Christy Gray is one of the most thoughtful people I've met – which I think you'll agree with after listening to this gem of an interview with her.

I met Christy in 2012 in an 8-month leadership development program and since then, she's gone on to complete a PhD, run multiple businesses and become a mom. Like me, she's passionate about books, so she decided to get into business distributing Barefoot Books because their company ethos really reflected her values.

Some of my takeaways from this conversation include:

• Books can be used to prompt deeper thinking – and to let us have difficult conversations within ourselves before we have them with other people.
• Some practices to challenge our beliefs – the most important of which is reframing through a lens of curiosity (not easy! though important)
• It's okay that talking about difficult things is difficult
• It's become a norm for her to talk about deep life themes with her son, which I think is such a beautiful thing
• The way gender is expressed today is generational and multicultural – it's important for us to keep talking about it.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.