I Can Do This Show Me How!

When did you last change your mind about how you learn?

Most of us build our ideas about education early, in our own classrooms, at our children’s schools, or in jobs that pushed us to keep up. Those ideas can carry us a long way. They can also stop us from asking new questions. And now that a tool like AI can answer almost anything in seconds, what happens to our curiosity?

In today’s solo episode, I reflect on more than 30 years of learning, teaching, and leading, and on why I am still reconsidering what effective learning looks like. I share how two books from the 1800s, found through my university’s library database, filled me with gratitude as the great-great-great-granddaughter of people who were enslaved. I talk about the timid parent I once was at school open houses, the evening I couldn’t help my son with his math homework, and how my first year teaching community college showed me the difference between schooling and education. I also take an honest look at AI and independent thinking, drawing on my own path from a manual typewriter to the first office computer. Tune in and listen to the fifty-seventh episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! to find out what your curiosity might be ready to challenge.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• [2:00] What two 19th century books taught me about access to knowledge
• [4:15] Why the freedom to seek knowledge as both a privilege and a right
• [6:30] How curiosity differs from questioning a teacher, and why I was once afraid of both
• [12:30] How I built my own self-directed program for learning to teach
• [14:40] How reflective thinking shaped my decisions as a leader and in my personal life
• [19:50] How to use AI without giving up responsibility for your own thinking
• [24:15] The question I want you to sit with this week

Resources

• History of Education by Levi Seeley
• The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated by John Henry Newman

Let's connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the goals that once gave your life its shape stop making sense?

Sometimes you've reached them. Sometimes your circumstances shift. And sometimes, life changes so much that the plans and routines you relied on stop working altogether. When the familiar places where we learn, like school, work, community, and travel, suddenly fall away, what happens to learning?

Tune in and listen to the fifty-sixth episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! I share what I found when the pandemic gave me time to sort through decades of books, papers, and photographs. Among them was The Hero Within by Dr. Carol S. Pearson, a book a friend gave me when I earned my first degree from community college and one I later used in my developmental writing classes. Reading it again, years later, showed me that being the hero of your own story doesn't mean living inside one story forever. I also talk about the moment I stopped waiting for someone else's permission to move forward, and explain why learning in adulthood can mean building enough confidence to act on what we already know.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• [0:14] Three ways the goals that organize our lives can lose their clarity
• [5:08] How the pandemic disrupted the structures adults learn through, and what that did to our sense of agency
• [6:30] Why rediscovering The Hero Within became a learning experience with no syllabus, no professor, and no grade
• [8:40] What Carl Rogers meant by "always becoming" and how it changes the hero's story
• [10:30] How Bandura's work on self-efficacy turns into one simple question: What can I do next?
• [12:25] Why no one else can give you certainty, and what changed when I started trusting myself
• [14:53] How learning can help us meet the next version of ourselves

Resources

• The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By by Carol S. Pearson

Let's connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A theater major who studied mime in Paris. A would-be French professor who found 300 applications on file for a single job opening. Two layoffs, a cross-country move, and nearly fifty years in publishing later, Rick Benzel has a clear view of how one door leads to the next. His path never ran in a straight line, and that's what makes his story worth hearing.

In today's guest episode, I talk with writer, editor, and publisher Rick Benzel about his life as seen through Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. Rick traces his calling from the stage to French literature to the publishing business, where he has worked since the late 1970s. He describes the moment he realized a career in academia was a dead end, the corporate mergers that cost him two jobs, and the move to Los Angeles that brought him into trade publishing.

Tune in and listen to the fifty-fifth episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! Picture walking into a house that looks like a single room, then finding several doors inside. Open one, and a new room appears that wasn't there before. Rick and I use this imagery to talk about career changes, the people who shape our choices, stand-up comedy classes, and the "serendipity days" Rick builds into every trip.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• [03:54] Travel is a learning experience for Rick. He plans his own trips and talks to strangers wherever he goes.
• [06:50] In 1975, Rick found 300 applications for one faculty opening. That was the challenge that changed his direction.
• [11:54] Young adults are pulled by emotions as well as career goals. Serious reflection and flexibility both matter.
• [18:40] How a second corporate acquisition in 1992 pushed Rick to go freelance for good.
• [28:40] Two years of stand-up comedy classes taught Rick that hobbies matter, even when they don't become careers.
• [32:19] Rick explains the adjacent possible. You don't know what's in the next room until you walk into it.
• [34:55] Dr. Linda reflects on bravery and on how the pandemic pushed many people to ask, "Why am I doing this now?"
• [40:48] Serendipity requires letting go of expectations. There is no wrong direction.

Resources

• Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey
• Why Couples Drive Each Other Crazy and How to Fix It by Ricky Arenson, MD

Connect with Rick Benzel

• Rick's author page
• LinkedIn

Let's connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the story you tell about yourself is already out of date?

In today's solo episode, I explore the psychology of awe and why it might be the key to staying curious for a lifetime. I share memories from my teaching career, a childhood thunderstorm in Alabama, and watching my four-year-old grandsons encounter the world for the first time, all as ways of asking: what still has the power to make your world feel larger?

Tune in and listen to the fifty-fourth episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! I trace my own path from adult community college student to English professor and how that journey reshaped the way I understood myself. Drawing on a 2003 article by psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I explore two ideas that changed how I think about growth: vastness, the sense that the world is bigger than we assumed, and the need for accommodation: the moment our old self-concept can no longer hold what we've become.

Learning Points

• [02:39] Reaching financial and personal stability, but noticing a new sense of alignment between work and sense of self.
• [05:02] Keltner and Haidt's 2003 article on awe and its two core concepts: vastness and the need for accommodation.
• [09:50] The idea of self-expansion: the moment your own evidence no longer supports the old story you told about yourself.
• [12:15] Awe isn't always comfortable. It can be beautiful and frightening at once.
• [17:06] The word "yet" and how it keeps us open to not knowing. 
• [21:52] How other people's stories can expand our understanding, and how comfort with uncertainty becomes a source of energy rather than fear.
• [28:59] Sit with the question: what still has the ability to make your world feel larger?

Resources

• The Science of Happiness

Let's Connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's solo episode, I'm reflecting on something I've carried with me for decades: the idea that education became a mirror for me—not just a way to learn about the world, but a way to learn about myself.

I share the story of enrolling in college in my 30s after years of believing I wasn't "the academic type" and talk about what it was like to get back my first college paper. I also share about being asked, for the first time, "What do you think?" and how that question started to change everything. I reflect on the difference between earning a credential and being transformed by the process of earning it, and I invite you to consider what your own mirror might be showing you right now.

Tune in and listen to the fifty-third episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! I don't know what your mirror is showing you right now, but I hope this episode gives you a moment to pause and notice. Whether it's a class you've been curious about, a skill you've always wanted to learn, or just a question you haven't let yourself sit with, you don't need an answer today. Sometimes noticing the question is where the discovery begins.

In this episode, you will learn:

• [02:46] Education as a mirror: it doesn't create new possibilities, it helps you see them.
• [06:07] We don't walk into classrooms, workplaces, or relationships as blank slates. We bring our histories, our assumptions, and the things we've never thought to question.
• [13:08] The shift began with learning to type at business college and a supervisor who saw potential in me before I saw it in myself
• [16:26] The moment that changed everything: an instructor's question on my first college paper and the beginning of learning to examine my own thinking.
• [19:20] A caution about talking about education only in terms of credentials: degrees matter, but they don't tell the story of who you become while earning them.
• [24:00] "I have never completed learning, and I hope I never do."
• [25:26] Reconsidering a belief isn't weakness, it's evidence you're paying attention.
• [26:41] My own practice for feeling stuck: getting curious about the assumption underneath the hesitation.
• [30:28] A closing invitation: you don't need to answer right away, sometimes it's enough just to notice the question.

Let's Connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the voice telling you "I don't belong here" is actually saying something else entirely: "I am still learning how to be here."

In today's solo episode, I explore the imposter phenomenon—that persistent feeling that your accomplishments don't fully belong to you, even when the evidence says otherwise. Drawing on the foundational 1978 research by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, I’m tracing how imposter feelings show up not as a clinical diagnosis but as a common experience for people entering unfamiliar territory, taking on new responsibility, or trying to find their footing somewhere they don't yet see themselves reflected. I trace this back to my own early years teaching at a community college, when I knew my subject but had never been trained to teach adults how to learn it. Instead of pretending I had it figured out, I started asking questions, wandering library stacks, and following my curiosity wherever it led. That shift, from asking, "Am I good enough to be here?" to asking, "What can I learn?" changed everything for me.

Tune in and listen to the fifty-second episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! to learn how environment and representation shape imposter feelings just as much as individual mindset does, and the three questions I now use to sort out what's actually going on: What is the evidence? What do I genuinely need to learn? Is this feeling only mine or is my environment contributing to it, too?

In this episode, you will learn:

• [00:14] Feeling like an imposter can persist even alongside real accomplishment and credentials.
• [02:43] The concept of the imposter phenomenon comes from Clance and Imes' 1978 research on high-achieving women who struggled to internalize their own success.
• [05:05] "I don't know this yet" and "I don't belong here" are two different statements, and mixing them up fuels imposter feelings.
• [07:33] Unanswered questions about how to teach or lead well are a sign of genuine growth, not evidence of fraud.
• [09:52] Following curiosity, rather than chasing one more credential, opened up new ways of thinking and learning.
• [14:40] Imposter feelings are shaped by environment and representation, not only by individual mindset.
• [17:03] Being the only person in the room with a particular background sharpens awareness of who feels like an insider and who doesn't.
• [19:29] Four things that helped over time: admitting what she didn't know, following curiosity, letting new learning change her actions, and allowing confidence to follow action rather than precede it.
• [26:20] Practical next steps include mentors, writing centers, tutoring, professional associations, and small learning communities.
• [31:09] Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey frames the shift from performing competence to becoming competent as a threshold to cross.
• [33:32] A travel story from China and Tibet illustrates the difference between feeling like you don't belong and feeling like you are still learning how to be somewhere.

Resources

• Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. (1978). The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women.
• Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey
• ICDTSMH episode 41 with Dr. Helena

Let's Connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the biggest obstacle standing between you and the life you want is not a lack of opportunity, but a voice inside your own head telling you that you are not ready, not qualified, and do not belong? And what if the antidote to that voice is not confidence or certainty, but simply the willingness to choose, just once, not to believe it?

In today's solo episode, I take you deeper into what choosing actually looks like over four decades of my life. I share how enrolling in college as an adult, through a program designed for working people with families and full lives, became the first of thousands of small choices that would eventually lead me to become a college president. I talk honestly about the exhaustion of working full time while raising two sons and earning three college degrees in six years, about the inner voice that kept telling me to stop, and about what I learned when I started applying my education not just to my career, but to my cooking, my sewing, and the way I moved through the world every single day.

Tune in and listen to the fifty-first episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! to discover why the real journey was never about the degrees themselves, and what it looks like to keep choosing yourself, again and again, even when that voice tells you to stop.

In this episode, you will learn:

• What crossing the choice threshold actually looks like over forty years of living. (0:14)
• Too many options can be just as paralyzing as having none. I share what Barry Schwartz's "The Paradox of Choice" taught me and what I have seen firsthand with hundreds of students. (5:30)
• Enrolling in the PACE Program as a working adult with two children was the beginning of understanding that I had the power to build a life I actually wanted. (7:00)
• I convinced myself for years that I was not smart enough and did not deserve to be where I was. Learn how completing each class began to quietly dismantle those beliefs. (10:00)
• I share how I started connecting what I was learning in geology, math, and geography to my job, my cooking, and my sewing. Knowledge does not stay in the classroom. (13:00)
• Raising two sons taught me what it really means to finish what you start. (15:30)
• The inner voice that tells you to stop never fully disappears. I share how I learned to recognize it as my ego trying to derail me. (17:30)
• The real journey was never about the degrees. It was the thousands of tiny choices that kept showing up. (20:00)

Resources

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz  

Let's Connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When was the last time you stopped and asked yourself: am I reacting, or am I actually choosing? There is a difference, and it matters more than most of us realize. And yet, so many of us move through life on autopilot, responding to pain, fear, and circumstance without ever pausing to recognize that we have a choice.

In today's episode, I take you into the heart of my personal journey, from a childhood shaped by trauma that quietly stole my sense of choice to an adulthood spent learning through therapy, teaching, books, and trusting relationships how to reclaim it. I introduce a metaphor that has been on my mind lately: we do not just create our lives out of thin air. We fabricate them using the raw materials we gather along the way. I reflect honestly on how isolation once felt like safety, why reacting rather than responding led to consequences I had to untangle later, and how crossing what I call the "choice threshold" became the turning point at every stage of my journey.

Tune in and listen to the fiftieth episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! to discover how understanding the power of choice can become the most transformative tool you carry.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Dr. Linda Rose opens with a declaration: you are not your pain, your fear, your trauma, or your self-doubt. She shares what it actually took for her to live that truth. (0:14)
• There is a difference between creating a life and fabricating one. Learn why identifying your raw materials changes how you approach personal growth. (5:05)
• Childhood sexual abuse quietly shaped Dr. Linda Rose's relationship with choice. Her easy acceptance was not a personality trait. It was a survival response. (8:00)
• Isolation can feel safe. But it is really just quiet in a way that lets the pain grow louder. Discover how teaching helped her transform solitude into something contemplative and purposeful. (10:30)
• There is a critical difference between reacting and responding. Dr. Linda Rose uses the story of her first marriage at 18 to show what it looks like to react to escape rather than choose with intention. (14:30)
• Every journey includes a choice threshold. It is the moment you stop reacting and start choosing. Dr. Linda Rose closes with one question to help you find yours today. (17:30)

Let's Connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever looked back at a moment of crisis and realized it became the exact catalyst you needed? What if the hardest parts of your journey aren't detours but essential waypoints? The hero's journey isn't just found in mythology; it's the framework of your own life, and understanding it can shift everything about how you navigate change, challenge, and transformation.

In today's episode, I'm honored to be joined by Jennifer Ally Kern, a transformational inner alignment coach, keynote speaker, and national award-winning author. Jennifer and I explore her own hero's journey from being kicked out of her home at 16 to discovering her calling through mentors and guides, to developing powerful methodologies for coaching and transformation. We discuss the practice of asking constructive rather than destructive questions, the importance of learning and presence, and how trusting yourself opens doors you never knew existed.

Tune in and listen to the forty-ninth episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! to discover how your own challenges might be pointing you toward your greatest gifts.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How a moment at age 13 revealed Jennifer's gifts for speaking and exploring the human mind (05:26)
• What happened when Jennifer was 16 and how that catalyzed her journey of transformation (08:33)
• About the mentors and guides who showed up for Jennifer at critical moments (09:40)
• How Jennifer shifted from pathology-focused work to coaching high-functioning people (13:30)
• The difference between constructive questions and destructive ones, and how to rewire your mind (33:00)
• Jennifer's daily practices for building alignment, including writing constructive questions and tracking miracles (43:48)

Connect with Jennifer Ally:

• Website
• Instagram

Let's connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When things fall apart, the last thing you want to hear is "just be grateful." It feels dismissive. It feels fake. But what if gratitude isn't about ignoring your pain or pretending everything is fine? What if it's actually a fierce psychological survival strategy that humans have used across cultures for centuries to reclaim their power?

In today's solo episode, I reflect on gratitude not as a polite thank you or toxic positivity, but as a tool for coexistence. I share how holding two truths at once (this situation is difficult AND I'm grateful for what sustains me) expands your capacity to handle hardship. I also explore Ubuntu, a philosophy from South Africa and other African communities, that teaches us "I am because we are." This episode challenges you to see gratitude as a choice of focus that anchors you to your community and reminds you that you are tougher than your circumstances.

Tune in and listen to the forty-eighth episode of I Can Do This, Show Me How! to understand how gratitude becomes your personal power.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why gratitude feels insulting when you're drowning in real problems (3:45)
• The difference between toxic positivity and genuine gratitude (5:20)
• How I used gratitude as my superpower during my last divorce (8:15)
• What Ubuntu means and how it shifts your focus from "what do I have" to "who helped me get here" (13:30)
• A 60-second challenge to practice gratitude in your own community (15:45)

Let's connect!

• My Email: [email protected]
• Mentor International: www.mentorfoundationusa.org
• Mentor: www.mentoring.org
• Ashoka Changemakers: www.ashoka.org

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.