Living Consciously in Midlife and Beyond is based on the conscious Living Wheel introduced in the book Midlife, New Life written by Eileen Caroscio, Sandy Demarest, and Paul Ward. The purpose of this podcast is to advance conscious living and conscious leadership for the greater good of humanity. Betsy Pickren uses the Midlife, New Life book as a foundation for her Wisdom Impact Groups. In our conversation, Betsy shares her own journey of transitions through midlife and explains how she helps women repurpose their wisdom for good in her wisdom groups.

To listen to the video podcast go to my YouTube channel https://youtu.be/RpIqNY77TiE and to learn more about Betsy Pickren visit www.betsypickren.com

Podcast first released in September 2024 

Most of us think about being contagious in terms of a virus or ill health, especially at this time as the coronavirus is spreading rapidly around the world, but emotions and attitudes are also contagious. During my Conscious Leadership in Action conversation with Anese Cavanaugh, author of the book, Contagious You, we talked about how we as leaders are contagious. The question is, are we positively or negatively contagious?

As Anese explained, we pick up on each other's vibe, or energetic presence. Meetings are a good example. We walk into the meeting, there's a couple of us that feel really great, we're really happy to be there, and there's that one person in the room where their vibe is just really low. Maybe their arms are crossed, their brows are furled. You can feel them, you can feel it. And what generally will happen is the other people will often catch that vibe, and they'll meet the lowest vibration in the room, and that case that lowest vibration was contagious. Other people caught it, they felt it, they saw it. They might have tried to hold their state for a little while, but ultimately, most often, unless somebody is really good at holding their state, they'll match the lower vibe.

It's the same thing out in the world, in one-on-one conversations. If I come into a conversation with you, and I'm feeling really low vibe, that you're able to hold your state and you bring a really beautiful energetic presence. Not fake, not rah rah, not trying to get me out of my state, but if I can be present that I can actually also catch your vibe and I can step into a higher level of presence. So we're constantly interacting with each other's energy and is it is a choice of what we want to put out there and a choice of what we decide to take on, and that's where the contagiousness comes in.

Anese went on to talk about intentional energetic presence (IEP). Being conscious and intentional about the energetic presence we bring to everything we do. With intention, which is what I want to have happen, we can add energy, which is the energy and stamina to actually create that intention. And then we have presence, which is how we are going to show up in the world. We can ask ourselves, what will my actual presence be? Am I going to be really conscious? Am I going to be positively or negatively contagious?

For those of you with the coronavirus or at risk of being infected with the coronavirus, and those of you have are experiencing loss because of the coronavirus, we send you love, and wish for you peace and good vibrations.

To listen to the video podcast go to https://youtu.be/HVHZoi7agfw and to learn more about Anese Cavanaugh visit https://www.anesecavanaugh.com/

In my Conscious Leadership in Action conversation with guest Eric Kaufmann we talked about his new book, Leadership Breakdown: How to break the vicious cycle, release the struggle, and succeed with conscious leadership.

Eric has made awakening and expanding the consciousness of leaders his mission in life. Eric says that what makes a conscious leader is not just waking up, opening your eyes and saying I am, but seeing the interconnectedness of all things, and holding all those variables in heart and mind as you make choices. That means extending beyond my ego, my sense of separate self and folding into it my co-workers, vendors, supply chain, my customers, my shareholders, my family, the family of my employees. What makes a person a conscious leader is the ability to expand that sense of self beyond the protection, beyond the greed, beyond the fear and to really include as much of life possible while making choices. A conscious being at choice, taking responsible action.

Eric describes his book as a journey through the applications of conscious leadership. He first addresses the question about why we need conscious leadership now, including the role that companies and businesses play in society, which is to say they've eclipsed religion and government as the shapers of human society. It is a mantle of responsibility cast upon leaders that they didn't expect. Conscious leadership is then deconstructed into its elemental vectors or main parts followed by chapters describing how we apply various lessons and insights to soften the ego’s grip and be able to be more conscious.

The Conscious Leadership in Action conversation also includes Eric being exceptionally vulnerable in sharing his own leadership awakening and a beautiful meditation. To listen to the video podcast go to my You Tube channel and to preorder Eric’s new book, Leadership Breakdown, visit Eric's Bookstore.

Podcast first released in February 2020.

In my recent Conscious Leadership in Action conversation with transformational coach and spiritual mentor, Gema Ramirez, we explored how leaders can cultivate conscious leadership. Inspired by a recent Conscious Leadership in Action podcast, Gema has renamed her ebook, with the new title, Cultivating Conscious Leadership. Hence the title of this blog post and video podcast.

Conscious leadership is an inner journey. Gema’s vision is to change the world to see everyone becoming a conscious leader, inspiring others, and coming together with our own unique versions of conscious leadership. Cultivating is also an inner journey, going within to find out who we are and discovering the conscious leader that is already there.

During our conversation Gema introduced the nine qualities of a conscious leaders from her ebook. The nine qualities are: authenticity, collaboration, inspiration, oneness, presence, equanimity, trust, inclusion, and greatness. These nine qualities are pointers for the conscious leader who can transform the world into the peaceful paradise that we all dream of and provide a great way of supporting people removing those old conditionings and limiting beliefs. To learn more about these qualities, listen to the podcast and read Gema’s ebook.

Gema has kindly provided a special edition of her ebook for readers of my blog posts and viewers of my video podcast. To view the Conscious Leadership in Action video conversation with Gema Ramirez and access a copy of the special edition ebook, go to my YouTube Channel https://youtu.be/PGJUonm0rXM  

In my Conscious Leadership in Action conversation with Karen Wilhelm Buckley, we explored how leaders can cultivate commitment with wise leadership. During our conversation, Karen said that unless we are grounded and centered in what matters most, our leadership is not employed with as much veracity, as much strength, or as much power.

Aligning with the title of the book, The Inner Journey to Conscious Leadership, Karen suggested that it's constantly an inner journey, and then it's constantly an outer journey as well. If we're only inward, then we're probably up in a cave, being a monk. If we're only outward, then we're always interacting with the world and there is not the maturity that comes from the inner work. The capacity to integrate our experience and our knowledge with our conscious awareness is really key to the capacity to be consciously a leader and to be conscious in our leadership.

When commitment is paired with wisdom, there's an awareness of the limits of the reliability of our own knowledge. The second part is the wisdom that comes when we're aware of the inherent dilemmas that come within acting on any commitment. So there's always polarities. There's two choices to make that don't necessarily seem to go together. And an ability to be aware of those dilemmas and the fact that we have ill structured problems and messes that we're dealing with, that are much more complex than we can possibly come to understand. That awareness is wisdom.

We cultivate commitment from the inside out. Yet commitment in itself is not enough. We have bring in wisdom before we take action. Cultivate the commitment paired with wisdom, and then take the responsible action that delivers the results. 

To view the Conscious Leadership in Action video conversation with Karen Wilhelm Buckley, go to my YouTube Channel https://youtu.be/48MhOFDrm6M  

In my recent Conscious Leadership in Action conversation with Josh Perry, Josh talked about three principles he has learned on his journey from Pro BMX athlete to multiple brain tumor survivor and inspirational speaker. Josh almost died because doctors thought his headaches were quite normal and it wasn’t until a routine brain scan following a training accident that two massive brain tumors were revealed.

Five years after Gamma Knife Radiotherapy was used to zap and shrink the tumors, two new massive masses were found to have grown on the other side of Josh’s head. Today, even though the tumors have been shrunk and are now stable, Josh lives with the knowledge of these tumors in his brain. Josh has adopted a ketogenic lifestyle to optimize brain health and, practicing mindfulness, is managing his stress levels more effectively. More than that, Josh is now helping others overcome their challenges and realize their dreams. He has developed three principles as a foundation for his inspirational messages.

Josh’s three principles are:

Perspective is Essential to Life. How we choose to see the world leads us to take action one way or another, and this determines our personality and creates our personal reality. When we audit our perspective and redirect it in a manner that serves us, we can then create abundance in all areas of life.

Health is Internal. Josh’s brain tumors weren’t showing up on the outside, but they were there all the same. The experience of a massive brain tumor taking over his life and almost killing him, led Josh to the ketogenic lifestyle to improve brain health, resiliency, and performance. Josh learned very vividly that health is not just what’s on the outside and now believes that our external being is a reflection of our internal health.

Our Reality is a Manifestation of our Choices. Understanding that our personality creates our personal reality and that health is internal, gives us the opportunity to manifest the reality we choose every single day. Josh says, I choose to manifest the life I desire, no matter how hard it may seem in the moment, and I encourage others to do the same.

To view the Conscious Leadership in Action video conversation with Josh Perry, go to my YouTube Channel.

Susan Wehrley is the author of recently published Yogi Executive, 7 Principles to Improve Your Gut Intelligence and Become a More Clear, Calm and Confident Leader. During our conscious leadership conversation, Susan talked about the yogi executive as somebody who's practicing groundedness and awareness.  We get grounded through our breath, through the practices of meditation and mindfulness. Also a commitment to awareness; awareness of what is going on around you and within you so that you're showing up as your best self.

Being a yogi executive doesn't mean you have to be an executive in a company, but it's using that executive functioning part of your brain. So everybody's a yoga executive when they're doing that. They're creating that alignment. Susan went on to say, my gut is a brain.

When we get that ping in the gut that says something's not right or something's not congruent, we've got to listen to our heart. A heart that says, am I willing to really look at the truth? And that could be anything from, oh my gosh my child is starting to make choices that I would deem undesirable or dangerous, or my relationship is starting to fall apart, or this job that I thought would bring me happiness and security no longer is. Whatever it is, we may need to square with that, look at the truth and make some changes. Oftentimes we might not want to feel all that fear, disappointment, or anger that might be associated with that emotion. There's a lot of associated emotions that we don't want to deal with.

To view the Conscious Leadership in Action video conversation with Susan Wehrley, go to: https://youtu.be/3cjFcwczDXA

Leaders as Elders, Stewards, and Tuning Forks is one of the chapters in Jeffrey Deckman’s award winning book, Developing the Conscious Leadership Mindset for the 21st Century. Jeffery writes, “elders are not in pursuit of leadership roles they’re in pursuit of consciousness.” In our Conscious Leadership in Action conversation, Jeffrey talks about the role of conscious elders.

Elders have a calming effect and observe a lot. They observe more than they act, but when they act, they act with precision and efficiency. Elders don’t have to be super old. They could be wise, they could be an old soul. These are people who listen to understand and speak to be understood. They’re patient, they’re more focused on how things are unfolding, as opposed to how should things unfold. They get more tuned in, and understand the wisdom of the natural flow of life and nature. You can yell with a rosebud all you want, but it’s not going to open up any faster. So you’re better off understanding how to create the conditions for that rose to bloom at whatever rate it can. And then you need to be mature enough to deal with that and to let that happen.

When someone is trying to figure out how to begin to take steps on the journey to conscious leadership, just think about the image you have of an elder and think about what they do and why they’re respected, and that will get you headed in the right direction. And the longer you stay in that direction, the more your consciousness will raise.

Learn more about the role of conscious elders and other aspects of Developing the Conscious Leadership Mindset by listening to the Conscious Leadership in Action video podcast with guest Jeffrey Deckman.

To view the Conscious Leadership in Action video conversation with Charlie Efford, go to my YouTube channel.

Different states of awareness or levels of consciousness exist in our universe. In this Conscious Leadership in Action conversation, Charlie Efford relates these levels of consciousness to octaves on a musical scale, each having a number of notes within it. Higher octaves mean higher levels of consciousness.

During our conversation, Charlie provided a fascinating description of the color coded spirals described by Frederic Laloux in Reinventing Organizations and Don Beck and Christopher Cowan in Spiral Dynamics, with references to vertical and horizontal learning. Charlie suggested that lot of the work around conscious leadership is probably coming out of the green level of consciousness, maybe tipping a little bit towards teal and raised the question, Is the world approaching a point where we’re about to make a jump up to another octave?

Exploring higher levels of consciousness beyond green and yellow is challenging. It’s difficult to understand what green leadership would look like if you’re predominantly operating at an orange level. Speaking the green language or conscious leadership language to someone who was very firmly at the orange level, makes no sense to them. They just don’t get. It’s not their fault, they haven’t experienced it yet.

To view the Conscious Leadership in Action video conversation with Charlie Efford, go to my YouTube channel.

Every CEO, when you're behind closed doors, and they're being honest with you, they all have confidence issues, and they're all afraid that they're not doing it right. That they're not smart enough, that they're going to be found out, that they're a pretender, that they don't have all the answers. And yet, that fear has them putting up this facade of strength where it appears they've got it all under control. That gets them to a level of success that they cannot get past.

In today's ever more complex world, more things are happening faster. They are dealing with a whole new generation of millennials who are out there driving all these baby boom leaders nuts, because they've got these walls and beliefs about who they are and how people are. And it's more of a game, more of a win-lose in their minds; and they're driven by fear. As conscious leadership coaches, we can help break down those fears and, if nothing else, help them learn techniques to overcome them.

Kevin went on to say: Start with your people. All business issues are people issues, first and foremost, and those people issues often relate to the false ego, the unconscious part of ourselves. So if we can break through those issues, and help them get into their own true essence and their own true selves, and tap into their own higher intelligences, they’ll come up with their own solutions. And then, my job is to help them figure their strategy for implementing and hold them accountable. That's my role as a conscious leaders coach.

To view the Conscious Leadership in Action video conversation with Kevin Rafferty, go to my YouTube channel.