Fiona Walsh had three kids in two years and was managing a corporate-wide change initiative at work, when a global pandemic hit. She found herself navigating it all while sharing work-at-home space with her family. It was enough to break anyone but she didn’t break. She zoomed along for another year, systematically fixing everything outside of her, until one moment made her realize she had to look inward.

Her pivotal moment started on a couch, in a living room full of toys. “I’m an ideas person, if you bring me a problem, I’m the one to give you fifteen solutions. In that moment I was out of ideas. That’s when I realize that something is really wrong.” said Fiona.

Fiona Walsh has spent nearly two decades on the human side of corporate change, across Australia, the UK, and Canada. The habit that carried Fiona through nearly two decades of high performance was suddenly holding her back. So she turned inward, and the whole shape of her life started to change, from a solo retreat in Mexico to the internal family systems work that finally taught her how to receive instead of just give. Listen to the podcast to hear the full story.

Now she’s a high-performance mind-body coach, working at the intersection of neuroscience, somatic integration, and parts work, and the host of her own podcast, Limitless. But she didn’t arrive here by studying burnout from the outside. She lived what she now calls the shift from burnout to breakthrough, and she brought every bit of that journey into our conversation.

We also get into:

The moment a friend helped Fiona without asking a single question first, and why that mattered more than any offer to help ever had.

What Fiona tells her own coaching clients to do the instant they notice an emotional need go unmet. It usually starts with a hug, and it’s almost never the person who disappointed them.

And because I couldn’t resist, we workshopped Fiona’s own stuck habit live on air. Her strength training routine had quietly gone from twice a week to zero over an eleven week summer break, and we walked it, values and all, right back onto her calendar.

🎧 Listen above.

Fiona is on Instagram at @FionaWalshCoaching, on LinkedIn under Fiona Walsh, and at FionaWalsh.co.

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⚓🎈Get notified when the STORYHabits book comes out → http://storyhabitsbook.com/

Bobby Shelton has spent over twenty years in government consulting. He’s a PMP with a doctorate of strategic leadership, a certified coach through the International Coaching Federation, president of Alpha Cat Consulting, founder of Battle Cat Coaching, a bestselling author, and the host of the Self-Leadership Lab. He gets up between 3:30 and 4 every morning. On paper, he is the most systematized human I have had on this show.

So when I asked him for a habit he had wrestled with and finally won, I expected a project management answer.

Instead he told me about weighing 354 pounds, in a depression so deep that everything he did, he hated. He made himself a deal. If I can just weigh X, I’ll like myself. He lost 139 pounds. He did not like himself. So he moved X and got there again, and still the self-hate was there.

Here is the part we dove into: the anchor he used to lose weight is his desire for self-love. He successfully lost the weight, he didn’t get self-love from it. So was that the wrong anchor or the right anchor? We get into that in the podcast.

We also get into the client he calls John, who was shotgunning every project in sight to get noticed, when the thing that would get him noticed was already sitting on his head like a forgotten pair of glasses.

We also get into the irony of his year: he has been pouring everything into a community program for veterans leaving service, right up until a friend texted him to say I really miss talking to you. So his community work is making him neglect his own community. We dig into the habits to tackle that irony.

Also, yes, we get to the bottom of why everything he owns is named after a cat.

🎧 Listen above.

Find Bobby on Instagram at Bobby Shelton, at battlecatcoaching.com or alphacatconsulting.com, and on his podcast the Self Leadership Lab, on YouTube and everywhere else, including Substack. He also writes Stoic Faith if stoicism is more your speed. If you’re a leader who has optimized everything except your relationship with yourself, he is the one to call.

Brought to you by #STORYHabits ⚓🎈

Ryan M. Scott has placed 200 CEOs. He can't find one for himself.Ryan M. Scott has spent eighteen years deciding who gets to run healthcare. His firm, Stark Lane, has served more than 350 organizations across North America, Europe and Asia, placed over 1,200 leaders, and put more than 200 CEOs into their seats. Modern Healthcare has named it one of the largest executive search firms in healthcare every year since 2008. He’s a combat veteran. He runs ultramarathons in his spare time.

So when I asked him about a habit he’s still fighting, I expected something tidy. Something about deal discipline, or hiring, or the part of the job he has professionalized into the ground.

Instead he said: “I’m a 45-year-old man, and when things start going sideways, I will still take my toys and go home.”

What he means is that when something he built stops working perfectly, he doesn’t fix the scratches. He blows the whole thing up and rebuilds it clean. “Take my toys and go home" means restarting again, even when it’s not necessary and has a higher net cost.” We ended up calling it the grenade. He has done this at real scale. A year of work on a federal business unit, dismantled in a one hour meeting. He thrives in chaos. Hand him an impossible task and it’s the best day of his life. Hand him a thing that basically works and needs tending, and he reaches for the pin.

That’s the habit he came in wanting to fix, because he wants to spend less of his life running Stark Lane and more on two other things he’s building, and grenading his own company would cost him five years.

So I asked the obvious question. Why not put someone else in the chair?

Turns out he’d tried. One person, seven years, someone he calls brilliant. He was grooming her for his seat. It didn’t happen, and when I asked why, the answer had nothing to do with her talent. It was one word. And once he said it, the whole conversation turned.

That’s the thing about habits. The surface behavior is never really the story. We came in to work on the grenade and about twenty minutes later the thread pulled, the sweater came apart, and we were looking at an entirely different habit. One he hadn’t planned to talk about, and hadn’t clocked as a habit at all. “I wasn’t expecting you to go here,” he said, and then he sat with it on the record instead of changing the subject. That takes some nerve.

We also get into the habit he did rewrite earlier in life. What he actually screens for when he’s placing a CEO, and why culture is fifty percent of the equation. The four values he names in under three seconds. Why he says a certain kind of candidate should never bring up family in an interview. And the red pill, blue pill moment he says is coming for him whether he picks it or not.

🎧 Listen above.

Find Ryan at starklane.com, the only place he pointed people to, though as he puts it, odds are you’re not going to find him. He’s probably going to find you. If you’re a healthcare board or leadership team looking for someone who can right a sinking ship, that is exactly his kind of impossible.Brought to you by #STORYHabits ⚓🎈

Jason Stonehouse has the résumé of someone who has it figured out: pastor, executive coach, strategist, counselor, author of three books, three decades leading multimillion-dollar organizations and ministries. He built an entire framework — Life in Process — around helping high performers lead from a healthy internal life. He is, by any reasonable measure, the calm and confident leader.

So it caught me off guard when he told me he’s dealt with anxiety and panic attacks for a couple of decades. Not the polished, hypothetical kind you coach other people through — the kind that hits mid-sermon, mid-speech, telling him he’s about to lose control in front of the room he’s supposed to be leading.

That’s the thing about habits — the ones that follow you into your most important moments rarely look like what you’d expect from the outside. The person holding it together for everyone else is usually the one who had to build the pause, breath by breath, longer than anyone around them ever knew.

That’s who Jason is.

We get into what actually happened five years ago that changed everything — the moment his life fell apart and, somehow, that’s exactly what taught him to stop reacting and start responding.

There’s a story about a CEO client whose wife pulled Jason aside on vacation and asked, “What did you do to my husband?” — because for the first time, he wasn’t go-go-go.

And we workshop, live, the habit Jason is wrestling with right now: what to do when you’re a public leader and someone decides who you are without ever giving you the chance to explain — and whether trying to correct that story is even worth the fight.

🎧 Listen above.

If you want more of Jason — the calm-and-confidence work, the coaching, the books — find him at jasonstonehouse.com or on LinkedIn as Jason Stonehouse. Well worth a follow if you lead people, especially on the days it doesn’t feel like it.

— Connie

Rewrite your story. Rewrite your habits. #STORYHabits ⚓🎈

⚓🎈Get notified when the STORYHabits book comes out → http://storyhabitsbook.com/

Jenn T Grace has written eight books. She’s helped nearly 300 people get theirs out of their heads and into the world. Her whole company, Publish Your Purpose, exists on one belief: your story matters, and someone out there needs to hear it.

So when I asked her what story she’d been telling about herself, I expected the polished version. Founder. Catalyst. Award-winning author.

Instead, she told me about the voice in her head.

Her most recent book launched in February — while she had pneumonia and couldn’t get out of bed. And right there, flat on her back, a voice piped up: Who cares anyway. No one wants to read it. Eight books in. Nearly 300 authors coached. And still, the voice showed up.

She doesn’t call it a demon. She calls it a catty little thing that follows her around like Tails chasing Sonic, yipping in her ear. So she did what she teaches everyone else to do. She named it. Meet Mara.

That’s the thing about habits. The surface behavior is never really the story. Under Jenn’s calm, catalyzing, help-everyone-else exterior is a woman running the same loop the rest of us run — and quietly, daily, learning to catch it.

That’s who Jenn T Grace is.

Episode 4 of the STORYHabits Podcast is live. We also get into the marathon that wrecked her knee (and what her all-or-nothing brain refused to let her quit), why fear is a perfectly good anchor if you use it right, and a live habit workshop where we build Mara a place she’s not invited — a lakeside villa where Jenn finally gets to be still.

🎧 Listen above.

Find Jenn at jentgrace.com or publishyourpurpose.com — and if you’ve got a book in your head and a voice telling you it doesn’t matter, she is exactly the person to talk to.

— Connie

Rewrite your story. Rewrite your habits. ⚓🎈Join the STORYHabits book launch team at https://storyhabitsbook.com/launch-team

Jason Butcher has lived about 20 lives. Founder of Orbit Capital, a global investment and advisory firm backing over 50 companies across fintech, AI, sustainability, and mental health. Co-founder of Ocean Integrity Caribbean. Board member. Mentor to another 50 founders on top of that. Chief Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the Cayman Islands. He's spent three decades sitting across from founders under pressure — not just writing checks, but getting in the weeds with them on leadership, decision-making, and resilience.

So when Jason talks about habits, he's not speaking from theory.

In this episode, we get into the habit Jason calls his most fundamental one: focus. Not the productivity-hack kind. The intentional, I-have-50-companies-and-10-to-20-calls-a-day-and-I-still-choose-to-be-fully-present-with-you kind. He traces it back to the early 90s when he was publishing magazines with zero digital interruption — and then walks us through exactly how the world engineered distraction into all of us. His take on ADHD will make you think.

We also hear the story of Michael — a founder Jason mentored at an incubator who had a genius product and a terrible pitch. What it took for Michael to break through isn't what you'd expect. It was coachability. Not talent. Not charisma. Openness.

And then Jason goes somewhere few guests go this early in a podcast run. He tells us that at 40, he was diagnosed with early right hemisphere dementia. He's 52 now. And the habit he's actively working on — the one that's hardest — is giving himself grace. Letting go of what he can't remember. Moving forward instead of dwelling. Anchoring back to purpose so that the forgetting doesn't win.

That's where the STORYHabits method comes to life in real time. Jason's value isn't just focus — it's purpose. And once you understand that, his habit of acting immediately, of staying present, of releasing what he can't hold onto — it all makes sense. It's not a workaround. It's who he is.

In this episode:

Why Jason thinks everyone has ADHD now — and why that's actually not a diagnosis, it's a design problem

The Smiley face story: how Jason ended up connected to the global trademark owner of the world's most recognizable symbol, and what it means to him

Michael's story: what separates a founder who takes feedback from one who doesn't — and why coachability is the real differentiator

The dementia diagnosis at 40, and the habit of grace that followed

The STORYHabits moment: anchoring focus and grace onto the value of purpose

Find Jason: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonbutcherWeb: http://orbitcapital.net

Looking for mentorship, a different perspective, or just someone to ask for advice? Jason says reach out.

The STORYHabits Podcast is hosted by Connie Kwan. Every episode, we examine the stories that drive your habits — the great ones leaders have built, the bad ones they still wrestle with, and the stories powering all of it.

⚓🎈 Join the STORYHabits book launch team at https://storyhabitsbook.com/launch-team

STORYHabits Podcast

Episode 1: The Woman Who Couldn't Walk Into Her Own Office

About This Episode

Simone is General Counsel at a Silicon Valley brand. She's led teams, argued high-stakes cases, and never flinched in a boardroom. But after an unexpected layoff, she found herself doing something she couldn't explain — turning around at her own office door and ending up on the couch. Every single day.

In this episode, Connie unpacks what was really going on, and how two almost embarrassingly small habits changed everything.

What You'll Hear

Why high-achievers often freeze hardest when the stakes feel most personal

The difference between a messy office problem and a story problem

How to use your own values as habit anchors

Why your goals might be too big — and what "one is productive" actually means

The unexpected power of a committed Tuesday night

Key Concepts

The Story Habit Loop — the story your brain tells you shapes the behavior that follows

Productive Anchoring — tying a new habit to a core value so it has weight

The One Object Rule — making the ask so small that overwhelm has nothing to grab onto

Quotable

"The goal isn't to clean the office. The goal is to stop fearing it."

"I walked in there trying to move one object." — Simone

Connect Substack: conniekwan.substack.com Instagram / LinkedIn: @conniekwan #STORYHabits

Why did the chips always come back

There are a lot of habit books out there. Clear, Fogg, Duhigg, Wood — brilliant people who cracked the mechanics of how habits form. Stack your habits. Reduce friction. Put your running shoes by the door. Hide the chips.

And it works. For a while. Then life happens, and you're standing at the pantry at 10pm wondering why the chips are back.

Here's the problem. Most habit knowledge focuses on the how. What they're missing is a method for the why. And your why — the story behind your habit — drives everything.

This is the intro episode of the STORYHabits Podcast, and I'm kicking it off with a short story about my own habit: dessert.

I wanted to eat less sugar. Not cut it out — just less. My goal was simple: reduce my dessert intake by 30% over a month. It worked for five days. Then I bought a $5 box of cookies from Safeway and ate it down to the crumbs.

Here's the thing. I'm a frugal person. My parents are immigrants. I'm an immigrant, twice. Frugality is a value I inherited that continues to run my life — including, apparently, my cookie consumption. I didn't want the whole box. But at $5, leaving any behind felt wrong.

Once I saw that, everything changed. I made one rule: I only eat expensive desserts. Now every time I walk into the fancy café on the corner and order a $10 single slice of cake, I wince. And I don't go back for weeks.

No willpower. No gritting my teeth. I reduced my dessert intake by 50% — way past my original goal — by working with my value instead of against it.

That's STORYHabits. That's what this show is about.

In this episode, I also talk about why a product manager has a podcast about habits (short answer: because I spent my career building the very products that are engineered to override your willpower, and I think you deserve to know how that works), and how STORYHabits was born from two colliding forces — a digital smoking-cessation company and five years teaching storytelling to product managers.

Every episode from here, I'll be bringing in guests who've done exactly this: broken a stuck pattern not by gritting their teeth harder, but by rewriting the story underneath it.

This is the why layer. The one the other books left out.

The STORYHabits Podcast is hosted by Connie Kwan. Every episode, we examine the stories that drive your habits — the great ones leaders have built, the bad ones they still wrestle with, and the stories powering all of it.

— Connie

Remember: Rewrite your story. Rewrite your habits. #STORYHabits ⚓🎈

⚓🎈 Get notified when STORYHabits comes out → http://storyhabitsbook.com/