Inner transformation work is outer transformation work. Personal development is professional development. Those statements are as true whether you spend your days making widgets or organizing political initiatives around climate change.

I started off my career wanting to change the world, but showing up in my work and in my life often paralyzed by perfectionism and anxiety. And I learned through personal experience that even when you leave your job and move across the ocean to escape the forces you feel are holding you back from being at your best, most creative, most innovative and productive self, you end up bringing those forces along with you!

As people who want to create a better world, we want to skip to the part where our organizations or groups are getting small business owners access to capital, we’re closing the racial wealth gap, we’re building coalitions to shift policy, we’re raising test scores in Detroit Public Community District, where we’re getting folks to the polls, etc.

But our organizations or groups are made up of people. How are we, the people? What are we carrying inside of us that we bring into the work and model in the world?

What does it look like for us to flourish? Are we showing up ready to dream big? Are we able to offer a supportive, non-shaming space for ourselves? And for others? Is the volume turned up so high on our anxiety that we can’t hear ways in which we’re uniquely equipped to support others?

As we close out season 2, I invite you to reflect on the following:

What does it look like for you to flourish?

Are you showing up ready to dream big? If not, what’s holding you back?

f you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on IG.

Don't forget to rate, subscribe, and share, if you're enjoying the podcast ;)

The theme of this season of my life must be "chasing dreams". I'm podcasting. I'm training to be a coach. I'm preparing to leave the organization I love and where I've spent my career, to date, to rest for a while and then dive into building my business. And in less than a month, I'm heading to Ghana to stay for at least 3 months, but perhaps much longer.

All of this is amazing to me. For years I was stuck, held back from moving towards some of my biggest goals by fear - fear of failure, fear of my inner critic, fear of what if, etc.- and now here I am preparing to leave the places and people I know for a while to chase a dream. 

Where did the fear go? 

Just a year ago my dreams seemed hopelessly out of reach, on the other side of fear and self-doubt. I was stuck.

The fear hasn't disappeared. I'm moving towards my goals now, but it's not because I dropped fear or self-doubt; I've just changed my relationship to them. 

Before, I used to go through great lengths to avoid needing to confront fear, self-doubt, disappointment, and other "negative" emotions. To be honest, I tried to avoid these feelings by not having goals that seemed too big of a stretch. 

I buried my dreams. I tried to send them to the idea graveyard.  I tried to rationalize myself out of my desires. 

How many of us who want to change the world are doing this at the individual, organizational, and societal scale? What does it look like for each of us to start owning our power to change our relationship to our fears, self-doubt, and anything else that limits our imaginations and keeps us from dreaming big - first as individuals and then, as a collective?

This week, I invite you to reflect on these prompts:

If you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at   [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on   IG.

Don't forget to rate, subscribe, and share, if you're enjoying the podcast ;)

For many of my 35 years, I built up the skills and practices of eating my feelings, stuffing down my feelings, lashing out my feelings, scrolling or swiping my feelings, escaping my feelings with my imagination, or busying away my feelings.

The idea of feeling my feelings is a relatively new skill that I’ve been learning and practicing over the past year or so.

Honestly, I think learning to feel has opened me up more to life, to a broader, deeper, richer, and maybe more fully human experience.

But I’m a beginner. And I have much more experience and familiarity with not feeling feelings. And sometimes it’s not easy, fun, or light to feel feelings.

The thing is, though, since I’ve been learning how to feel- how to consciously allow my emotions to be there without trying to escape them, stuff them down, or react to them by lashing out- I’ve learned that the negative emotions I experience actually have a lot to teach me about who I am, how I am, and how I’m thinking.

Our feelings are worth getting to know because they dictate how we show up or whether we show up at all in the work of changing the world. They also dictate how we experience our one precious life!

For this week's reflection, I invite you to notice a feeling that you’re having each morning this week. Name the feeling. “I notice I’m feeling…”

What are some ways that you engage or disengage with your feelings instead of feeling them?

What feelings do you want to dictate how you show up in the work of changing the world? And in your life this week?

If you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at  [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on  IG.

Don't forget to rate, subscribe, and share, if you're enjoying the podcast ;)

Hello from San Juan!

This episode may feel like a wild, unpredictable ride! I'm in Puerto Rico for Rachel Rodgers' "ROI: the Millionaire’s Summit" and it's inspired me with quite a few thoughts about my thoughts about being here!

In this episode, I talk about how learning to question my thoughts has played a critical role in helping me continuously unpack the internal obstacles that keep me from getting to "dreamspace" - a place where I'm taking the actions I want to take and being how I want to be in any given situation.

The skill and practice of questioning my own thoughts are part of my ongoing inside out change journey.

And what about you?

What does your inside out change journey look like?

Do you have a practice of questioning your thoughts- especially the ones that you find unhelpful and maybe even hurtful? If so, what does that practice look like?

I invite you to try the pre-meeting or beginning of the meeting exercise that I mention in the episode. How, if at all, did the exercise impact your experience?

If you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on IG.

Don't forget to rate, subscribe, and share, if you're enjoying the podcast ;)

Tune in on:

When I started at my first “real” (read: salaried with benefits) job in the community development field, I just knew I’d made it! I was going to get paid to do what I’d always wanted to do – make Detroit a better place for people like my neighbors and myself.

To my 24 (ish) year old mind, I was living my happily ever after.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’d carried certain beliefs about myself, my community, “the way things are”, the impact of my work, and much more to the work. As I was mentored and trained up in the work, I also absorbed other beliefs about leadership, the community, “the way things are”, and my place in the scheme of things.

For the most part, I’m sure I didn’t speak these beliefs out loud. I didn’t question them. I simply embodied them.

(And maybe it is or isn’t a coincidence that I, like many people, had it ingrained in me from my earliest years that the path to the reward lies in obeying and following along, not questioning.)

However, over time, other people’s questions and prodding, my own observations and my feelings about them, started to shake my certainty about my happily ever after and about my beliefs about myself and about the work I was doing. 

I started asking questions, critical questions about “the way things are” and about my beliefs.

This was tough because I like certainty. Like most human beings, I like the stability and comfort of holding onto my beliefs (even the ones that don’t serve me, even my biases). Questioning them or letting them go can sometimes be an uncomfortable- and even messy- process.

And yet, that process is the key to growing in my ability to show up in the world in ways that model and manifest a more just, humane, and loving world at the smallest scale of impact (me, the individual) so it can be modeled and manifested at the largest scale (us, the collective).

That’s why I appreciate conversations with my friend/fellow coach and facilitator Petra Vega, the Liberatory Leadership coach at Create More Possibilities!

Over the course of our interview in episode #6, “Wait! The Matrix Is in Me?!”, Petra invites us all to take the red pill and follow the white rabbit as she shares her insights on how we, as aspiring world changers, can start to recognize and go about unpacking the internalized -isms or “unspoken agreements” that we carry in us.

The conversation is RICH. You might want to listen in small doses. Also, you can read the full transcript on Petra’s blog.

If you want to connect with Petra, you can find her at:

To connect with me or if you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on IG.

On Wednesday, I’m going to a funeral for someone who was very dear to me. Mrs. Sophia Ellis was my high school German teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School in Detroit.

Over the 22 years that I knew her, I had the chance to witness her  being herself, loving herself, giving herself permission to show up and be seen. As I grew up, I started to take in  how radical it was for her to choose to love herself, to be seen, and have unconditional self-worth when in every way imaginable that cut against the grain.

She was born in 1927, a dark-skinned Black woman from a poor family from 8 Mile Road. Her willingness to show up in spite of all the explicit and implicit ways that she was surely told all of her life to be small, be quiet, be insignificant, be a stereotype, be humble, be normal required her to tell herself "YES" in a world that was set up to offer her a "NO".

Her "YES" made it possible for her to touch the minds and lives of students in Detroit Public Schools for over 50 years - including this one. It made it possible for her to impact Detroit students through the Sophia Holley Ellis Scholarship that she set up at her beloved alma mater, the University of Michigan.

And so much more.

Where did the "YES" come from? Maybe it was in part her stubbornness. Ha! But I believe her love, and show up, and contribute in her own unique way to changing the world, was anchored in her ability and willingness to love herself.

Thinking about Mrs. Ellis’ life brings to mind a question that came to mind when I was thinking about this iteration of season 2: “How you gon’ love the world, when you can’t love yourself?”. But now I’m thinking about it in the reverse: How much more can you love the world, can you contribute to the world, when you love yourself?

As you listen to season 2, episode 1, I invite you to reflect on the following:

If you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on IG.

*Note: to see the pictures I embedded in my blog post, visit https://www.gilmorefacilitationllc.com/post/how-you-gon-love-the-world 

“How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale.”

“What we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.”

- Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown (p.52)

As I talk about in the very first episode of the podcast, I started off my journey as an aspiring world changer actually just wanting to solve the problems that I’d seen in my community and my overcrowded high school as a student in Detroit. 

Driven at least as much by a desire to stick it to society for what I perceived to be its low expectations for me and people like me as by a desire to make my hometown a better place for my neighbors and myself, I wanted to be an academic and work in government. I wanted to figure out the answers to the problems that I’d seen around me. I wanted to study, become an expert, and then deliver solutions for the issues that mattered most to me.

Today, many years later, my ideas about my role in changing the world are very different. As a facilitator (both in the context of my work as a nonprofit professional and in my personal practice), it’s mostly my job to ask questions, not have answers.

I have the extraordinary privilege of helping groups of people who are all committed to creating a more humane, equitable world in their own way, work together to achieve big goals.

It’s exciting work, but let me tell you: collaboration is not an easy thing. Even among well-intentioned people who genuinely have a desire to do good, impactful work in the world.

Why is that?

Well, from my experience, when we, as well-intentioned, aspiring world changers come to the collective table to try to address the stuff “out there”, we bring along all the stuff we carry inside of us that perpetuates the status quo.

We show up to the task of tackling huge, complex issues (e.g., advancing racial justice or creating a more equitable economy) with our talents and highest ideals and desire for change just as much as we show up with our scarcity thinking, personal insecurities and ego wounds, internalized -isms, fear of conflict, and...fill in the blank.

In other words, we show up as human beings. Beautiful yet imperfect human beings.

As you listen to episode# 4, “Change: From the Inside Out”, I invite you to reflect on what it looks like, or could look like, for you to deal with any internal stuff that you might currently be bringing to a collective table (e.g., an organization, a committee, your family, etc.).

Also, zooming out:

How do we spend less time shaming and blaming ourselves and others when we sometimes show up in ways that aren’t perfectly aligned with our values?

How do we have grace for one another as we work to unlearn thoughts that we’ve picked up through socialization that cause us and those around us harm?

How do we create environments where people are willing to be vulnerable and dare to look inward?

Bonus: Have you read “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas? What did you think?

If you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebookis the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at  [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on  IG.

It might surprise you to learn that I was inspired to record this episode because of experiences that I had earlier this year when I traveled to Ghana for vacation (Note: Join the "I Want to Change the World Podcast Community" to see pics and posts from my Ghana trip).

I felt privileged to be able to make the trip. At home I certainly don't feel rich. I'"normal" middle-class American.

However, being able to afford such luxuries as airfare to Ghana, vaccinations and medications from the travel clinic, visa fees, etc. put into perspective that I'm pretty well off - both by global standards and American standards, too, considering how many of us don't have access to affordable housing, child care, or medication, let alone disposable income to spend on travel expenses.

Even when I'm not traveling, I live comfortably enough at home.  I pay my bills on time. I live in a cozy apartment in a gentrified area of town. The market a short distance from me has a charcuterie section.

In more than one way, I'm kind of a beneficiary of the broken systems that we, as aspiring world changers, must shift to create a more humane and just world.

And yet, with all of my relative privilege, I found that in Ghana, just as I've found at home and elsewhere abroad, there are people who have a struggle narrative ready for me. Have I had any encounters with the police? Do people (read: black people) still experience discrimination at work? Have I seen 'Just Mercy'? Why don't Black Americans...?

Le sigh.

What if, as long as race/racism is framed in popular imagination as, to quote Toni Morrison from her BRILLIANT essay, "A Race in Mind: The Press in Deed", "the real, the vital, the incendiary story"of social and economic exclusion, we are overlooking or under-looking the real lines of social conflict and inequality?

As you listen to episode# 3, "It Don't Always Be Racism", I invite you to reflect on ways in which you tend to essentialize race in your thinking about complex social issues. If poverty and economic and social marginalization aren't exclusively"black and brown people's problems", whose problems are they? What, if any, role do you see for yourself in doing something about those problems?

If you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at  [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on  IG.

We live in a “you’re _, therefore you’re supposed to be like _ ”- kind of world. We don’t get to pick the stereotypes or expectations that come along with showing up in the world as ourselves.

I show up in the world as myself (i.e., black and from the east side of Detroit, and also “articulate”, intellectually curious, well-traveled, etc.) and sometimes that surprises people.

Sometimes that surprise is expressed in the form of a question: “How did you make it?”.

I used to take offense at the question, but now, as I state in episode 2, “when someone is curious because something or someone doesn’t line up with their expectations and they do ask a question or express an ill-informed opinion, I don’t want to be the person who dismisses them or shames them.”

You know why? Because I’ve been the person asking the question or holding the ill-informed opinion.

Let’s be real: sometimes I’m still that person. I invite you to stop acting like we haven’t all been that person.

And as you listen to episode #2, “How Did You Make It?”, I invite you to reflect on how what you heard in this episode speaks to YOUR experience. Have you ever been the person directing an ill-informed question at someone? Have you ever been the person receiving the question? What might it look like for you to meet yourself and others in your bias or ignorance with understanding, and a willingness to learn or maybe even teach?

If you want to chime in on the discussion, the “I Want to Change the World Podcast Community” on Facebook is the perfect place to do so! You can also email me at [email protected] or drop me a line @missjanaiashley on IG.