Refractive

This guided meditation and visualization explores your highest purpose in life and how you are best equipped to make a lasting impact on those around you. From this place of clarity, you are better able to identify your calling and key archetypes in life and then use that info to “begin with the end” and design a career, a lifestyle, and relationships that lead to that goal. Have a pen and paper ready to write down the content of the visualization as soon as possible. Like a dream, these visualizations often fade quickly. There are instructions given in the meditation on what aspects to pay attention to.

The observations you’ll write down after the meditation point to how you can best build a legacy in harmony with your talents, your spiritual gifts, and your highest calling.

This guided meditation and visualization explores how you are best equipped to make a lasting impact on those around you. From this place of clarity, you are better able to identify your calling and key archetypes in life and then use that info to “begin with the end” and design a career, a lifestyle, and relationships that lead to that goal. The challenge is to honor this guidance when you reach decision points in life. After all, how much is your true calling- a life that feels passionate and right- worth?

As I always tell my clients: you already know, you already are; the answer is in the stillness! Enjoy this relaxing and informative meditation.

Please note: a version of this meditation was first shown to me by the Co-Active Training Institute, the organization that taught me coaching. While I expanded on the original notion, I cannot take credit for the concept. Learn more about CTI by clicking here.

The guided meditations of Steve Nobel, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, is referenced in the recording. You can find his YouTube page here.

For more episodes on living your most authentic and powerful life, try these: A Life that Feels Right and The Courage to Change Careers.

In this episode Johnny G talks with Jodi Akst, Executive Coach, as she shares with Refractive listeners the system she has fine-tuned over the years for not just navigating- but OWNING the chaos and turbulence that inevitably appears in life. From understanding what really matters to leveraging available resources, she offers a simple, powerful method for reclaiming your power whenever life sends you some rough air.

Please visit Jodi’s website at https://www.JodiAkstCoaching.com to learn more about her services, subscribe to her newsletter, or ask any questions you may have.

Jodi referenced Daniel Pink’s book “Drive,” you can find information about Daniel Pink and his books at https://www.danpink.com

For information on how I might be able to help you find clarity and step fully into your power, visit www.refractivecoaching.com

For other episodes on increasing serenity, try Self Care for Parents and The Ancient Truths of Acceptance & PLINKO

Find below a transcript via automated software; please excuse any errors.

Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest telling you to move, to love, to speak, to try day after day. You pretend you don’t hear calling, or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse that it’s there ready for you. And it will wait for you as long as you. My name is Johnny G and I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening. As we dare to embrace our light. This is refractive.

Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode of refractive. Today. I am here with Jody axed. Jody is an executive coach based in Baltimore, and she spent the majority of her professional life working for a nonprofit that sought to end the inequities in our country’s public school systems. She decided to take that passion she had for helping other people and blend it with a home life that felt right. And so she founded her own coaching practice. Jody asked coaching today helps people who are seeking to live a more mission based life. So I’m really happy to have her here today, as we discuss a topic that I think is going to resonate with a lot of people and we decided to call it Jody, owning the turbulence. Right?
Speaker 2 00:01:26 Absolutely. Welcome to
Speaker 1 00:01:28 Refractive. I’m so happy to have you here. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 00:01:32 I’m doing well. Thank you for having me, Johnny.
Speaker 1 00:01:36 Um, I think we have a really nice outline of material to cover. And I mean, if there’s any time where the turbulence feels especially relevant, I think that’s now
Speaker 2 00:01:47 Right in its simplest terms. When I think about owning the term turbulence, I think about just getting through the hard stuff. And uh, if anything, 2020 has been a lot of the hard stuff.
Speaker 1 00:01:59 Yes. Everything feels hard, but you know what today? I like to say all is, well, I have my coffee, I have water. I have my place decorated for the holidays. I’m sitting in a comfortable chair talking with a friend of mine on zoom right now. I mean, what else do I want? It’s like the universe just handed it to me on a silver platter.
Speaker 2 00:02:25 Uh, well, your space is beautiful. Looks like you’re all ready for the holidays, which is really exciting. We just finished deliberating Hanukkah and our house. Um, for me, the only other thing that’s going to make this perfect is that my kids and dog don’t interrupt us. So we’ll see if we can get through that. This is about owning the turbulence.
Speaker 1 00:02:46 Right. So talk to me about the framework that you see for this episode.
Speaker 2 00:02:51 Yeah. So when I think about owning the Chevy Lyndon, as I said, sort of getting through the hard stuff, it takes me back to the reason we landed on the word turbulence is it just takes me back to that when you’re sitting in an airplane and it starts to get bumping and you just think to yourself, Oh my God, when is this going to end? Is this turbulence? Or is there something more going on? Can I stay calm? Can I reassure myself that the plane is not going to fall from the sky? Right. And so that concept of sort of getting through the turbulence is something that I think we all feel in big and small ways at work and at home. So for me, it’s all about knowing that there, that you can get to calm that you were going to get to a better place. Um, and that, that is true when, whether it’s trivalent in your home life or your personal life. And this matters to me. And the reason I wanted to bring this topic forward today is because I’m a leader and I’m a mom in equal measure. And so I have many other humans that are looking to me, um, for cues on how they should feel, how they should act, what they should do.
Speaker 1 00:04:12 And the canine to
Speaker 2 00:04:15 A puppy was a Corona virus puppy. So this topic is just something that that’s really important to me. And now as a coach, because I have a framework for owning turbulence in my life, which I’ll share in a moment, I can relate to my clients and I can help them create their own process. It may not be mine, but it can, I can help them create their own process for getting through those, those tough times. So what do I mean when I’m talking about OMI owning the turbulence and what is this process? So for me, it’s four steps. So it’s finding the calm, which includes anchoring in what matters. And what’s important to me, it’s about getting clear on my options and setting that vision for moving forward. It’s then step three, leveraging the resources and supports that I have all around me to then four, share that vision with everybody involved in whatever it is that we’re going through and getting buy-in so that we can all weather the storm together. And this approach is something that’s allowed me both as a mom and as a professional to continue to reach Michaels, um, and hopefully become better at both
Speaker 1 00:05:34 This really duct Hibbs, uh, dovetails well with some of my guiding principles earlier this year, people who listened to the podcast will know that I took a road trip and it was kind of like a last minute surprise road trip that lasted two months because the apartment I was moving into flooded two or three days before I was moving in, I decided in that moment, uh, to call it above the storm, right? Because when you’re flying in a plane, you hear the pilot say, Oh, we’re going to go around this storm, or we’re going to go over this storm, ladies and gentlemen to avoid turbulence. And so just like for you, it really resonated with me that I don’t need to suffer through pain for the sake of suffering through pain. If there’s a way to bypass it, I don’t need to be a martyr and lay down and suffer for idealistic reasons. And so I love this idea of taking what can be a chaotic situation, breaking it down to more manageable parts and applying it to a smoother life. That sounds really good. Does that kind of capture what you’re talking about?
Speaker 2 00:06:43 Yeah, absolutely captures what I’m talking about. I think when we’re in that moment and things just feel, I think another word that comes to mind chaotic, right? Like owning the turbulence or stabilizing the chaos or sort of two, two phrases or ways. I like to talk about it and think about it, but in my personal life and professionally, and for me, it’s all about understanding what the end game is like, where are we going? And to remember that at the end of the day, we ha we have to try to keep it simple, right? Like when you’re in that moment, your instinct is to catastrophize. If, if I have a word of, of advice or some wisdom to share, it’s when you’re in those moments that you actually want to do the opposite, which is to sort of narrow whatever you’re thinking about and in your approach to handling it and get really down to that common denominator of what you’re trying to accomplish.
Speaker 1 00:07:50 How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Speaker 2 00:07:56 So it’s so interesting when I think about this, you know, I think back to when I was a girl, right, like just sort of who I was naturally like nature versus nurture. And I sorta was just like part of my being my personality was to always sort of like figure out easily and quickly, like, what am I trying to accomplish here? So my parents love to tell this story of why I was in fourth grade, which is really funny because my son is now in fourth grade. So I’m, I’m watching him at that age. So thinking about myself as a ten-year-old and I had to do a book report and I hated reading, I just, there was something about, it was hard for me. I didn’t like it. And so I, I picked a book on dogs, which was a favorite topic of mine. And I picked up a book that was almost like a textbook that had chapters on dogs.
Speaker 2 00:08:47 And I realized as I started looking through this book that I could need the beginning and the end of each of these chapters and understand what it was really about. And that my goal was to just do well in school. Right. Like that was my goal. Um, and so I got really focused on the fact of like, what would it take to get a good grade on this report? And then, and I was able to figure that out and just sort of get down to the basics. And that has really become a methodology for myself, I think too similarly to college. So my whole life as a student, I was not one of those people that spent Saturdays in the library. Like I was able, always able to sort of understand what is the main point? What are we supposed to learn? How do I apply it? And it allowed me to be really capable of just sort of zeroing in on, as I said, that that lowest common denominator. And so it’s, I think some of it is instinctual. And then I think for me, some of it is applied. And then that is where I can think about other examples in my personal life or my work life, where being able to sort of look among the chaos and zero in on the end game has always been my approach.
Speaker 1 00:10:14 Let me tell you, as I worked my way up in my career from line staff to leadership and human resources, I noticed quickly that the difference between the people who were in charge and the people who weren’t in charge was this ability to have a perspective. And I remember when I was on the front line of companies, I cared so much about the little details that, I mean, I would get lost in them. And when I found myself driving culture and, you know, managing performance of, of teams, I realized that there’s a place for that fine detail orientation, but there’s also a place for, for a high level perspective. So, I mean, it’s a, it’s a skill that obviously for you was innate.
Speaker 2 00:11:10 I think so. Right. And I think that there are ways in which we also adapt to our environment. So I think about like my husband and I, we were newly engaged. I was living in New York city. We had this long distance relationship. He came in and we spent a whole weekend registering. Yeah, exactly. Right. And we met a dear friend of ours for a drink after this long day of picking out, chatting up. And, um, she, uh, she happened to also be my boss. So she knew me very well professionally. And we had, we had formed this amazing friendship and she, we talked about our day and she looked at us and she goes, Jody, you are a suffice, you know what you want. And as soon as you find it, you’re done, like it’s met your needs. You feel really good about it and you’re ready to move on. And then on the other hand, my husband is what she called a maximizer. If he’s making a decision, he has to research every option out there. Right? Like the, when we were, you know, I think back to like picking the stroller when, when we were pregnant with our first child, I mean, he knew every single stroller that ever existed or relating it back to the registering. Right. He wanted to look into every China pattern in the store. And I was like, Oh my God, I know what I want.
Speaker 2 00:12:35 And so right. When I think about the two of us and we’ve been able, you know, you asked like, is it a Nate? And it is a Nate. And then I look at the two of us, I say, okay, but we’ve been able as a couple to merge these two styles in a way that has allowed us to be really successful as a team. Um, because there, you don’t always have to be as precise and efficient as I like to be. And you don’t always have to be as expansive as my husband is when it comes to decision-making. And so I do think I am on one end of the spectrum, but that there are many people that have just as strong of an ability to own the turbulence that may fall on all ends of that. Excuse me, may be on all points of that continuum in terms of, of how they want their process to look when they are in these situations.
Speaker 1 00:13:30 All right. Well, that’s, I mean, I feel like that’s an important caveat that this methodology doesn’t require a certain set of gifts or abilities. It really is a formula that anybody can apply,
Speaker 2 00:13:44 Correct. It’s like anything else, it’s a framework and how you choose to apply. It is going to be based on what works best for you. So for me, somebody that is really typically able to pinpoint that end game really quickly, um, I can move past that point on to looking at options and setting my vision fairly quickly for other people. They might have to spend a little bit more time getting clear on what that end game is. They may have to do a little bit more internal reflection, or they may have to do some external processing to understand what that true end game is before they’re ready to move on to the next step. So there’s no right or wrong in any of the stages of the process in terms of how you, how one individual might experience it.
Speaker 1 00:14:37 Okay. So can you recap for us these four steps again, because it’s already, I mean, my mom’s already gone in a million ways.
Speaker 2 00:14:47 Absolutely. Step one is finding the, everybody
Speaker 0 00:14:52 Get out a pen, Siri, record this for me. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:15:00 Finding the calm anchoring in what matters to you, what is the end game? What is really important, if you could sum up what you want to try to, what you want the end of this turbulence period, to look like, what would that end goal look like? Step two, getting clear on your options and vision. So you may know what your end game is, and then there can be tons of different ways to get there. So step two is about spending time thinking about what are my options, and then what is my vision for how we’re going to get there. Three is leveraging your resources and support. So you’re never expected, or I don’t ever expect anyone to have to get through the trivial it’s Allah. And then lastly, sharing this vision with anybody involved. So just to sort of make this come alive a little bit, I can talk a bit about what this looks like in my professional life and in home.
Speaker 2 00:15:59 And I’ll start by saying that I have two amazing children. So I have a 13 year old daughter and a 10 year old son, and they each have their, their challenges. So our daughter has moderate to severe ADHD. And our son was born with a congenital heart defect and had open heart surgery when he was 12 weeks old. And he has extreme anxiety, which is correlated to children that have open heart surgery. So their brains work differently. So my home life can be can’t. Um, so when I applied this formula to home and work, I go through the same steps. It just looks a little bit different. So for example, um,
Speaker 0 00:16:43 With the chart, like counting that step one, so maybe you haven’t already refrigerator, I don’t know.
Speaker 2 00:16:51 I’ll tell you, I love a spreadsheet, love a spreadsheet, which I can talk about in a little bit, like what role that plays in terms of this process for me. But I do write, I do like an organizing tool so that if I can get past that emotional initial charge that you’re feeling, whether it’s at home or at, or at work to then help yourself get grounded in what matters. Um, so if it’s helpful, I can, I can talk through what this looks like a little bit. Go ahead, please. Great. I think back to my early days in my career, so as you mentioned, I was a leader in a national nonprofit. I was the program director and later partner for a program called the New York city teaching fellows, which is a program that recruited career changers into education. We were early, early, early in the tenure of understanding how to run these programs.
Speaker 2 00:17:53 We, um, the organization, I worked with consulted to the New York city department of education, and we had tremendous success right out of the gate with this program and found ourselves in a situation where we process these to run the program. Hadn’t caught up to the pace at which we were growing. And this is the point at which I was brought into the team. It became really clear that we needed a singular focus, which is that at any moment in time, we need it needed to take us less than two minutes to know where all our thousands of applicants were in their process of admissions. That was step one, my team. And I got really clear that I should be able to say at any point in time, where is X in the process and anybody on the team should be able to tell me within a couple of minutes?
Speaker 2 00:18:50 Yeah. A similar example. It would be at home for a period of time. Family dinner was just chaos. Like it was, it was not what we wanted to be family dinner. Is it very important to my husband and I, and we had a goal as a family that we would be able to have a family dinner where both children were sitting at the table for a minimum of 10 minutes conversation in which nobody was talking over each other and everybody was feeling heard and seen. Right. So we got very clear on that. Um, so that was step one in both of those scenarios. So then we moved on to thinking about the options and the vision. So at work with the data management system, my vision was that we would have an online applicant tracking tool, but where we would be able to see where everybody else was, every anybody else was in the process. So that vision came into clarity based on my end goal of wanting to be able to know at any point in time where anybody else was in the process at home. As I said, that vision was a minimum of 10 minutes, have a really nice dinner in which we were all sharing our dates. Okay. So that became step two. So then step three becomes leveraging your resources
Speaker 0 00:20:20 For the dinner. Like I can’t wait for, to hear the resources for dinner. Go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:20:24 There’s this vision. And now we have to actually get there. And this is where obviously the bulk of the work happens. And in some situations, this, this step of the process can be months. It could even be here is right. It doesn’t happen overnight, but this is about leveraging your resources and figuring out how you’re going to actually do it. So at work, I knew that app that we needed to develop an applicant tracking system. And so then it came down to looking at our budget, looking at our people, resources, figuring out whether we have the skills on our staff to build this, or whether I need to have needed to hire other people. So it, it meant, you know, reconfiguring the budget and, uh, making it a priority to hire. We ended up hiring two developers who built us that the applicant tracking tool and at home, my husband and I looked at each other and said, we don’t know how to do this.
Speaker 2 00:21:24 And we leveraged a family therapist. And so we, as a family, went to family therapy to not have to solve it ourselves, if not getting owning the turbulence doesn’t mean you have to do it by yourself. And then step four, in terms of sharing the vision and getting the buy-in at work, it was about the whole team, understanding what the new processes were going to be for how we worked through our applicant system. But we built the process for processing applicants to align with the tool vice versa. And then we had to get, you know, and get the entire team trained on the new processes and make sure they were comfortable and make sure that we have the quality controls and all of that, that you do when you’re putting in place a new process. And at home family therapists work with us. So that as a family, we, we created this vision together.
Speaker 2 00:22:26 So our kids were part of the solution. The therapist gave them lots of options and they decided they wanted to use a timer. They said that would feel really good if we knew that we could set a timer and that mom and dad had an expectation that we would sit here for 10 minutes, it made it doable for them. And so that was, that was what we did to realize our vision of being able to sit for 10 minutes. And now, you know, a couple of years later, it’s not uncommon for us to have 30 minute dinners or even longer because the kids learned what it looked like and felt like to be part of that and to get all of the benefits of having that time as a family every night, those are a couple of examples of how, how those steps actually look in the real world.
Speaker 1 00:23:21 You know, I find that when something starts to go, maybe not even wrong, but when something feels like it’s not going in the direction, I wanted it to like my first reaction as a perfectionist and as a people pleaser, I mean, I got to say is to scratch everything and start over and say, I’m not doing this right. And this whole plan is doomed and we’re going to have to start over. And it feels like this gives an alternative to that gut response.
Speaker 2 00:24:04 So these are obviously the four steps that you can do sequentially, but then you can go back to any of the steps. At any point in time with work, we were halfway through building the applicant tracking tool. We weren’t where we needed to go. And our client was like breathing down our neck about the inefficiencies in our process. And so we needed a bandaid. We needed an alternative solution to get us through that period of time prior to having the, like the big vision, um, real well. And so we had to have a concurrent manual process that we did for a time being. And that was okay. It didn’t pull us away from the end game. It wasn’t like, Oh, no, like we can’t do this applicant tracking tool because now the client needs this faster. It was like, okay. So this is just a bum.
Speaker 2 00:25:00 We’re going to continue with our vision, which we feel really strongly is the right vision. And we’re gonna do this concurrent process to continue to move us forward while we are getting to the final approach. Um, and then at home, I mean, if I tell you that we would use the timer, we got to a place where things were good. And then, you know, six months later it was like, we’ve never had a family dinner, right? Like things got crazy. Again, the kids were not wanting to come to the table or they were shouting over each other. And we went back to the time or we went back to the base. And I think that that is something that I focus on a lot in my work and with my clients, which is when you’ve tried something and it’s worked, if you veer away from it, it doesn’t mean it didn’t work. It means that sometimes you just have to go back and make sure you’re implementing it with fidelity. And that’s what we did at home. We brought that timer back out and we will bring it out anytime we needed to, when our vision of our family dinner is veering from what wa
Speaker 1 00:26:15 That feels comforting. Like I actually like, like, I have a response to hearing you say that because even today, while I don’t necessarily let those perfectionistic impulses drive me the way they used to, I’ve developed tools and systems and different beliefs. And I’ve healed a lot around that. I still, I mean, even decorating that Christmas tree, like there, there was a, a point it’s like, wait, I need to like, take the lights off the tree, take the tree out of the stand, recut the base of the tree. And that actually went through my mind because it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do. And it’s like, wait, hold on, hold on. We don’t need to start everything all over. It doesn’t mean that the system is broken. It means we just need to go back and look, where does it make sense to reapply a tool? You know?
Speaker 2 00:27:14 Absolutely. Right. The old cliche don’t throw away the baby with the bath water. Right. I think there are very few instances where you have to start from scratch. Um, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes there might be, but if you’re really clear end game, you usually have made some sort of progress towards it to the extent that you don’t have to start. For sure. So one of the other things that I’ve learned over the years, right, as I’ve grown as a human, is that stabilizing Cass or owning the turbulence, isn’t just about the doing, it has to be about the feeling. So I think back to early in my career, I was relentless about goals. I mean, if people would say, tell me about Jody, they would say she’s results oriented. Like she’s just going to get there, um,
Speaker 1 00:28:13 Group, project people that was like cracking the whip, you know, handing out the, the assignments to the group.
Speaker 2 00:28:20 Right? Absolutely. I was a no excuses. Like we are getting there, I think back. So I’m only five feet tall. And I lived in New York city, as I mentioned. And I, because of my height, I wore heels and I walked miles in New York city every day in my high heels. And I’m not really known for my grace and I have this, I have this like determined walk, right? Like my coworkers always knew when I was coming. Cause I’d be clomping through the office, a clipboard in one hand, my water bottle and the other just clumping to my next meeting. And that sort of, that image of myself, when I think back to it just symbolizes this laser focus that I had on meeting our goals, which served me well in a lot of instances, but it, it’s not what true leadership is really about. And so as I’ve matured, I’ve learned how to be relentless towards my goals and just softer in depth.
Speaker 2 00:29:23 Um, I still clump around quite a bit, right like that, but it’s no longer about no excuses. It’s no longer about the goal regardless of what else is going on. Um, and this really, I think I learned this lesson more so at home than I even did at work. I, you know, when I became a mom and I had these two children with these emotional challenges, um, my instinct was to over plan and over control. I just have this approach, which is if I have the spreadsheet and I know what we’re supposed to be doing scheduled every moment in every day, then things can’t go wrong. Right. And one of my children’s early therapist said, if you want to actually teach your children to be flexible, you have to model that flexibility.
Speaker 1 00:30:20 I don’t know if we’re ready for that. I mean, Lord,
Speaker 2 00:30:24 I don’t think that there were words that my husband, that, that were uttered that my husband, wasn’t more excited to hear.
Speaker 1 00:30:31 Oh, I can imagine. Because Jody, you seem like someone, I would love to walk through the mall with, you know, cause like I need, when I’m walking through the mall, I need someone who knows where they want to go. And I need someone who is not moseying standing in the direct center of the pathway with or four Nordstrom bags blocking everybody. Right. Like I need, I need a mall partner when this is all over Jody. And I feel like you’re my mall partner through that bad boy.
Speaker 2 00:31:03 Oh my God. Happy, happy, happy to do that. Um,
Speaker 1 00:31:09 Okay. So I took you completely off track.
Speaker 2 00:31:12 That’s fine. I love that. And that’s so true, but here’s the thing, the difference between who I was before and who I am now is that we will still have a plan and I still can get us through that mall as quickly as you want to go, we might venture off and do a store that we hadn’t planned to. Right. Like it will be a little bit more fun than just the dog and determination to get through there as quickly as possible. Um, and you know, now that my kids are older, um, they, they keep it real for me. So they, um, when they see me being flexible or realize that I’m, I’m not being over-planned or not, you know, don’t have everything. So tightly wound, my, you know, my name is Jody. They call that person Joni. Um, and they get so excited and it comes from, this is like my daughter and I were out shopping one day and a sales person misheard me in terms of what my name was and started calling me Joanie. And she thought that was hilarious. Joni is now my persona when I need to lighten up. And when I’m not trying to over control. And it really speaks to the fact that when you’re going through day to day and particularly in tough times that the, the light, the lightened approach often just makes it that much easier to weather the storm.
Speaker 1 00:32:44 So, okay. So this is great. When we’re talking about the inside work here, we’re talking about, I’m putting on my Joanie hat today and I’m making a conscious effort to, to own the turbulence through these four steps, through understanding what’s happening relating to my vision. Right. And, uh, leveraging my resources and getting buy in. But what happens when there are people around you like hard-headed coworkers, um, or, you know, you talked about like working with a child who doesn’t necessarily see the value in being flexible. Like I want what I want when I want it and I want it, let me be clear. I want it. So how do you handle this? How do you become Joanie when you don’t have a willing partner who is supporting you in this drive?
Speaker 2 00:33:37 Yeah. So I think it comes down to two things, right? So one is myself having confidence that, that we’re going to be okay. Right. Like, so I do those spreadsheets so that I’m clear on my goals and my visions. And then I have to let it go. I just started to have to be, and the other is communicate, communicate, communicate. So, and this is, and it’s communicating about expectations and visions, but not necessarily the, how would you actually make, which actually makes me think of, um, Daniel Pink’s work. So he’s an author who often raised about motivation. He’s known for a book called drive and a couple others drive. Yeah. And he says, which I agree with him wholeheartedly when people have their own way of doing something, they are more likely to do it when you’re in that situation where the buy-in is, is not great, where you were hoping it would be, you have that child that wants what they want or the coworker that’s not quite there yet.
Speaker 2 00:34:45 In terms of this vision, it’s really about going back to the shared vision and making sure that they understand what it is and then collaborating. And this works for a two year old, a 10 year old, a 13 year old. I’ll tell you when my kids are older, whether it works on their oldest and it works with coworkers, which is okay, so here’s where we’re trying to go. How do you want to do it? What, what matters to you? And then truly as a leader and as a mom being okay with what their response is so that they then have a lot of autonomy and a lot of ability to do it their way. And this is what’s really exciting to me about this is that that’s really what the core tenants of coaching. So with my coaching clients, my, one of the main things I’m doing is helping them find their way, whatever, whatever it is that we’re talking about, it’s about finding their way when you’re in a situation where you yourself have a vision and have an idea of how you want to go, you are, you need to be open to others, what they want as well.
Speaker 2 00:36:07 And then, you know, as a coach, it’s all about supporting my clients to find their way, and then equipping them with the support and confidence to be able to reach their goals.
Speaker 3 00:36:23 I hear you say, you’re listening. And I’m glad to hear that because when I look back at my career and all the times, let’s say a company would get a strategy, come down from the corporate office and we’d go to implement it. And we would have round tables and, uh, discussion groups and all this stuff about how to implement this and that. I found so often that the people who were managing the teams directly were not really interested in input and the people that you’ve invited to a round table to give input, no, when you aren’t interested in the input.
Speaker 3 00:37:16 And so this idea of being willing to hear and accept as valid, even if it’s not the end point of the conversation, but accept as valid the result in comments. I think that, I think that matters. People want to be heard. They want to be acknowledged, you know, to disregard someone’s concerns with a solution or a plan or a strategy, whether it’s how to, how to make these unbearable, 10 minutes of family dinner go by, or whether it is reorganizing after a mass layoff at work, like whatever it is. People want to know that what they have to say counts.
Speaker 2 00:38:02 Yeah. One of the things that I believe really strongly in, um, and once again applies both professionally and personally is being really clear on the negotiables and the non-negotiables. So with my kids, sometimes we use a red, yellow, green system at work. I often use, I feel strongly about this, or I don’t feel strongly about this so that you’re calibrating, people’s expectations about whether they do have a voice and whether they don’t. And so that way, when they don’t, you’re very clear on that. I feel very strongly about this. This is how we’re going to do this is very different than so I have this idea. I don’t feel so strongly about it. I have a vision for where we’re going, but I’d love to get your input for how we’re going to get there. And then truly listening to that. And in most cases ending up with a much better end product than you might’ve on your own. And so I’m a huge, huge believer in calibrating those expectations and then following through. So if you believe that something needs to be done a certain way, say that right out of the gate, don’t give people a false sense that you’re listening. And if you don’t, if you really do want to collaborate, then be very clear that you’re going to collaborate and then make sure you actually do that. So that approach has worked for me and I, I believe really strongly.
Speaker 3 00:39:36 So for the listeners, I want to, I wanna, I want to return to this and underlying it real quick, because I’m imagining that if I were listening to this, I hear these four steps and they sound great, but it requires the participation of the people around me. And sometimes those people around me are the resources that we’re talking about, leveraging and things in order for this system to help smooth over the difficulties. It requires a certain integrity and integrity on the part of, I care enough about you to bring this to you. And to be honest with you to say, I’m sorry, this is not a discussion that it makes sense to have. We already have our plan in place. And I just want to be honest about that or asking for feedback when you mean it and being respectful of that, you know, that integrity matters, I suppose, when you’re trying to get people to buy into your plan.
Speaker 2 00:40:47 Yeah. Integrity. And the other thing I would add onto that is transparency. So, um, when I think about my values and what matters to me in professional situations, candor and transparency are really high on that list. Um, and that, that comes down to respect, right? Which is that you, the people around you need to feel trapped, need to feel respected and to feel respected. I believe you share things in a transparent manner so that they understand, and you treat them as adults that are capable of handling situations. And, and when you’re doing that, then you’re showing up with a ton of integrity and the people around you are always understand where the, where do they fit in both in terms of, um, how you value them and when you want to meaningfully involve them. Um, and I think that goes a really long way of building collaborative teams and being able to get through any turbulence that you might find yourselves.
Speaker 3 00:41:58 All right. So Jody, take us home. Let’s bottom line, all of this cat, because as a former trainer, which was a major part of my career, anytime we’re given people a series of steps or whatever, we gotta, we gotta repeat it again. So walk us through some of your main points and then recap those four key steps for us.
Speaker 2 00:42:20 Absolutely. And I’ll start by saying as sort of a theme of this whole podcast, which is that this is what’s worked for me. So I invite the audience to take what they’re finding meaningful and useful in this process and go with it and adapt it as it might work better for them, for me, when I find myself in a situation that is overly chaotic or is feeling very turbulent, I first find the calm, right? I anchor in what matters and what’s important. I get really clear on that big idea. And then I look at my options to set my vision for where I’m trying to go. Once that is clear, I look at my resources and my support. I don’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to do this alone. There’s nothing that I’ve gotten through in my professional career or my personal life that I hadn’t leveraged resources and asked for help.
Speaker 2 00:43:15 Um, and I don’t think I said that in those simple terms on this podcast at this point, asking for help is really important and everybody should feel comfortable doing it. And then lastly involve everybody that is part of the solution and get a shared vision and buy-in with them. And that’s going to make everything you’re going to be able to get through whatever you’re getting through faster. And, and everyone involved is gonna want to get there with you. So those are the four steps that have worked really well for me. I don’t know when this is going to air, but we’re, we’re sort of at the end of 2020 right now. So as we sort of close the book on this chapter and move into 2021, I hope we all find ourselves dealing with a whole lot less turbulence, but know that whatever is ahead of us, that everybody can be equipped to really own the turbulence, not let it derail them and get to a place that they want to get to and meet their needs.
Speaker 3 00:44:15 Yeah. What are the things that I was thinking about recently is on Facebook every year without fail by the second half of December, people are posting about what a year it was and how next year’s gotta be better. And I mean, it is an annual tradition about talking about how awful the year was and while 2020 was certainly noteworthy for a lot of reasons. Yeah. I think it is important to maintain a perspective that things, how can I say this? First of all, I want to be respectful for people. Who’ve had their lives turned upside down and I don’t want to diminish any tragedies or anything like that because you know, that’s not what that’s, that’s, that’s not the spirit of what I’m saying, but I want to say that there are gifts that each of us were born with and also may have been given over the years and they might be experiences.
Speaker 3 00:45:27 They might be people in our lives, but we all have these gifts that are like battery packs. And they allow us to move through a slow patch and move through the quick sand that we find ourselves in from time to time. And I believe that if we forget our access to these gifts, whatever they are, we’re doing ourselves a disservice we’re hurting our lives. And we are giving in to this turbulence. We’re screaming that the plane’s going down when that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s probably not what’s happening. And, uh, you know, I think the perspective of finding your calm, looking at the options, leveraging your supports and resources, reaching out for help and noticing what you have around you to make it through and then partnering, getting buy in communicating, being transparent. Um, you know, I just think that this is a valuable path to regain some of the power that we may have given up inadvertently maybe during difficulty and whether you need to tape this to your bathroom wall so that you can remember and internalize this, whether you want to play this episode on repeat, I’m not going to stop you from doing that please, but whatever it is you need to do, uh, maybe you even carry a little note of your favorite point of this in your, in your wallet or in your purse.
Speaker 3 00:47:16 Maybe it just says, what are my resources right now? What is my calm? What really matters right now, having just, even one of those little valuable points, staying your orbit can be a game changer when something unexpected knocks you off your balance. And, and the whole point of this podcast, it’s always been to give people resources, to step into their own magnificent power. And I feel like through your introspection and observations, you’ve been able to come up with a tool that can be helpful for people. And I, I want to thank you so much for the thoughtfulness of sharing that with us today. And I’d like to ask you Jody, to share with our listeners how they can get in touch with you. Maybe they have questions. Maybe they’re curious about your practice. Maybe they just want to thank you for your, for your efforts today. Um, but how can people learn more about you and your coaching and get in touch?
Speaker 2 00:48:22 Well, Johnny, first of all, thank you so much for having me today. This is so fun and I hope that your listeners are walking away with a few nuggets that they are going to be able to take into 2021, no matter what this year brings us. My website is Jody axed, coaching.com. And I will spell that J O D I, my last name is axed, which is a as in Apple, K as in kite, S as in Sam, T as in Tom, a mouthful, but actually a phonetic. So Jody asked Jody taxed coaching.com my website, and on there, uh, there are ways to get in touch with me. So I would welcome anybody to reach out questions or just to say hi, or just subscribe to my newsletter or whatever way in which, um, you would like to.
Speaker 3 00:49:13 All right. Well, thank you, Jody, that does it for today. Anything else that you want to say before we close out
Speaker 2 00:49:21 Just that Johnny, this podcast is, is a joy and thank you for bringing it into the world. Um, and for having me as a guest in the conversation,
Speaker 3 00:49:32 I appreciate that. Thank you, Jerry. All right, everybody you’ve been listening to refractive podcast. This is Johnny G and my guest today was Jody ax. And you can find her contact information in the show notes on the podcast page, the webpage, the YouTube page, et cetera. I am a personal, spiritual and career coach. I’m based out of Washington, DC. I am also a speaker and I’m here to help people step into their own authentic power and live their best lives. So if you’d like to get in touch with me, my email address is Johnny J O H N N *@****************ng.com. You can also visit the website for information on the ways that I can be of se*****@****************ng.com. Thank you so much, everyone for listening and always remember, be good to each other and aim your
Speaker 4 00:50:23 Take care.

Enjoy this recording of a powerful live event: “Coaches in Conversation- How to Jumpstart (or Refresh) Your Job Search.” Join Executive Coach Randi Braun, Founder of Something Major Coaching joins forces and Johnny Guidry of Refractive Coaching as they share their best tips on how to navigate the waters of the job search process. Topics covered include: elevating your resume & LinkedIn game; great networking in a virtual world, interview best practices, pursuing a purpose-driven career, self-care and resilience, and more.

We’re all in this together- let’s lift each other up!

Make sure you visit the Something Major website at www.SomethingMajorCoaching.com

For similar content, try this episode of Refractive Podcast: Exceptional Resumes- An HR Director’s Best Tips & Pet Peeves

Find more information at www.RefractiveCoaching.com and www.RefractivePodcast.com

More content to help you live your most authentic life, including this episode in video format, is found on the Refractive YouTube channel.

This episode of Refractive Podcast features Tom Coderre, Acting Assistant Secretary of SAMHSA, the Federal Agency overseeing Mental Health and Substance Abuse. He describes his path through addiction, his fall from the ambitious life he had crafted, and the road to redemption and self acceptance. Tom shares the lessons he learned about himself that help him to turn the volume down on self-judgment and find the loving care he deserves.

Tom Coderre had painful secrets. Growing up in a Catholic, political family in Rhode Island, with aspirations of elected office and a life in the spotlight, there seemed no room left for one major aspect of his life, a part of him that refused to sit quietly in the corner: his homosexuality. Balancing his outer world with his inner reality caused him a great deal of pain- a pain Tom managed through alcohol and other substances. While on the outside Tom’s life looked ideal- he was a Rhode Island State Senator at 25, then the Chief of Staff for the Rhode Island Senate President, this denial of his true nature brought his career crashing down around him, leaving him with no home, no career, and not even a will to live.

Through the world of 12 step-based recovery, Tom relaunched his life and today focuses both publicly and personally on helping others who are running from themselves and their problems with the aid of alcohol and drugs. By being willing to look inside himself and make peace with what he found, Tom opened the door to a more serene way of life and a life-long adventure of self-acceptance.

Join Johnny G and Tom in this important discussion around how to look in the mirror- and really see.

Links to materials referenced in this episode:

Daily Beast web story on the Call Me By Your Name monologue: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-call-me-by-your-name-monologue-leaving-audiences-in-tears

Click Here for Spiritual Teacher Byron Katie’s website.

Here is the link to the book Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman. I get neither money nor any other benefit from this link.

For similar content, try these episode of Refractive Podcast: Making Peace with our Dark Side or The Ancient Truths of Acceptance & PLINKO

Visit www.RefractiveCoaching.com and www.RefractivePodcast.com for more resources. More content to support you in living your most authentic life, including the video version of this episode, can be found on the Refractive YouTube Page at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A

Episode Transcript below, compiled via automated software service. Please excuse any wrongly-identified words or punctuation errors.

Speaker 0 00:00:03 Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest that tells you to move to love, to speak, to try day after day. You pretend you don’t hear it calling, or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse, but it’s there and it will wait for you as long as you need. My name is Johnny G and I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening as we dare to embrace our light. This is refractive.
Speaker 1 00:00:40 Hi everybody. And welcome to refractive podcasts. I am Johnny G and I have a guest with me here today. Mr. Tom Coderre. Tom is currently a regional administrator with SAMHSA. That is the federal agency that works with substance abuse and mental health issues. Before that he was a senior advisor to the governor of Rhode Island and going back into his history, he was a member of the Rhode Island Senate. He was also chief of staff for the president of the Senate. So Tom, welcome. I’m so happy to have you join us on refractive.
Speaker 2 00:01:13 Thank you, Johnny. It’s great to be here. I know we’ve been talking about this for a while and I’m excited. The day has finally come.
Speaker 1 00:01:19 Yeah, we’re good friends. You and I, uh, for the listeners out there, Tom and I have been in the same circles in Washington DC for several years, even though he’s moved back to Rhode Island, you know, we’ve still maintained a pretty close friendship. And because I know some of his background, as I was thinking about potential topics and podcast guests, he was on my short list. And so Tom, you and I, we decided that something that might have some good meat to it was talking about self-acceptance. And so, uh, why don’t you fill us in on some of the, maybe some of the aspects of this that you and I have reflected on?
Speaker 2 00:01:56 Well, before I know we’re going to talk about self-acceptance and gut got a whole podcast to do that, but before we begin, I’d love to share a short story with your listeners. Is that okay? This one is about a man who, by the time he was 30 years old, uh, was pretty successful by most people’s standards. He came from a good loving family and he had many friends. He had been employed in nonprofit management and development for many years, and he had risen in his career to become the executive director of a large nonprofit agency.
Speaker 1 00:02:29 Oh, I thought you was talking about me for a second, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:02:34 This man was also very involved in his community and he had a love of politics. Uh, he got elected to the state Senate when he was 25 years old on the outside. Everything about this man’s life looked normal, some might even say perfect. However, on the inside he was tortured. So he turned first to alcohol and then to other drugs cope with the stresses that he was experiencing underestimating the power of these substances and not understanding the neurological consequences of taking them. He quickly became addicted and his life, well, his life started this downward spiral. As his life began to unravel. He started to lose the things that were most important to him. When his family and friends tried to help, he resisted their help. He pushed them away. This caused him to lose them. Um, he lost interest in politics. He lost his job and eventually his position in the Senate, his health deteriorated he’d lost his apartment and became homeless.
Speaker 2 00:03:36 He lost his spirit. He lost his freedom in the end. He lost pretty much everything. Even his desire to live this man’s life, which at one time was so full of hope, became hopeless. And I know this story pretty well because as some of you may have guessed it’s mine. And fortunately I was able to get the help that I needed. And today I’m a person in long-term recovery, which for me means I haven’t used alcohol or drugs since May 15th of 2003. And my life has gotten a whole lot better. In fact, uh, being in recovery has not just enabled me to create a better life for myself, but it’s also been able, I’ve been able to create a better life for my family and ultimately my entire community because, uh, recovery, uh, does that for people, everything about you changes when you get into recovery, it’s not just about stopping the use of alcohol and other drugs.
Speaker 2 00:04:29 It’s about creating that better life. And so that’s kind of, I thought would be helpful to frame things, Johnny, so that your listeners knew kind of the perspective I was coming from. I want to let you know that one of the reasons that I used alcohol and other drugs was a lack of self-acceptance and it was a lack of self-acceptance, uh, particularly around sexuality. Um, I was attracted to men and I was confused by that. I was, I was raised a Roman Catholic and I was part of a political family. My mom was also involved in politics. So I learned to suppress, uh, my sexuality and those feelings that I had for men at a young age and pretend that they didn’t exist. You know, when I realized that my alcohol and drug use was getting out of control, right. And I tried to reel it back in and, and get into recovery, I failed because I was riddled with fear and afraid to expose that part of myself.
Speaker 2 00:05:33 Uh, so I continued to struggle and I knew if I was going to be successful on this journey, I needed to face my fears, as they say in recovery, right. Uh, fears are either like, um, freak everything and run or face everything and recover. So I had to face everything and I started sharing this for first with my counselor and treatment. I shared it in psychotherapy, very slowly started to share it in 12 step meetings. And, and, you know, I was doing spiritual direction at the time I was doing everything I could to kind of be additive to my recovery process and to make a very long painful story short. What I came to find out in the end is that the only one that had a problem with me being gay was me. And, uh, you know, and that the sooner I could figure that out, that the easier it was going to be on this journey of life, not just of recovery but of life and that there’s an, I could get self-acceptance around it. The more freedom I would gain in my own personal life.
Speaker 1 00:06:38 It’s so powerful to come to the conclusion that you did, that the only issue is inside yourself. It’s one of the major signposts of spiritual growth. And I know that you’ve gone through this and I’ve certainly experienced it. That the problems that we perceive are from our own ego centered fears, you know, that really is the reality that we project and create and manufacture and the people around us sensitive energy beings that everybody is, they give us exactly what we ask for. You know, I mean, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s fascinating to realize that the power was inside the whole time, right? Like th th the authority to drop the pain was within you. It’s like, Dorothy, like you’ve had the power the whole time. You just weren’t ready for it. You know?
Speaker 2 00:07:34 Exactly. Well, it’s funny that you say that too, because, you know, I think about my family, like my family, and I still don’t talk about this. And, and the reason we don’t talk about it is because I’ve made it very clear to them. Like through that energy, never, never spoken, but through that energy that I don’t want to talk about it, that this is like a topic that’s off limits. And it drives me insane because I really probably should be talking. I mean, like, that’s probably next on my list of things to tackle in this process 17 years later, um, is to, is to actually get honest with them and say, you know what, this is who I am. This is what I’ve gone through. Um, you know, they know they already know, but I’ve just made it, and I’ve invited them to things where I’ve talked about it.
Speaker 2 00:08:26 Like I’ve had different ways to kind of express it to them. Um, but I’ve kind of also at the same, it’s one of these things where we do this, you know, I want you to come closer, but stay farther away. And like you said, that’s an energy that we set up with them. And, uh, I got to break through that in some way. And I got to breakthrough through it with like, I’ve, I’ve been able to break through with it with friends I’ve been able to break through and recovery circles. I’ve been able to break through even in the workplace where I’ve had some really uncomfortable, but important growth opportunities to talk about this. And I’m glad I, I, at the end of these conversations that I have with people, I’m always happy. I’ve had it. I’ve never been I’ve, I’ve never like regretted having the conversation. So I don’t know why that doesn’t inspire me to just do it more, but, but it’s that fear. It’s that fear?
Speaker 1 00:09:19 What do you, if I can, if I can ask this, what do you assume their willingness and openness to, to talk about this with you is like, you know,
Speaker 2 00:09:31 It’s, it’s, that’s hard to say, but, you know, I think it might behoove us to kind of like, turn the clock back a little bit. Right. And to talk about kind of where the, where that was, where the fear was rooted, because I kind of mentioned growing up a Roman Catholic being part of a political family, societal norms, being what they were at the time, like people didn’t talk about the sixties, seventies, seventies, and eighties were what I grew up. And, and it was, um, it was during those, you know, those decades that I learned these behaviors and anybody who was gay, hit it, and didn’t talk about it. And even the sexual experiences I had early on in life, it was like, it was wrong. It was like hush, hush. Like it was anonymous. Like it was like all, all these clues that, that I had was like, no, you don’t talk about this.
Speaker 2 00:10:33 You don’t talk about it. You don’t dress it. You pretend like it goes with, and, and I even dated women. Um, so too, I mean, part of it was because I was confused, like I said earlier, and I was trying to figure that out, like, okay, can I actually kind of actually have a sexual attraction to a woman? Can I actually have kind of do, can I perform right. Um, in, in that way. And, and I was, and so then I was like, well, maybe I’m bisexual. Uh, but then thinking about, you know, the emotional connection that we bring to relationships, I, I wasn’t able to make those same kinds of emotional connections with women that I was with men. So that’s how I ended up, you know, and I had conversations with people that people were like, you gotta pick, you know, you just got to pick one.
Speaker 2 00:11:18 And I was like, well, that’s a little, that’s a little simplistic maybe, or cause, and I don’t think the generation today thinks that way either right generation today. I mean, they have a different, they’re growing up in a different time where, where things are different back then, you know, you really, the, all the cues were that you, you didn’t talk about it. Things were not fluid. You were one or the other. And, you know, if you accepted one, your life was going to be somehow you were going to be ridiculed and you were going to be an outcast and you were going to have to really fight for yourself every single day. And I was like, not interested in doing that. Plus I had these plans to be, you know, to, to run for elective office and to, and to be, you know, this upstanding member of my community and how I would, how in God’s name was I supposed to, uh, reconcile those two things. Right. Um, and so, yeah, so this is what ended up forcing me to push that part of myself further in to myself. And, uh, and I regret that, you know, I, I, I regret that, but I don’t live in regret today because I realized, you know, my human experience was exactly the human experience I needed to have at that time. And it was okay. And, uh, today I have awareness around these things, um, that I never would have had. Um, had I not gone through those experiences,
Speaker 1 00:12:45 I don’t know about you, but when I look back at the times where I abused alcohol, I often really appreciate the role that alcohol played for me, because I feel that if I didn’t have those moments of feeling free of that crippling, crushing fear that you talked about, if I didn’t have those untethered moments where alcohol made me able to see a future that could feel free, I’m not sure, I’m not sure I’d be alive. I think I would have killed myself, you know, and in that, in that sense, I really do appreciate the role it played for me. What was that like for you? Well, I’ve never really,
Speaker 2 00:13:35 What about it that way, but that makes a lot of sense to me, of course, because I had those same experiences. Right. So, um, I used alcohol to, um, lower my inhibitions and because I lowered my inhibitions, I was able to experience things that I wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. So yeah. Then I could, that was kind of the experimental part of like, do I, do I like being in this situation with this, with this person or these people? Um, and can I, you know, can I survive in that, in that time kind of dynamic and, and you’re absolutely right. And I wouldn’t have known that if I had not had that, that, that helper, so to speak.
Speaker 1 00:14:19 Yeah. So how did you move from this, I guess this period of fear and frustration with what your insides were saying to a new way of processing life? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:14:38 Well, as I spoke about in telling about my story, you know, it became a survival, you know, a requirement for survival, right? Um, I almost died as a result of my addiction. I got into recovery, I was 132 pounds. Um, you looked into my eyes, you wouldn’t think I had a soul. I was on this declining pathway. Right. Um, that, that I could have, I could have died from my, from my disease. So when I got into recovery and I knew I had to address this like alcohol and other drugs were, but a symptom of my problem, those were things I used to change the way I felt or not to feel. And so I realized without those things, I was going to have to feel again, and from a survival perspective, I was going to have to deal with that. So I started, um, like I said, sharing this, you know, with my counselor and treatment, who, who validated my, you know, my experience and who said that was okay to feel that way.
Speaker 2 00:15:39 I ended up getting, going to 12 step meetings. They have 12 step meetings who that are specific to LGBT people. And I met people there who were just like me, and I heard their stories, what were just like mine. And, you know, people told my story at the meeting. I got a sponsor who was gay, who had those experiences, who I could talk with about mine, you know? And I just kind of plowed through, it’s kind of like that old saying, they have that courage is not an absence of fear, but it’s what we do in spite of it. You know, you have to kind of summon the courage to kind of plow through these issues, to address them, like, to actually show up at that first meeting, as uncomfortable as that felt inside. And as I was walking up the pathway to the door, as I put my hand on the door to push it, to go into that meeting, I had second thoughts and I was like, I’m not, I can’t do this.
Speaker 2 00:16:37 And I had to push forward again and say, well, if I don’t do this, I may die. And so I did, I did that work and then it’s never really become easier. I want to say that too. I’ve just gotten better at plowing through, right. I’ve gotten stronger and able to power through, but I still get those same feelings that the butterflies in my stomach, I remember I took a Dale Carnegie course when I was in my twenties. And the instructor, Dale Carnegie courses are about learning how to be a better public speaker. Typically. I mean, there’s a lot of other stuff that go along with them, but that’s why I took it. And one of the, my classmates in the class raised her hand one night and she asked the professor, she said, every time I get up to speak, I have these butterflies in my stomach.
Speaker 2 00:17:27 She said, when will they go away? And he thought for a moment. And he said, I don’t, they don’t go away. What we do is we learn to, to, to teach them how to fly in formation. And I thought that was beautiful. And I’ve kept that with me for all these years. And I think that’s the same kind of experience I have about, uh, about dealing with my sexuality or my lack of, um, it’s not, it, it never becomes comfortable for me. It’s always uncomfortable, but I’ve taught those butterflies to fly in formation. So that gives me the strength to kind of move forward. It’s like, okay, I felt this before. I know what this is. This is fear. Um, this isn’t something, you know, this is a momentary feeling. It’s not a fact it’s going to go away. I’m going to get to the other side of it.
Speaker 2 00:18:10 I’m going to feel a lot better when I get to the other side of it. So I’ve gone out and I’ve, um, I’ve shared at conventions now. Uh, there’s a convention down in Florida called the rainbow convention where I told I spoke for an hour, told my whole story. I told them things that I never thought I would share publicly. Uh, and, and here I am sitting in a room of 500 people sharing my story about that. I went to the world convention of the fellowship that I’m, that I’m a member of in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And at the world convention, I got asked to lead the LGBT workshop and shared a lot about my experiences dealing with this as well. So yeah, so these experience has, have, have also, it’s not like I’m some expert in this and that I’m able to then share about it. It’s that I’m going through it right now. Like I’m in the middle of it and I’m going through it. And I share about what it’s like to go through it. Um, the other piece is, is like, when I share about it, whether it’s today or any of the other times, I do a little preparation, right. I get prepared for those conversations. And that is an opportunity for growth as well. For me, where I’m able to then, uh, dig a little deeper, like scratch a little bit more beneath the surface.
Speaker 1 00:19:29 What do you mean by prepare for it? So
Speaker 2 00:19:31 Well, I’ll, you know, I’ll be like, Hey, I really love to share this part of my story today. You know, am I strong enough to do that? And what does it involve? So I have to go back and think about that part of my story and think about like, okay, how, how did that occur? Why did it occur? What made me like that? And so I’m scratching beneath the surface to, you know, the origins of where these feelings come from and what experiences I had, some of the experiences, which I’ve, like I said, stuffed down so deep inside of me that it’s taken years for them to emerge again. But that preparation brings those things up and helps me and helps guide me. And then kind of takes me to the next level where, you know, so that’s what growth is, all the great growth doesn’t happen. You don’t go from here to here, right? You go from, you go from here to here and then to here and then to here and then here. So the part of growth that happens, it happens by, for me, it happens by doing those kinds of having those kinds of opportunities and following through with them.
Speaker 1 00:20:40 Yeah, because you know, not everybody is a gay man from a blue collar state part of a Catholic political family. But you know, everybody through these formulative years gets told by society that there’s something about them. That’s not good enough. Right. It’s just a part of growing up in our culture that we get pushed down due to the fears of other people, right. Due to other people’s need to feel that they’re okay. And so I just, you know, not everybody who’s listening is going to walk into a 12 step meeting tomorrow and be able to dig deep and scrape this up and share it. But there are ways that if someone is like in the, in the 12 step community, we say honest open-minded and willing. If someone is honest, open-minded and willing, there are ways to go inside. You know, I tell my clients that the answer is always, always any answer is always in the stillness.
Speaker 1 00:21:47 And whether that is through journaling, through talking with a trusted friend or a religious advisor or a therapist. Yeah. Meditation that’s right. Like to go inside and look at what’s there, because one of my favorite Tom, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, her name is Byron Katie. And I mentioned her on almost every episode because she’s just so fantastic. She talks about how the root of all suffering is believing and uninvestigated story. And that any time we feel pain, because we feel we’ve lost something, lost someone we’re not good enough, we’re believing something that we weren’t born believing that we came to accept as truth. But that if we were to stop thinking about, we would stop feeling the pain and the minute we go back to thinking about it, we feel the pain. And therefore it’s the uninvestigated thought that is the cause of the suffering experience. You know, it’s arguing with what is real. So as you live your life today and being more honest open-minded and willing to kind of walk through that, self-examination what does that look like for you in your current life?
Speaker 2 00:23:15 Yeah. Thank you for asking that. And you know, it looks, it looks like a lot of different things, but election day was a couple of days ago and we had an election here where the speaker of the house lost his election. And then there had to be an election for a new speaker of the house and the new guy that got elected, uh, speaker of the house. Um, they did a profile on him and on the front page of the local paper here. And, you know, as I reading through the paper, now, I always suspected this gentlemen was gay, but I hadn’t, I had never asked him about that or didn’t know it for a fact. Uh, and as I read through,
Speaker 1 00:23:56 Because in your circles, you inter like you, because in your political world, like you,
Speaker 2 00:24:01 Yeah. I interact with them, we’re friends. And, um, but I only interacted with him in politics. I don’t interact with him socially. So I wouldn’t know that part about him, but in the profile, um, the reporters
Speaker 1 00:24:14 Square dancing group together,
Speaker 2 00:24:22 We have reminds me of the pride parade together with our, with your back. Um, so I’m reading the profile in the, on the front page of the paper and it, and it buried matter of faculty says Joe lives in Warrick with his partner, Steven and, and period, that’s it. That’s all it’s. And I’m like, what? Number one? That’s that’s the first time I’ve seen in print that Joe has a partner, number two, they didn’t make a big deal about that. Like, like five years ago, or maybe 10 years ago, the story would have been, Joe is gay and it wasn’t even, they didn’t even say that they just said he lives in Warrick with his partner, Steve. So for me, I was like, wow, we’ve made a lot of progress. Secondly, I’ve seen, obviously Hollywood has done a really good job for us too. Right.
Speaker 2 00:25:19 There’s a lot of motion pictures that have been done, uh, there’s shows entire shows about, you know, being gay, there’s gay characters that are now just slipped into shows. Right. Um, to kind of give that perspective. I mean, that’s really, I think helped. And so as I see all these different things, and I’d love to talk about one, cause you, you have seen the movie call me by your name. And I think some of your listeners have seen it as well. And I have the book here. I saw the book a couple of weeks. I was with my mom of all people, uh, at the Barnes and noble bookstore down where she lives. And I took her over there. This book was there and I was like, she’s like, do you want to get any books? And I was like, well, actually I want, I want this one. And she never asked, she didn’t ask any questions
Speaker 1 00:26:05 That an example
Speaker 2 00:26:07 One way. Right. Another thing like before I never would have, I would’ve like ran away from that table that that book was on. And if I was with my mom, but uh, I put it right out on the counter and bought it in front of her and she didn’t ask any questions or anything about it. She made me not even know what it was, but I would’ve been, I would’ve thought she did and would have made some assumption about it, but this moves great because I love that. They just, they didn’t make a big deal about these characters being gay or about the relationship. Um, I think it’s Andre and Oliver have a, is it Andre? Andre, I think it’s on. Um, but um, I’d love to read just a little, uh, excerpt from it if that’s okay. Would that be all right? Yeah, please.
Speaker 2 00:26:49 Yeah. So basically the story is about, um, uh, this family that, that vacations every year, it goes to, uh, Italy, I think Italy every year and they have a Villa there and they always bring somebody, um, since the father is like this, um, professor and he’s like this archeologist and he, they always bring kind of a student under study to work under the father every year. And he lives with them well, and this year, the understudy ends up falling in love with the son and they, they hang out a lot together and they, they end up, you know, starting this relationship and the story, and it becomes evident to the, to the father and the mother, although it’s never spoken about in the, in the movie, um, toward the end of the movie when Oliver has to leave, Andre is in all sorts of pain, obviously, because now he’s lost, um, this friend, this new found friend, a relationship that he’s in and the person who’s back in the States and he’s still in Italy.
Speaker 2 00:27:54 And so there’s this exchange between the father and the son, which is just so beautiful that when, you know, I like cried when I started the movie and I wanted to go back and read it when I got the book. And I just thought it’d be perfect to share today. So I, I actually am going to read from the daily beast has a, has a version of this that I really like. And I’m going to read from that, uh, the speech that the father gives to the son comes just as the film is nearly over Eliel. Oh, Leo is his name, not Andre. I’m sorry about that. Helio is nursing. How did I forget that Leo is nursing his heartbreak after Oliver heads back to the U S at summer’s conclusion and his father, mr. Perlman calls him over for a conversation on the couch without making assumptions, without making Eliel feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 00:28:47 And without overstepping his bounds. Mr. Perlin tells Leo that he noticed the intense connection he had with Oliver. He doesn’t judge. In fact, he wants to make it clear that he accepts it, that he encourages it, that he may even be jealous. That Leo has been able to find someone to feel so intensely about regardless of gender, you had a beautiful friendship. Mr. Perman tells Leo maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you in my place. Most parents would hope that the whole thing goes away or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough, mr. Perlin says, but I am not such a parent in your place. If there is pain nurse, it, if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out. Don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better.
Speaker 2 00:29:40 We whipped so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should, that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start some with someone new, but to feel nothing. So as not to feel anything, what a waste, that’s just a beautiful, beautiful scene in that film. And it, and it, and it’s something I think that we all envy. Yeah. Yeah. You know, just like he envied his son for being able to have that experience. I envy the relationship that they, that they have. I didn’t have those kinds of relationships growing up with people that I could turn to, that I could reach out to, that I could share kind of, uh, you know, the, the feelings that I was having and, and somebody who could help either validate them or process them, um, or just talk them through with. And I think, you know, for people today to have these examples, you know, in, and, and, and to, to see that on a big screen and as a, as a kid who may be going through those same feelings, right. Whether they be about self-acceptance around a sexuality or something else, um, to know that there, that they can talk about it and that they’re going to be okay as a result. I think it’s a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 00:31:06 Oh, I think, I think so, too. And the idea of telling a child, follow your heart, trust your signals, and don’t worry about the wrist. Like that is, it seems so simple. That’s not that’s, and I’m not, this is not a criticism of my, of my parents, but like, that’s not the message.
Speaker 2 00:31:39 Yeah. Mine wasn’t either, by the way.
Speaker 1 00:31:41 Yeah. It’s, it’s the message. Society gives us is tame your wild emotions and signals, keep them under check all the time. Because if you don’t, you will fail in life. Like that is the message we get. And for me, when I was unable to do that adequately, when I was unable to keep my signals, that I was feeling in check, it made me feel like crap. And that is the reason that I would have turned so easily to something that would allow me to escape. Right. It could just be alcohol, it could be sex, shopping, drugs, gambling, eating, anything.
Speaker 2 00:32:31 That’s right. That’s right. And I don’t think our parents or, or the people who love us, I do that on purpose. Right. I think they’re afraid. Like he was, um, he was afraid that his son was going to get hurt, but the irony in all of this is that you get more hurt if you don’t. So, so they, the parents think that they’re protecting us by, uh, Hey, don’t, don’t go there. Don’t do that. You’re going to be, you’re going to be sorry if you did, but the truth is no, you’re going to be sorry if you didn’t
Speaker 1 00:33:05 Right. That’s right. That’s right. I look at myself as having been emotionally stunted for 15 years, where my lack of willingness, and maybe even my lack of conscious ability at the time to explore my feelings stopped the forward progression of my emotional functioning. And when my world became overrun by compulsion’s, many of them, all of the sudden, like I felt like I was learning how to emote at the same level as someone who was a teenager, because like I had never gone there
Speaker 2 00:33:58 Cause you were emotional. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I feel that way too, as a 51 year old man, um, to sit here and have these conversations and to feel like some of that uncomfortability or it that’s exactly where it brings me back to, it brings me back to my youth. It brings me back to when I was sitting in classroom and the teacher was gonna yell at me or I was going to get sent to the principal’s office or, or I was going to go home and my parents were going to yell at me. I mean, it brings me back to that kind of feeling. Um, and the cues that we were were given in the response, our response to it was to shut down, right. Not to emote during those times. Um, and to, and to also to come to comply right. To, to be like everybody else and, and work. And that’s not how humans are made.
Speaker 1 00:34:50 Yeah. Do you still have areas in your life where you struggle with finding acceptance for yourself?
Speaker 2 00:34:58 Of course. You know, one of the, so the, the big thing for me has been, I have had real difficulty in, in relationships, in the area around relationships, because I just don’t know how to be in one. I don’t, I don’t know how to seek them out. I don’t know how to be a successful person in one, I was in a, you know, a same-sex relationship for like five years with, with a guy who I am still friends with today. We haven’t dated in a long time, but I probably had five years in recovery when I met him. And I started on this journey and, you know, we, our relationship was not successful ultimately, but I learned so much and I love this, uh, this thing that gets set in 12 step meetings all the time, like relationships are character defect, magnifiers, and taking, uh, a magnifying glass and putting it in with my magnifying glass right here, taking a bag of, I put it right over your, over your character defects list because everything kind of comes out, you know, and that person sees in you and then expresses, right, because you’re, you’re supposed to be in, you know, something where you’re, you’re willing to give and take in a relationship.
Speaker 2 00:36:11 And you realize how selfish you are, how, you know, how you realize everything about yourself that might, that you might like to change. So I am grateful for that relationship for that. Um, cause it taught me a lot about myself, but I haven’t been in a successful relationship since. And, um, I noticed myself, uh, even in recovery, seeking other things out, like work, right. Becoming overwhelmed with work. Okay, I’m going to take these big jobs and I’m going to work all these hours and I’m going to basically put myself in a position where I can’t be in a relationship and I’m going to send, I’m also going to send those energy cues that you talked about earlier that, you know, like, don’t come too close to me because I don’t have, uh, I don’t have time for that. I don’t have, I’m not interested in that. Um, and, and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s been painful for me because it’s led to, you know, it’s led to acting out in other ways, sexually and other kinds of things that, um, I’m not proud of, but I, you know, but they’re part of my they’re part of my story.
Speaker 1 00:37:17 Yeah. I have found over these last three years is when the bulk of my major spiritual growth has happened. Right. And it’s led me on this path and the podcast and like my current career and all of that. And what I’ve learned is that emotions are like muscles and that in order to develop, I have to stretch them and let them heal a little bit and then stretch them and heal a little bit. And for me, um, I had a, uh, I had a pretty traumatic experience in high school and it left me with like a really significant fear of groups of straight men. Whenever there would be three or four guys walking down a sidewalk, all, you know, and enjoying each other’s friendship and laughing, like I would immediately tense up and I would feel like I was a target for them. And, uh, one of the things I did as a part of this growth was to go to sports bars by myself and stand next on game night and stand next to groups of straight guys who were screaming at the television and like, just sit there and like, it’s so uncomfortable, Tom.
Speaker 1 00:38:33 Like, it just it’s so uncomfortable, but once you’ve done it, you can look back and you have evidence that nothing happened, nothing happened. And then it loses its power, you know? And so I have body insecurities where I put myself in the most vulnerable position I can and, uh, go through it and then realize after it’s done that I’m alive, you know,
Speaker 2 00:38:56 That’s right. You’re, you’re alive. You’re a human you’re. You had an experience. You got to the other side of it.
Speaker 1 00:39:03 Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I guess as we wrap up, that’s really, I think that’s the nugget that I would, that I would want the listeners to walk away with that when something is uncomfortable, if you’re honest, open-minded and willing, you’re ready for the growth, then invite it.
Speaker 2 00:39:22 Yeah. Find a safe way to invite it. Right. So find a safe way to invite it. Um, because our instinct or, you know, our, our normal reaction right. Is to, is to retract from it and we really need to move toward it.
Speaker 1 00:39:36 Yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s where the power is. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:39:41 Yeah. Our, our reflexes are wrong in that, usually in that situation, uh, sometimes for safety reasons, they might be right. But if it’s safe, move toward it and find safe ways to move toward it. And, uh, and, and you’ll, and you’ll grow as a result, but that’s what this is about at the end of the day. It’s about growing personally.
Speaker 1 00:40:03 That’s right. That’s right, Tom. I’m so grateful for you to have been a part of this episode. And if your story resonates with any of the listeners, um, is there a particular email address or anything that you would be welcome to receiving correspondence?
Speaker 2 00:40:23 Yeah, sure. People can reach out to me at my name, To********@***il.com. Happy to chat with anybody who wants to reach out.
Speaker 1 00:40:37 All right. Perfect. Thank you so much. You’re welcome everybody. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please go on and give it a rating. You don’t have to type a single word, just click a button for a star rating from one to five, and it does help to improve the search results, logarithms for other people to potentially access this material. And remember, as you go through your days and you face your fears, always try to, and your light, this has been refractive. I’m Johnny G. I am a personal and career coach located in Washington, DC. I worked both in person and remotely with people who are ready to look inside, tune into their intuition, discover their purpose and live the life of their dreams. If I can be of service to you, please reach out to me on Twitter at refractive life. Find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/refractive
Speaker 0 00:41:36 Coaching. You can visit me on my we*****@***********************************************************************ng.com. Thanks so much. And again, don’t forget. .

The key is letting go of our judgment of the present moment. Host Johnny Guidry blends personal experience, spiritual concepts, and everyone’s favorite game from The Price is Right for a deep dive into letting go of painful stories that keep us from peace.

Links to supporting materials:

Here’s the link to a HILARIOUS Youtube video of a guy winning $10000 twice. Just skip to minute 5:00 in the video. You’re welcome

Here’s the link to the Oprah SuperSoul Conversation podcast episode featuring Byron Katie

To enhance mindfulness in your life, try these guided meditations from Refractive Podcast: What’s My Purpose and Ocean Stillness

For similarly-themed content try these episodes of Refractive Podcast: From Addiction to Self-Acceptance or Who Do You Think You Are?

Visit www.refractivecoaching.com to learn more about how Johnny G helps people orient towards their best and most powerful lives. Visit www.refractivepodcast.com for more information. Additional content focused on supporting your path to authentic living is found on the Refractive YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A

Find the episode transcript below; please note that the podcast is transcribed via software, we ask that you excuse inaccuracies or misinterpretations.

Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest that

tells you to move, to speak, to love, to try. You pretend you don’t hear it calling,

or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse, but it’s there, ready for you and it will wait for you

as long as you need. My name is Johnny G and I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening

as we dare to embrace our light. This is refractive. 

Hello. Hello, good evening. And welcome to

Refractive. This is Johnny G. over the past year, I’ve come to believe that protecting my serenity

is my number one job, and it falls above earning money. It falls above finding food and shelter

and relationships. Protecting my serenity unlocks the resources that allow me to step into the

flow of life and effortlessly receive all the care, the nourishment and the abundance that I need.

It allows me to be more loving and more present as a person- unlocking

the door of serenity is a foundation for accessing my birthright of magnificence. So that’s a lot to

jump right into, right? We’ve only been talking for a few seconds on the episode, but the purpose

of today’s episode is to look how surrendering to the current moment is an entry way to

accessing serenity and therefore an entryway to accessing the best possible life that exists for

me. The mythology we have often accepted as a culture is that we have to try as hard as we can

to have an amazing life. We have to overcome obstacles. And when we aren’t given what we

want, we should go out and get it for ourselves. We have to fight for glory. We have to fight for

security. We have to fight for recognition. We have to push past the pain and grab life by the

horns and forge our own future. I don’t believe that that needs to be the path forward any longer.

I can’t tell you why. I don’t know what changed, but I see a different perspective on that now. And

I see other people also adopting this different perspective and this different paradigm. It is now

the era of growing through joy. So in this mindset that I mentioned, go out and work super hard

to build the best life you can. In this Mindset. We constrict ourselves in a thousand boxes of, should we have

ideals. We have concepts that we feel beholden to, and you know, there’s nothing wrong with

achievement. In fact, by living a life of intention, by having clarity around the present moment

and being mindful and surrendering to that present moment, because surrender is the key word

of this episode, the quality of any effort I undertake improves when I am mindful, aware and

clear on what’s before me on what’s real and what’s mythology on what’s actually happening and

on what is just a story society has believed and what I have accepted as real, but is not really

real when I’m able to recognize those things I can achieve with more efficiency, it takes less

energy. I fight less and my love and my pure creative energy flow into what I’m doing in a way

that gives me better results.

So this episode, as I talk about surrendering to the moment for a greater

sense of serenity in life, this is not about letting go of achievement and creativity and effort. It’s

about letting go of the painful stories and painful beliefs that we believed were the gateway to

achievement. That’s the difference, a life of joy and beautiful experiences and achievement and

love is built of a million consecutive moments of feeling for what is most resonant right now.

Each decision that I make from the power of the present moment opens before it an entirely new

branching path of timelines. If I decide to stop recording this episode and instead to go take a

nap that changes the timeline before me and opens up an entirely new sequence of things that

become possible after that decision, there’s a new series of causes, effects, possibilities,

lessons, and adventures that open up with every single decision I make. It’s like a new river that

forms out of nothing and branches out to cover a continent with meanderings that

weren’t there before. And that river, that decision , flows without being told what to do, where to

go and how to move for us in applying this principle of flow to life, the trick is twofold. So this is

really key for this episode. The first part is to look inside, connect with my wisest self and ask

what’s right, right now, the second part is once I have that information, to love myself enough to do it surrendering to the magnificence of life is based in the acceptance of what is by way of pure unconditional love. 

My favorite teacher on this topic, her name is Byron Katie, and I’ve certainly mentioned her name once or twice in other episodes.

Um, she’s an extraordinary person. Her book called loving what is Katie says, she’s a lover of

what is, and that the only time we suffer ever is when we believe a stressful uninvestigated

thought. She says that pain is a part of life. It’s unavoidable, but suffering is different suffering is

when we believe a story that the pain is unfair wrong, or otherwise shouldn’t be happening. She

talks about the death of her mother. And, um, there’s an instance where Oprah is interviewing her and Oprah

says, do you mean you haven’t suffered since 1986? Well, haven’t you lost anyone important

to you? Oh yes. My mother died and Oprah says, but you didn’t suffer? And Katie says, no.

Oprah says, well, I just don’t understand that. You’re going to have to tell me. And what Katie

said is I sat with my mother towards the end of her life. And without my story of attachment,

without my story of it’s wrong for her to leave me it, I need her with me. I want her to be with me

instead of on her own path, which is ending without that story. I could see clearly that her path

was coming to an end. And I realized that for me to want her to stay here for my happiness was

my own selfish story. This did not come from a place of love. We say that this love, but in

reality, I didn’t want to go through the pain of separation. And therefore that is the painful story

that when someone dies, we believe it’s too soon. It’s not fair. It’s wrong. It shouldn’t be

happening. As opposed to this person’s path has come to an end. And I am so full of love for this

person. I am so glad I experienced every moment I could when we were together. And I am so

glad that this person suffering has ended, or I am so glad that this person has moved on to a

new what realm of existence. And I celebrate that person’s transition. Wow, that’s revolutionary

Oprah almost Couldn’t handle it to think that the pain of losing someone is that I don’t want to

suffer. It’s not about, I love that person because if I love that person, I want them to be on their

perfect path. And who am I to say when someone’s life is over, it’s only my

selfishness that makes me want to declare such a thing. So that’s a rather extreme example of

accepting what is, but I really strongly suggest you take a look at Byron Katie. If this concept at

all resonates with you, um, I will put a link to the Oprah SuperSoul conversation podcast episode

with Byron Katie. That is a really nice way to get introduced to her thoughts and her perspectives

on this stuff. And it’s how I first encountered her. Um, and then if that feels right, you can go to

her book, which is loving what is, which is a, uh, a really impactful tool for me and my spiritual

journey on putting down the sword to stop fighting what is real and to really, uh, sink more deeply

into the moment and letting go of painful stories.

So this is what brings me to Plinko we’re talking about the painful stories. Okay. So the way I’ve come to best explain this type of existence of surrendering to thepresent moment is through Plinko from the prices right now. If you don’t know what Plinko is, do yourself a favor and look it up on YouTube. I will put a, to a video on the show notes. I know I

have listeners from other countries, South Africa, Germany, Ireland, UK Francis reel, Spain

Ukraine. So, um, if you haven’t experienced the game show, the price is right. You may not know

what Plinko is, but it, he is one of the most popular games that is featured on this game show.

The price is right, the link I’m going to post there’s this guy. And he wins the $10,000 prize twice.

And he screeches and squeals, and it is the funniest thing.

Um, and to just watch his reaction to hitting $10,000 twice. it’s

amazing. Alright. So how does Plinko work? A person climbs to the top of a slightly slanted

board? The board’s about 10 feet high, and it’s filled with pegs at the bottom of the board. There

are a series of slots and each slot has a different prize amount ranging from zero to $10,000.

Based on earlier performance in a contest, a contestant gets a certain —

— number of disks or pucks like a hockey puck. They get to go up to the top of the Plinko board

and drop a puck one at a time. And the puck bounces through all of these pegs. It is like a

pinball machine, but far more congested. So there is no possible way to control the destination

of the puck. You could place the puck in any position at the top of the board and the puck could

travel to any slot on the bottom of the board.

So people try to be very slick and carefully pick their location, but it

really doesn’t matter. I’ve seen people go all the way to the left and cross all the way to the right, or start in the middle and stay in the middle. As the puck falls, it bounces down in a very

happy, joyful way, just like bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce. And the

further down it goes, the more excited the crowd gets and the contestant gets. And,

sometimes the person get $0. Sometimes the person gets all the way up to $10,000. Each peg

offers a decision of right or left for the puck. Now, even though everybody wants to win the

$10,000, that’s in the middle of the board, the bad news is it’s surrounded by zeros on both

sides. And so the joy of the puck happening to stay in the middle is exciting because you could

get the $10,000, but there’s a greater chance of getting zero than getting $10,000.

The joy of the puck being on the far left or the far right, is that there’s no

chance of zero. You know, you’re going to win something. The people playing Plinko like, if you

watch them, they’re super excited, no matter what, because it either stays in the middle and it

could get the grand prize, or it goes to the edge. And there’s no chance of getting zero. There’s

nothing that person can do to strategize or control it. Once they have dropped the puck. But by

playing smartly, before they get to the Plinko board, they have a chance to get more pucks. And

the more pucks they’re able to drop the better, their chances of making big money. And so life is

so much like Plinko, first of all, the farther into the future that I focus, the less able I am to assure

that outcome. It doesn’t matter where I dropped the puck at the beginning because I can’t

Possibly control the right or left motions down 150 pegs. It it’s out of my control. All

I can do is earn enough pucks to drop and believe that everything’s gonna work out. Okay. So

does it mean that I’m a passive and silent partner in my life? If I’m talking about applying this

concept of, I can’t strategize far out in the future? No, that’s not what I mean. Intentionality is a

very important tool for me in my life. And it has really yielded richness for me. So I have

intentions for the direction that my life goes, but I cannot plan my experiences of three or four or

five years from now. There’s just too much that could happen. I mean, look at COVID, the lesson

is doing the best I can to gather as many pucks as I can being happy if the puck stays in the

middle, because I might get 10,000 and acknowledging my kids zero, or being happy if the puck

is in the left or the right, because then there’s no chance of getting zero feed off of the energy of

the crowd and the cheering of the host.

And remember that the worst case scenario in playing Plinko is to get

$0. You cannot lose. You. Can’t walk away with a less than what you arrived with at the bare

minimum. You’ve had an extraordinarily fun experience and a story to share with everyone for

the rest of your life. And you didn’t lose a single thing. Best case scenario. You walk away with

money. This is a beautiful, satisfying, joyful, abundant way to experience life. I wish I could say

that I always approached life the way players approach Plinko that said, I mean, how many

times have I looked at my prizes with disgust, with rage, depression, horror? How many times

have I fumed over how unfair it was that I didn’t get promoted or I didn’t get married, or I didn’t

have enough money or that I wasn’t more handsome. How many times have I actually shed real

tears around how I felt about my life?

So many that’s how many, so many the pain in my life came from a

belief that I was supposed to win the $10,000 who ever said I was going to win $10,000. I

believed it when instead I walked away with zero or 100 or 500 or 1000, I believed I was

cheated. I believed I was robbed and tricked, and that I had been taken advantage of by life. And that is painful. I walked

away from the Plinko board with $0 trudging back to the parking garage, looking at my mug that

says, I went to the price is right. And all I got was this lousy mug and feeling I got cheated

instead of recognizing what was real, what was real was I had the experience of a lifetime. I had

the experience of a lifetime and I didn’t lose a single thing. It’s the belief that what I actually have

today is wrong and unfair. That’s what hurts me. It’s not, not being able to afford a pair of Gucci

sneakers. That’s not what hurts. It’s feeling that I should have them, but can’t that hurts. And this

is a story that I have the power to pick up or put down. It is in my purview to believe that or not.

It’s about perspective. Do I feel like I was bamboozled by life or do I look

at the love, the relationships, the promotions, the birthday gifts, the people who stepped into help

me when things were hard, the beautiful apartments I’ve had. Do I look at all of that? Do I look at

the coworkers who valued me and the bosses who appreciated me and all of this that has been

poured down on my head? Do I look at that and say, this is just a mug I got as a constellation

prize, because what I really wanted look like X, Y, Z, or can I shift that perspective to say, wow,

how did I end up so lucky? And why do I believe I need X, Y, Z? What is it inside of me that feels

like I’m deficient. If I can’t have that, there was a lot of unnecessary pain that I went through for

three decades.

And it’s not until this recent period that I can let go of that. I mean, I’m

not living up on the clouds. You know, I don’t have the body that I would prefer. There are a lot of

aspects of my life that I wouldn’t pick out of a catalog, but I don’t feel cheated. I feel like what I

have received out of life is appropriate. And when I look at the causes and effects, and when I

look at my behaviors and my decisions, what I got out of life is more than fair. If I can let go of

the story, that I should have more and instead look at what’s real. I made out pretty damn good.

And that is that’s a game changer. So today through the growth, I’ll say

that I’ve gone through for the past couple of years of trying to reorient my life on a more spiritual

plane today, I do live a much more intentional life than before. I mean, literally I sit down in the

morning and draft up my intentions for the day, but I also have established boundaries. I don’t do

things that don’t feel good to me. I don’t hang out with people that don’t feel good to me. I don’t

accept a job that doesn’t feel good to me. Right. I follow my intuition, my guidance. I look at

what’s real in the moment, me.

And I say, do I believe that the universe wants me to have this or not? And if it doesn’t feel right, I don’t believe I’m supposed to have it. And I let it go. I’m certainly not

perfect in that. I mean, I, I actually did buy a lotto ticket a few weeks ago and I was annoyed

when I didn’t win anything. Um, so that’s literally the same thing as walking away from Plinko

and being upset about it, right? I mean like, um, so I don’t follow this perfectly, but what I can tell

you is that I follow this most of the time, and it has opened up a different way of life. To me that

has allowed me to start this new career as a coach, as a speaker, it’s allowed me to launch a

podcast. It’s allowed me to have adventures in 2020 that I’ll never forget. There is a real benefit

to living this way. That’s why I believe in it, I’m experiencing it. So when I catch myself in that

well worn pattern, that something is not fair that I have been given a bum hand. I know that I

have not surrendered. It’s like an alarm clock going off inside of me saying, Hey, it’s time to look

at what’s real right now because you’re living in a fantasy. And when I look at what’s real, the

painful stuff is just a troubling belief that I have accepted as real.

I slip back into that absentmindedly, uh, you know, it’s not effortless to

stay mindful, but I can’t snap out of it just by directing my attention there. So when that happens,

I look at the peg of this moment to go back to Plinko. What is my choice right now? Am I going to

fall to the left of this peg or the right of this peg? That’s the choice I have right now? What do my

guiding values? And my inner wisdom tell me to do left right left, right? And then peg after peg, after

peg fall to the right fall to the left, fall to the right fall, to the right fall, to the left decision by

decision moment, by moment, instant by instant following my North star, my values, I chart out a

course that aligns with my values. So by setting that North star and staying aware of the moment

I get the North star now is a life of surrender, boring an anticlimactic.

Well, you get to decide. I mean, no one else has any say in it, but I can

tell you that that’s not my experience doors have opened to me this year because I was quiet

enough to listen for the hinges. How do we achieve something? If we’re not drafting blueprints

for the future, right? Nobody wants to float in a foggy purgatory with no direction. And that’s not

at all. What I’m telling you. The answer is in setting clear intentions for an optimal path, values

are important here. If one of my primary values is adventure that is going to flavor the decisions I

make of turning left or right left or right peg by peg, by peg, with an ultimate understanding and

faith that the path I’m on is touched by adventure.

If achievement is one of my values, then each peg will represent a

choice left or right. That gives me a chance to lean into achievement or not. And moment by

moment, I can look back and see that by my tendency, towards my value of achievement. I have

achieved. This works with all values and combinations of values. Relationship is a value. Service

is a value family, creativity, learning. All of this is a value. Beauty is a value. And so once I set

my compass on that value with clarity and I make the decision that feels best to me in each

moment I move towards the value. Slightly wavering left, right left, right left, left, right, right left.

It’s not a straight line, but it ended up there.

And that is my experience. That’s what a life of surrendering to the

moment has offered. That’s why people hire coaches. It’s why I ended up where I am doing what

I’m doing, because I knew that my life didn’t seem oriented to my values. And I couldn’t

understand why I tried so hard to be an achiever, to be good, to contribute, to make people feel

better. I tried really hard to do all of these things. And yet I still felt like I kept ending up in the

wrong place. And the answer was that I did not listen to my values. I let other things guide my

puck from peg to peg, to peg. And while the decisions are small, you don’t notice. At first, over a

period of time, I had strayed far enough away to feel that sense of loss. And by looking more

clearly at that, I could undo some of that pathway and reoriented to where it should be.

If any of this is taking root in you right now, if it feels consonant with you,

um, I hope it’s this. There is a big difference between doing what feels right in the moment and

doing what you think will give you the best outcome in the future. This is a major point of this

episode. This might seem like nitpicking. It might feel like semantics, but I promise you. It’s not.

The good news is that no matter what you do, there is no such thing as a right or a wrong path,

right. And wrong are relative. And they are defined by you. There is no such thing as a right path

and a wrong path. Any path you pick or any path you end up on from a lack of mindfulness is

filled with love for you by the universe and endless opportunities for fulfillment. And for course,

correction, one path just happens to be in a flow.

And one path happens to require you to push a Boulder up a Hill. Both

of these paths are rich and they’re perfect in the eyes of your spirit and your soul and your

calling. They’re both perfect. All roads lead to Rome, but one flows and one pushes up Hill. It’s

up to you to choose, which is better for you right now. One path makes choices from your actual

place of power and place of greatness, which is the now one path makes choices from the

future, which is a place in which you have no power because the future is imaginary. Both paths.

Do however, have the potential to deliver to you what you want. So the path of surrendering to

the now gives you a position of power.

Is that ironic, surrendering to the now grants, you access to power. The

path of making choices from a future means you have no power. So what’s the difference. If you’re going to get where you’re supposed to go, no matter what, why on earth does it matter whether you surrender to the now or whether you draft and plan out the future? In my experience, my life is absolutely littered with things that I have achieved,

bought, earned, and won, but that once I got them, they were unfulfilling. As I directed my

attention on achieving something, the universe often gave it to me, but it’s not what I really

wanted. I got the high of achieving and that high gave me a taste of flow. And once that

momentary high was gone, I needed the next high of another achievement.

That is my experience. And I don’t know if any of you can relate to me.

Have you fought hard to get something? And once you got it, you didn’t want it anymore. I don’t

know. That’s what happened to me over and over and over again. That is not the life that I would

want for my child. If I had one that is not the life I would recommend to my adolescent self. If I

could lovingly sit with him and give him guidance, I would not want him to embark on a series of

achievements that left him feeling unfulfilled. I know what that was like.

There’s a better life than that for me. And it is knowing what feels right in

my heart and following it moment by moment and trusting that if I do that, I’ll end up in a place.

That’s great. Where’s that going to be? I don’t know. I can’t tell you, what am I going to be doing

in five years? I have no idea. I can’t tell you, but the secret is the other guy can’t tell you either.

And he thinks he knows. I’m just honest about not knowing. And I’ve made my peace because I

trust that my compass is set in the right direction.

Now I’m the first to tell you that switching to a life of surrender is an

uncomfortable move. There is well worn, comfort and soothing. And this illusion that we have our

hands on the levers of the future and the truth is we control almost nothing. We can’t control. If

the refrigerator breaks, we can’t control our children’s attitude or their tendency towards

cleanliness. We can’t control flooding in Louisiana or wildfires out West. We can’t control the

price of aspirin in a hospital or the traffic on the way to work. I can’t control the expiration date on

my yogurt or leaves falling in the yard just after I wake them up. I can’t control how many dust

bunnies are going to form under the bed, or I can’t dictate the inventory at my supermarket. I

can’t stop my friends from freaking out on Facebook. I can’t stop how people think and feel and

act today in my country.

I can’t choose who my kids want to date. I can’t choose when my

bananas are just ripe enough or which celebrities I find annoying. I can’t pick when the cherry

blossoms are going to hit peak bloom in Washington, DC, and I’ve never been able to summon a

white Christmas, but I’ve tried. I can’t stop my mother’s hands from shaking, even though it’s

hard for me to watch. And I can’t help that some of my hairs are starting to turn gray. That’s just,

what is, so what can I control? The only thing I can control is the decision that is directly in front

of me at this precise moment. This is where my power lies. And like Shakespeare said, though,

she be, but little, she is fierce.

If I know my North star, that tiny decision that I make right now in this

moment causes my life to flow with immeasurable power. This is a potential that can change

paths and it can be strangled to a trickle. The minute I, again, fall into mindlessness and

inauthentic choices. So just saying this and taking you through these concepts, I realize that it

can seem that this is a dull concept, that it is an unappetizing way to live life, but I can attest to

you that it is intensely fulfilling. I have done both ways and I have experienced in both ways

earlier this summer, as all of the world’s civilization was sheltering in place. I felt when I looked

at the present moment that I could just as easily be isolated in a rental car and in a hotel room or

a motel room or an Airbnb by myself, that I could, instead of looking at my walls and watching

TV that I could drive through landscapes that I’ve only seen in books that I could go to natural

wonders and take advantage of places with almost no visitors. I knew that I could go and stay

safe while exploring national parks and cityscapes and skylines and sunsets and mountain peaks and bridges of all types. I picked my beginning of my end point

and I chose my destinations day by day. And that blew my mind. Every vacation I have ever

planned was so tightly scheduled before. And it was so unsatisfying.

This was stepping into the flow each day. I looked at the few hundred

miles around me and checked if there was anything I might like to see. And I drove in that

direction and I made my hotel reservations. And this route that I chose, it looked just like a

Plinko board, because I went from peg to peg and each peg, do I go this way or do I go that

way? What feels right? And so I lived the adventure of the Plinko puck going through the United

States from West to East, experiencing national park after national park, after national park, after

state park, after empty city, I experienced different climate after different climate from the high

mountains to the deserts, to the flatlands of Texas. And I had this experience only because I

listened to the inside voice that said, Hey, if you don’t pay that expensive rent that you have in

DC, if you don’t renew your lease, you can use that money to do this instead. And that’s what I

did.

And that trip gave me two months of stimulation and excitement and

memories forever and adventure. In addition to that, this year, I spent two weeks, uh, in the

smoky mountains and in West Virginia, uh, that was in March. And then when I got back from

my trip, I just knew, I just, I just knew it didn’t feel right for me to stay in the city right now. And so

I said, Hey, I want to go live somewhere on water. I don’t have any money. I’m down to my last

couple thousand dollars. I bought an old car used, I paid cash. And then I had to go all the way

to remote rural Maine to be able to afford a place on water, but I did it. And as I’m here recording

this, uh, I’m looking out a picture windows at a rainbow of autumn leaves. They’re falling like

confetti.

They’re putting on the best drag show ever. I’m watching chipmunks,

dark back and forth across this enormous lot. I’m mesmerized by sunset. It’s being reflected in

10,000 tiny stars of light that are twinkling on the surface of a pond that is just outside my

window and the pond. Every morning when I come down the stairs, it looks happy to see me.

There’s my Plinko grand prize. I don’t have any money right now. And, uh, I’m, I don’t have a lot

of close intimate relationships right now, but I have an incredible life that was given to me on a

platter because I was willing to just get quiet and look inside, ask what felt right for my most wise

self, and then love myself enough to say, yes, I’ll try it. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but

I’ll do it. And the rest of the journey will be lovingly arranged and architected from a higher

perspective without my petty involvement. So my main point today, as we wrap up and the

purpose for this content is to ask you to consider what you believe around surrendering to the

present moment. Your beliefs are so valid, even if they are complete opposite from mine, follow

them, appreciate those beliefs. Love them, lean into them. They are unquestionable. Follow your

guidance as honestly as you can. My opinion is that straining for a life of uninvestigated goals is

like a wounded dog snarling at the vet. The most powerful I will ever be, and the only

circumstance in which I can Truly co-design my own universe is to still my mind go inside. Examine

what is real in this moment and lovingly without attachment, without expectation, drop the puck.

Thanks so much, guys have a great day. Be good to each other. This is Johnny G with the

refractive podcast. I am a spiritual and career coach, a speaker and facilitator. You can email

me jo****@****************ng.com. Please reach out. I’d love to hear suggestions for episode

topics or receive any questions or comments you might have. You can find me on social media

at Twitter and Instagram @refractivelife. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment

to click a star rating. You don’t have to type a single word, but every rating does help to enhance

the distribution of this podcast in the search engine algorithms. Of course, if you’d like to

subscribe to the podcast, that’s great too. Thank you so much for tuning into refractive. Have an

amazing day. Be good to each other.

Finding the courage to pivot and change careers is a key element to living our best lives. This episode features the inspiring story of Dr. Karen Barnard, who after a 30 year career in medicine leapt into the arms of her intuition and began a new calling as a personal coach. Karen talks about how to know if it’s time to switch careers; how to know what career fits your calling, your soul, and your lifestyle; some simple steps to advance towards this new life. Connect with Dr. Karen at www.drkarenbarnard.com or at ka***@************rd.com

For similarly-themed episodes, try these: Live Event: Jumpstart (or Refresh) Your Job Search or Artist Stan Piotroski: A Life that Feels Right

Visit www.refractivecoaching.com or www.refractivepodcast.com for more information on moving towards your best life. Additional uplifting content can be found on the Refractive YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A

Referenced in this episode are the following books and podcast episodes. Refractive receives no compensation or other incentive in recommending these titles.

Books:

Your Body is Your Brain by Amanda Blake

Emotional Agility by Susan David, PhD

Limitless by Laura Gassner Otting

Podcasts:

Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations featuring Caroline Myss: Discovering Your Life’s Purpose

Apps:

Meditation Studio

Below is the transcript of this episode completed by transcription software; please pardon any inaccuracies from the software’s conversion of sound to text.

Speaker 0 00:00:01 Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest telling you to move, to love, to speak, to try day after day. You pretend you don’t hear calling, or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse that it’s there ready for you. And it will wait for you as long as you. My name is Johnny G and I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening as we dare to embrace our light. This is refractive.

Hello. Hello.
Speaker 1 00:00:42 Welcome to refractive podcast. This is Johnny G and today I am delighted to present to you a dear friend and an inspiring individual that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting lately. Dr. Karen Barnard, Karen was born in South Africa and at an early age of 15 years, she was encouraged by a school teacher to pursue a career in medicine. Karen knew that she felt driven to live a life of service of some kind, and this happened to align well with what she saw for her future. So at the age of 18 in South Africa, Karen began her training as a doctor, finished medical school and moved to the United States. At that point, she trained here as a general internist and then subsequently chose endocrinology as an area of specialization. After a 30 year career, Karen felt intuition, leading her to a change of career. She knew that she still continued to desire a life of service of some sort, and she landed on life coaching.
Speaker 1 00:01:55 She began training as a life coach in 2019. This is where I had the pleasure of meeting her and she formerly left that 30 year career in June of 2020 to pursue her new dream. So welcome, Karen. I’m so happy to have you on the refractive podcast. Hi Johnny. And thank you so much for this invitation. And I’m really looking forward to the conversation we’re going to have today. That’s right. And so I haven’t presented yet the topic for everyone, but I think this is an area of focus that many, many people are feeling a connection to. Now, I don’t know about you, Karen, but I, in my conversations with people over the past several months, I feel that this COVID pandemic and the shelter in place working from home phenomenon that we’ve experienced has led a lot of people to question what they have chosen as a life path and person after person, after person has told me that they wish they could leave their current career and start something new, even when they don’t know what that is.
Speaker 1 00:03:11 They just know that they have felt a low level consistent dissatisfaction with what is, and they are looking for something new in the future. So today’s episode is all about recognizing those internal signals we have when it’s time to shift our career path and recognizing our saboteurs thoughts, recognizing obstacles that are both real and sometimes not real. And looking at some common sense steps to rowing piece around this concept of making such a major life shift. And I know that something that you and I have both done recently, and I’d love for you to share with the listeners, your origin story, some more details or within what I’ve already discussed. And, um, let’s let everybody know why you have some experience around this to share.
Speaker 2 00:04:12 Oh, absolutely. And before I say talk about my experience, I just wanted to say, I have also heard from so many people who are really looking to making a change and just not sure how to go about it. So this is a very timely topic. So Johnny, as you mentioned, I graduated from medical school in South Africa, actually almost 31 years ago now. And I really enjoyed a productive and rewarding career as an academic internist and endocrinologist. Um, you know, I was able to see patients and I, um, degree search and I told and had administrative leadership roles as very engaged. And I thought I would be doing it for the, my whole life. And then a few years ago, I sensed that something was off that I wanted to contribute in a different way, but I just didn’t know what it would be. So I went on an exploration of sorts that led me to last year to a foundation’s coach training course where I met you, of course. And at that moment at that course, I knew that coaching would become my second act. So, um, I went from medicine, which I now think of as my first act to coaching as my second act. And so here now, September of 2020, I am retired as you mentioned. And I dedicate myself full time to my coaching business. Um, and I work with a broad range of professionals. I have a special interest in healthcare providers and I work with folks to design their careers and lives with clarity and intention and courage.
Speaker 1 00:05:56 I relate so deeply to the calling that you’ve mentioned. And I think that just based on what I’ve experienced, I think that you, Karen, with your background and your set of experiences, I just think that there’s an entire medical community that has invested so much time and love and money and energy to pursuing a life in medicine that the option of ever putting that down and moving to something else just feels like they’re disrespecting themselves. And I think the idea that you can lovingly begin your second act and integrate your first act into your second act in helping members of the medical community as they feel this sense of impending change. I think it’s very inspiring.
Speaker 2 00:06:50 Well, thank you and your exit you, right. It’s never easy to leave a career where you’ve put so much energy and society has also partly sort of helped to fund. And so, you know, there’s that, and there’s just the expertise you develop. And one just wonders where there is there anything else I can do. I only know how to do medicine. That’s what I hear a lot. Um, and, and yes, there’s a whole world out there and, and every single experience in life counts, whether you’re in medicine or whether you’re doing what ever, that really sets you up for however, you’re going to serve in the future.
Speaker 1 00:07:30 Sure. If we dive right in Karen, let’s talk about how people can discern whether what they’re feeling is a drive towards a new career, or if what they’re feeling might just be some frustration at their current job, because there’s a difference there. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2 00:07:51 Yeah. This is such an important question. Uh, Johnny, and, you know, here, I like to talk a little bit about the harnessing, the wisdom of the body. You know, we tend to think that all of our knowledge and wisdom comes from above the neck now, cognitive processes. Um, but in fact, there’s this tremendous network of hormonal and your illogical signaling below the neck, coming from our gut and from our heart, from our skin, from our connective tissue. And in prioritizing above the neck data as reliable and valid, we’ve kind of turned off or we neglect this ferry finally to sense organ that we have, uh, that can really help us sort of tease apart some things of what we feeling and what might be next. And here, I love to talk about the work of Amanda Blake. Um, she wrote a book called your body is your brain.
Speaker 2 00:08:54 And she relates how we treat our bodies as vehicles to get to the next meeting or machines that could be fixed by experts. And Hey, I’ve been guilty of this too. So this really resonated with me and we have unlearned in this busy, distracted world to pay attention to what’s really going on inside Johnny, if I may, I just want to say how it relates to how I ignored my own senses. Here was I started a few years ago, really feeling a lot of fatigue, you know, not just the usual, Oh, at the end of the day, I’m tired or they’ve really wasn’t fixed by going on vacation or having a weekend. It was just this low grade fatigue, which was very unusual for me. The other thing that started happening is that my migraines started increasing in severity, both in frequency and in intensity, it was like, my body was just, I hadn’t listened.
Speaker 2 00:09:51 I hadn’t listened to study. My body was saying, Oh, okay, stop. And literally it stopped me in my tracks. And I was like, okay, something is going on here. The other piece to this. So, you know, there is the signals we get from our body about how we feel with where we’re at. Then there’s also our emotional state and really listening to our emotions is, is critically important. And here, I like to draw on the work from Susan Davis. Who’s actually also a South African she’s a psychologist at Harvard medical school. And she wrote a book called emotional agility. And she asks the question, what are your emotions signaling to you? Notice them become curious, um, and look at them as data. Um, but they’re not directed. It doesn’t mean you follow everything, but you pay attention. And so for me, the emotion was that I left Infusio autism.
Speaker 2 00:10:57 Like I was always this take on any project. I look for this, go for promotion, like really go home. And I started withdrawing, like my enthusiasm chest was rock bottom, which was, again, something was signaling there’s Euston. We have a problem. Similarly, you know, there’s a challenging emotions. We need to listen to this also, you know, Johnny, that first course that we did together with coaching, like the way I felt, even though I wasn’t coaching very well, just the space of ease and the happiness and the excitement that I felt in that space that was now looking back, that was posts saying, pay attention. This might be the way forward.
Speaker 1 00:11:46 The idea that you had these symptoms, migraines that coincided with your lack of enthusiasm. I think this is fascinating. How did you come to the conclusion that they were related and that this pointed to a different career?
Speaker 2 00:12:05 I wished I could tell you that I was mindful of it. And I, and I recognize that as it was happening. And I said, I didn’t do any of that. It really kind of knocked me over the head in a way, like the universe was talking to me and I wasn’t listening.
Speaker 1 00:12:20 So it took me a while to
Speaker 2 00:12:23 Put the pieces together. Um, and, and, you know, once I got sort of the pole to, to go into coaching, now that I’m there, I can look back and my migraines, I haven’t had a migraine in eight, eight and a half months.
Speaker 1 00:12:43 Okay. Which is a very interesting coincidence of timeline.
Speaker 2 00:12:48 Like not one, um, my energy level is completely the way it was before. I mean, I, there are days I get tired, but like normal, I have high energy end. Yeah. Mine’s easy as hasn’t for what I do the love of what I do. And so, yes, I think it was, um, really in it sort of really being taken to a standstill and saying, why am I not functioning so well? And then after the change of looking back and going, okay, wow.
Speaker 1 00:13:20 So, you know, I talked to my clients and I say that it is possible to have a career that energizes you. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have exhausting days, but there it is possible to go to work every day and feel vibrant and to feel excited. There are so many people who come home from work every day, who know that 10 years ago, they were very passionate about what they were doing, but they know that every day they come home and they feel just a little bit dead inside, they feel a little bit, they just feel drained. They’re exhausted. I think that that’s a really unfortunate way to go through life. And so what I hear you saying, Karen, is that if you are feeling this consistent drainage of your energy, of your passion, it’s assigned to look inside and at least start asking questions where it comes from and nothing is off the table.
Speaker 2 00:14:19 Oh, I couldn’t agree more. And I think a key word there is the consistency with which this feeling shows up. We all have a bad day here and there, or even a bad week, or, you know, but it’s really the question of it’s persistent. It was for me. And I waited maybe even longer than I could add it, but I waited a few years before I really acted on this. The other thing I just want to mention is so that the shirts that come up like, Oh, I should, you know, this is an incredible, I have, I’ve spent, I should be feeling happy. I should be engaged in everybody else. They’re loving it. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I, and those sorts of shirts, just to look at that and say, what am I really telling myself? That’s really a critical piece to this.
Speaker 1 00:15:12 I agree with that. I think that there is, um, there are very few situations where should, is in loving term. You know, I really do. So let’s say we have been experiencing this consistent at best boredom and at worst, a sense of being drained every day from our vital forces. How do you know if it is time to look at an entire new career or if it’s just where you’re working every day,
Speaker 2 00:15:49 Kara, the things that I work with with my clients and that I did for myself as well. And one of the first things is really reconnecting with our life purpose. Um, what we think we’re here to do, and also reconnecting with your values or your principles in life, ask yourself what really matters to me. What do I want to be in the world? What kind of contribution do I want to make is contribution even important to me, maybe what’s important to me is caring for and providing for my family and my current job that may not be great, but it brings in the money for me to honor the value of providing for my family, or it might be significance in my job. I might, you know, I’m a leader and I’ve had a significant role. That’s important to me. That’s a high value and look at what makes you come alive and explore that sun and see where in your life are you honoring those values that are important and where maybe have you neglected them or stepped over them.
Speaker 2 00:16:59 Cause Johnny really, when we live in alignment with our values and our core principles, our life just flows. And that’s my experience. One of the things that I realized, I always thought values were kind of set in stone. You know, you have a set of values and they stick with you. And to certain extent, that’s true. And, but I’d like to think about it a little differently that certain values take a higher priority at different times in our lives. So for example, for me, the value of geographic freedom and the, I came to the us from South Africa. I love traveling, but there was a value of mine, but it wasn’t a top value. And then in the last few years, we wanting to spend more time with my, with my aging parents. And now my dad, my brother, suddenly that value of geographic freedom became really important to me. And, and that’s where, when I looked at life coaching that checked a box that, uh, you know, being a physician needing to be in one place did not meet. Yeah. I’ll just, I’d like to hear your, um, your take on the role of the values and life purpose in helping to directly,
Speaker 1 00:18:23 You know, when I was a kid and people ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up for a long time, my answer was I wanted to be in paranormal fields.
Speaker 2 00:18:36 Yes.
Speaker 1 00:18:42 Yeah. Going back further. I wanted to be the president. I wanted to be an actor. You know, and these are ways of living that as a child, they connected with my primary drivers, they looked fun. They looked interesting. And as I grew up, I ended up in human resources and listen, human resources is a great job. As far as most jobs go, HR is a good deal, okay. Is a good job. But it did not connect with my primary drivers. And every day at work, I felt an intrinsic desire to not do HR. And so to get through it, I changed jobs every two years because at least when you change jobs, you’re overwhelmed by the newness and the learning and that is stimulating. And so as I look back, I can see, I worked for a hotel company where I could easily transfer.
Speaker 1 00:19:52 And every time I transferred into a new role, it got me through for like a year and a half. And then I started to get back into the doldrums and I needed to move again because I did not enjoy what I was doing. And so what I would tell my clients and the listeners is go back to the ideas you had as a child. Maybe today, I’m not going to be a paranormal list. Okay. But what was the, what was the reasoning behind that? Because the reasoning behind your childhood fantasies is a deep connection to your psyche. As a child, we are not constrained by this realism that we’re forced to live in as adults. And so there’s real fertile soil there for understanding what makes you tick, what connects with your heart and what feels good. And if you can align your career with something that feels good inside your heart, you have a life that is energizing, not draining. That’s my thought.
Speaker 2 00:20:55 I so love that story of the, you know, going back to the, to your childhood. Cause you’re absolutely right. That when we children, we don’t have all of these things, societal pressures and expectations, and we’re so much more in tune with that sort of a regional wisdom. That’s excited about.
Speaker 1 00:21:14 You know, I think it goes back to the familiar old saying to thine own self, be true. I think it’s important to acknowledge what makes you tick and you know what, like you said, Karen, maybe today I have a young child and I can’t leave my stable career to go chase a dream today. Maybe that would be harmful to my family, but I can lay down a plan. Okay. I can lay down a plan. I can give myself the love of following my gut guidance to say, I can make this work in a five year plan or a 10 year plan. It’s okay to plan a career change 10 years from now, there are literally no rules. You set the rules, you set the parameters. And if you are being true to yourself, if you know your insides and you’re being true to yourself, you are going to find peace in your daily life, but it takes the courage and the willingness to say, what is true and what is not true, but that I accept as true.
Speaker 1 00:22:27 Is it true that I need to make $125,000 a year as a minimum salary? Is that true? It may be important, but is it, is it a real rule that I’m holding myself to, or is it something that I had accepted based on my imagination that is more aligned with society than what is aligned with what my insides are telling me. And if you can grow peace around your inner truth, your values, your driving principles and your real needs for love your real needs, not your society pressure needs, but your real needs, all of the sudden doors open in your imagination that you have forcefully kept shut to yourself for decades. And that is the key that when I work with my clients, that’s the key to unlocking your peace and your happiness, stop holding your own cage shut because of a set of limiting ideas that you’ve been spoonfed. And you’ve accepted as fact because you get to choose, you decide you make the rules and is not a single person who can hold you back. If you don’t agree to be held back. That’s, that’s my, that’s my feelings around it, you know?
Speaker 2 00:23:57 Oh, absolutely. And I love how passionate you are about that because we all need to hear what you just said in the way that you said, and you showed such fierce courage as you spoke. And that’s what it takes. It just takes a lot of fear, courage, which you just exhibited lovely to see.
Speaker 1 00:24:20 So one of the most formative elements, and it sounds silly to say this, but it’s why I got into podcasting. Okay. So one of the most formative elements of my recent life change has been Oprah’s super soul conversation. So this was a television show on the, on the own network, but it’s also available in podcast format of just the audio. And I listened to most of those episodes because on every episode there is a different person. You might consider a thought leader on some sort of heart or spirit based concept. And there was one episode featuring I think there’s actually two episodes featuring a lady named Caroline Myss. And she, uh, she responded, uh, to a question that Oprah gave and she said something like, well, no, you’re always either moving towards fear or you’re moving towards love. You can’t move towards both at the same time.
Speaker 1 00:25:22 Go ahead and think about it. Try to give me an example. It is not true to accept both fear and love. And this has been a really important concept for me in my growth. It’s unlocked something inside of me. And as I look, what does fear mean? And what does love mean? Fear is any one of a hundred forms of limiting messages? I can’t, I shouldn’t, it won’t be acceptable. That’s not loving. I can’t do that to my family. I can’t do this to myself. I can’t survive on $60,000. I can’t, I can’t, I shouldn’t, I won’t write fear says if I do this, I’m going to fail. Whereas love says, I’m willing to look inside and discern and discernment is really key. Discernment is the idea of putting your thoughts and your feelings through a test. Does this make sense? Does it feel right when I weigh it against reality? Does it still stand? If it doesn’t, maybe I’ll put it away for now, but discerning whether my path I’m on, am I doing HR because of love? I could be, I could love my child so much. I’m willing to do HR. Okay. That could be a love-based decision. Or am I doing HR? Because I don’t think I’m qualified to do anything else. And I, I’m not willing to drop my salary by half to start over that’s fear.
Speaker 2 00:26:59 Oh yeah. Fear will show up predictable hundred percent whenever we want to make a change. And it’s, it’s a very instinctive reaction. And in fact, part of the fear is there to protect that that fear has come along with us and has kept us out of trouble, helped us to survive, helped us in the community, a stain out community and not get kicked out of the tribe. But that fear doesn’t realize that we’ve actually evolved and we’re no longer, you know, creatures roaming around, maybe needing a lot more help from fear. We now have this amazing prefrontal cortex that helps us in our decision making. And if we have weighed the options, fears, not going to go away, it’s going to keep staying there. So are you sure? You sure. You sure. And you know, you can say, thank you for your, I see you.
Speaker 2 00:28:00 And yes, I have done the math. I have discussed. I’ve listened to my body it’s time. And you know, Johnny, Chadwick Bozeman who really left us way too soon was he was an enlightened being. And he said, fearlessness means taking the first step. Even if you don’t know where it will take you. And it gets to that piece of that’s where the courage is. Courage is not that there isn’t fear fears going to be there. It’s going to just get used to it, recognize your fear, recognize its messages. And they’d say, I got this and I’m going to move forward despite of it. And that’s, to me, the definition of courage.
Speaker 1 00:28:44 And so this leads us into, into our next topic, which are the obstacles around making such a shift in life. And I mentioned in the intro, some of these obstacles are very real and a lot of the obstacles have been put there by ourselves and they are as real as we grant them to be. You know? So I’d love to hear your perspective on facing these obstacles when we consider changing our life to following more of our vocation or our guided career, rather than where we happen to have ended up to date.
Speaker 2 00:29:28 Yeah. So these, um, and I love this topic because it’s something I’ve been thinking about and writing about, um, for quite some time now, and that’s, you know, inner voices that it was perceived obstacles that either we make up or we think other people are saying that it’s really these thoughts and voices in our heads. And I call them saboteurs. Um, people have different names, but there’s, you know, there’s a judge separator there’s, um, there’s an avoidance separator. My favorite is you’re not good enough separator being able to recognize them as sort of a little bit like fear where they, there is, there’s a smidgen of truth often to what they’re saying. There’s like a little bit of truth. Um, and we get hooked and he say, see, you can’t do it. So for me, you’re too old. Like, what do you want to go changing careers age of 52?
Speaker 2 00:30:31 And then I really started looking at that. I’m too old and I’m looking around me and people of 80 are writing books for the first time. I actually just read last week. Cause that the, um, the average age of a successful startup founder, Johnny is 45. There you go. So with that new data, I just made a decision to say, no, I’m not going to, I’m choosing not to listen to that voice. Um, and then, you know, the fact that our identities are so wrapped up in career and education and income, we should have all the voices around that. You know, you’re going to next others down. And I heard this, how will you manage financially? This is what about retirement? And so of course I had to look into that, but at the end of the day, I had to really wait these voices and say, okay, we should look at is true.
Speaker 2 00:31:26 And can I overcome that now, maybe with the age thing, Johnny, if I was 75, I, I may not embark on a new career coaching. I didn’t know I made, but maybe that’s not something I’d want to do at the end, but certainly at 52. Oh yeah, I’m going for this. Um, and so something that helped me tease through the voices was looking at what other people have done. And if another human being of more or less, my age had done what I want to do, it’s possible. And therefore I can just end of story. I’m not talking about probability. That’s a different thing. I don’t have control of the way that this is going to work out. I still don’t know whether, you know, we don’t know how life’s going to roll, but I know what I want. And then just connecting with why, why do I want to make this change?
Speaker 2 00:32:18 What’s important about this also helps with sort of those, those blockages and sort of things that come up as we’re thinking about making the change. Yes. Um, I, I do want to say something about the financial income piece because it’s something I hear a lot and I think it’s real, especially now during Covid. I mean, we have folks who have student loans, they have mortgages, they might be the primary breadwinner and sort of totally eating a career might just not be feasible. But I want to just link back to something you said earlier is really looking at that with honesty. For many of us is a little bit like anxiety provoking and so have brutal honesty about your bank statements and where you spend get a financial advisor. If you need to look and to help you to fill up your budget for that future, that might be, you know, three or five years when you,
Speaker 1 00:33:24 You can make the change. Yes, absolutely. It’s about those little, those little steps when it comes time to set a plan down, if you, uh, if our listeners have come to a point where they’re ready to really examine our career shift, and they know that this is not something that’s going to happen today, I’m not going to submit my resignation today. Uh, but this is something that I can do in the midterm. What are some recommendations you might have for planning this type of life change
Speaker 2 00:33:58 In the beginning, embracing not knowing. So if you are ready to make a change and you’re beginning to explore some options, it really takes time to find the right place to make the best decision for you. And it’s, it’s a journey. So I’ll start off with that, just to sort of take some of the pressure off, um, just to understand that it’s going to take time. I also what’s really worked, still works for me. And what I really recommend is that people that we continue to connect to a wisdom that inner wisdom and taking a break from the distractions and the noise of the world and finding some stillness. Um, this can take on a variety of forms. And th the, really the reason for the stillness Johnny is that when our intuition or our inner knowing speaks or touches us with a gut feel, or gives us a heart flatter, or a sensation of tingling, it’s different for different people.
Speaker 2 00:35:13 How are you gonna get that sort of nudge of intuition of where to go next? It’s really soft. It’s very, it’s sometimes it’s subtle. And of course, by my story, I kind of missed it along the way until it really hit me over the head, but in the stillness, we can really hear it. It could be anything from going into the days at, for a week, going on a sonnet meditation to standing in the shower, just being in the present moment, feeling the water, running over your body, feel how you’re standing and begin to just tune in to what’s happening in your body as you’re showering, that sort of thing. And it takes practice. You know, we’re just for people who haven’t done this just start small, like five minutes here and there that you can grab some moment just to be with yourself, actually, a client of mine Who’s a runner. She finds that when she really wants an answer to what’s next or how she should do something, she goes for a walk through nature and it’s like, she can just relax and you could meditate. The other thing that helps several people is actually journaling, um, something called, uh, we call it automatic writing and it’s worth a try. And it’s really asked yourself a question. So it might be something like, where should I submit my resume, or what industry should I look at? And just start writing and set a timer for 15 minutes and don’t pick up the pen, just write, even if you’re writing mumble jumble, it doesn’t matter. Just write and see what it is you’ve written because through that automatic writing, you’re sort of bypassing some of the, the cognitive aspects that might block that from coming through. Um, a couple of other interesting things are things like, where are you? What we’re doing is we’re activating the parasympathetic or the thriving nervous system, which really to get out of that sort of hijack stress system and even stroking an animal. Like if you’ve got a cat or a dog and you just sit for a few minutes and just feel the stroke of the hand, that immediately actually calms the animal, and then also calms you. And, you know, you can just sit with, and that’s often when our best ideas come is when we’re not thinking about them. So those are some ideas. I would also encourage of people, and this is what I needed to do. So that’s why I’m bringing it up is I was really only my head. I was, where am I? I had a list. I had done some research. I was on the web. I had strengths, weaknesses. I had all of this stuff in my head and I got a coach and she actually, one of the first session, she said, you know, you’ve done so much external research and you have some ideas, but how about we just go inside and see what your inner wisdom is to say. So getting a coach or any objective trained listener who doesn’t have an agenda for you as a great way, also to begin to work through some of the things and the next steps you need to take.
Speaker 1 00:38:45 You know, one of the tenants of my coaching is you already know you already are. The answer is in the stillness. I truly believe, and not everybody may believe this and that’s okay. But I believe for myself, for my life, that every bit of knowledge and knowing this, which is like a word that I use a lot knowingness, every bit of knowingness that I need is already inside of me. If I’m willing to do the work, to go inside and seek it. Um, because I believe that I was given all of the tools I need to live my best life. The same way a puppy is given all the tools. It needs to live its best life. And that means when it’s time to play, I go inside. Is it time to play yet? It’s time to play. When it’s time to sleep, I go inside. It’s time to sleep. I don’t need to fight and litigate this. If it’s time to sleep, I need to sleep. It’s time to eat. I need to eat. If it’s time to work, I need to work. And surrendering to the wisdom inside is really the key to serenity. It’s when we either believe that our inner wisdom is wrong, or when we choose to disobey our inner wisdom, that we begin to feel pain and dissatisfaction. So I think, uh, I think that dovetails nicely with some of, some of your recommendations there. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2 00:40:26 No, I was just going to make it to say really that I, so second you are and when to emphasize your point, that it’s all inside and we have everything we need to help us make these decisions. We just need to tune in.
Speaker 1 00:40:45 I started meditating rather recently, and I just, I just, I felt like I could never do it. I felt like every time I sat down to meditate, my mind just went crazy. And all of a sudden I was making grocery lists and I was like imagining conversations I needed to have. And it was very frustrating for me. And so a way that worked for me was I downloaded a meditation app called meditation studio. And they had guided meditations ranging from two minutes to 45 minutes and on all types of different topics. And they were so helpful to me because they trained me there. There were a lot of meditations where I did where it was five minutes and I just couldn’t do anymore. And then there came a where I didn’t want to do a guided meditation. I wanted to sit in silence and I did. And I learned I could. And so for me, it was a gradual process to go inside. And like you said, not everybody needs to, to meditate. There are other ways to go into the stillness. You know, I think journaling is great. I think, you know, speaking with a trusted person and I think your comment on no agenda, I think that’s really important. Cause sometimes our family has an agenda for us.
Speaker 2 00:42:03 Yeah. And it’s, it’s really true that start with, with what works for you so that you can begin to trust what you’re hearing and your interpretation because interpretation often is where we, where we can get caught a little bit. So whatever you feel drawn to, whether it’s the walk or the journal or guided meditation, whatever it is, just start somewhere. And as you begin to listen, you’ll begin to learn how your body speaks to you. And that can then bold your confidence in your own, in your own, knowing it. Cause it took me a long time to actually feel confident. And I still sometimes have, is this a nudge or is this a set of terms speaking? So kind of it just takes time. But the important thing is just to start somewhere because it is ultimately so incredibly valuable.
Speaker 1 00:43:04 That’s right. That’s right. Is this, is this inner voice I’m hearing a voice of love of some way, or is it a voice of fear of some way? Can I discern between the two? You mentioned Amanda Blake’s book, your body is your brain. And you mentioned Susan David’s book, emotional agility. As we come to the end of the podcast, I want to mention one more book and I’ll, I’ll put information on all of this in the show notes for anyone who accesses the podcast page. There’s a book that was recommended to me by my friend, Nick. He sent me an audio book and it was called Limitless: How to ignore everybody, carve your own path and live your best life. And the author is named Laura Gassner Otting. And I really recommend this book for anyone who is considering a life change based on your vocation, your calling your career.
Speaker 1 00:44:04 And what she says is your life feels best when you find consonance consonance, when you resonate with what you’re doing and she divides it very conveniently into four CS, your calling, your connection, your contribution and your control. And she says that if you can identify, what is your calling? Like you said earlier, what is your purpose in your life, your connection, how connected do you feel to what you’re doing your contribution, right? Do you need to drive the entire strategy of an organization? Do you need to get your hands dirty on the front lines to feel like you’re contributing? Uh, how is it that you want to contribute and leave your legacy and then control? How much control do you need over your careers? Do you need to telework? Do you need to manage your commute or is that not a primary driver for you?
Speaker 1 00:45:11 Um, you know, how much autonomy do you, do you need to feel happy or do you prefer to leave the big decision making to someone else in your career, in your job? So this is a really strong book. Like I said, I will definitely put the name of it in the show notes, and I want to recommend it to our team of listeners here. Karen, as we come down to the final words of the episode, I want to kind of leave on a high note. I think this is a powerful statement. I’d love to hear your guidance for the listeners on this. When your inner champion speaks, believe it. What is that about?
Speaker 2 00:45:53 Yeah. It’s, it’s about the courage to trust. You have everything you need to move to the next step to live a fulfilled life within you. And as we’ve said, it takes some practice and you might need some help, the risk if you don’t believe and you don’t go, it’s staying in the same place and maybe you don’t.
Speaker 1 00:46:22 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:46:23 It’s an incredibly powerful statement. And you know, I would say, I’ll say that, you know, change is scary. It takes courage, but ultimately it can be very spacious and,
Speaker 1 00:46:38 Yeah, that’s right. Thank you, Karen. I am so happy that you joined us today and that you shared your wisdom and experience with the refractive listeners. I’ll go ahead and wrap.
Speaker 2 00:46:51 Thank you, Johnny. And I so enjoyed chatting with you, learning from you and, uh, it was, it was really a pleasure to be here. Thank you
Speaker 1 00:47:00 Very much. Absolutely. And Karen, can you please let everyone know where the listeners can find you if they have questions about your coaching or if they want to read this blog that uh, that you have?
Speaker 2 00:47:14 Yes. So my website is, uh, dr. Karen barnard.com, which is dr. K a R E N V a R N a R d.com. And if you, you can access the blog from the menu. And if you like, you can
Speaker 1 00:47:30 Subscribe to the weaken use letter. Funny, my email is Karen at dr. Karen barnard.com and I welcome any inquiries or comments or questions about this or coaching with me. Please feel free to contact me any time. Thank you so much. All right, Karen, thank you. This is Johnny G and you’ve been listening to the refractive podcast. I am a personal career and spiritual coach in Washington, DC. You can find me refractivecoaching.com. You can email me at jo****@****************ng.com. That’s Johnny with a Y. And I work in person and remotely with people who feel they are ready to take some fresh new steps towards a life that feels energizing and good. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please go ahead and click subscribe. And I also ask that we’re ever, you listened to your podcast. Please leave a rating. You don’t have to type a single word just by clicking a star rating. You help to enhance the distribution of this material to other people that you think might benefit from the messages. Thank you so much for tuning in today and never forget, be good to each other and aim your life every day.

Executive Coach and legendary mom Randi Braun, founder of Something Major (somethingmajorcoaching.com) shares wisdom, experience, and solid research on the value of investing time in self-care. She recommends micro-moments of peace and adding small, simple rituals to even the most hectic of days in order to be the best parent, employee, employer, friend, and self. This episode is uplifting, has plenty of laughter and energy, and encourages all listeners, parents or not, that consistent small acts of self-kindness are the key to living our best lives. Pro tip: click here to check out Something Major’s Insights page for tons of well-thought-out, well-written, uplifting, and encouraging content focused on women who are owning their legacies.If you’re looking for other episodes about living an invigorating life, try Owning the Turbulence and Unlocking Joy.

For more information visit RefractiveCoaching.com.

Additional uplifting content is found on the Refractive YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A

Episode transcript for Self-Care for Parents follows below; please note transcripts are created via software and there are slight variations between verbal and written content. Visit refractivecoaching.com and refractivepodcast.com for more material.

Speaker 0 00:00:01 Ever since you can remember, you felt something in your chest telling you to move, to love, to speak, to try day after day. You pretend you don’t hear calling, or maybe you dismiss it as silliness or worse, but it’s there ready for you. As long as you. My name is Johnny G and I invite you to join me on a journey of awakening as we dare to embrace our lives. This is refractive. Hello. Hello. Welcome through refractive podcast. This is Johnny G. And on today’s episode, I’ll introduce you to a force of nature and a fellow coach speaker, and a facilitator. Her name is Randi Braun. I love Randi. I keep her close to my orbit because she inspires me to own my power as a coach. And she has channeled her own strength into lifting up women who are ready to own their best lives.
Speaker 0 00:01:03 However, that takes form. Randi is here with us today to discuss the topic that is especially valid in the age of COVID-19. And one that I hope will resonate deeply with all of you, whether or not you have kids self care for parents. Now, Randi has never found it difficult to speak with strangers. And that is what led her path eventually to becoming a coach just like me. Now Randi’s coaching focuses on empowering them and helping them hit their stride, live their absolute best life. She’s the founder of something major coaching. You can find th**@********************ng.com and I am so excited to welcome her today. Hi, Randi. Welcome to refractive.
Speaker 1 00:01:51 Hi Johnny. Thank you so much for having me on
Speaker 0 00:01:55 It is a delight. And ever since I started recording podcast episodes, I knew that you were one of the people that I wanted to have on because you have an, how would I say you have an energy about you that makes people feel good. And I want my listeners to feel good when they absorb an episode of this. So I’m delighted that you said yes
Speaker 1 00:02:19 And I’m delighted to be here. I always love chatting with you and I’m excited to see what happens when we hit the record button on one of these conversations.
Speaker 0 00:02:27 Well, I hope I’ve already hit the record button. I’ll find out soon if that’s not the case. So, uh, Randi, why don’t you take us into your background and your origin story? I know that this is a topic that is near and dear to your heart, and I’d love for the listeners to understand more about that.
Speaker 1 00:02:46 Well, Johnny, thank you again for having me and like so many other coaches, I never dreamed of being a coach. In fact, I described myself as the accidental coach and the reluctant entrepreneur. You mentioned in the intro that I’ve always had a pension for talking to strangers and originally worked in fundraising and sales, kind of my first professional love. And what happened in my sales career was that I had my two kids in two years and six days, which is a little crazy. And I just got it. Our listeners can’t see it, but your eyebrows just literally went.
Speaker 1 00:03:23 That is the correct answer, by the way, just so you know, that is the correct reaction. And what happened was in those two years in six days, I doubled my compensation in terms of my salary and my earnings. And because like you, I live in Washington D C word got around quickly and our very, very small little town, I was sitting on panels and people were connecting you with their friends. And I discovered two things really, really quickly. And all of these informational interviews, number one, people weren’t interested in my story. They were interested in going after their own big goal. And number two, I was so much more interested in what they had to say then telling my old story again, that’s how I fell in love with coaching and what coaching could be. It wasn’t always a dream as a working parent. At the time I had two kids under three, I was working as the director of enterprise sales at a tech startup and coaching at 7:00 AM and 8:00 PM.
Speaker 1 00:04:21 And that’s why this topic is so important to me because by the time I made the decision to go to coaching full time, I was truly on the cost of burnout and I never ever want any other parent to feel like that for me. And we’ll talk more about this later on the pod, it was really simple. It was about living a life where I’m prioritizing joy instead of living a life where I was mitigating stress. And that’s what led me to taking something major full time. And I could not be more thrilled to be here with you and talking about some of the works that I do with amazing working mothers every single day.
Speaker 0 00:04:57 Yeah, absolutely. Well, we have some good stuff today because I can’t not mention the fact that we’re in the middle of COVID-19. I mean, this is a dominant factor in the lives of everybody all around the world. And, uh, I am not a parent, but I can’t even imagine what it would be like to all of the sudden have my routine altered where I don’t leave the house anymore and have the routine that my children can’t leave the house either. I mean, how do you breathe
Speaker 1 00:05:35 One breath at a time? I just actually took a nice exhale. As you were saying that, you know, this is been life altering for everybody, for parents. It it’s just like someone took the rug right out from under them. And in a pre coronavirus world, one where daycares and schools were open, the research center had already reported that 56% of all working parents in America, describe it as challenging to make it all work, balancing family and home. That’s with childcare, with all of the arrangements that so many parents like the clients, I work with pain, staking only architected to build the life that they wanted to leave to live their professional lives and make sure their children have everything they needed when just like everyone else. The rug came out from under us. Parents were not prepared. Our system was fragile to support them in the first place. And truly in this moment, I believe in my heart of hearts that working parents are in crisis. And it’s incumbent upon all of us as coaches, as corporate leaders, as stewards of our organizations to show up support the great talent that we have and fight for it before we have an attrition crisis in our economy.
Speaker 0 00:06:50 Yeah, absolutely. That rings true to me as a former member of the HR crew, I can really see where you’re going with that. I know that you’ve done quite a bit of research on this topic because it’s something that your clients are obviously very interested in. Um, so would you like to kick us off with some of those factoids that you have uncovered for the benefit of all of us?
Speaker 1 00:07:17 Yeah, absolutely. We’ll talk a little bit Johnny about COVID and then what’s so important about this conversation is we can’t just let it be about Kobe. Taking care of ourselves is such, it’s the definition of evergreen. You know, we can’t serve others if we’re not serving ourselves. And I know we’ll get deeper into that, but the economy we’re recording this in the middle of what most parents feel like is a stretch to sin quarantine summer. And it’s no wonder they feel stretched in when nearly a third of the American workforce has children and those children have very, very limited care. And so I just want to say to any of the parents listening, if this feels like it’s been the hardest time of your life, if every single day feels like a struggle, you’re not doing it wrong. My system was not designed like this, right.
Speaker 0 00:08:06 But it’s supposed to feel like right now
Speaker 1 00:08:09 And you know, my husband, Johnny, I’m married to an amazing partner and my husband and I hand to heart every night before we go to bed, we have some version of this conversation. I can’t believe today happened one day. It’s going to be a part of the story he used to live to fight another day. And I know that so many working parents feel that way. And that’s something I want to share with the listeners too, Johnny, sometimes I think, you know, I don’t know if you got this, but sometimes they think just because you and I are coaches, people think that our life is, is perfect. I will say, I feel like, I don’t know if you agree. I have some tips, tricks and life hacks up my sleeve for sure that I’m able to channel on demand. But my life’s just as hard as any working parents.
Speaker 1 00:08:51 There’s some great research out of Harvard business school from a professor named dr. Willens, who studies, how high performing people use their time and what she discovered studying call center employees of all people was that the call center employees, people whose job is literally measured in how they use time. Those who took a 30 to 60 second break in between pickups in between calls those little micro moments of self care actually had a macro impact on how successful they were, how fulfilled they were in their job and their customer satisfaction ratings. And so the big takeaway, I know it’s incredible, right? The big takeaway from this Harvard study is that just 30 to 60 seconds to ourselves can pay a macro dividend in how we feel about our jobs and our streets.
Speaker 0 00:09:45 And, you know, Randi, we know this inside, we know this as human beings. We know what we need, but we have so many influences around us pressures and needs and fears that make us go, go, go, go, go. So this is such important information to process.
Speaker 1 00:10:06 And like you said, Johnny, it’s not rocket science, but I love about the Harvard business school research is that it’s from Harvard business school. So you say that, you know, I specialize in working with people who work in high performance, high volume, high predicted high unpredictability environments. And as soon as I say, Harvard business school, all of a sudden, right, it’s vetted all of a sudden as this is important. Um, and I’m one of those people, right? I mean, I’m, you know, this research for me really made me rethink that this is not anecdotal and it’s certainly some great quantitative findings, but you know, it’s just not rocket science. There is a reason why we get our best ideas when we’re in the shower, when we’re waiting for the coffee maker to kick on in the morning, we’re walking the dog last thing at night, we need time to process. We need time to be creative. And when we give ourselves that space, oftentimes we discover our super power is in our ability to speed up our ability to cultivate space, to do our best work. And that’s something that I try and hold myself to every day.
Speaker 0 00:11:13 So what do you recommend, uh, what are some good jumping off points for these people who feel so stretched and are willing to give it a shot? Let me take 30 or 60 seconds at a time for myself.
Speaker 1 00:11:24 Yeah. I think it’s really understanding what’s meaningful for you in those 30 to 60 seconds. You know, there’s four pillars of self care, which we can talk more about, but just the simplest things, you know, I have one client who to demarcate when her parenting time ends and her work time begins. It’s counterintuitive. And COVID because our work is our office and our off a part of me, our home is our office and our offices are actually step outside, listen to one song and her come back in, right? I mean, I guess that’s three minutes, not 30 seconds for me. Anytime I can get outside and get fresh air. I do a lot with music. I also do a lot in my own home right now where I can’t get out, but I want to play with space. I’ll just go somewhere else and just close the door.
Speaker 1 00:12:13 Like so many parents who are probably listening in, I have done way too much work from the floor of bathrooms and closets because sometimes that’s the only quiet spot I can take a phone call, you know, I mean, this is life and COVID, we all have to make it work and give ourselves permission to take a deep breath. And sometimes I just even do little breathing exercises with myself. And so this really feeds nicely into the concept of the four pillars that you mentioned. So for the listeners, why don’t you take us into that? Yeah. And this is something that I feel so strongly and passionately about because something happened Johnny in the way that we talked about self care, all this sudden self care became woo. It became yoga. It became green juice and it almost became political. And you either are self-indulgent person who does self care, or you take pride in the fact that you don’t drink green juice and do yoga.
Speaker 1 00:13:14 So there’s certainly physical self care, right? That’s going to be everything from our exercise, sleep, what we’re putting in our body. That’s kind of like the common sense self care. And then there’s also emotional, intellectual and spiritual. And when I work with my clients, this is where I really see the unlock habit. It can be anything from, you know, intellectual self care. It’s almost like we forget to use our brains for anything else besides work. Yeah, that’s right. You know, it could be reading, it could be podcasting, it could be doing something creative. I have one client right now who self care activity is picking back up her violin. Um, after years and years of not playing in a very high profile job and a very high profile company. Um, I’m working with one woman, she’s an emerging leader stepping into her first executive role.
Speaker 1 00:14:04 And she’s literally picked up just doodling and coloring. She’s used to love to draw that’s intellectual self care that’s creating and using your brain. And then certainly there’s the emotional self care. Whether that’s setting boundaries, connecting with friends, turning off the news, right? Like what just emotionally recharges you. Right. And then finally, Johnny, I know this is really your domain is right. And it’s really incredible, you know, that could be anything. And I’m sure our listeners love to hear your tips too, on mindfulness or meditation, or, you know, I have one client I’ve been working with who really misses the fellowship and community for organized religion and thinking about how she can perform that kind of spiritual self care going to church every weekend is just off the table in the city she’s living in.
Speaker 0 00:14:56 Right. Absolutely. Well, that’s off the table for almost everybody right now, if that was a part of your, you know, personal refresh, um, not right now, you know, did you ever take any Franklin Covey courses? Just curious. Yes. Well, no, Franklin Covey is the name of Stephen Covey’s company. It is named after Benjamin Franklin and then also Covey. So Benjamin Franklin was one of his personal heroes. And so I’m not from the, I’m not, I’m not sure if there is popular today as they used to be, but are you familiar with them?
Speaker 1 00:15:30 Not only am I familiar with them, they are my foray into this work. There was an, um, can I tell you a little story? Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:15:39 Yeah. We go for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:15:42 So when I went to Emory university, which is where I did my undergrad, there was a fitness and physical education requirement. I like so many other undergrads rolled my eyes at this class. I’m too busy for this. I was 19 years old, right? What is busy when you’re 19? And I met this amazing woman who taught fitness at Emory named Kay Stewart, who was a burgeoning mindfulness coach. And as part of those PPEs, those physical education requirements, Kay, had gotten permission to pilot, a mindfulness course based on the, uh, the seven habits of highly effective people. And I took this mindfulness class with her to satisfy my health and wellness and physical education requirement. Looking back the number one thing, Kay, taught me in those classes and all the other ones. Cause I was, I ended up being a K groupie. I just took all my fitness and wellness classes with her. It’s not judgment. It’s just awareness. And it’s such a gift when we give ourselves at, so that’s not necessarily a Stephen Covey ism. Um, but yeah, I mean that more years ago that I’m going to admit on the podcast was really my first foray into coaching. Just a chance encounter in a physical education and wellness class and undergrad. I mean, classic life happens, right.
Speaker 0 00:17:06 Well, I’ll tell you, uh, I took, I was lucky enough to have my employer way back a million years ago, pay for me to go to a Franklin Covey course and it changed my life and it put me on a trajectory for impact and success. And it was based on the seven habits of highly effective people. And I had not yet been exposed to that book before. And, uh, the point of me bringing this up is, uh, the habit sharpen your saw and sharpening your saw in Franklin Covey speak, um, copyright Franklin company, inc, is, is about taking care of your knees and your wellbeing and investing the time and resources to recharge yourself so that you don’t have to work harder. If you take a few minutes to sharpen the saw you cut down more trees more quickly, and that was the focus. Then when you were talking with me earlier, when we were kind of brainstorming this episode about those four pillars, it made me think of sharpening the saw, because in my planner, I actually had those four categories. I remember way back when I was a first time manager, I had those four categories and every day, what was I doing for my spirituality or my intellect for my body and all of that. So I love that these truths are kind of coming to the surface. Again,
Speaker 1 00:18:31 I’ll just give you a real life example of what that can look like for our parents. So this Saturday I took three hours to myself. This is not a micro moment. This was like, especially in a COVID-19 world, this was a macro indulgence. And let me tell you what I accomplished in three hours by myself, the rules were no phone numbers.
Speaker 0 00:18:56 That seems hard. It was,
Speaker 1 00:18:59 I read a hundred pages of the book. I wrote two articles by hand
Speaker 0 00:19:09 Outline
Speaker 1 00:19:10 For my newsletter. I wrote a thank you note by hand to somebody that I wanted to send. And I came up with five ideas for my business, various things for me and my business and a few things for clients, not because I said, Oh, I have three hours. I’m going to do work. But because I spent the first hour sitting outside and reading, I went, I’m here at my parents house, which is where we’re recording tonight. Um, and had the luxury of dipping in the pool. And as soon as I took that swam, all of these ideas popped into my head. I’m telling you for, for having not work time, it was the three most productive hours of my week. And guess what? That magic is something that can be,
Speaker 0 00:20:00 Yes, that’s right. It’s a formula. It really is. You know, um, I like the concept of adding rituals to my life. And when I say rituals, you know, it sounds all religious and whatnot, but it’s not what I mean is establishing a pattern of activity that feels good. So it might be the way you make your coffee and the single place you sit every time you have your coffee in the morning, or it might be watering your plants, first thing on Saturday morning or whatever it is, it could be lighting a candle every single time you sit on the sofa, but it’s this kind of, um, I’m doing a therefore B happens. That gives me a reminder that things are spinning out of control. They may feel very fast paced, but I can build into my hectic day. These moments of pattern and predictability and gentle comfort
Speaker 1 00:21:01 And ritual is so powerful. You know, I that’s, when I think about what has made this just beyond schools closing, you know, what has made this such a difficult time for parents, as we think about how they can cultivate practical and effective self care in a COVID-19 world we had as parents, all of these rituals, even if you hated your commute, even if you hated getting the kids to school or daycare every day, getting them to the bus stop in time was a mad dash. There was ritual and rhythm for separation and boundaries around when we parent, when we work and there was a very sacred transition time. And whether most parents realize it or not, they have small little rituals in that trend,
Speaker 0 00:21:47 Right?
Speaker 1 00:21:48 From the way they scrolled their iPhone on the Metro, because the way they listen to their favorite podcasts in the car driving to work. So we’ve now collapsed boundaries. We’ve collapsed rituals. When I work with parents, it’s not, how do you recreate the rituals you had back in February in a COVID-19 world. It’s really an invitation to reimagine what ritual can look like and recreate things. And they can be small. I can’t come back enough to the power of these micro moments. One song, having your coffee by yourself, taking time to read an article for me, Johnny, my personal ritual is I’m. You know, some of our listeners will long for the days when their kids used to do this. My kids still nap. You know, I still have little kids that’s yours. And I love them to death, love them to death. When I put them down for their nap, I make myself a strawberry and banana smoothie.
Speaker 0 00:22:48 Oh, that’s perfect.
Speaker 1 00:22:50 Yeah I make it for me. I make a small little one that my daughter enjoys when she gets up from her nap because she’s four going on 14 and wants to be a part of everything. But for me, when I have that smoothie every day, I know that I’m entering a period of the day where it’s going to be my time and it’s just vanilla yogurt and frozen strawberries. Like it’s not complicated. This is easy stuff. So easy. And I really want to invite parents to think about what can make your life easy right now.
Speaker 0 00:23:20 That’s right. That’s right. Just taking the moment of mindfulness to say, where can I reestablish quiet moments of comfort on a daily basis? You know, it’s an anchor. It really acts that way. Randi, one thing that I noticed a lot from my clients, from other people I talk to is that this situation of COVID and the quarantine and shelter in place has inspired a lot of people to think of redesigning their careers and redesigning how they felt about working for Paul or the general structure of their career. So what has been your exposure to this changing thought?
Speaker 1 00:24:04 First thought, Johnny, if you’re not learning a lot about yourself and what you care about in a COVID-19 world, you’re not,
Speaker 0 00:24:11 Is that your alarm,
Speaker 1 00:24:18 This is a really exciting opportunity. And it’s one of the things that I personally feel really grateful about is that I feel like I’m learning a lot about myself and I know I’m not alone in that. You know, it’s really interesting for some people, they are redesigning their lives in ways that feel really voluntary for them. And unfortunately for some working families, they’re redesigning their lives in ways that don’t feel voluntary. So back in April fortune was one of the first publications to report on this. And I remember saying to my husband at the time that this article came out, watch this, this is going to be the Canary in the coal mine. They reported that 14% of working American women had either quit or considered quitting their job since the pandemic had begun. Keep in my mid April, we were only about six weeks, widespread lockdowns, max. There’s more and more research coming out every day. And you know, we are figuring out very quickly, economists and pundits on TV have figured out what working parents have figured out for months, which is there are some days where it feels like we just can’t function. And as it turns out, neither can our economy, there are 26, some estimates, eight 26 million working Americans with schooling.
Speaker 0 00:25:44 Hmm.
Speaker 1 00:25:46 It really is an opportunity to redesign our lives. I see working women every single day who are really thinking about what’s important to them. And I’m proud to tell you, Johnny and my coaching practice, I have working mothers who have gotten promotions during this time that a new jobs, when organizations are on hiring freezes, we have gotten raises when budgets are being cut at their organizations. And so it’s not to say that people aren’t thriving, but I also want people to know if they don’t feel like they’re thriving, they’re not
Speaker 0 00:26:21 That’s right. And this is such a rich opportunity. Like you said, to get in touch with what really matters, what are my driving principles? When I make a spur of the moment decision, what are my values? And I think that we, as a culture, we all think, Oh, yep. Oh, honesty is my value. Yeah. I love honesty. You know, um, charity. Oh yeah. We got to take care of
Speaker 0 00:26:51 Exactly. And you know, in reality, not everybody makes their decisions based on honesty or charity or service and that’s okay. Like there’s nothing wrong with achievement being a primary value. Not everybody needs to go live in a convent. Nobody ever made that rule. It’s okay to want to be surrounded by luxury. That’s fine. And, but be honest, like accept it, own it because that’s your power. That’s your super power to know what makes you tick is a super power. And this is a time for us to say, I know that I don’t want to live a life of service. I want to live a life of achievement. Okay, great. Or I know that my focus is going to be on learning new things. It’s not going to be on that 25% pay increase I was expecting for next year. And that’s okay. I can’t over state the importance of understanding your values. And I know you do a lot of work on identifying values with your, with your clients. How do you help them to uncover what those are?
Speaker 1 00:28:03 Yeah. So typically when I’m working with a client, especially when I’m working with a working parent, who’s feeling some kind of tension in their life. And this was even pre COVID. It’s really, really easy for us to get all of the different strands of our life, nodded up into one wall. And then life just feels complicated and messy and not enough, and we can’t untangle it. And so as part of that untangling process, I often have clients break down four parts of their life. What are their goals personally, professionally with their family and financially, but with my clients, you know, it’s really a lot easier to integrate all the different parts of our lives when we first take a little bit of time to segment them out. And so that can be really, really helpful for folks to understand just, Hey, like what do I want professionally? What do I want financially? And sometimes those things are in conflict, but until you take the time to really rumble with that conflict to borrow a Brene Brownism is you can’t really get anywhere in living and leading on purpose. One thing in particular that I offered to parents right now is great thinking big picture. Really, really great. As you’re thinking about how you want to move the dial from surviving to thriving in a COVID-19 world. I also want to get parents permission to just ask themselves what’s important to me, to them.
Speaker 0 00:29:21 Yes, that’s it.
Speaker 1 00:29:24 Right now. I can not tell you how liberating it is to make a decision in the here and now. And there’s never been a more urgent time to do it. That’s how you take care of yourself. That’s how you see the warning signs.
Speaker 0 00:29:36 That’s right. It’s really painful. Randi. When, when I live, I’ll about me, when I live in a way that is not consonant with my values, there are so many times where I said yes to a job that I didn’t want. It didn’t feel right, but I wanted the money. And so I said, yes, when my insides were saying, no pivot, go this way. Find something that makes you feel joy. And I said, Nope, I want to, I want to shop. I want to buy my furniture at pottery barn at age 24. So I’m going to go take this job that I don’t want because it pays more well, that hurts. Like it hurt me. And it may not have been bone crushing pain in the moment. But over time I wake up one day and I don’t like my life. And like what greater pain is there, then not wanting the life you have for me.
Speaker 0 00:30:32 That’s the true wealth of taking a moment to know what really matters to me. Listen, if my primary focus is that I need to buy a house in a certain school district, because that is my primary deciding factor for these next couple of years. Great. If that’s what feels right, you should pour all of your love and energy into it. But if that is to keep up with the Joneses and that’s not what your insides are telling you to do, you’re going to pay the consequences of that decision. My clients are paying the consequences of it. That’s why they come and talk to me because they don’t know how they ended up in a life that feels so lukewarm.
Speaker 1 00:31:10 Absolutely. And you know, it’s, it’s complicated. I think it’s really complicated for parents, Johnny. You know, I just think about when you add up, I have two kids in daycare, one kid in diapers. And when, you know, both of my kids were formula babies, you know, it costs thousands and thousands of dollars, um, to just make it all work, to provide the bare necessities to your children and my children, weren’t in some like Lux daycare, right? But just in a daycare, you know, Johnny and where are you? And I live in Washington, D C in like the basement of a federal building, nothing fancy. And so I really respect and appreciate the decisions that parents are making every single day. And this has been a tough time for a lot of parents. It, it feels scary, especially for parents of older children, where they’re really thinking about getting close to college about what it feels like to lose your job, what it feels like to worry about being furloughed or worried about the economy.
Speaker 1 00:32:09 You know, this came up, I did a thriving while remote workshops for a private school in Washington DC. And one of the women who attended asked me in the Q&a, she said, Randi, one of the tips Johnny I had given was, you know, you gotta figure out what you can to your point of living your values, what you can delegate deputize or skip when you don’t have the same eight to nine hours in a day so that you can really maximize and optimize your impact. And he said during the Q and a that’s really great in concept, but I’m really worried. They’re going to be making cuts in my organization. And I feel like they need to show up and perform because I’m the breadwinner in my family. That’s a really real issue. You know, my advice to her first. So I felt for her, this is just such an excruciatingly hard time for so many people.
Speaker 1 00:32:57 And I feel for him, and what I just shared with her was when the reviews come around right now, you can’t do a hundred percent of your work at a hundred percent of your capacity at a hundred percent of your performance. And I said, when, when those tough conversations come around, do you want to be the person who did a hundred percent of your work at 70% or 70% of your work at a hundred percent? And again, I, we have parents listening. I just want to give themselves permission to breathe, to recalibrate. And to really, I fell for that woman. And she also loved her job. That was the really special thing about her. They had made a decision, she was the breadwinner. She was Sam good at her job and loved it. And that struggle is really very real for a lot of people right now.
Speaker 0 00:33:43 That’s right. You know, and I certainly hope that people listening don’t feel that I would want to diminish the pain of that decision. What I’m saying is, okay, here’s the reality of today? It doesn’t mean this is a lifetime sentence. It means that, okay, I’m going to have to buckle down and continue this path for the next nine months. And I’m willing to build structures so that I can show love to myself and provide for my family and then pivot when it’s right for me. Because what I’ve seen is that we don’t ever even put down on paper, the opportunity to pivot later, we resign ourselves to a life of pain and I’m here to tell everybody, no one was born to have a life of pain. You are a spark of God, you are born for magnificence and greatness, and I’m going to goosebumps like your heart.
Speaker 1 00:34:48 And this is one thing I see with parents all the time, not just, you know, in my coaching practice. I hear it in conversations with colleagues and friends, when you’re working parent on a good day, right? We talked about those Pew stats at the beginning of our conversation in a pre coronavirus world, 56% of American working parents described it as challenging or tricky to make it all work. A lot of times we spend our time thinking about how we can minimize stress in our lives. And I find that for the clients I work with transformation and happiness really comes when, instead of focusing on minimizing stress, they’re focused on maximizing joy. And I know that was my own path to taking the greatest leap of, of my career. Everything on paper told me I should have stayed in my day job, great job, best perks I ever had at any company.
Speaker 1 00:35:45 Right? So I’m not, I’m an old guy, worked with wonderful people, loved the clients, right? I did not run away from a job. I just liked for me. I look back and I think I get goosebumps thinking about it. If I had been caught up in a mindset of remediation in minimizing stress, I would have dropped all the things I was doing with something major when it was just a little side hustle on the side. But instead, every single day I was leaning into what brought me joy. Now did that mean I ran myself down at the end, trying to do it all certainly, but I know I made the right decision, but I feel for parents who are on the class of these big decisions, I, you know, the first few months being full time in my business, I was paying my kids’ daycare, tuition bills out of my savings.
Speaker 1 00:36:33 Now it doesn’t matter. It’s all come out with a wash, but those were, those were scary months where you think to yourself, man, I have a responsibility to two little people who are counting on me and never did I worry the roof over their head was in jeopardy. This was real life and really tough decisions. And life is really full of really tough decisions. And so part of self care is thinking about not just how you minimize stress, because sometimes you just need to blow off steam. You just need to minimize a little bit of stress, but really when we can shift our mindset towards cultivating joy, following our heart, you know, letting ourselves be excited and see where that excitement takes us. That’s where the really big stuff happens.
Speaker 0 00:37:15 Yes, that’s right. I call it living by Plinko. Do you remember Plinko from the price is right?
Speaker 1 00:37:23 Not only do I remember Plinko but last year I lived one of my life’s dreams, which was to go to a live taping.
Speaker 0 00:37:30 Oh no,
Speaker 1 00:37:34 No, we did. I wasn’t called out, but I did guess the showcase show down to like a thousand dollars. Like I would have won if I was both the man named Ron walked away with like four cars and a Winnebago, which, who would’ve thought a Winnebago would be so important this year?
Speaker 0 00:37:52 No, no. Now, yeah. That’s gold. So this formula for living, it’s really based in being present in the moment. But living by Plinko is a system that works like this. You stand at the top of the Plinko board with your puck and you look down and there are 350 pegs and your puck is going to bounce from peg to peg, to peg. And each peg is the next moment in time. So I drop my pocket and wherever I think is the most opportune place. And I hit a peg and my pox is going to go left or it’s going to go, right. And both ways are okay, which way do I prefer? Let me think, okay, I’m going to go left. And as I go peg by peg, by peg, I can gently guide my life towards the $10,000. I can’t go straight down. I can’t go in a straight line.
Speaker 0 00:38:48 It is the end result of a million tiny decisions. Every time I listened to my heart, I get closer to the $10,000. Every time I listened to my fear, I go away from the $10,000, but it takes a lot of effort and presence to be able to identify in the moment, is this fear or is this love? Why am I choosing what I’m choosing right now? Oh, that’s fear. You know what? I’m going to go left. I’m gonna go towards love. And it’s I find it’s a winning strategy. And it’s what, it’s something I try to teach my clients. And, um, with that, I think we’re running out of time. Randi. I am so grateful. I’m so grateful that the refractive audience is going to get a chance to hear some of your experience. And I would love for you to share with us how we can get in touch with you.
Speaker 1 00:39:42 Absolutely. You can get in touch with me anytime on www.somethingmajorcoaching.com or you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m Randi Braun – Randi with an I- and Johnny, I really invite all of your listeners to check out the insight center on my website. I have tons of free on demand resources, both for working parents and for non parents on how you can live your best life in a COVID-19 world and a non COVID-19 worlds, including for our parents, an audit that they can use to determine whether they’re thriving or surviving while remote, and hopefully get them a few steps closer to thriving. So thank you Johnny, for having me on so much fun, chatting with you and hitting the record button and forward to doing it again soon.
Speaker 0 00:40:26 Yes. Thank you, Randi. Everybody. This is Johnny G with refractive. I’m a personal career and spiritual coach based in DC, but I work locally and remotely with people who know they are meant for more than a lead form life. My goal is to live my best life by helping others live their best lives. So find me on Facebook at refractive coaching. Find me on Twitter or instagram at refractivelife or on the web at www.refractivecoaching.com. Thanks again to Randi Braun, founder of something major. Remember you can go visit her and her insight center at www.somethingmajorcoaching.com . Check her out. She is an unstoppable force, which you already know if you have completed this episode. So have a great day. Everyone be good to each other and don’t forget aim your light.
Speaker 2 00:41:12 .

This episode features an interview with Artist Stan Piotroski, who shares how his meandering life path was no accident, but a step-by-step foundation to build the life of his dreams by following his intuition.

To access his breathtaking works and add them to your own collection, please visit the website of my guest today, artist Stan Piotroski, at www.stanpiotroski.com

Visit www.refractivecoaching.com or www.refractivepodcast.com for more resources on stepping into your most authentic life. Additional uplifting content can be found on the Refractive YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A

For similarly-themed episodes, try these: Dr. Karen Barnard, The Courage to Change Careers or Surrender to Greatness

Transcript follows- please excuse any inaccuracies from the automatic transcription software.

***Please note: Transcripts are performed automatically by software; please pardon any inconsistencies.***

Speaker 1 00:00:40 Good afternoon, everybody. This is Johnny G with refractive. If you’re

familiar with refractive and its values, you know that right?

Speaker 3 00:00:48 One of my guiding principles and you hear it a lot in my content is aim

your light. I mentioned this phrase fairly often with clients as well, because it references the

immeasurable power of creation that I believe lies within each person. And that creative power is

available for use. Whenever we agree to live by our gut or live by our intuition. In fact, the reason

I chose the name refractive for my organization for my practice is the quality of each person

being like a prism to receive in energy and then transform bend an aim that energy, as we put it

back out to the world, I have a treat for you today. I’ll be introducing you to Stan PI Troskey. He is

an individual I’ve met some years ago here in DC. Stan has molded a life of love and joy for

himself by listening to that inner sense of knowing and by stepping in faith and courage that his

inner guidance was worth following he’s someone who indeed does aim his light.

Speaker 3 00:02:08 And he’s someone that I deeply respect from my perspective. Stan is

actively responsible for his place in the world, and he is responsible for the energy he puts out to

others. This is a big reason why I wanted to introduce him too. The refractive world here over

stand’s long professional life. He has risen entitled in responsibility, adding prestige through a

solid handful of sectors. He was an officer in the armed forces. He was a federal employee in

the executive branch. He was a psychotherapist with a private practice, and that’s just to name a

few phases of his career. But beneath this life story, a both officer and gentlemen, Stan says that

he always knew he would be a full time artist. And throughout his life, he carved out time space,

energy resources for that passion. So unlike many of us, and I really speak for myself who had

been drawn to a creative field, but have settled in the past for a more realistic or stable or classic

type of career.

Speaker 3 00:03:20 Stan told me that his earlier roles were not chosen at the expense of his

love of art. Rather, they were deliberately selected as a part of his life path and they led him step

by step into the life he lives today, where he can in fact, devote his time and energy to art.

Today’s Stan operates his own art studio and his own gallery. And just like so many times before

he is exactly where he feels he should be now his life as an artist. Isn’t the only example of

Stan’s willingness to say yes to the universe. He also said yes to love and not long ago, Stan

followed his gut yet again and married his husband and having had the privilege to meet stand’s

husband. I can assure you, they are as lovely and inspiring a couple as I’ve ever met. So with

that said, let’s get to it. Hi Stan. Good afternoon. How are you doing today?

Speaker 4 00:04:27 Oh, good afternoon, John. And thank you for those kind and generous

words. Um, I’m having a lovely day and I was looking forward to speaking on this podcast and

relating my experience as to how my life dreams have developed. So I’m happy to be here

today.

Speaker 3 00:04:49 Thank you so much. I am delighted to have view and you know, I think

that one of the elements that brings people to refractive is the feeling that they’ve received

guidance and intuition throughout their life, that they’re supposed to follow path a, but they’ve

second guess themselves. And they’ve chosen the more safe society endorsed path, um,

thereby leaving themselves, feeling lukewarm and unsatisfied by where they end up. Uh, and I

think that this moment, which is a crazy moment in the history of our world is a really good time

for people to pivot and to listen to their heart and do what feels right to them. And because I

have seen you from the outside follow that type of path, I really feel that there’s some value for

you a —

— nd our listeners. So thank you for the sake of the listeners who may be hearing this in future

months, although Stan and I both live in DC, we’re connected today by video because of the

COVID quarantine.

Speaker 3 00:05:59 So listeners please, excuse us. If the audio quality may be a little bit

inconsistent compared to what we normally do. So with that, we’re going to get, we’re going to

get started with talking about sand here. So Stan, you and I have been in each other’s orbits for

about five years now. And when I first started to do a podcast at the beginning of this year, I

knew immediately that I wanted you to be on it. And there are two reasons for that. The first

reason is that you have a very calming presence, um, and it feels good to be in a room with you

that calming presence that you have spreads. And it’s a special quality that in my experience

can take a while to develop. So am I off base with this? Do you understand what I’m talking

about,

Speaker 4 00:06:50 Johnny? I, I do understand what you’re referring to and oftentimes

there’s moments in my life where the calm, the settles in, and there also other times when

there’s an next excitement. And then in that pension of the future of the bow, for the most part, I

believe that I’m, I’m settled within myself. And that takes a lot of work, a lot of opportunity, Trinity,

uh, to develop that sense of security within one’s lines. And at this point in time, it’s something

that actually coming naturally. So Johnny, your intuition is working very well.

Speaker 3 00:07:43 Can you send that? It takes a little bit of work, at least it had in the past

for you. What did that, how did that look?

Speaker 4 00:07:52 Well, you know, I think that a lot of it is looking at oneself and a variety

of factors. Certainly therapy has been a part of that starting in New York city and following

through and in different venues where you get to explore the inner self. Uh, I’m a strong believer

in meditation. I believe that can be very helpful. It quiets the mind and allows you to get in touch

with that part of yourself that, you know, has always been there. Uh, you know, the other

dimension of our lives. And I’ve had great opportunity in my life too. Get in touch with that

dimension of hunting quite a bit, a bit of traveling all over the world, some of a professionally

oftentimes, uh, it has been for pleasure, but it’s been in unique situations where, uh, you get in

touch with something much greater than yourself and it allows you to be open in a way that, um,

you may not be if you don’t have that same opportunity to be there. So that’s, that’s certainly part

of it. Part of my experience,

Speaker 3 00:09:25 What is your preferred methodology for meditation today?

Speaker 4 00:09:31 Breathing, paying attention to your breathing. I’m following, you know,

certain people who are master have mastered the art of meditation and who are good teachers

sitting quietly, allowing your mind to go wherever it’s going to go. Okay.

Speaker 3 00:09:56 Did you use YouTube or apps to find these individuals that you follow?

Speaker 4 00:10:03 I do

Speaker 3 00:10:04 Any that you’d like to recommend off the top of your head. I don’t know if

you might know their names.

Speaker 4 00:10:09 Well, certainly I would recommend Jonathan Foust, who is a local

individual and he is part of the insight community here in the DC Metro area. Yeah. Uh, and

Jonathan, you know, is quite experienced. And then I follow apps Inside timer, Nicholas. It is a

discipline. And when I first started, I really need, it had to have that discipline in my life too, to

quiet the mind.

Speaker 3 00:10:46 I also started my experience with meditation through apps, because as

you know, at first, there’s just no way to sit there silently for 10 minutes and enjoy it. It’s a little

bit, it’s a little bit of craziness going on in the mind. And so by using those brief guided

meditations for five minutes, eight minutes at a time, eventually I got to the point where I could

enjoy just following my breath and doing it silently. But yeah, I love those apps. I really think that

they opened door. You know, The second reason that I wanted to have you on the refractive

podcast, Dan, is that you put out, that’s a significant love energy. Sometimes it looks like

kindness. Sometimes it looks like caring, but as I’ve seen you interact with different people, there

is reall —

— y just a lovely flow of love that comes out of you. And what is your awareness of that? Is it

something that you have cultivated or is it just an automatic natural part of you?

Speaker 4 00:11:55 No, I believe it’s a part of me. My parents are very loving and accepting

people who instilled in us

Speaker 4 00:12:05 The value of being open to a loving, kindness and generosity in our

lives. It’s developed certainly over the years. And as I age, it really began to understand what’s

important in your life and people are important. I’m also valuing those attributes and people

where love slows freely. You know, the, there is very few pretense of a gloves in life, either it’s

there or it’s not there. But I also understand when people can’t show love that there’s something

going on and they just may need some help to do that. I’ve had plenty of help to have an internal

freedom where I can just express lovingly how I experienced someone. I always feel that there’s

something good and everyone.

Speaker 3 00:13:14 Alright, thank you for that. From my perspective, Stan, you seem to

have learned to tune your life compass to something that seems very healthy and nourishing. Is

that correct? Do I have that assumption correctly?

Speaker 4 00:13:30 I believe so.

Speaker 3 00:13:32 What can you say about that?

Speaker 4 00:13:34 Well, it comes from a variety of sources, certainly, you know, the work

that we do on ourselves and the enlightenment that we experienced through the process, the

variety of the processes that are open to us, you know, has led to discovery discovery of who we

are and where we want to go and, uh, what we want with our lives. But I think the basis of all of

that is a certain level of trust trust in one’s beliefs, trust in it, venture that you want to be on and

the courage to take those halves. I think we’ve all done that you’ve done that. I’ve done that. And

it’s a knowing that we develop in our lives and trusting that no. And if there’s doubt, then we

check it out with other people. No, uh, no man or woman is an Island.

Speaker 3 00:14:31 how have you been able to develop and grow that trust

Speaker 4 00:14:38 Time and experience well has helped me to develop that trust.

Speaker 3 00:14:51 How so?

Speaker 4 00:14:54 Well, I, I think, you know, from age Johnny, it is continuing to experiment

with your life and you try many things, you venture out whatever to wherever and whatever you

know is leading you in that path. And you build on the success of openness and willingness.

That’s been minds. And again, you know, having the resolve to follow what you know is right. I

really believe that each one of us has a sense of who we are and where we want to go. And

sometimes it just takes a while to get there.

Speaker 3 00:15:44 Yeah, That’s lovely. All right. That resonates with me Taking that idea of

your life compass, relating it to the idea of higher self inner wisdom, gut and intuition. How does

your intuition show up for you in what form does your intuition show up?

Speaker 4 00:16:07 That’s a good question. I think it happens in all forms of life. What’s

worked for you in the past. Yeah. Builds on our intuition. Uh, and then there is a good experience

where you just know what’s right. Yeah. Have clear away some of the wreckage of the past and,

and understand yourself in a more detailed fashion you could begin to, to trust yourself so that

when you have an inspiration, you, first of all, value that inspiration from where it’s coming and

then you proceed to proceed with the willingness to try things out. That’s what I’ve done in my

life. And then feedback, feedback from others. I think, I believe and think is an important part of

the process of intuition. Then I think there is an innate part of intuition. You just know, you know,

you just know the next right thing to do.

Speaker 3 00:17:20 You know? Um, with the beginning of the quarantine started, I, uh, I had

this very strong idea that I needed to buy a dog and I swear stand like I would have, I did. I

argued with people. I was like, no, like I’m telling you, this is, I had been guided to this. And uh, I

spoke to a friend of mine and he said, Johnny, you literally don’t have a life that permits a dog.

Like it is selfish. And it is not looking at the big perspective of this. If you want a dog, you first

need to make several changes to the way your life i —

— s structured. And I’m just going to say that and offer it to you. Another thing. And that shook

me, you know, to me, it was a good example of how, in one moment I can believe that

something is so right, but then I need to bounce it off people. It might not be right at that

moment.

Speaker 4 00:18:33

Speaker 3 00:18:34 I find that to be one of the most difficult aspects of discernment, not

every idea that is presented to me by my intuition is most appropriate. In that moment. It might

be something that needs to be tucked away and left to Germany for six months or a year before

it’s appropriate.

Speaker 4 00:19:01 Timing is important. He may know something about yourself prior to me,

you made that on you, something that a dream that you want to pursue, but oftentimes it’s not

the right time. That’s helpful to speak to value of friends and mentor to discuss justice and

opportunity that you’re thinking about with them. And there are times when they say, go for it

right now, why would you not go for it? And that might be because there’s some apprehension,

there’s some self doubt. That’s where the value of people in your life is so important that you can

bounce ideas, all of them and get a perspective. We can develop so much perspective on our

own, and that comes from experience and successful experience. But having the opportunity

when you’re stuck to talk to someone and say, I’m not quite sure about this, but I really think that

this is an important path for me to take. What do you think?

Speaker 3 00:20:23 Yeah. I’m telling you if not, I would be, I would, I would be having a dog

with me on this road trip right now stand. So I, uh, I am grateful for the wisdom of, uh, of trusted

friends. Yes, for sure. So, uh, since you just talked about timing as being so, so important, you’ve

mentioned that you’ve always known that your career would move towards art. Um, I wonder

why you did not jump into a career in art as a young adult, but instead built it gradually over time.

Speaker 4 00:21:15 Well, I think my first response to that and I’ll go into a little more detail is

that they were competing life circumstances that had value and chose to follow one path over

another. I knew as a child, that I was an artist, I was a talented child artist and knew that my

talent was innate. I had paybacks from family, friends, and professionals. And as I, uh,

developed into a teenager, I had opportunities to do that, to do art on a high school level. Then I

entered college and my artistic training began there. And I started to show my work to sell my

work at a very young age and won an award. So there was enough feedback and this, the

stream of life, that’s a, you are an artist. And as I went forward in my life and I received a degree

in psychology and then a masters in social work and then a doctorate in social work, I was still

painting.

Speaker 4 00:22:47 I was still working. I aren’t edited a book. So there was a consistency in

my life that said, this is who you are, but that was also, or than that, I had a lot of training as a

psychotherapist and valued all of that and understood that that was important for me as I went

on in life, I knew that at some point I would become a full time artist. There was never any doubt

in my mind that that’s the direction I was going, but there were other things I wanted to do before

that. And now I have the resources and my life as I retired from my professional life as a social

worker and director sure that I could now devote to art. And for the past five years, actually, even

that while I was still, uh, working, I was actively you’re painting and doing shows and exhibits. So

it’s always been a part of my life. And this is, you know, not just, um, one train it’s knowing, and

this is something that I know

Speaker 3 00:24:08 What I am Feeling from. You know, your answer to that question

Speaker 3 00:24:16 Is a serenity around building a foundational life, uh, of establishing a

nice firm base and, uh, refining it, uh, as you move up over time. And this is exactly what I was

talking about a few minutes ago with the idea of a dog, right? If I want a dog, let me build a

foundation first and let me be serene. And knowing that while today is not the day that I go to the

pound today might be the day that I choose not to renew my lease, where I am. And instead look

for something that fits better. I hear that from you in this process of bui —

— lding the life that you want over time.

Speaker 4 00:25:07 Well, Johnny, I think it’s core and I believe it’s important for all of us to

identify what we clearly know about ourselves and what well, we value in ourselves. I know that

in relationships and I know that professionally, and I know that as far as well, my dream there’s

an aspirations are at this point in my life. And to accept that and to believe it and to follow

through on it, you know, I have the good fortune that I’m able to do that. And I’m very grateful for

that.

Speaker 3 00:25:49 How does fear show up in your life today?

Speaker 4 00:25:53 Fear has always been a part of my life and dealing with fear or anxiety.

It’s more about an anxiety. You can look at anxiety in a positive or a negative way. How does it

help me to live my life comfortably a day at a time? And how does it interfere? Yeah. And each

time that I think about that regarding what circumstances I’ve timed myself, I know that all things

work out and that I’m not in control of all of this, but I’m here to serve a purpose and to be of

service as long as I’m here on this planet and wherever I go from

Speaker 3 00:26:44 There, who knows? Yes. When you talked about the positive, as well as,

uh, the more challenging sides of anxiety, this is something that I have grown to accept as, as a

truth for me in my life, there is nothing that is wrong, right? So if I were to lose a member of my

family, if there were to be a hurricane that wiped out my home, that as distasteful and

unpleasant, as it may be, this is the course I signed up on earth school. Like this is the course I

signed up for. This is the healing in my being that I need in order to be more whole and to

access more of my true essence as a child of the creator. Uh, but it’s hard. It doesn’t feel good

all the time. Know, Stan, let me ask, what would you advise to people who have felt called to a

creative vocation?

Speaker 3 00:28:02 And let me just, let me just peel back the layer and say me I’m talking

about me. Okay. Because when I was in high school, I wanted to move to New York, go to NYU,

be an actor I imagined being on stage and just living that life. And it felt so beautiful to me. And I

never gave any soil to that plant. Right? Like there was just no chance from the gate that I was

ever going to seriously entertain even a partial element of that. We weren’t even going to do

communities. We weren’t going to do anything with it because it just felt that eventually I would

fail it. Wasn’t going to work out. It would be a life of pain and difficulty. And then I would go and

eventually have to take some office job anyway. And now I’d be years behind my peers in title

and income, you know? And, uh, so I gave up that calling of applying my creative force. And I

think I’m not alone in this. I feel like this is a common story. So what would you say to people

who are currently in that situation?

Speaker 4 00:29:18 I would say go to an acting class, sign up, do it that’s simple. Huh?

That’s simple. Just do it. I attended a, uh, master oil painting class in Provence and it was, um, a

landscape painting, class impressionism. And I like impressionism, but I’m an abstract

expressionism. And I went to the South of France and it was an arduous, tough class. And after

three days, I said, I’m not going to do this. And I called my son. I called him, my husband. I

called other important people in my lives. And I said, you know what? This is really hard. And

they all chuckled. And that, especially my sons, that, that even you can do hard things.

Speaker 4 00:30:25 So I will tell you straight, okay. Yeah. What I once told him, which, which

we both had a chuckle over, but it was that contact. Uh, and I was honest. It really was quite

demanding. We would paint 12, 15 hours a day and it was out of my comfort zone. But the

support that I got from my son and husband and others was that you can do it. And we were

actually painting in the darn close to, uh, the, uh, barkeep decides a palace, which is quite lovely.

And I said, well, I can’t see the paint time even mixing, which is a wonderful metaphor. And I just

painted something. I brought it back cause we’d had teak of all the artists by the, a masterclass

leader. And it turned out to be some of my okay, best break through art. Wow. So, you know, uh,

so my, my recommendation for those individuals who are saying, gee, I don’t know where to

start.

Speaker —

— 4 00:31:46 We’ll just do it go. And you know, if it’s, if it’s photography sign up for

photography calls, if it’s acting sign up for an acting class, if it’s marked sign up for an art class

or go to a art store and get, um, a palette and some paints and a canvas, if that’s what you want

to do. Uh, at one of my most recent shows, there was a lovely, a moment ago, came in since she

showed me her, her work. And she had just a beautiful touch of water colors, which I find to be

extraordinary. And it’s very abstract and I, the chain don’t stop. And then another little eight year

old girl in, and she goes, I’m an artist. And I said, I believe you and her pants were standing

there beaming. Cause you knew they were supportive of her art. And she showed me some of

the work that she was doing.

Speaker 4 00:32:55 And it was, it was really quite talented. So, you know, just do it. This is

where you stop questioning, but you already know, and you looked for the opportunity and you

started at a point where going, Oh, I can do this. And if you don’t think you can, then you have to

ask us tough. Why not? If it’s out of apprehension or fear or just indecision or sometimes it’s it’s I

don’t have the money and okay. You know, then you figure out another alternative that you can

explore this, create a part of yourself. And, and don’t listen to the voice that says, I don’t want to

do it now. Just do it wisdom for the ages. Listen, just listen to what, you know, listen to what you

know, that’s the tee shirt we’re going to make for this episode. Listen to what a great idea. Yeah.

Speaker 3 00:34:03 Listen to what you know. Um, Stan, you said something just now that I

really, and listen, this is not the compliment stand out, but I really feel that your response to that

young lady, when she said I’m an artist and you said, I believe you like that is such an

exceptional.

Speaker 4 00:34:25 So full of love and validation and gentleness. And I just think that this

encapsulates why you are memorable to people, I have to say, so Johnny, our quality, the Polish

personality intuitive in your own. Right? So stop question. Thank you, Sam.

Speaker 3 00:34:58 I want to move on to a couple of rapid fire questions.

Speaker 4 00:35:02 Okay. My purpose is to enjoy life and to spread that to others, God is, I

love him. I love happiness. Grace to me is presence in my life that I don’t have to do any of this

alone. Prayer to me is a connection with something greater than myself.

Speaker 3 00:35:41 I’m most proud of

Speaker 4 00:35:45 Life.

Speaker 3 00:35:48 This is what I know for sure.

Speaker 4 00:35:51 I never have to do any of this alone.

Speaker 3 00:35:54 Powerful. I love it. And love it. As we wrap up, Stan, what do you feel

like to say?

Speaker 4 00:36:03 I encourage everyone to be present in their lives to trust what they know

about themselves, to give themselves the permission to proceed. If there’s doubt, bring people in

your life that you know, you can trust for their guidance and consideration, chin and love. Um,

don’t stop. Keep going. You know, uh, identify what you know, to be truthful about yourself and

trusting

Speaker 3 00:36:44 Words to live by Stan. You are a beautiful man who leaves any room

you enter better than it was. So thank you so much. I am just grateful for you to share your light

and your experiences with us today.

Speaker 4 00:36:59 You’re most welcome Johnny

Speaker 3 00:37:02 Stan, where can people see your art? Uh, would you like to spell out

your website?

Speaker 4 00:37:07 Yes. It’s Stan piotrowski.com.

Speaker 3 00:37:13 How do you spell Petroski

Speaker 4 00:37:16 As in Paul? I O T R O S K I

Speaker 3 00:37:22 Alright, Dan, thanks so much folks. This is Johnny G with refractive

coaching and podcasts. I’m a personal and career coach in Washington, D C I help people, both

in-person and remotely who want to make space for a life that feels right. So please reach out to

**@******************************ng.com or visit my website, refractive coaching.com. I

publish new content all the time on social media, usually a little nuggets of wisdom or beauty that

I find anything that I think will put more light out into the world. It’s a great way to dilute some of

the darker stuff that might be on your timelines right now. So find me on Instagram and Twitter at

refractive life, L I F —

— E refractive life and on Facebook at refractive coaching. Also, if you’ve enjoyed the podcast

today, please subscribe to this podcast and give it a rating. Every single time you do that, it helps

people find the content.

Speaker 3 00:38:20 And my goal is to live my best life by helping other people do the same.

So I appreciate anything you might do to help me help others. And just a quick update regarding

my blog. A few weeks back at the last minute I lost the apartment I was moving into due to mold.

I decided instead of stressing out and forcing myself into a new place in six days from scratch, I

would just put my stuff in storage news, my ridiculous DC rent money and take a two month road

trip across the U S is it some friends visit some families drive through some parts of the country

that I’ve never been through. Of course, keeping in mind, wellbeing and serenity and not in the

time of COVID. I am calling this experiment above the storm because I just don’t believe I need

to suffer through it.

Speaker 3 00:39:19 There may have been a time in my life where that was necessary, but

just like a pilot I can choose just to fly above it, look down, see what’s happening. Um, but enjoy

the view. And that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve never done something like this before. We’re going

to see how it goes. You can follow along on my blog, go to refractive, coaching.com and click on

blog. You can subscribe there. I’ll also be using video blog, text and social media to document

my adventures over this time. So I do invite you to come and watch what happens when I stop

asking why. And I start saying, okay, what feels right? Thanks again to standby. Troskey for

coming on refractive so much love and light to you, my friend, and to all of the listeners have a

great day. Everybody be good to each other and always remember to aim your.

—

In this episode of Refractive Podcast, host Johnny Guidry shares a treasure trove of my best tips on creating a great, effective resume, gathered from over 16 years of HR, Training, and Talent Sourcing experience. Following this guidance will give you resume that will at least be taken seriously, and at best will get you in the interview chair to share how you can be of value to a new employer. Good luck!

For similarly themed content, try these episodes: Jumpstart (or Refresh) your Job Search or Dr. Karen Barnard- The Courage to Change Careers. The Refractive YouTube page is chock-full of uplifting content. You’ll find it here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A

Find below the transcript of this episode. Visit http://www.refractivecoaching.com for more info on the Refractive family of services, including resume and LinkedIn services and interview preparation.

Hello. Hello. Good afternoon. This is Johnny G. Welcome to refractive. Today’s episode is about how to elevate your resume. I was an HR director and uh, I spent 16 of my years involved in all aspects of HR from training to recruiting to benefits and compensation. And I have to say I’ve been surprised how mysterious resumes still seem to people. So since this was something that I was an expert in in my last career, I thought I would share with you some tips on how to make your resume friendly to a hiring manager. There are certain types of formatting and content that make a resume difficult to process and when someone is going through a stack of 20 or 30 resumes, anything that makes it less simple to process is going to place you at a disadvantage. So that’s what we’re going to focus on today.  

I do want to warn you upfront, the transitions from topic to topic won’t be very smooth because I did sit down and draft out simply a list of the most important aspects to cover. So we will be hopping from topic to topic and I hope you’ll bear with me as we do that. So let’s dive right in. You know I’m going to quickly glance over some things that might be common sense, but they’re important to underlie. First of all, don’t lie. Um, a lot of hiring managers do check references and it’s important that you don’t lie about your length of employment, your title, your responsibilities, or your achievements as well. I also want to encourage you to stick to the common length guideline of one resume page per 10 years of professional experience. If you want to vary from that, it’s up to you. But again, um, it does, it does get noticed if you have an unusually long resume.  

I also think it’s a good time to point out that there are certain industries that have their own resume guidelines. If that applies to you, you already know what I’m talking about. So take this with a grain of salt. If you work for the federal government, if you are in visual media or some other type of role where resume formatting and content are a little bit special, you know, I feel that brief employment generally doesn’t have much value to add on a resume. If you work somewhere two, three, or four months, it’s probably not worth putting on your resume. You haven’t even finished your training and onboarding yet and you most likely weren’t fully productive yet. So it doesn’t give me as a hiring manager information as to what you’re capable of. What it does is indicate that you might be a flight risk. So I don’t recommend putting brief employment.  

I’ve met some applicants who were hired into very prestigious companies and so they wrongly assumed that even if they work there for three, four or five months, um, it was advantageous to show that they were hired by XYZ company and that is not generally the case. I speak for me, but I do feel that that’s a pretty solid piece of advice. I want to talk as well about parallel structure and when I say parallel structure, I’m talking about consistency in the way your resume is written and in the way your resume looks and is formatted. I’ll go down a few points here that I think will really help you to have a resume that looks pleasing to the eye. You know, you can pick up slight differences in line spacing and also the way your margins look and font size can really make your resume look like a patchwork.  

First of all, if you’re going to write in full sentences, then you need to write in full sentences for your whole resume. If you’re going to write in bullet point format, keep that format through your whole resume without full sentence structure. Personally, there’s only one type of resume where I would even use full sentence structure and that would be on what we call a skill based resume. If you don’t have a lot of professional experience and titles behind you but you are skilled in certain essential valuable ways, you might want to present a resume in a more sentence or paragraph type format based skill by skill so that you can provide the context to explain why you’re qualified, why you’re skilled in this way, but if you’re talking about achievements in your legacies in your previous employment or if you’re talking about the why your education is exceptional and qualifies you for a role, you should be using bullet point format.  This is how business decision makers write themselves. You don’t need to worry about full subject verbs in a lot of cases. You can get down to the nitty gritty and leave out unnecessary words, but you’ve got to be consistent. If you flop back and forth, it makes your resume look careless. Font size really matters. In my opinion. There shouldn’t be more than three different font sizes in a resume. I have a slightly larger font size for my name, maybe 14 or 16 I don’t go more than that. You don’t want to look pretentious. I do want people to quickly see my name and so I make it a little bit larger and that is the only place in my whole resume where I use that 14 point font. The next size would be for my section headers and for my section headers, like experience, education skills. In those headers I might use a 12 point font and then for everything else I’ll probably use an 11 or a 10.5 font and it’s as simple as that. Any more font variations makes your resume start to look a little bit sloppy. Don’t put a larger size font for the name of your company. Don’t put a uh, an italics for the dates that you worked in a place like all of that variation creates a very subtle, subliminal confusion that the eyes and the brain have to overcome so it works against you rather than making you look like a highly creative, thoughtful individual. I also want to encourage you to keep an eye on your formatting. What is the line spacing between lines, between paragraphs and your margins? It can be very tempting when you are trying to adhere to the one page rule for 10 years of experience to shrink your margins and to shrink the space between lines. But again, you need to think about the user experience for your resume. Is it pleasant to review this document or does it look like a congested block of letters? Be strategic. Be smart, edit down so that you don’t have to cram too much writing into the page, but whatever you do, however you fix your margins, however you fix your line spacings, be consistent with that. The same goes for the use of punctuation. If you’re going to end a bullet point with a sentence, no one’s going to freak out over that, but that means you got up and every bullet point with a sentence. If you’re not going to end a bullet point with a sentence, that’s my preference. Then don’t use periods. A period means you’re ending a sentence and if you’re using a bullet point, you’re probably not using sentence structure, so you could use a semi-colon.  Um, you could use a dash, you could use other types of punctuation, but it’s a little bit contradictory to use end of sentence punctuation when you’re not using sentences. Again, this is a more minor point, but in my, I noticed this as a hiring manager and it communicates to me that the person I’m dealing with has a certain, a certain understanding of professional presentation and communication. It shows your skill in presenting yourself in a polished way. So that’s my recommendation. Feel free to follow your gut on that. I want to also, as we’re talking about parallel structure, encourage you to use numbers rather than spell out numbers. Now when you write in English, if you use a number in the beginning of a sentence, you’re supposed to spell it out unless it’s a long hyphenated number. So you would spell out the number nine or the number seven, but you would use the actual digits for 26 that’s if it’s at the beginning of a sentence.  However, in a resume, I don’t recommend spelling out numbers. It it’s jarring when you see it, it feels unnecessary. 

Something that’s very valuable is to develop a list of action words that you can pull from as you write your resume. This is classic resume advice. I even heard about this back when I was in high school a million years ago, but still it does matter. You want to show what your legacy and impact has been in your university or in your previous jobs achieved, designed, innovated. These are valuable words to use so that you show that you’re not passive in you approach your work. Come up with a nice long list of them that feels genuine to you and try not to use the same action word per entry. So if I worked at company a and if I have three or four bullet points, I’m not going to use the same action word again in company a when I get down to company B. If I have to use one of those previous action words again, I can, but I’m going to also mix it up with more words. What we’re talking about here is a subliminal message to the person reading your resume that you’ve put thought and care into making this effective, simple and pleasant. And when you read the same word over and over in a document, in a book, in any type of writing, it’s obvious and it sticks out and it kind of jars you a little bit out of your scan of the document. Again, I think this is important for upgrading and elevating the quality of a resume. It’s not necessarily going to keep you from getting an interview, but it’s something that adds bonus points. 

Make sure that you are using the appropriate tense. Are you writing in present tense or past tense? So if you are describing things that you’re currently undertaking in your present job, you’re going to use the present tense. If it’s a project that’s already over, use the past tense. This is about refining and elevating. I want your resume to be better than average by the time you finish listening to this podcast, and that’s my goal. You know, you could pay six or $700 if you want to go have a professional, write your resume for you. But if that’s not something that’s realistic for you, if you follow the guidelines that I’m giving you, your resume will be better than average. It will be able to compete head to head with most other resumes. 

References are not so necessary on a resume anymore. The old resume format from 20 years ago had an objective at the top of the resume and it had references at the end of a resume. Over time. We started to see the format of references available upon request. You don’t need to put that on there and you don’t need to put your references on there at all. I know as a hiring manager that if I asked for references, you’re going to give me references. So you don’t need to inform me of that and I’m not going to call references before I meet with you. There’s a whole list of reasons I won’t go into why we don’t check references. Typically before we, uh, before we contact a candidate. So if you, if you have exceptional references, high ranking accomplished people who are willing to vouch for you, bring it to the interview, bring a nice formatted document that matches the look and feel of your resume and has the references on it, but don’t include it in the resume. It’s not necessary. Also, the objective is not necessary anymore. It is a waste of very valuable resume space. Back in the day when you would job hunt, there was a lot more cold calling than today because the only way to advertise jobs was the newspaper. Today, it is relatively inexpensive and easy to advertise jobs. So people are not just walking into random companies to ask to present a resume as much. So here’s what I would say about the objective. If you are cold calling a company, you can put an objective on the top of the resume that is specific to that company and explained the type of job you’re interested in because you’re applying for a job that’s not open. You’re basically asking to be put in a talent bank in case the job that you’re interested in opens in the future and objective in that case is helpful because as I need to look through candidates, if on your resume it says you’re interested in a regional sales job, then I know, okay, this is not an HR candidate.  This is not a logistics candidate, this is not an administrative candidate. This person wants sales other than those rare exceptions and objective doesn’t help you and it looks outdated. So that’s my recommendation on that. 

Okay. There are typically three different formats for a resume. There is an experience based format where your jobs take center stage. What qualifies you for what you’re applying for or the places and positions that you’ve worked in the past. The second format is a skill based resume and this is useful for someone who is transitioning from one industry to another. So maybe the jobs you’ve held don’t make a lot of sense for what you’re applying for today, but there are transferable skills. This is great for like military people who are looking to transition into civilian life or again moving from one industry to another. If you want to go from the medical industry to the education industry, then your medical abilities might be less relevant than your critical thinking skills or your project management skills or your talent development abilities or your, you know, leadership skills.  So these are how you might apply into a skill based resume. What a skill-based resume looks like. And you can Google this and you’ll see examples. It’s going to list in priority from the most exceptional, rare, important, valuable specialized skill on down a nice list of skills that are relevant to a very specific job for which you’re applying. And under each of those skills there’s going to be a list of either bullet points or this is the format I mentioned earlier where you might use full sentence structure, although I still think bullet points are fine and you’ll explain why you have that skill. So if I’m putting project management as one of my skills, I might put bullet point. Um, when I worked for Omega hospital, I oversaw the full rollout of a new purchasing management software. This was a $7 million project and I was the key stakeholder in ensuring the successful rollout.  This involved periodic meetings, setting milestones and holding various executives accountable. Okay. And then I moved to another bullet point where I talk about another instance of project management skills. You know, when I was at Mississippi state university, I single handedly founded the students initiative for recycling and this involved a 400 person rollout, including all Greek societies as well as other extracurricular organizations. Between March and July we instituted a full campus rollout and I led a team of 20 people to drive this process. Okay. And so these are how you would back up your claim that you’re good in project management and then you’ll go to the next skill. Maybe your next skill is talent development and you’ll talk about where you had impact with that skill over the course of your careers. So that’s the second format. That’s a skill based resume. 

The third format is education based resume.  And so if you may have only had one or two professional roles but your education is truly exceptional or if your education contains really important experiences that qualify you such as internships and uh, thesis projects that are specialized to the type of role that you are going to. This is where you’re going to start with your education and it’s not so important to just put a summary of where you went to school and when you graduated. Just like with this skill based resume, you’re going to flesh out why this education experience is relevant for you being hired in this very specific role. And then after you put the educational experience, if you’ve held part time jobs or maybe full time jobs that aren’t related to your career, you would put those afterwards in their own section. Typically in an experience based resume, your jobs go first and your education goes last, but in this case you’d put your education first and you would put your jobs last.  

All right, so we’re making some good progress here. I’m hoping that you’re resonating with this information and that you’re finding it helpful. This is the type of guidance that I really wish I had 15 years ago when I was just a few years into my career. All right. I want to just make one quick point about the dates of employment. Sometimes people will only put years when they are listing their various jobs. And I got to tell you, this is a pet peeve for a lot of hiring managers because if you say I worked for Amazon web services from 2015 to 2018, there’s a big difference between January, 2015 to December, 2018 or December, 2015 to January, 2018. That’s a difference of close to two years and you’re not telling me that information. I want to encourage you to put months and years. But again, don’t lie because if we check references, typically the only information a company will give when we call to check references are title and dates of employment.  And in every large company I’ve worked for, if someone’s dates of employment were more than 90 days off from what they put on their resume, they were in eligible for hire, even if they were an exceptional candidate, they lied. And uh, that was a deal breaker. So this was not just one policy. This was in every big company I’ve ever worked for. So I want to encourage you to be honest with that. And putting those months does matter. It looks like you’re trying to hide short employment. If you only put the years and leave out the months. 

Internships are also something that you want to make sure you include. If they are relevant. Now they may have been very important to your educational experience, but you may have changed the type of jobs you’re applying for and an internship may no longer be relevant. So you have a limited amount of space that you’re working with on a resume.  Make sure that you’re choosing wisely. There’s nothing wrong with putting a job on your resume that’s not relevant. Um, in fact, it’s better to put a substantial length of employment job down, even if it’s not relevant than to have that blank space. But, um, if you’re fighting for space, you’re gonna leave irrelevant information off. And that might be internships that might be part time jobs or other types of information. 

A couple of quick pace guidance to share with you. Now, um, stuff that doesn’t take a lot of explanation, but just some quick topics for you to keep in mind. Abbreviations, if you’re going to abbreviate abbreviate, if you’re not going to abbreviate, don’t.  be consistent. Be consistent. That is important. 

Make sure that if you’re going to use color in a resume and most cases you want to do it very sparingly. I personally have only a blue color for my headings and my name.  I don’t have any other coloring. I would get resumes from time to time that had big blocks of color. And you know, if you’re applying for a creative type role, that’s fine. But otherwise it can look gimmicky. It’s better for you to look refined and professional. Uh, in most cases. So it doesn’t mean you can’t have some contemporary flair, but edit down, right? Think like in project runway, a lot of times the advice was look at what you designed and take the last thing away. You should do that with your resume as well. If it looks busy, if it looks gimmicky, if it looks complicated, you should edit down. Also, photos are a no-no. Do not put photos on your resume and my European and Asian listeners on talking to you guys because in your cultures it’s expected that there’s a headshot, but in the U S it is not necessary.  It’s not relevant and in fact it, again, it’s jarring and it’s distracting. We don’t want a photo on your resume. You shouldn’t either. It, it’s just not, I don’t know how to say. It changes the whole tone of the document and I don’t feel, and my colleagues that I’ve spoken with don’t feel that it improves the tone. We feel that it hurts it. 

Be careful with putting social media information. Your LinkedIn is important. I feel like I could do an entire podcast episode just on LinkedIn because it’s so essential nowadays and maybe I’ll do that. You can put your LinkedIn link there, but you should not necessarily put your Facebook link or anything else like that. There is typically information in Facebook that could be detrimental. Everything from your political views to pictures of you at a bar. These are just things that if you invite someone to look at your Facebook, then you need to expect that they’re going to have a reaction to it.  Is it fair to penalize someone because they put a picture of their 30th birthday holding a beer in each hand and partying? No. Maybe that’s not fair. But you asked me to look at a picture of you partying and I’m trying to hire a professional. So be aware of the impact of giving social media information. In fact, when I job hunt, I lock all my social media accounts to private because they don’t want them being visible to someone who might make an incorrect assumption about me from that information 

Portfolios. If you are, I used to hire a lot of cooks and chefs and people like that. If you’re going to include a portfolio, make it professional, make it look good, put it in some sort of binding. Um, do not just list a string of photos at the end of your resume. It’s not, um, it doesn’t leave a good impression.  So if you are artistic, put that artistic and stylistic gift of yours into designing a portfolio and you can decide how to uh, how to do that. You could put links to a website. That’s something that’s popular now and it’s really affordable. Um, but make sure your website with your portfolio images again, looks professional and looks bought fully done. 

One of the last things that I want to say is if you are uploading a resume, you should use a PDF format. There are people who don’t have the same version of word processing software as you, and the minute that occurs, your margins can be off, your font type and font size can be off and it can make your resume very difficult to read. It can really make it look like a jumble of words. So I recommend using a PDF format always. It’s typically free to save a document in PDF format from any word processing software and it maintains the crisp look of your document.  

Also, LinkedIn needs to match your resume. So just be careful, don’t have discrepancies and dates of employment, don’t have discrepancies in titles. Make them match. It’s okay if LinkedIn has more experience and more information than your resume, but it certainly should not have less and it should not argue with your resume in any way. 

Cover letters are up to you. If you do use a cover letter, it should provide contextual information based on why you are worth the time. What is it that you’re going to do for this company? What proof do you have based on your previous experiences that you are worth meeting? That’s the only question you should be answering on a cover letter. Otherwise it’s not worth my time as a hiring manager to read it and I’d just rather not have one than skim through it and put it down. Be mindful with your cover letters and your cover letters should never be generic.  They should be personalized to the company with the name of the hiring manager. If you can find it out, you can make a phone call and ask that question. It’s not that hard to find out the name of the hiring manager, but it needs to be personalized to the company and the hiring manager and the content should be personalized to the job opening. If it’s not, I immediately stop reading it. If, if I get the slightest whiff of a form letter, I do not read it because it’s it, it’s lazy. So, uh, that’s my perspective on cover letters. 

Guys, if you have questions, I’m happy to answer questions. Email me at jo****@****************ng.com and I, uh, you know, I look forward to being of service again. My whole mission right now is to be the best person I can be by helping others do the same. And if I’m gonna hold your hand on this journey of awakening, it’s important that you have a job that feels right to your heart and soul. And that’s my goal for today and for this episode. It’s not about digging deeper into this physical world. It’s about empowering yourself to get the job of your dream that fits you. And that’s what I want to help you do as you go out there, be good to each other and never, ever forget to aim your light. Have a great day.  

This has been refracteive. I’m Johnny G. I am a personal and career coach located in Washington, DC. I work both in person and remotely with people who are ready to look inside, tune into their intuition, discover their purpose, and live the life of their dreams. If I can be of service to you, please reach out to me on Twitter at refractive life. Find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/refractive coaching. You can visit me on my we*****@****************ng.com or you can email me at Jo****@****************ng.com. Thanks so much. And again, don’t forget, aim your light.