What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

When kicking off interviews for season 3, I knew I had to invite a good friend to come update us on his latest adventures. 

Geeg Wiles is a real, live swashbuckler, and he has a pretty epic story to tell – a story he couldn’t yet tell when we last heard from him in the first episode of season 2. Tune in to hear the details of how Geeg summited one of the world’s tallest mountains with Captain Ahab, a giant lawn gnome handed down to him from his grandfather.

This isn’t the first of Geeg and Ahab’s adventures together, and it won’t be their last, as they travel the world completing bucket lists and inspiring others to do the same. The 40-lb captain Ahab joined us for this interview, and he’s here to ask you: How heavy is your excuse going to be?

Takeaway questions to consider for yourself:

• What excuses might I be using to avoid a “yes”?
• What artificial fences might I be building around myself?
• What big bucket list thing do I want to do?

ABOUT GEEG WILES

Geeg is an experienced motivational speaker, TED talker, adventurer and proud caretaker of Captain Ahab. You can follow his and Ahab's travels on their website ahabsadventures.com or support their travels by joining Ahab's Elite.

Website: AhabsAdventures.com

Instagram: @AhabsAdventures

Facebook: facebook.com/AhabsAdventures

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Are you ready to up level your fun and creativity, inviting more joy and abundance into your life? 

Here are a few ways to join in the fun with Jen:

• Apply to be a guest on the podcast
• Apply to work with Jen in her 12-week coaching program

Stay connected

• Follow Jen on Instagram @chromaticjenn
• Join the FB Group

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

In this kickoff to season 3, I tell the story of what kicked my rear back into gear to get this podcast going again. It was -– of all things – a Penny. Yes, a Penny with a capital P. 

Hear how Penny the Penguin, and a string of emotional events, led me down a path that ultimately gave me unequivocal confidence that this was the exact right time to start moving forward.

Takeaway from this episode:

• Learn to manifest a penny!
  • Sit still. Close your eyes. Take three deep breaths. 
  • Ask the universe, God, your angels, whoever it is you talk to, to bring you a penny – or something better. 
  • Give it all the gusto you’ve got.
  • Wait for your penny to arrive!

If you do this activity, let me know what happens! Send me an email at [email protected] or DM me on Instagram @chromaticjenn

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Are you ready to up level your fun and creativity, inviting more joy and abundance into your life? 

Here are a few ways to join in the fun with Jen:

• Apply to be a guest on the podcast
• Apply to work with Jen in her 12-week coaching program

Stay connected

• Follow Jen on Instagram @chromaticjenn
• Join the FB Group

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

Jen is comin' back atcha with all the fun, creative, deep, and meaningful conversations to help you get unstuck and inspired to DO THE THING!

Season three will bring us two episodes a week  on Tuesdays and Thursdays – one short solocast and one interview-style conversation. So whether your commute is from the bed to the office or an hour on the train, you'll have plenty of time to get inspired.

Get ready to move past the perfectionism, judgment, and fear that holds you back, and to step into the creative, joyful life you want to live. Because you're about to get your pants inspired clean off.

I'm raising my hand to hold yours, so here we go, my friend! Together, let's take the next step on your creative commute.

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

This is episode 40. FORTY. Can you believe that? 

In this episode, I dive deep to reveal more about how the idea for The Creative Commute came to be, and how it was the response to a very specific question. (A very specific question that I hope you'll ask yourself after you listen to this episode.)

If you take nothing else away from this episode, I hope it's this.

There is no other person in the world like you. Not one other person has the same, exact Koolaid mix as you. You bring your own personal flavor to the world. And you are here to serve it up to the people you meet on your person journey.

This journey, this commute, this amazing, wonderful, spectacular lifelong creative commute. It is yours. And you get to choose where it takes you.

See you in a few weeks for season three. 

<3 Jen

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

What's the B.S. you're telling yourself? Jocelyn Brady is here to help you jostle those Brain Stories (B.S.) you've been writing for yourself and rewire your brain so you can get moving on your creative commute!

Listen in for lots of nuggets of brainy wisdom from this brain coach who believes the most important thing in life is to live a life you love. 

 "Just do the thing. You will not regret it." – Jocelyn Brady

EPISODE TAKEAWAYS

1. Think about death bed you. What would she be telling you to do right now?
2. What is the world you want others to experience? Model that.
3. Have someone to hold you accountable. You don’t have to take everything on yourself.
4. Think of thoughts as habits. You can train yourself to think differently.
5. Change is possible for you. Embrace it.
6. Put on your penguin suit! When you stop playing, you start dying. Play and use your  imagination.

ABOUT JOCELYN
Jocelyn Brady is a NeuroLeadership Institute-certified Brain Coach  who helps big-dreaming leaders master their BRAIN stories, so they can create more joy, purpose, prosperity and sweet, sweet flowwwww.

As an award-winning copywriter, creative director and agency CEO— Jocelyn previously helped multibillion dollar brands score multimillion dollar deals (and millions of fans) by expressing their most important stories. 

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

On Saturday, I took three minutes to explore something I've been curious about for years. In that short window of time, my perspective of a place I'd been hundreds of times changed forever. 

It's a story about choices, laced with magical reindeer and questionable decisions to wander into the woods alone. Enjoy!

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

You are a creative being.  So, what are you doing to support this vital, primal, core part of yourself?

If you're anything like me, hardly anything at all. In fact, rather than building a village of support to surround and nurture my creativity, I've often burned the whole village to the ground. What's left is a heaping pile of creative burnout.

The idea of spending more of our waking hours supporting our creative selves is the antithesis of everything we've been taught in Western culture. We track our every waking hour, feeling guilty about enjoying a fun moment, monetizing our free time, thinking about what we "should" be doing.

The problem is, you aren’t leaving time to feed your creativity. Which is what helps you be your best in work and life.

In this episode, I break down an exercise that will help you start to fortify your own creative support village. You'll simply need a pen and paper to do this exercise. 

If you'd like to join me in doing this exercise as a group, sign up to get on my email list at CreativeCommute.com and I'll send you the date, time and link!

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

Right now, the world is not a safe place for creative people. Listen to this episode with Dr. Barbara Kerr, who has devoted her life to supporting creative humans, and let me know if you agree with her statement – by sharing this episode with #CreativeCommuter or by leaving a review on iTunes!

This was such a fun conversation with a brilliant woman, and in listening back, I wish I'd been able to ask 50 more questions. I bet you'll feel the same.

Enjoy!

You can download the full text from her latest research discussed in this episode here.

About Dr. Barbara Kerr

Barbara Kerr, Ph.D., is the Williamson Family Distinguished Professor of Counseling Psychology and Co-Director of the Center for Creativity and Entrepreneurship Education at the University of Kansas. 

Dr. Kerr is the author of seven books, some of which you can find here. She has written more than 150 articles and papers on the topic of guiding and nurturing talent. Her research ranges from case studies of inventors, artists, writers, and architects to large-scale studies of students who attained the highest scores on the ACT college admissions test.

She is a winner of the NAGC Torrance Award for Contributions to Creativity, the Esther Katz Rosen Award for Research in Gifted Education, and she is an American Psychological Association Fellow, named one of the 25 most influential psychologists in the study of giftedness by APA.

Dr. Kerr currently directs the Counseling Laboratory for the Exploration of Optimal States (CLEOS), where creative students learn to navigate the invisible pathways to creative careers, and is co-director of the Lawrence Creates Makerspace, where artists and technologists innovate together.  Previously, she was on the White House Science Advisory committee on Makerspaces, Project Director for National Science Foundation Gender Equity Programs, Psychologist at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Associate Director of the Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education at the University of Iowa and director of the Guidance Laboratory for Gifted at the University of Nebraska.

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

I gotta be honest with you, I'm toasted. Roasted, toasted, burnt to a crisp. 

The impending shift back to normal is already rocking my socks about as much as the initial upheaval did. Except for, this time, replace the fear, astonishment and booze with enthusiasm, social awkwardness and...well. Booze.

Don't misunderstand me. I am so excited to see people again. It's just that I got used to having some decisions made for me, and now it's time to start making them for myself again. How do we make time for all of the joys of life, old and new?

We're going from the keystones of pandemic burnout, isolation and zoom fatigue, to another very real kind of burnout: people fatigue. Taking-on-too-much fatigue. 

Beware the overwhelm, my friends. Look for the signs.

In this episode, I share some of my personal signals that burnout is getting real, but I'd love to hear: What are the signs of burnout for you?

Email me at [email protected] and let me know!

**In an attempt to name a feeling I've been struggling with the past few weeks, I continued my research on the topic after recording this episode. I came across this article by Adam Grant on the idea of languishing.  According to Grant, languishing is often a precursor to larger mental health challenges. If you're feeling a bit unmotivated or "blah" right now, I recommend giving this article a read.

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach

What’s on your mind, unicorn? 🦄 Send me a text!

What’s holding you back from chasing your dreams? If you’ve been procrastinating on your career moves, get ready, because Jayati Vora is here to dish you some serious straight talk.

As an editor who once walked into her boss’s office and said “I quit,” Jayati’s got some meat in her message. She also comes up with way better metaphors than that.

In this episode, we talk about burnout, how to know when you should leave your job, facing your fears (particularly judgment), and the power of being silly.

Takeaways from this episode:

1. Feel for the train tracks. When you stop resisting, you might just click into your groove.
2. Your safety net is a prison.
3. If your cup is already full, you can’t fill it with anything else.
4. Stick with it. Keep going. The path will become clear.
5. Give yourself permission to be silly. 

ABOUT JAYATI VORA

Jayati Vora is a recovering journalist and editor of award-winning stories who is obsessed with making work be as close to play as possible. This means that she occasionally does strange things like asking people to help her fail or writing a job posting to attract her next client. She teaches children creative writing, or so she tells their parents. What she REALLY teaches kids is how to love stories, and how to tell them. She has a writing-centric show called Cutting Chai Stories. And as the Million-Dollar Story Boss, she is showing entrepreneurs and start-ups how to mine and polish their own gold story. She hosts an ongoing writing party for anyone who wants inspiration, motivation, accountability, and feedback; DM her for deets.

Get her 12 things to never forget when writing your next email: https://cuttingchaistories.com/12emailcomponents/ 

Sign up for her Million-Dollar Emails: https://cuttingchaistories.com/waitlist/

Cutting Chai Stories Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1N3JPCvINDiOtzyviVkfjz

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jayativora/

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cuttingchaistories

She also issued us a prompt this week in The Creative Commute Community. 

Support the show

🔥 Ready to step into your next level? Join us at Island Awakening in Saint Martin from June 4-8, 2025! Let’s rise together. 🌴✨

💫 Claim your spot now: jenliss.com/retreat

Support the pod:

• Share an episode and tag Jen on IG @untetheredjen
• Follow/subscribe to get updates of new episodes
• Leave a review!

Music created and produced by Matt Bollenbach