The Difficulty: Creativity, Meaning & the Hard Work of a Life

Today’s episode is focused on visualization and specifically we put on our critical thinking hats and consider how it plays into the Law of Attraction. This law can be easily misunderstood. So, we are going to explore what it really means, how it can be harnessed and why it truly is powerful when applied with discipline, and also what it is NOT. 

What we focus on, we attract. The Law Of Attraction goes way beyond just 'visualizing' or 'vision boarding' our dreams. What we're ultimately doing is feeling and tuning into our vision of how we want things to be.

We discuss not only how you conduct visualization, but also how you must do so with discipline, the same way anyone trains any other part of their body.

This episode is chock full of fascinating nuggets about the brain, supported by science and evidence-based research, AND with specific takeaways that you can take with you wherever you happen to be listening.

Time Stamps:

1:10--The law of attraction, what it is and how it's had some twisted iterations over the years

7:13--The question for our audience today

8:50--When Shelley first started getting intentional about visualizing in 2010

14:09--One of the enemies of learning: daring to dream

17:17--Setting the intention

25:19--Matthew Ricard, the molecular biologist who became a Buddhist monk

28:43--How you've got to train your brain

32:36--Visualization connects to RAS (Reticular Activating System)

37:40--Not like magic, it takes energizing your life in a certain direction

45:30--Start with small things and then go to big

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

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If you’re like a lot of people, you don’t really care about the health effects of drinking, and frankly you probably don’t care to know. But the fact is that most of us have been drinking more than we want to for a long time. 

And a lot of the time when we do this it also fills us with guilt, maybe even shame. Or to bring this full circle, maybe you really don’t think about it and don’t want to think about it. 

But if you’re honest, really honest, like we chose to get honest with ourselves finally–you probably don’t feel entirely in control of your ability to choose whether or not you actually drink. 

We are not here to evangelize. But we are here to share a couple of things. First, as coaches, we fully recognize that we have to be doing the very work that we are coaching others in. If we are helping others free themselves from mindless habits and envisioning the life they want, we have to have done the work ourselves. Perhaps even more importantly for you, we want you to see–to have the insight or recognition–that you are in control of you. You can shift your thinking and experience transformation unlike what you ever thought might be possible. 

It doesn’t matter what your friends will say or think. It doesn’t matter what your spouse will say or think. It does matter what you believe and what you think. And this topic, like any other, is about beliefs, both conscious and unconscious. It is about the power of these beliefs and how they shape our thinking, and therefore our actions. 

The aim of this episode is NOT to offer you tips. Tips are a dime a dozen whether they’re good ones or bad. What is more difficult to come by are workable ways to apply tips, to replace one behavior pattern with another. When you learn how to change a habit, it is usually not too hard to decide which ones to change. 

Let’s dive in!

Time Stamps:

2:30--Maybe you're just a little curious about evaluating your relationship to alcohol.

6:14--We want you to have the recognition that you have the control over your thinking and what you want to do, and this is about shifting your thinking, not tips.

9:50--How alcohol dependency became like a slow burn, just this habit that formed over time.

15:24--When the shift happened for Shelley early on this year.

21:40--How you can self-assess where you are right now and thinking of the desire behind the habit, or is it the habit behind the desire?

24:01--Chad tells his story of his relationship with alcohol.

29:10--Chad's approach is a little different than Shelley's.

29:48--Quote by Dostoevsky about habits in the second half of life.

32:15--How the habit may start first.

37:31--If you want to start taking it to the next level and other ideas.

40:20--The final takeaway.

Show note links for further inquiry:

This Naked Mind

New genetic study confirms that alcohol is a direct cause of cancer

A ‘factory reset’ for the brain cures anxiety, drinking behavior

What sudden insights look like inside the brain

Follow up with us and check out our Burnout Coaching Package here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

Shelley shares her story of burning out and what she's done with it five years on.

Chad asks questions based on what he's hearing and thinking about from her story.

Shelley discusses how she began to take radical responsibility for herself and her "self" alone and how this led to the tipping point of recovery. We learn about how Social Twos have their own special sauce when it comes to control, and how pride takes hold of the ego.

Time Stamps:

1:09--How the story has evolved

3:40--Back in 2014, I started a venture backed technology company

8:05--How Shelley refused to admit defeat for months even after the team was gone

10:20--Working 80-hour weeks

13:54--On control and the need for humility

24:06--How Shelley had to get out of the frying pan

27:00--After stabilizing, the next step is analyzing

28:37--The final step is visualizing

34:04--"We're either broken open, or we willfully shed."

35:05--Why Shelley can be grateful for her burnout now (five years later)

39:46--Expectations lead to a lot of our unhappiness

44:41--When the system doesn't work (and we don't work in the system)

49:00--The idea of radical responsibility and how it led to a turning point

53:06--Shelley's final reflection question

We're so glad to have you here for our second episode of Season 4!

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We've got a few questions on the subject of failure. Do you really learn from failure? What does it mean to actually fail at something? How big or how small does the failure have to be? Do you really learn more when you have a losing season instead of a winning one? Where did the “fail fast” mentality come from, and does it mean the same thing today? 

Everyone’s paths are different, but many of us start out with early indications about what we should be for the rest of our lives. We begin to believe that the only way for the arch of lives to be considered a success is to make sure those first mountain life decisions turn out to be the fulfillment of those early dreams.

What happens when those plans don’t turn out the way you thought they would? What does it mean to fail at something that seems so big? 

The truth is everyone fails. Everyone experiences setbacks both personal and professional. It IS of course what you do with the failure. But the truth is also that failure is a lot more complicated than the “fail fast” mantra would have you believe.

First of all, failure sucks. Failure is messy. Of the four noble truths of Buddhism, the first is that life IS suffering. And the second noble truth? That the avoidance of suffering causes more suffering. We avoid failure in the same way we avoid suffering. 

So what happens when you identify, accept, and even embrace failure? And what are the failure(s) you truly do want to avoid?

We figure it all out on Chad's big failure story on this week's first edition of Season 4 of the Big Self Podcast!

Time Stamps:

3:19--How David Brooks' The Second Mountain has a lot do with what we're talking about

6:33--The second mountain is when you you shed the ego enough to break open

8:32--What does it actually mean to fail at something because none of us want to fail?

11:37--Even about the age of 10, I was always interested in being a writer

13:30--Your first mountain. So you just turned 50 crossed the threshold.

19:39--What do you now see that you've learned from the failure?

20:25--Congratulations on the failure

24:51--Failure Lesson #1

27:16--Failure Lesson #2

31:05--Failure Lesson #3

31:56--Failure Lesson #4

35:57--Failure Lesson #5

38:47--Failure Lesson #6

41:27--Failure Lesson #7

43:30--Failure Lesson #8

Show Notes:

The Second Mountain by David Brooks

Falling Upwards by Richard Rohr

Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis

My Losing Season by Patrick Conroy

Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Noah Baumbach

Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant

Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously by Osho

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

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Burnout has become one of the most talked about workplace and life topics, and its impact is far-reaching. But too much of the conversation is focused on the problem vs. what we can actually do to break free from burnout.

In her new game-changing, self-illustrated book, THE AWESOME HUMAN PROJECT: Break Free from Daily Burnout, Struggle Less, and Thrive More in Work and Life Nataly makes a compelling case that while challenges in life are constant, struggle is optional. She offers us proven science-backed and engaging methods to help us break through the cycle of “daily burnout,” as she defines it -- methods which have already transformed over a million people and counting. Nataly’s book is intensely personal and written as a response to her own journey as a refugee who viewed struggle as a way of life. After achieving tremendous success in the corporate and startup worlds, Nataly suffered a debilitating burnout, which taught her a powerful lesson: You can’t give what you don’t have.

We are delighted to have Nataly on for our 100th episode and our final guest for the first quarter of 2022.

Find Nataly here, or at happier.com.

Time Stamps:

3:09--Why Nataly and her parents fled the former Soviet Union in 1989

8:20--How Nataly went through a debilitating burnout

10:40--Nataly's experience with startups and struggling, and the difference of challenge

15:12--Getting emotionally fit, and how Nataly found her way

18:20--How Nataly realized she wasn't just her brain (and learned to talk back)

22:40--The five ways to keep emotionally fit (in a nutshell)

29:00--For people who are moving into burnout in a pretty deep way right now

34:00--Normalizing self-care as a priority at work

38:45--You don't need to burnout to learn, but you probably need an interruption

41:41--Playing it forward and asking, "How do you want to experience your life?"

45:15--What Nataly hopes you'll takeaway from her book

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Today we speak with entrepreneur and investor, Ted Alling. Ted is a leader in Chattanooga who uses his entrepreneurial achievements to create opportunities for others.

He is the co-founder and former CEO of a $500-million startup, Access America, which merged with UPS subsidiary Coyote Logistics.

That initial success allowed Ted and his fellow Access America founders to create Lamp Post Group, a venture capital firm and tech-focused incubator located right here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Lamp Post is responsible for developing and incubating literally dozens of startups. From there, he co-founded Dynamo in 2016, a venture-capital fund with a focus in logistics technology. And then in 2018, he and his wife Kelly, helped to found the Chattanooga Preparatory School, an all-boys charter school. 

Chattanooga Prep is designed to provide unique and impactful educational opportunities for the young men in the city’s urban communities, and it opened to its inaugural class of sixth graders in August 2018 and now has over 300 young men.

It’s been a wild ride throughout the past two decades, and Ted has not only succeeded himself, but has an ability to bring others along with him. He has also done a lot of personal development and learned a lot, sometimes the hard way, about himself, others, and best practices when it comes to building companies and culture. That is why we wanted to speak with him on the Big Self Podcast.

Time Stamps:

4:00--Ted's love of the Enneagram

6:24--The biggest hack for all our listeners on the Enneagram

10:20--The progressive realization of a worthy ideal (what success is)

18:00--How some companies are living out their values now more than in the recent past

27:43--When Ted and Kelly met David Robinson in researching for their prep school

30:57--How Chattanooga Prep selects the 70 students they enroll each year

34:40--How they create the "Disney World Experience" for the kids right off the bat

37:43--When Ted first discovered the power (and addictive nature) of the Blackberry

40:33--How Ted recognizes how some have huge advantages over others

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Leading teams and organizations to greatness has never been more challenging than it is right now. But there is opportunity amidst the chaos.

We are now in an era of post-traumatic growth. An Egon Zehnder study reports that 80% of CEOs strongly agreed they needed to transform themselves as well as their organizations—up from 26% prior to the pandemic.

Employees want to grow. Leaders want to help their people and their companies grow—and recognize that the only way to do that is to grow themselves. The challenge lies in knowing how to stop walking in circles, and move forward.

In her new book SMART GROWTH: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company (Harvard Business Review Press; January 11, 2022) Whitney Johnson, CEO of Disruption Advisors, and one of the top ten business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50, provides a set of tools to get smart about growth.

Whitney Johnson is CEO of the tech-enabled development company Disruption Advisors, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company in America and was recently named #8 on the Thinkers50 list for 2021, made up of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world. She is an award-winning author, a regular keynote speaker and she and Shelley really hit it off on this week's episode.

Time Stamps:

3:50--Working on a new framework of personal disruption led to the S Curve concept

9:55--Whitney's turning point moment of realizing she is going to have to disrupt herself

11:45--What's interesting about different kinds of fears

16:31--We're all operating at different levels of fears and awareness

19:38--Whenever you start something new you are at the base of the S

25:00--The many different ways you can apply the S curve to your life

31:06--The six stages of growth that correspond to the S curve

39:00--That place where your identity is shifting

44:20--You want to race before you've spent time in the collector phase

47:40--How 2022 is the Great Aspiration rather than the Great Resignation

Show notes links: 

https://whitneyjohnson.com/

Be one of the first three listeners to leave us a review on on Apple iTunes and receive your free copy of Whitney's brand new hardcover: Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company.

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Anne Scottlin is on a mission around the world to help people from business executives to creatives to startup employees who wear a lot of hats to find their joy. What does joy mean? What does it mean to possess it and carry it around with you wherever you go? Tune in to find out.

Plus, how Anne practices her own methods in her life. Also, what happened when Anne mind-mapped her life and connected the dots from Medieval literature to acting to altruism around the world supporting oppressed women.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's Big Self Podcast.

Show notes links: 

Find Anne’s newly released book, Live For Joy, here. 

Grab a one-week journal to foster and create your own joy awareness at https://www.annescottlin.com/joyjournal.

Time Stamps:

3:40--The difference between joy and happiness

6:00--Wishful thinking and how to overcome it, and how Anne's early experiences led to her life journey of finding joy and then wanting to share it with others

11:40--The relationship of the PERMA model

17:25--What Anne advises when people want to make a career transition

24:25--The conflict that creating such deep individualism often brings

33:46--We tend to remember where we fell short

40:00--The Big Self Takeaway

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Long before the pandemic gripped the world and blurred the lines between home and work, we had become a nation suffering high levels of burnout. It is one of the most discussed, and far-reaching problems in the workplace today. And that is why we are covering it from a wide variety of perspectives on our podcast here at the top of the year from top business professionals and trained coaches, researchers, and leaders.

In BEATING BURNOUT AT WORK: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience, founder of the Stress and Resilience Institute Paula Davis provides a new framework to help organizations prevent employee burnout via a holistic approach.

Her research-driven and actionable book is the first to explore a comprehensive approach for building the resilience of teams of all sizes. Her framework works with organizations ranging from Harvard Law School to Walgreens, and is aimed at reshaping the organizational policies, decision-making, and political, social, and economic issues that contribute to workplace stress.

Time Stamps:

4:44--A big part of what people are getting wrong about burnout

8:42--We can't just keep approaching the systemic issue of burnout through the individual, which is what lead to the idea of working with teams first and foremost

12:06--Interesting research that you can be highly engaged and burned out

14:15--Psychological safety as a foundational element

20:16--Start with the Resilient Teams Inventory

25:10--Detecting your icebergs

29:23--The core values and powerful themes that come up for leaders that they're not always conscious of

32:40--We don't listen to understand; different kinds of listening

35:58--Suck it up and drive on and do it the way I did it

42:00--The importance of coaching

44:03--The Big Self Takeaway

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We’ve been covering burnout from our inception at the top of 2020. We've suffered from it in different ways and at different times in our lives. Now we help organizations and leaders deal with it, and we had no idea how acute it would become and how the screws would tighten with the circumstances and chaos of the pandemic. 

And who better to bring on the show to discuss her own unique strategies and experiences than Jennifer Moss? In her compelling new book, Moss argues our current strategies are getting it all wrong – that self-care won’t cure burnout and organizations need to entirely rethink their approach to wellness. Leveraging her latest research and evidence-based solutions, her recent book, The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It, will help leaders and individuals prevent burnout for healthier, happier, and more productive workplaces.

We tend to think of burnout as a problem we can solve with self-care: more yoga, better breathing techniques, and more resilience. But evidence is mounting that applying personal, Band-Aid solutions to an epic and rapidly evolving workplace phenomenon isn't even close to enough. 

Moss’s book is eye-opening, paradigm-shifting, and offers a practical guide, laying bare the real causes of burnout and how organizations can stop the chronic stress cycle that an alarming number of workers suffer through. Self-care is important, but it's not a cure-all for burnout.

Be sure and stay tuned to the end for our Big Self Takeaway!

Time Stamps:

4:31--The root causes of burnout

6:28--The World Health Organization definition of burnout

8:05--When your leaders are passionate about their work and they become less aware of the model they're setting

9:30--Feeling external pressure in high growth organizations

12:10--Industries we're seeing a lot of burnout in

14:08--Overwork is responsible for 2.8 million deaths last year

18:38--Research on video conferencing fatigue

23:52--How Jennifer used to look down on burnout before she went through it

26:30--Seeing an accumulation of small traumas leading to grief

31:30--The Big Self Takeaway

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