Create Magic At Work®

Today’s reflection explores how productivity is about more than accomplishing tasks. When we celebrate the achievements of others and prioritize work that brings us energy and purpose, productivity becomes a source of fulfillment rather than obligation.

Start your own journey of reflection, creativity, and intentional growth with the Create Magic at Work Journal or bring the wisdom of the Edgewalker mindset into your daily life with your own copy of the Edgewalker Card Deck. You can find both at https://magicthreadmedia.com/experience

What happens when grief walks into work with us, but no one knows what to say?

After Mindy Corporon’s father and 14-year-old son were murdered in a 2014 hate crime, she found herself carrying two realities at once. She was grieving an unimaginable loss while also leading a company, supporting employees, serving clients, and raising her younger son.

Amy and Mindy explore what those experiences taught her about grief leadership and the responsibility leaders have when loss enters the workplace. Mindy introduces the ABLE Conversation, a practical framework built around four actions: ask, befriend, listen, and encourage. Rather than expecting someone to return from bereavement leave ready to perform as before, she invites leaders to ask a more human question: What is your capacity today?

Their conversation also explores how grief can appear through overworking, mistakes, brain fog, and changing family milestones, along with the role Mindy’s faith has played in helping her continue after profound loss.

Grief does not ask leaders to become therapists. It asks them to notice.

Sometimes leadership begins with having enough courage to acknowledge what happened, stay present, and remind another human being that they do not have to become invisible in their pain.

Moments That Create Momentum:

1. Silence Can Add to the Pain – Understand why acknowledging someone’s loss can matter even when a leader does not know exactly what to say.
2. Ask About Capacity, Not Just Wellbeing – Learn how asking what someone can manage today creates a more useful conversation than expecting an all-or-nothing return.
3. Grief Can Look Like Overworking – Recognize how longer hours, mistakes, brain fog, and disrupted routines may signal that someone is struggling after loss.
4. Remember Who Is Missing – Consider how holidays, birthdays, and family milestones can reactivate grief long after the initial bereavement period has ended.
5. Faith Does Not Require an Explanation – See how Mindy continues choosing faith, service, and kindness without believing tragedy had to happen for a reason.

About the Guest:

Mindy Corporon is the founder of Grief Leadership, the emerging discipline at the intersection of grief and leadership, and author of Grief Leadership and Healing a Shattered Soul. A CEO, speaker, and entrepreneur, Mindy’s work was shaped by profound personal loss when her father and fourteen-year-old son were murdered in a 2014 hate crime. She transformed grief into action, developing practical approaches that help leaders recognize and respond to loss while sustaining humanity, culture, trust, and organizational performance. Through her writing, speaking, and leadership, Mindy equips organizations to put Grief Leadership into practice through ABLE Conversations: Ask, Befriend, Listen, Encourage.

https://www.youtube.com/@mindycorporon1170

https://www.facebook.com/mindy.corporon

Instagram: @mindycorporon

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mindycorporon/

Mindy’s Book - Grief Leadership - https://link.amazon/B0dpgJV2e

About Amy:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving workplaces and lives where “magic” becomes reality.

Connect with Amy:

https://createmagicatwork.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/create-magic-at-work

https://www.facebook.com/112951637095427

https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnEm4h3fUgaq8qgvZpz6dGg

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Today’s Edgewalker card explores how passion becomes more meaningful when it is connected to a clear sense of purpose. By recognizing our unique gifts and choosing to use them in service of something greater than ourselves, we create opportunities to bring lasting value to our lives and the world around us.

Start your own journey of reflection, creativity, and intentional growth with the Create Magic at Work Journal or bring the wisdom of the Edgewalker mindset into your daily life with your own copy of the Edgewalker Card Deck. You can find both at https://magicthreadmedia.com/experience

If you haven’t tuned into Salty Sweet—a standout relationship podcast on the Magic Thread Media network—you are missing out on some of the most honest, vulnerable, and transformative couple's work captured on air.

In this special behind-the-scenes episode, network executive producer Amy Lynn Durham sits down with Salty Sweet host Dr. Pavini Moray for a candid conversation about what it really means to step inside the therapy room, confront the fears that block intimacy, and navigate the messy, beautiful reality of human connection.

Unlike standard relationship advice or heavily edited reality TV, Salty Sweet invites listeners directly into a season-long deep dive with a single, brave couple willing to record their live therapy sessions. Blending somatic work, couples' counseling, and Relational Life Therapy, Dr. Pavini works alongside the couple to help them unmask unhealthy behavioral loops and embrace true healing.

• Who’s Really Driving Your Triggers? Find out why your childhood "adaptive child" takes the wheel during a conflict—and how learning to cultivate your "wise adult" changes everything.
• The "Get Out of Jail Free" Card of Shame: Discover why falling into a shame spiral after a breach of trust actually suffocates your partner’s pain, and why true remorse requires a totally different kind of courage.
• What is Your Relationship Hiding Behind? Uncover the secret "third things"—from distractions to old habits—that couples unconsciously use as a volume dial for vulnerability when intimacy gets too terrifying.
• The Counterintuitive First Step to Healing: Before you try to banish your relationship's defensive patterns, Dr. Pavini explains why you actually need to thank them first.

As Season 1 wraps up with some gorgeous breakthroughs around intimacy, casting is officially open for Season 2! Dr. Pavini is looking for tender, courageous couples who are willing to go deep—especially those navigating "impossible" situations, a space of heavy resentment, or queer relationships ready to model expansive, rule-breaking love.

Listen, Rate, and Review:

• Listen to the Salty Sweet Podcast on your favorite podcast platform - https://salty-sweet.captivate.fm/listen
• Listen to Salty Sweet on Magic Thread Media - https://magicthreadmedia.com/shows
• Connect with Dr. Pavini Moray and inquire about Season 2 casting at https://pavinimoray.com
• Share this episode with a friend, leave a review, and help us spread conscious voices for a more connected world!

About Dr. Pavini

Dr. Pavini Moray is a somatic coach and Relational Life Therapy practitioner with a PhD in Somatic Psychology. For more than 15 years, Pavini has worked with couples navigating relationship crisis, intimacy challenges, rupture, and repair. Their approach blends Relational Life Therapy, somatic work, and trauma-informed care to help couples understand the deeper patterns shaping how they connect, communicate, and love.

https://www.pavinimoray.com/

About Amy

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving workplaces and lives where “magic” becomes reality.

https://createmagicatwork.net/

https://magicthreadmedia.com/

What parts of ourselves did we leave behind when we learned how to be professional?

For some of us, it was singing. For others, creativity, play, vulnerability, or the willingness to connect with someone whose worldview looks nothing like our own. Somewhere along the way, being human can become something we carefully manage rather than something we fully inhabit.

Amy and Benjamin Mertz explore what happens when we bring those parts of ourselves back into the room. Drawing from the Black spiritual and civil rights music traditions, Benjamin describes how communal singing can dissolve defenses and reconnect people to joy, courage, and one another.

Their conversation expands into dialogue across differences, the importance of community when we feel stuck, making “good trouble” at work, and what it means to protect our humanity as AI becomes more present in our lives.

Hope, Benjamin suggests, does not have to be something we wait to feel. It can become something we practice through service, creativity, connection, and the way we treat the people around us.

Perhaps staying human is not something we accomplish alone. It is something we keep reminding one another how to do.

Moments That Create Momentum:

1. We Were Made to Create – Explore why singing, dancing, and making art still matter even when no one is performing, competing, or trying to be the best.
2. Freedom Is Not Individual – Discover how community can help us remember who we are when our own thinking has left us feeling stuck.
3. Disagreement Is Not Danger – Hear how to stay expansive and hold space for our differences.
4. Good Trouble Builds Resilience – See why speaking up in small ways can strengthen a team before a much larger storm arrives.
5. Be a Hope – Recognize how hope becomes more tangible when we practice it through service, connection, creativity, and integrity.

About the Guest:

BenjaSoul is a composer, pianist and song leader who has led music of the Black Spiritual tradition for 20 years. He leads music at benefit concerts, protest actions, sacred services, and Black History workshops. He is currently the board chair of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, an immigrant rights and anti-incarceration nonprofit organization. He has worked in the Civil Rights space his entire life.

Benja is also a certified executive coach through the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute. He helped develop BEC's inclusive leadership programs and teaches Leadership presence with Dr. Mark Rittenberg's team at the Haas School of Business. He has facilitated leadership workshops across many industries, including healthcare, education, and tech. He is currently pursuing a Master's in History, focusing his thesis on the history of the Civil Rights movement.

When not teaching, performing, or causing good trouble, Benja is at home being the proud father of Isaiah, Sammy, and baby Amarachi.

https://benjaminmertz.com

https://benjasoul.com

Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity: htpps://im4humanintegrity.org

About Amy:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving workplaces and lives where “magic” becomes reality.

Connect with Amy:

https://createmagicatwork.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/create-magic-at-work

https://www.facebook.com/112951637095427

https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnEm4h3fUgaq8qgvZpz6dGg

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

When it comes to creativity, wonderful friends and a bustling social life aren’t enough. We need the six relationships most important for creative health.

In her fifteen years of creativity coaching, Rachel Efron identified six creativity relationships: allies, mentors, role models, mentees, collaborators, and nature/spirit. If you have a couple of these, your creativity will thank you. If you have many of them, you’ll feel a synergy between your creatiivty and the world around you. If you have all six of them, god help this world handle everything you’re about to create!

Rachel explains the six relationships with personal anecdotes: her first experiences with each one of the relationships. Hear about her verbose first mentor. Hear about her shoddy piano teaching practice. Hear about her realization that she and the Pacific Ocean are both sparkly and salty. And discover the amazing power of each of the creativity relationships in your life.

A creative ally is a fellow traveler on the creative road. A mentor guides with the wisdom of experience. A role model gives you a map to your becoming.. Mentees remind us of how much we have to offer. Collaborators locate new aspects of our creative voices, and spirit/nature teaches us that when we create, we belong to the world around us.

The deeper invitation is not to surround ourselves with more people. It is to notice what our creativity needs relationally. Because sometimes the missing resource is not another idea, more discipline, or greater confidence. Sometimes it’s learning how to involve others in our creative process.

Sparks of Insight

• Creative connection has very little to do with popularity or social skill. What matters is whether the relationships in your life actually support your creativity.
• Six different relationships nourish six different dimensions of creative health: allies, mentors, role models, mentees, collaborators, and nature or spirit.
• Rachel’s first creative ally showed her what happens when two people become enchanted by each other’s creative process.
• Mentees may be one of the most overlooked creative resources. Serving someone is a straight line to our self-worth.
• It’s a beautiful thing to let the people in our lives be exactly who they are to us… to let our friends be friends and our parents be parents, and to seek creative connection in the six relationships where we know it will be.

Ready to reveal your creative Spark?

Download the Muzi app at http://itunes.apple.com/app/id6739667782 to take the Creativity Assessment, and uncover your Spark profile. Then email your Spark to Rachel at [email protected] for a chance at a Spark Reading, where Rachel will offer personalized insight into what your creativity most needs from you right now.

About Rachel:

Rachel Efron is an Oakland-based songwriter, producer, and creativity coach. She's released four full-length albums of original songs, plus written for such legends as Narada Michael Walden and Journey. Rachel is a premier songwriting coach for songwriters across the world, and has over fifteen years experience helping artists, leaders, and teams find their voice.

In 2022, Rachel turned her methods into a comprehensive framework and groundbreaking app, Muzi, to help everyone —artists and non-artists alike—access greater creativity in their lives.

email: [email protected]

website: https://www.rachelefron.com/creativity

Download the Muzi app at http://itunes.apple.com/app/id6739667782

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Today’s reflection explores what changes when we give ourselves permission to stop pushing and make room for rest. By considering what rest truly means for us, we can begin to recognize where greater ease and flow may be needed.

Start your own journey of reflection, creativity, and intentional growth with the Create Magic at Work Journal or bring the wisdom of the Edgewalker mindset into your daily life with your own copy of the Edgewalker Card Deck. You can find both at https://magicthreadmedia.com/experience

What happens to your communication when someone pushes exactly the right button?

Strategy can disappear quickly when the nervous system feels threatened. We become defensive, rush to prove our point, or get pulled into the emotional energy of the person across from us. The conversation may still be happening, but we are no longer fully present inside it.

Amy and trial lawyer Jennifer Gardner explore what it takes to remain grounded when the stakes are high. Drawing from decades inside intense courtroom situations, Jennifer shares why self-regulation is not separate from effective communication. It is what makes clear thinking, presence, and persuasion possible in the first place.

Their conversation moves from grounding through the body to the deeper work of humanizing the person on the other side. Jennifer also examines the line between ethical persuasion and manipulation, including how likability, empathy, and emotional connection can be used either in service of understanding or as tools for control.

The goal is not to become impossible to trigger.

It is to recognize the moment you are losing yourself, return to what matters, and choose how you want to respond before fear, ego, or defensiveness chooses for you.

Moments That Create Momentum:

1. Don’t Take the Bait – Explore why regulating yourself first can keep conflict from deciding how you communicate.
2. Come Back to the Body – Learn how grounding and breath can help restore clarity when the pressure around you begins to escalate.
3. Humanize Before You Persuade – Discover why understanding another person’s reality can make communication more compelling without abandoning your own position.
4. Notice the Shadow of Persuasion – Recognize how likability and emotional connection can create influence, and when those same tools begin to feel manipulative.
5. Hard Truths Still Need to Be Spoken – See how difficult conversations can create greater inner peace when your actions remain aligned with what you believe.

About the Guest:

Jennifer B. Gardner is a Los Angeles-based trial lawyer, speaker, and persuasion expert who helps high-performing leaders strengthen their executive presence, communication, and influence. She has operated her own litigation firm for more than 30 years and has handled complex business, real estate, and criminal matters through trial.

Jennifer holds executive certifications from the Wharton School in leadership, influence and persuasion, and neuroscience for business. Through The Edge Education, she teaches leaders and lawyers how to communicate more effectively, navigate high-stakes situations, and achieve stronger results with less stress.

https://jenniferbgardner.com/

About Amy:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving workplaces and lives where “magic” becomes reality.

Connect with Amy:

https://createmagicatwork.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/create-magic-at-work

https://www.facebook.com/112951637095427

https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnEm4h3fUgaq8qgvZpz6dGg

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Today’s Edgewalker card explores how vision can emerge through presence and deep listening. When we slow down enough to notice what others may overlook, we create space to recognize possibilities, patterns, and guidance that can shape what comes next.

Start your own journey of reflection, creativity, and intentional growth with the Create Magic at Work Journal or bring the wisdom of the Edgewalker mindset into your daily life with your own copy of the Edgewalker Card Deck. You can find both at https://magicthreadmedia.com/experience

Today’s reflection explores what can become possible when curiosity takes the place of quick judgment. By asking meaningful questions and being willing to explore the answers, we can discover new perspectives and possibilities within our work.

Start your own journey of reflection, creativity, and intentional growth with the Create Magic at Work Journal or bring the wisdom of the Edgewalker mindset into your daily life with your own copy of the Edgewalker Card Deck. You can find both at https://magicthreadmedia.com/experience