Pivot with Jenny Blake

Today’s guest, New York Times bestselling author Rachel May Stafford, confided to her friend that the fruits of her successful career were starting to sour. She had become stressed, depleted, and was feeling used—all of it contaminating her joy and sense of purpose.

Her friend Shannon replied with a wise reminder, the way only our truest friends can:

“Rachel, you’re a mapmaker, not a baggage carrier, not a tour operator, and not a travel agent. You are there to guide and accompany people through their own journey; you are not responsible for carrying stuff that does not belong to you.”

The relief in releasing roles that were no longer serving her is one of many powerful Soul Shifts that Rachel and I discuss in today’s conversation. Listen in for strategies to drop self-judgement and the masks we wear for others, stepping more fully into authentic joy.

More About Rachel: Rachel Macy Stafford is the New York Times bestselling author of Hands Free Mama, Hands Free Life, Only Love Today, and Live Love Now. Her new book, Soul Shift: The Weary Human’s Guide to Getting Unstuck and Reclaiming Your Path to Joy. Rachel is a sought-after speaker and creator of her perennially popular course, Soul Shift Lift.

✅ Try This Next: For a thought that’s causing you stress, especially one where you’re being hard on yourself, try Dr. Lisa Firestone’s exercise, starting with dividing a piece of paper in half. Write negative thoughts down the left side. On the right side, translate the same statement into the second person. On a second piece of paper beside the first, write a realistic and impartial view of yourself, your qualities, and your situation, using your name. “We have a choice each day. We can work against ourselves or for ourselves; we can push through life or ease through life.”

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📝 Check out full show notes at http://pivotmethod.com/333

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Today we’re building on 319: Who’s Sitting in the Board Room of Your Brain? With Adrian Klaphaak . . . and 328: Accessing Your True Self Through IFS, full Pivot x Career Pathfinder podcast episodes (Spotify playlist).

If you are looking for a little support and guidance on finding your purpose, or best next step, check out Adrian’s Career Pathfinder Program and apply promo code PIVOT for a special offer on his group training. If you’d like to work with him one-on-one, he just opened up a few new spots—book a free consultation here.

More about Adrian: Adrian Klaphaak is a coach, purpose guide, entrepreneur, and founder of A Path That Fits Career and Life Coaching. His coaching approach is holistic—a constant balance between getting results and a quest for meaning and fulfillment. He describes himself as “a deep seeker with a constant itch to make things happen.”

✅ Try This Next: Be curious. Imagine your “not good enough” exiled part, and start a dialogue. At what age did it form? Ask: What do you want me to know about you? You can even journal around this, as if you’re writing a play. Ex: “Write from your core self to this part: I see you ____, and I can tell you’re feeling bad about yourself. Can I come hang out for a little bit?” Bonus challenge:

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📝 Check out full show notes at http://pivotmethod.com/332

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Research shows that negative interactions take a significant toll on all of us, carrying as much as five times the impact of positive ones. And yet, most people don’t realize how much microstress they’re under. As today’s guest helps reveal, we’re not just affected by the big, obvious stressors, but by the little moments throughout each day rippling beneath the surface. Karen Dillon and her co-author Rob Cross call this an “unrecognized epidemic,” one that’s invisible and relentless—in this conversation you’ll learn strategies for reducing even just a few microstresses in your life that can have a profound impact.

More About Karen: Karen Dillon is an author and former editor at Harvard Business Review magazine and the coauthor of three books with Clayton Christensen, including the New York Times bestseller How Will You Measure Your Life? Today we’re talking about her new book, co-authored with Babson College professor Rob Cross, The Microstress Effect: How Little Things Pile Up and Create Big Problems—and What to Do About It.

✅ Try This Next: With dozens of microstresses coming at you daily, how do you know where to begin? Do what the ten percenters do: think small. Take a page out of The Good Life by Robert Waldinger: Reconnect with people you’ve fallen out of touch with by suggesting an 8-minute phone call (not Zoom!) — even setting a timer to ensure it doesn’t go over.

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💻 Check out Jenny’s Pivot course on LinkedIn Learning: Figuring Out Your Next Move

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📝 Check out full show notes at http://pivotmethod.com/331

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Raise your hand if you love Reality TV! Now admit to that in public. Now choose that as your academic discipline—to study and teach sociology through the voyeuristically fabulous (and often fabulously fringe) lens of reality TV—and you’ve got today’s wonderful guest, associate professor Danielle Lindemann.

If you, too, let these shows wash over you at the end of a hard day, binge-watching dating shows with increasingly quirky premises or even hate-watching famous families bicker and then make-up, you’re not alone.

“We want to peek into the lives of these interesting people,” Danielle writes. “But it’s their similarity to us that keeps us riveted. We’re voyeurs, but part of what tantalizes us about these freak shows is that the freaks are ourselves.”

More About Danielle: Danielle Lindemann is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University who studies gender, sexuality, the family, and culture – particularly as they relate to occupations. Her third book, True Story: What Reality TV Says about Us, is the topic of today’s conversation. She’s also the author of Dominatrix: Gender, Eroticism, and Control in the Dungeon, and Commuter Spouses: New Families in a Changing World. Her work has also been published in scholarly journals such as Social Science & Medicine and featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, CNN, Jezebel, USA Today, and Rolling Stone.

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As “recovering people pleaser” Natalie Lue opens her book, The Joy of Saying No, “Suppressing and repressing my needs, desires, expectations, feelings, and opinions to try to influence and control other people’s feelings and behavior was as natural to me as breathing. I thought it was normal to tell people what they want to hear (read: lie) to make them feel better. I believed I was ticking the boxes of being a Good Person by being kind, generous, hardworking, conscientious, loving, eager to help, attractive, and intelligent, and doing what others needed and wanted.”

If you, too, are ticking “Good Person” boxes while making yourself miserable, this episode is for you. Natalie and I discuss the five types of people pleasers, what we continue to struggle with today despite decades of awareness-building, and how to build the skill of saying no.

More About Natalie: Natalie Lue used to have very low self-esteem, a litany of problems including bad boundaries, toxic relationships with emotionally unavailable and shady folk, and a crippling immune system disease, but this all changed in the summer of 2005. Now, she is a recovering people pleaser. She’s the author of The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing, Reclaim Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want and for 8 years hosted The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast. Natalie helps people learn how to reclaim themselves from their emotional baggage and increase emotional availability through self-care, making a profound difference in their lives via her substack On Knowing Yourself.

✅ Try This Next: Check in with yourself when you feel pressure to be or do something in a certain way—is this a preference or is this programming?

📝 Check out full show notes at http://pivotmethod.com/329

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“There are no bad parts.” That’s a core idea behind Internal Family Systems, a form of psychotherapy that helps guide hidden parts of ourselves to the fore so they can be acknowledged and integrated. Today, recurring co-host Adrian Klaphaak and I are building on episode 319: Who’s Sitting in the Board Room of Your Brain? by talking about how IFS can clear blocks when navigating change, and modeling the process with JB in the hotseat.

Are you looking for a little support and guidance on finding your purpose, or best next step? Check out Adrian’s Career Pathfinder Program and apply promo code PIVOT for a special offer on his group training. If you’d like to work with him 1:1, he just opened up a few new spots—book a free consultation here.

More about Adrian: Adrian Klaphaak is a coach, purpose guide, entrepreneur, and founder of A Path That Fits Career and Life Coaching. His coaching approach is holistic—a constant balance between getting results and a quest for meaning and fulfillment. He describes himself as “a deep seeker with a constant itch to make things happen.”

✅ Try This Next: There is genius in our parts, and we can apply their gifts in our adult life. Try to identify how at least one of your manager parts and one firefighter might be stepping in to avoid feeling the pain of an exile (most likely formed in early childhood as an adaptive measure).

❤️ Enjoying the show? I'd be grateful for a rating and/or review! Even better? Share this episode with a friend :)

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🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts

📝 Check out full show notes at http://pivotmethod.com/328

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At 24 years old, Eric Zimmer was homeless, addicted to heroin, and facing jail time. In the decades since, he has found a way to recover from addiction and build a life worth living for himself, while coaching others through his programs and award-winning podcast The One You Feed, based on an old parable about two wolves at battle within us (a story I also share in Pivot).

We had the great pleasure of recording in person—while meeting for the first time! This was extra special because of how much Eric generously shares about his pivots through addiction and recovery, the deeper needs beneath destructive coping habits, how challenging addiction can be on friends and family, and what the literature often gets wrong about codependency.

More About Eric: For the past 20 years, Eric Zimmer has worked as a behavior coach. He’s also a Certified Interfaith Spiritual Director, podcaster, and writer, who is endlessly inspired by the quest for a greater understanding of how our minds work and how to intellectually create the lives we want to live. Since 2014, he has been hosting the award-winning podcast, The One You Feed, based on an old parable about two wolves at battle within us. His story and his work have been featured in the media including TEDx, Mind Body Green, Elephant Journal, the BBC, and Brain Pickings.

✅ Try This Next: Sometimes, in the moment, there isn’t anything to do about it other than be upset, and that’s okay. When you’re in a dark space, recognize it and feel what you’re feeling, while keeping your mind open to change.

📝 Check out full show notes at http://pivotmethod.com/327

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“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

—Anthony Weldon in The Court and Character in King James (1651)

Are you an accidental fraudster? An unknowing victim? A righteous whistleblower? The possibilities are closer than you think. Today’s guest, forensic accounting professor Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope, is here to remind us that fraud can happen to—and be committed by—any of us.

Among companies with over $10 billion in global annual revenues, 52% experienced fraud during the past 24 months. Since the pandemic hit, global online fraud has increased by 46%. Even worse, “We regularly miss the red flags that are swatting us in the face.”

Listen in to this conversation to learn why business is a victim hallmark, what makes us susceptible to fraudsters or to committing accidental fraud, and how to get better at spotting red flags.

More About Kelly: Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope is a nationally recognized expert in risk, forensic accounting, and white-collar crime research, and an award-winning educator, researcher, author, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. She is the Dr. Barry Jay Epstein Endowed Professor of Forensic Accounting at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. Her TED Talk entitled "How Whistle-blowers Shape History” has been viewed over 1.6 million times, translated into 20 languages, and serves as a resource to help organizations and individuals embrace internal whistleblowing. She is the author of Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion-Dollar Fraud Industry.

✅ Try This Next: Sign up for an accounting class so you know how to read a financial statement, and can spot red flags more easily. Ignorance is not bliss!

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Attending conferences can be overwhelming — even for the most excited extroverts among us—let alone the introverts who challenge their comfort zone in the registration process alone.

Today, my friend Alisa and I do an in-person debrief of our recent week-long adventure at the TED global conference in Vancouver (my second time attending, her fifth). We cover conversation openers, the power of a genuine compliment, trying (and sometimes failing) to approach people we admire as a peer, handling the inevitable FOMO and big feelings that arise, when to call it quits (what I call “falling off the cliff”), and so much more.

Be sure to also keep an eye out on the Free Time podcast (even better, subscribe!) for Friday’s episode #196, where I share a mini daily audio diary that I kept on each day of the conference, with some additional reflections at the end.

More About Alisa: Alisa Cohn has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. She is the author of From Start-Up to Grown-Up, and hosts a podcast of the same name. A onetime startup CFO, strategy consultant, and current angel investor and advisor, she has worked with startup companies such as Venmo, Etsy, and more.

✅ Try This Next: Alisa: Go and meet one new person—strike up a conversation with someone you wouldn’t normally speak to and see what happens. Jenny: Put yourself in the path of people. Is there an event, a book reading, even a bench in the park where you can encounter people you normally wouldn’t?

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As today’s guest—imposter complex expert Tanya Geisler—notes, the global self-development industry is worth $41 billion as of 2021. She says, “That is a lot of money invested in making people feel terrible about themselves…and like they need to be fixed. (Think diet industry but for confidence.)”

In this episode, we’re talking about the six ways imposter complex manifests, the ways that trying to eliminate it can paradoxically exacerbate feelings of unworthiness, and even more importantly: the six illuminating values behind imposter-y habits that can help you step into your fullest expression.

More About Tanya: Tanya Geisler is a celebrated women's leadership expert, mentor coach, keynote and TEDx Women speaker, writer, and Ready Enough podcast host. After a successful career in advertising, she entered the world of coaching two decades ago and has worked with thousands of changemakers, innovators, and leaders to dislodge that not-good-enough feeling, perfectionism, procrastination, diminishment, people-pleasing, comparison, and leaky boundaries.

✅ Try This Next: Get curious about what is underneath your imposter complex: What beautiful value is it revealing? For guidance with this, take the quiz to discover your Iconic Identity.

📝 Check out full show notes at http://pivotmethod.com/324

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