Given we all are rushed to accomplish so much between work and home responsibilities during the year-end holiday season, I have one final, quick, albeit illustrative story to share about the importance of investing in building relationships beyond work interactions with our colleagues. In this Self-Guru Journey episode, I explain how building a strong, trusting relationship with a work colleague helped us get through, what could have been a trust ending, and personal confidence crushing situation.

Brigitte Deel has already developed impressive self-awareness at 23-years of age. Brie attributes the early start of her personal awareness journey to being a student-athlete at Highpoint University.

As she transitioned from academia to the start of her career earlier this year, she brought with her excellent time management and prioritization skills. After 6-months as a Sale Development Representative with Salesforce, she has discovered a need to strengthen her active listening skills further.

Brie and I discuss:

• Managing competing responsibilities

• Delivering on your commitments to others

• The benefits of being coachable and accepting feedback as the gift it is

• The benefits of being open to diverse ideas

• And her discovery of the importance of active listening

This week, Sarah Smith joins me to talk about her journey from Air Force brat to becoming an Episcopal Priest at St Andrew’s On-the-Sound in Wilmington, North Carolina --- via an unconventional route.

Sarah’s journey includes a personally described moral crisis, which called on her to evaluate her core values as a young 20-year old. From there, you’ll hear Sarah share a series of life experiences, twists and turns that climaxed in her coined “quarterly life crisis,” which led her to Christian Education and the Ministry.

I came away from our conversation with an even deeper respect for Sarah on many levels, especially her abundance of confidence and humility. She has an enviable balance of self-respect and respect for others.

Just some of the topics from our thought-provoking conversation include:

• No one is one dimensional, and our skill-set is not always our vocation

• Sarah’s personal values of accountability, responsibility, & gratitude

• Our weaknesses are our strengths misused

• How our values and behaviors are interrelated

• Embracing what is a perceived failure as a growth opportunity

• Strengthening leadership skills to include leading through change

• And much more

We close our conversation by discussing how this year has been a uniquely humanizing experience. Behind every topic we as a society classify as an issue are people, human beings with real wants and needs. Sarah and I are like-minded in that we both hope this is a reckoning we all can remember and carry forward as we get through the year that is 2020 together.

We are taking a break from our usual personal journey storytelling this week to share a topic included in the Self-Guru app – critical thinking. We wanted to share a view into how we help individuals develop life skills to become their best self.

I’m very excited by the thought provoking guests who are joining us on the podcast in the next several weeks. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy learning a bit more about what it means to be a critical thinker.

In this episode of Self-Guru Journey, we hear another personal experience from Leslie Ferry. She shares how a failed work experience turned into a significant learning opportunity to develop critical thinking. You will hear her story and how she has benefited from this momentary feeling of failure.

In this episode of the Self-Guru Journey podcast, Leslie talks with one of her dearest friends, Victoria Parks. Victoria is a self-assured wife and mother of a 17-year old son. It is Victoria’s confidence that Leslie believes will appeal to you, given many of us can be inflicted with imposter syndrome at times. Leslie and Victoria discuss how, if someone entrusts you with a task or responsibility, they are expressing their confidence in you, so we need to embrace that belief and then go figure out how to get the job done.

Victoria shares how she has developed a strength of intuition, her belief that self-talk should be self-respect, and one of her weaknesses of having a bit of a temper.

The life skills Leslie & Victoria discuss include:

Confidence

Intuition

Critical Thinking

& Optimism — although not explicitly stated, so listen closely

Our first self-awareness journey exploration is with Leslie Ferry, the Founder of Self-Guru. Leslie shares some of her personal, continuous learning experiences.