When you think about Curiosity, do you think about Questions? I used to think that questions were the primary tool of a curious person … and then I discovered LISTENING! This month, Wonder Your Way to Brilliant is dedicated to episodes on the topic of listening because without the capacity to listen deeply, we cannot truly be curious nor can we wonder our way to brilliant! This first one dedicated to exploring what it really means to listen to yourself and others. At the end, I share a Game Changing Question that could change how you relate to yourself and to others for the rest of your life!

I honestly believe that no matter how confident any of us seems, none of us is without a gap or fracture in our sense of worthiness. We all experience doubts in our sense of self-worth and value. I also believe that the world needs us to own our value and strengthen our sense of worthiness so we can bring our fullest self to this world. The world needs our contributions, gifts and ways of seeing the world. This is why this week’s episode is dedicated to offering a tool for tending to the strengthening self-worth.

Can a relationship make us feel worthy or complete and should that be our expectation?

Never having learned how to cultivate our own worthiness, it totally makes sense that many of us adopt the paradigm that we are a ‘part’ and we can partner with another ‘part’ (hence ‘partner’) to become whole. But is that really what is supposed to happen? Is that how we become whole? Is this the function of relationship? In today’s episode, I explore and challenge this paradigm and offer up a new one to consider.

For over 40 years, I suffered from a chronic lack of worthiness. I was exhausted, felt persistently empty, and could not offer the kind of love I knew was inside of me. My guess is, I am not alone. A lack of worthiness is at the root of so much unhappiness and shows up in myriad insidious ways in our lives. If any of this resonates with you, join me this for this episode of Wonder Your Way to Brilliant in which I explore why we feel so unworthy and how we can approach a deeper and lasting sense of worthiness.

What IF - to live a brilliant life - all we had to do was to learn how to sift the depleting energies into more joyful, loving and peaceful ones? Would we learn? Would we be committed? would we invest our energies to grow in this way - or is our unhappiness too seductive? Join me for today's episode of Wonder Your Way to Brilliant and let's explore together. 

As much as we would like to think that we can free ourselves, it is clear that we will never eliminate fear, shame, and anxiety from our lives. They are part of the human experience. A word, gesture, or interaction can trigger one of these emotions in a split second, and at other times, we can spend most of a day, week or even month + steeped in these emotions. So if they are not going away, and we want to live a life that is present and inspired, what can we do with them? On today's episode of Wonder Your Way to Brilliant, I take on this question. 

Our To DO lists are long and by the end of the day we may have checked off a lot of boxes but yet not feel as though we have really engaged in anything meaningful or important. And yet, if we experience this again and again, why can’t we stop it? On today’s episode of Wonder Your Way to Brilliant, I explore what makes our TO DO lists so powerful and how we can integrate our BEING selves and DOING selves and feel more fulfilled.   

Each of us encounters times when things are not going right for us, we feel overwhelmed, we are sure the sky is falling or that the floor is crumbling beneath us, or that we simply are not ok in one way or another. It may relate to money, health, job, family, personal sense of worthiness, … There are so many things that can knock us off our feet and drag us under.

On today’s episode of Wonder Your Way to Brilliant, I offer some insights and tools for navigating these difficult times. We cannot prevent difficult times from entering our lives, but we can alter the impact that they have on us and what the resulting experience is like.  

We all ask questions all the time, but are we asking the Right Questions? In this podcast with Luz Santana, Co-Director of The Right Questions Institute (RQI), we explore how learning to craft and developing the confidence to ask high-quality questions is the foundation for self-advocacy and rich learning. Using a process known as the Question Formulation technique (QFT), RQI has empowered thousands of students, parents, patients and citizens in a wide range of roles to literally Wonder Their Way to Brilliant!. Listen in and learn about this process as well as the release of RQI’s soon to be released book, Partnering With Parents to Ask Their Own Questions.

All of us went through school and some of us met with more success than others, but how many of us ever really understood the purpose of schooling? The purpose of schooling has changed since the first grammar school opened in America in 1635, but for the last 100+ years, since the founding of the Association of American Universities, there has been a clear focus in K-12 education on preparing students for college and career. We have been focused through testing and success measures on successfully moving students through K-12 to college and beyond. To do this, we adopted a somewhat factory-like model of education:  Place similar age students in classrooms together with pre-determined content and competencies and expect them all to move through the learning pathway at the same time. As we now have overwhelming evidence that this model cannot work for all students, perhaps it is time to redefine our goal and our strategy. Join me for this conversation with Sam Chaltain in the direction we are heading and what it means for the preparation of our young people.