Posted on by Helene Johnson

On The Other Side Of Fear

Fear is pervasive. Michel de Montaigne, a French Renaissance statesman and writer noted about 500 years ago: “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”  Indeed, studies show that up to 95% of what we worry about in life never happens.

At times, fear sneaks on us, like a nagging feeling, when things might seem too good to be true. Other times, it is there, ubiquitous, unconsciously shaping our behaviors and thoughts, well anchored into our childhood histories and environment. James Hollis, a Jungian psychoanalyst and author of several books notes in his book “Living An Examined Life” that “more energy is spent in any given day on managing fear through unreflective compliance, or avoidance, than any other value“.

There is also the more extraordinary fear – at, call it, crossroads moments in our lives when events or situations put a bigger choice in front of us. For instance, do I say yes or no to… moving to another country, staying in a marriage or a relationship, leaving a job, starting a business or simply accepting an invitation to talk at a conference.

Fear can be paralyzing and likes to tangle us in our status quo. Therefore, not unsurprisingly, fears abound when we are at a point of getting out of our comfort zone. After all, the main question at a specific “crossroad” moment is do I choose to be afraid and stay where I am, or do I choose to move forward by saying yes and taking a first step, in acceptance of uncertainty and risks. At the end of the journey of facing fear in the face, usually breakthroughs happen. For instance, something you thought you couldn’t even imagine yourself doing turns out “feasible” in the end. So it’s not a surprise that many of us can point to specific actions or decisions underpinning significant growth at a personal or professional level, but which only came about as result of turning back on our fears.

‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said. So what are some myths around fear?

  • If there is fear, then it must not be the right thing for me. Fear is insidious and chameleonic. Being afraid of unknown, changes, losing control, or failing doesn’t necessarily mean we are straying away from our righteous paths. The feeling of fear could simply be a measure of our understanding of the situation at hand and its short or long run implications. In the same “Living An Examined Life”, James Hollis talks about how “something within always does know what is right for us and what is wrong”. Discerning through what exactly we are afraid of and why will release the stronghold that fear might have on us and liberate us from its grip to make the right call.
  • If there is fear, then I am going too fast. This is a myth that can only be understood once you start growing. In other words, once you experience some level of growth, you understand that fear might actually be a good sign. For instance, if there is nothing on the horizon or in the calendar that give you some anxiety about it, you are not stretching and dreaming big enough. Brené Brown in her “Daring Greatly” book notes: “When we spend our lives waiting until we’re perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make. Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don’t exist in the human experience.” 
  • If there is fear, but I choose to move forward, everything will go smoothly and I won’t experience any or much pain or stress. While a conscious decision to move beyond fear will help you push through, there is no guarantee that the process will be smooth. In the 9 Things Successful People Do Differently, Heidi Grant Halvorson talks about the difference between a realistic optimist and an unrealistic optimist. Realistic optimists believe they will succeed via efforts, planning, persistence, strategizing and overcoming challenges. Unrealistic optimists on the other hand, believe success will happen to them, as some sort of reward for their positive thinking. Heidi notes that “believing that the road to success will be rocky leads to greater success, because it forces you to take action”. In other words, stepping out of your comfort zone and choosing to look fear in the face doesn’t mean to blindly believe things will work out without challenges or pain. James Hollis in “Living An Examined Life” likes to call this “We have to risk feeling worse before feeling better, and we have to risk the loss of the oh-so-comforting misery of stuckness”.

Having understood some of those myths around fear, it becomes obvious that fear is universal, however if tamed, it is one of life’s biggest gifts.

What are some strategies to tame the “Fear” beast?

  • Journal. Every day, week or month, journal on your fears and feelings in general. What did you feel? What did you think? What did you do? Looking back and analyzing what might be holding you back, what control you might have or not, or what the worst outcomes might be is the soil where fears lose their grip as a more self-aware, determined and brave soul arises. In James Hollis’ words: “fear is unavoidable, but a life in which fear calls the shots is one that results in terrible malformations of the soul….and sooner or later we all have an appointment with our soul.”
  • Reach out. Ask for help or reach out to someone you trust to talk about your fears, especially if it’s something more complex or complicated that you are struggling with. We are craving and made for connection. Knowing we are not alone empowers us to stand against fear, either because someone else has gone through a similar situation and can share his/her perspectives, or simply because we are being heard. Strength is not defined by the ability to carry everything on our own shoulders, but to know our own limits and that we can become stronger with help from others (e.g. a coach, a mentor, online or in-person support groups, like minded people or simply individuals in our lives who have earned our trust).
  • Take massive imperfect action in motivational speaker Tony Robbins’words. Action helps us to reclaim our rights to a better and braver life. Identifying a practical way to address a fear or situation has a domino effect for both our mindsets and success. Like the saying “God doesn’t steer a parked car”, nothing can change without intentional action. Philanthropist and author W. Clement Stone liked to call it “when thinking won’t cure fear, action will.”

By journaling and making conscious decisions on how we respond to fears,  they end up guiding us in finding ourselves and developing our potentials.

Fear is omnipresent, however, there is a lot of opportunity built-in with it. In her book “Feel the Fear…and Do It Anyway”, PhD Susan Jeffers notes “As long as I continue to push out into the world, as long as I continue to stretch my capabilities, as long as I continue to take risks in making my dreams come true, I am going to experience fear.”

To sum it all up, authenticity, growth and purpose lay on the other side of fear.

Posted on by Helene Johnson

Book Club – Outliers, The Story Of Success

Book: Outliers, The Story of Success

Publishing Year: 2008

About the Author: Malcolm Gladwell is an English-born Canadian journalist, public speaker, and author of five New York Times bestsellers — The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. His latest book published in 2019 is titled Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know. Gladwell is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, the producer of the podcasts Revisionist History. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. Included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list, Gladwell is considered one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.

Growth Is A Journey summary consists of a series of questions and answers, intended to represent 1-2 key nuggets of insight from the book, as well as personal takeaways with an invitation for readers to discover the book in its entirety.

Key message of the Book: Outliers is a non-fiction thought-provoking book, reframing stories of success of high achievers, such as Bill Gates and Beatles, referred to as outliers. Such stories of extreme success are not defined solely through the lens of personal traits, talents, and hard work; they are presented through the lens of external factors such as the culture, environment, upbringing, generation and family of those outliers. As Malcolm put it, “the point of my book Outliers was that we need to tell the story of success in different ways, looking at the way talent is affected by luck and circumstance and culture and context.”  Of interest, as of June 2020, HBO Max is reported to have an “Outliers” series project under development, based on Gladwell’s book.

What to know before reading: The book is structured in two parts: opportunity and legacy, two external factors found to be strong contributors to the success of outliers. What opportunities we are being offered and what social, cultural, and family legacy we are inheriting can make a huge difference: “The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact, they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.”  Each chapter of the book is alike a social study case, used to demonstrate how things like the birthdate, place, generation, timing, environment, and culture where you might be born or grow up into matter a lot.

To make it more concrete, as an example: Chapter one titled the Matthew Effect talks about how many hockey league players in Canada have birth months close to the cutoff date for youth hockey leagues. Players who are born within a few months of the cutoff date -January 1st- are generally slightly more developed than players who are born later in the year. Even if there is a slight age advantage, older kids are likely a bit stronger physically, meaning they have higher chances to be drafted for All-Star teams. Once selected, those kids are given better opportunities to practice and get coached than the younger kids. What started as a small advantage becomes a built-in advantage based on birth date, causing significant differences in the players ‘physical abilities on the long run. Such phenomenon has been coined as the Matthew Effect from the bible verse, calling out that those advantaged will get further advantaged while the disadvantaged will see more losses.

Throughout the book, you will be journeying through the connection between plane crashes and national cultures, why many software tycoons in Silicon Valley are born around 1955, why descendants of Jewish immigrants, born around 1930 became very successful lawyers in New York, and why Asian children are so good in math.

Biggest personal learning from the book: Key learning for me was the idea of success being the result of not only hard work but also of opportunities created by the environment, generation, culture, or family you are born in. External factors influence success, as much or potentially even more than personal traits like IQ, talent or determination. Reading the book, it has opened my eyes and mind to the opportunities I have received via my birth date, culture, environment, generation and family history, and how as a parent, professional or leader, I cannot ignore the importance of such external factors when considering success of my own or those around me in my sphere of influence.

One specific learning from the book:

Known as the 10,000-hour rule, Malcolm talks about the importance of practicing and mastering a skill to achieve world-class level of expertise: “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Furthermore, Outliers seem to be folks who were given unique opportunities to practice early enough to get to the 10,000-hour level early in their careers or lives: “But there is nothing in any of the histories we’ve looked at so far to suggest things are that simple. These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society”.  For instance, Beatles started as a high school rock band, struggling at the beginning but which got the opportunity to practice hard when invited to play at a night club in Hamburg for eight hours a night, seven days a week for several times between 1960 and 1962: “All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, in fact, they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times”.

As someone who sees hard work as a personal value, I also empathized with the idea of finding meaning in work: “Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” In other words, “hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig”.

How is this book different from other leadership books: The book is not the typical success/self-help book encouraging a specific set of individual traits or skills, or a particular mindset. It is a book woven in social, economic, and cultural research that explains in a fascinating way how as human beings our success has a lot to do with the external world/culture/environment/generation we live in. It brings to light in a very compelling way that “success is a group project”: “It’s because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances, and that means that we, as a society, have more control about who succeeds – and how many of us succeed – than we think.”

Additional resources: For more details on https://www.gladwellbooks.com/

Comments/Feedback: I would love to hear from you with comments, thoughts, and testimonials on Outliers.

Posted on by Helene Johnson

A Story of Kindness: Chelsea’s Charity – Art Is A Start

As part of the Empowerment initiative, Growth Is A Journey is delighted to share the story -if you have not heard about it yet – of a wonderful 10-year-old who is making the world a better place with her love for art, and a heart to give and help children via homemade art kits.

How did Chelsea’s Charity start? For her 10th birthday in August 2019, Chelsea Phaire asked her guests to donate art supplies instead of gifts. Her desire to donate art kits to children in need went viral on social media and got enough attention for Chelsea and her family to be encouraged to officially start Chelsea’s Charity. Since then, Chelsea’s Charity has distributed thousands of art kits to children across the country and has had a first international distribution in Haiti. While the in-person distributions have been postponed because of COVID-19, the mail distribution continues – for homeless shelters, orphanages, hospitals, and schools. Each art kit comes with a few essential art materials such as colored pencils and paper, and a handwritten note from Chelsea with her heartfelt wishes and the motto “Art Is A Start”.

Chelsea’s conviction is that “Art Is A Start”, with the potential to support children’s mental health and social-emotional development, and to help them cope with everyday life. She lived the power of healing via art herself, at 8-years-old, when her swim coach passed away from gun violence: “The only thing I felt like I had left to make me happy was art”. Therefore, Chelsea has been looking to donate to children who have experienced traumatic events. She traveled to El Paso, Texas and Jersey City, New Jersey to deliver her art kits to children who were directly affected by mass shootings. She also distributed art kits at homeless shelters in Queens, NY and has been working with several low-income schools across the country.

Chelsea is a strong believer of kindness – “One act of kindness can cause a big effect on other people’s lives” and that art should be available for everyone as a conduit for healing and healthy mental development, especially for children in needs. Chelsea’s point of view is supported by research in early education, with psychologists and experts recommending art as a way for children to externalize their feelings but also as a way to support their visual, fine motor, mental and social development.

Chelsea’s goal is to distribute over 50,000 kits by 2021 in all U.S. states and internationally, and she is on her journey to become a professional in arts.

Thank you, Chelsea, for being an inspiration to children and adults alike, and demonstrating that no one is too young to show kindness and make a difference in this world!

For more information on Chelsea’s Charity work, please visit:  https://www.chelseascharity.com/

For a one-time or recurrent donations, please visit: https://client.customdonations.com/securepay/chelseascharity/

If in needs of kits, please follow specific instructions on Chelsea’s Charity website – Menu Option: More/In Need of Kits.

(Article and Picture published with Chelsea’s Charity permission)

Posted on by Helene Johnson

Guest Article: Growth in the Face of Adversity

By Guest Writer Jennifer Tankersley, an Executive Coach and Principal of The Tankersley Group, works with leaders and their teams to achieve individual and organizational excellence.

There is no question that the leaders of today are facing some of the biggest challenges of their careers. Thrust suddenly into unchartered territory by the pandemic, they are dealing with intense levels of uncertainty and volatility where their business decisions are laden with unprecedented layers of complexity.  Leaders, some of whom were already stretched thin and headed toward burn out, are now finding themselves forced to navigate critical business challenges while managing furloughs, layoffs and compensation cuts.  In the midst of this pressure, they are also traversing a completely different office landscape where working from a make-shift home space, meeting virtually and juggling home schooling and childcare is the new normal. From the perspective of a coach who works with business executives, this is not exactly an ideal formula for tackling personal growth.

Yet, in the last few months, I have inquisitively watched my clients move more fully and substantially into their leadership roles.  Some are finding the courage to step up and adopt those seemingly unattainable leadership qualities to which they have aspired.  Others are finally glimpsing the behaviors that have undermined their effectiveness in a way that feedback had never fully uncovered, thereby giving rise to significant change. Over and over, I am seeing leaders opening themselves up and leaning into the invitation to grow.

This begs the question why now? How, in the midst of such precariousness and turmoil, are leaders showing up in a different way and journeying into the often uncomfortable process of growth? In my coaching work with business leaders, there appears to be three synergistic  factors at play that are accelerating these transformational shifts.

  1. DISRUPTION: While it may seem to be the least likely candidate to spur growth, this massive societal disruption seems to be doing just that. For many leaders, there is almost nothing status quo in the current environment and this impediment to routine has created just the push they need to awaken to new possibilities. For some, a shift that had felt insurmountable only months ago, is now bred from necessity.  Pure chaos has led to the breaking open of a perceived barrier. By way of illustration, one of my senior HR leader clients had been working to move out of execution into a more strategic role but continually struggled with delegating responsibility. Given both the external and internal threats resulting from the pandemic, she discerned that letting go and trusting her team was the only way forward. For another client, the current upheaval served to exaggerate his reactive tendencies toward conflict.  This amplification of his behavior forced him to acknowledge the impact it was having on his team. For others, the disordering of their lives has spawned a willingness to experiment with new approaches and create space for the possibility of doing things differently.
  2. REFLECTION: Disruption in and of itself, however, does not create lasting change. As John Dewey, a 20th-century philosopher of education taught “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” Our habits or tendencies are deeply rooted and, without a deliberate and measured move toward something new, we will be naturally pulled back to inertia. Reflection is a process of examining one’s beliefs and assumptions with the goal of accessing alternative perspectives. Reflection takes time, discipline and purposeful pauses in which new learning has an opportunity to germinate.  Unfortunately, our fast-paced, often reactive way of being doesn’t naturally lend itself to such attention. While the current environment doesn’t necessarily facilitate greater time for reflection, the mood people are finding themselves in seems to be nudging them in that direction. The space for reflection can be intentionally created when it is recognized as a powerful tool for growth. Recently, one of my clients was reflecting, with a bit of guilt, on how working from home had allowed her to finally slow down. She was dreading the thought of “going back to normal”.  We used her attention to what felt different to explore what was working, what had become possible and what actions she could take from this new, slower pace. As part of our exploration, she decided to start a daily journal to reflect on the shifts she wanted to keep, the impact they were having on her leadership and how she would take them forward when a new “normal” began.
  3. RESILIENCE: When I consider the clients who are creating real change right now, they are commenting on their heightened sense of being able to change. Why does the current environment invoke that elevated level of ability to transform? In exploring that question, I am noticing a pattern of leaders who are, somehow, better resourcing themselves, and are thereby better able to withstand the discomfort associated with adaptation. Some of those I work with are building in time for self-care; something that had been poorly attended to in the past. A walk in the morning is replacing the commute time in the car.  Other clients are tending to their energy levels.  A client, who had perpetually shown up to our meetings drained and overwhelmed was struggling to understand why now, paradoxically, she was feeling so much more willingness to work on her ingrained behavioral patterns. She suffers from a longstanding pattern of defensiveness in which she frequently races to justify her position when confronted with opinions that differ from hers; a defensive mechanism that protects her from the discomfort of feeling exposed or unworthy. As we reflected on what was different, she noted that, as an introvert, the simple break from back-to-back in-person meetings and, for her, awkward social interactions, was not as taxing on her energy.  With that extra vigor, she was able to tolerate the discomfort of listening and not defending herself, creating opportunities to explore a reactive pattern that was no longer working for her. Other clients are sharing that previously neglected family time is now filling them with a sense of joy and aliveness – a foundation of resiliency.  These clients, in various forms, have reconnected with sources of energy and vitality that provide them the necessary reserve to work through and bounce back from challenge. Leaders who understand and embrace this are able to not only cope with the current state of affairs but are also able to demonstrate tremendous personal growth in spite of it.

Viktor Frankl, the famous Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, penned a postscript to his book Man’s Search for Meaning titled “The Case for Tragic Optimism.” He defines this as the ability to “remain, optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad,” … a triad which consists of … (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death.” While I am profoundly saddened by the way Covid-19 has impacted our world, the changes I am seeing in my clients bring me hope.  These are leaders with great influence and responsibility, who are discovering greater possibilities within themselves and showing up more consciously for others. As a coach who is dedicated to changing the world through work, this is giving me great optimism amidst the tragedy and hardship we are collectively experiencing.  The great pause gifted to us by the 2020 pandemic is inviting the opportunity for genuine change through disruption, reflection and resilience. With these conditions in place, true growth and transformation are not only possible but probable.  

Jennifer Tankersley, Executive Coach, The Tankersley Group

More on Jennifer: Jennifer has spent the last 25 years dedicated to helping organizations and individuals achieve excellence and breakthrough results. With an extensive background working with leaders on critical strategic and people issues as an advisor and consultant, she now focuses her work on coaching leaders and teams as they tackle navigating the complexity of their roles or charters. Before starting The Tankersley Group, Jennifer worked for The Boston Consulting Group and cofounded NP Strategies, a recognized leader of nonprofit strategy consulting in Southern California.

Jennifer is passionate about creating positive social impact and has founded and served on several nonprofit boards. She is on a broader mission to “change the world through work” believing in the profound possibility of stronger leadership and corporate cultures for creating societal change. Jennifer is based in San Diego, California.

Posted on by Helene Johnson

Life After The Lockdowns

What a ride 2020 has been! Across many countries, we are slowly transitioning to some levels of normality with the hopes that the peaks of COVID-19 contagion are behind us. First days into the suddenly changed reality, it felt like COVID-19 was calling us to press the reset button. A few months into it, it feels as if we are awakening to a new spring of life from a forced human hibernation to preserve lives.

Like with any spring, we are treading carefully, warily of a few more winter storms to come before a full swing to warm weather.

What has the COVID-19 hibernation taught us or revealed to us to date?

– A deeper sense of appreciation. The crisis has taught many of us not to take the big and little things in life for granted: family, friends, outings, caretakers, teachers, health providers, jobs, industries, life itself… At risk or in lack, the value of what was once part of our normal has suddenly become so evident for sustaining our existence. Or stated in another way, as novelist Thornton Wilder said,  “we can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures”.

– An inner wisdom to be intentional. The crisis has forced us to be intentional in our actions and communications, in order to stay afloat, and help others do the same, as we have all been facing entering uncharted territories, with uncertainty, fear and loss on the horizon. Or stated in another way, common sense is not common practice and this crisis has taught us the difference.

– A life skill to continually adjust and persevere. The crisis has taught little kids to use Zoom as part of virtual school programs, and business partners to negotiate deals on backdrops of  little humans’ laughter or cries. It has taught many of us to be a little bit braver while getting more comfortable to sharing a little more of our private spaces and lives. While governments around the world are pumping money into economies to help individuals, companies or industries adjust or re-invent themselves.

– A better appreciation of time. Forced to rethink and adjust priorities and schedules, even if ultimately many of us have not been fully in control of time (e.g. working parents) the crisis has taught us to relinquish control and in that process appreciate the sacredness of time better. In musician and songwriter George Harrison’s words: “it’s being here now that’s important”.

– A see-through of weaknesses. The crisis has revealed a number of weaknesses of ourselves as individuals (e.g. where did all the ice-cream pints and toilet paper go), but also vulnerabilities and flaws in our societies,  family structures, healthcare, governments and socio-economic systems. For instance, The Economist has run a piece on how working moms have been more impacted than working fathers by the pandemic, as more of the care and household chores have fallen on moms during the lockdown. Or in many parts of the world, ethnic minorities or historically marginalized groups have been the most impacted by the pandemic, due to underlying healthcare and socio-econimic inequities.

Life after the lockdowns is therefore not about finding our normal again, but about redefining it, based on what lessons and learnings have become apparent in this crisis. And with it, a renewed sense of appreciation, intentionality and meaning takes hold of us for key acts of life – being, doing, loving, leading and caring.

As to the identified weaknesses, where there is weakness, there is also potential for growth. Darkness is exposed by light. Becoming self aware is the first step for individuals, institutions and societies to take ownership of problems and flaws, and responsibly create change. As Brené Brown notes in her book titled The Gift of Imperfections, “only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light”.

Posted on by Helene Johnson

How To Change A Negative Habit

As complex human beings, the way we act or think is influenced by many variables such as our environment, DNA, uprising,…At times, consciously or unconsciously, we are caught in patterns of negative emotions or behaviors that impact us at home, work or in our relationships. Norman Vincent Peale referred to negative thinking as fertilizing weeds; other negative emotions or behaviors include anger, resentment, jealousy, perfectionism or addictions. Brené Brown, a Phd professor, lecturer and author notes in her Dare To Lead book, “when we have the courage to walk into our story and own it, we get to write the ending. And when we don’t own our stories of failure, setbacks and hurt – they own us.”

How to ditch a negative emotion or behavior?

  • Assess the cost of not changing versus the cost of changing. At times, there are warning signs related to a particular negative behavior or emotion, but even when we are self-aware, we tend to minimize its potential impacts or long-term consequences; we end up normalizing somewhat the behavior or not being intentional about making a change. There are times however when things hit us loud and clear – jobs or relationships are at risk. Be realistic about the behavior/emotion and its costs. When the cost of not changing is higher than the cost of changing, it becomes very obvious that we need to make a change. If for instance, as a parent, you lose your patience way too often, because of your own unhealed wounds, as per James Hollis, an author and Jungian analyst, “the greatest gift we can give our children is our own healing.” 
  • Recruit an accountability partner. It can be your spouse, best friend, a work colleague you trust. Let them know you decided to work on your emotion/behavior and that you need their help to keep your commitment and be accountable.
  • Develop a help system. Identify what and who can help you sustain the change. It can be seeking and getting the professional help you might need. Or finding online or local groups, and resources that you will rely upon when you are tempted to go back to your old behavior. The idea is to develop your own microsystem of practical resources and ways to address the behavior, or to simply remind yourself why the change is needed.
  • Visualize yourself living or working free of the emotion/behavior you are working on. The power of our mind -via affirmations or visualization- is the biggest tool we have to manifest changes. This is because sooner or later we default to acting according to our beliefs. As a visual learner, it’s been a breakthrough for me to understand that the simple act of writing down and seeing on paper the qualities I want to reflect make a difference in me acting in that way.
  • Create a reward and self compassion system. Celebrate the wins and progress e.g. first day, week, month, year of freeing yourself of the negative behavior/emotion. Elimination all together and over night might not be possible, therefore relapses will happen. That’s when you cannot give up even in the face of failure, by being self compassionate and continuing the journey of making the change. As per Dr Kristen Neff, a widely recognized expert and founder of the Self-Compassion Research Lab, “self-compassion entails being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism“.

Growth is a journey in part because it takes continued courage and self-awareness to peel the onion of our souls and walk into our purpose. It is not about being perfect but about embracing our imperfections and deciding to take action to work through them in love and compassion but also firmly and responsibly.

Posted on by Helene Johnson · 2 Comments

A Letter On Graduation Day

Graduations are an exciting milestone – an official culmination and recognition of the academic efforts, while a stepping stone to the future. A painter could paint this day as a wide expanse of green valleys, with lots of colorful butterflies and mountain peaks in the horizon, valleys and sky uniting in the far edges of the landscape. Observing the painting, one would feel the wind blowing, extend the arms as if touching the sky and the mountains in the horizon, and in that movement, touch lightly one of these winged souls – full of hope, excitement and fear of unknown.

Looking back to my Graduation day, this is what I would say to myself on that day:

  • Yes, everything is possible. You are right to dream and to dream big. Life is full of opportunities and you are uniquely designed and equipped for your purpose. “The world is your garden”, one of my teachers used to say. Even if you only have some vague ideas of what you want to accomplish in life, don’t worry. Do the best you can where you get planted, the rest will reveal itself over time, with more adventures and experiences. As Martin Luther King Jr said “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step”. Dreams are like a mustard seed, whatever you water and see within the realm of possible, defines the universe of your possibilities. As Henri Ford put it, “whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right“. In other words, believe you can and you will, believe you cannot and you won’t.
  • No, it won’t happen overnight. Building skills and expertise takes time. Building a sustainable future and accomplishing dreams take time, commitment, plans and hard work. Joy Wilder, founder of The Brilliant Life and Micro Planning Systems brilliantly notes how every day we are planners, either by design or by default. Learning doesn’t stop at graduation – it is a perpetual activity by:
    • Developing critical thinking. Your youth gives you permission to ask questions even if they seem silly or basic. Once you understand the why and the how, then you can transform and innovate.
    • Developing a growth mindset. Anything in life can be learned. As per Carol Dweck, “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishments“. In other words, don’t put negative labels on yourself when you don’t know something but instead put in the efforts required to learn and grow.
    • Developing resilience as obstacles and challenges will be inevitable. Reaching dreams is not a linear and fixed plan, it’s staying flexible and open to ride through the curved roads of life. Ultimately you will understand that reaching your dreams will be a byproduct of the journey and process.
  • No, it won’t happen in solitude. We accomplish more when surrounded by and connected with others. In his book Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits, Robert Glazer talks about success as an exponential function of what we know, with the exponent being who we know. In other words, the “people” aspect may be more important than “the knowledge” aspect. You land a job faster when you have a professional network. You can know a lot, but if you don’t know how to communicate and relate with others, knowledge will not get you as far as the combination of knowledge, communication and people skills will. Or you have a lot of dreams and aspirations, however your environment may be limiting you either because you may hang out with the wrong crowd or because you don’t have enough mentors for what we all need in order to grow: encouragement and feedback. As motivational speaker Jim Rohn said it, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, including yourself.” Your purpose, in one way or another, is connected to and influenced by others.

Graduations are an end and the beginning to something bigger in life. To some extent, any chapter in life, be it a happy or a painful one, resembles a graduation. We are graduating certain skills, self-awareness or knowledge, and we are moving into a new chapter. We will understand at some point in our lives that there is one special type of graduation that will repeat itself in different ways and shapes throughout our life long journeys and learnings: the graduation from our mind to our heart; after each of such graduations, we journey further into a life of more growth, peace and purpose.

Fly fly butterflies!

Posted on by Helene Johnson

How To Build Resilience

Oftentimes resilience is built in the trenches of life. You went through something really hard or painful, and, with or without crutches, you have made it through alive. It might be something you wished it didn’t happen, or that no one should ever have to go through. Or there are the occasional crises and obstacles, that sooner or later, we all face. These COVID-19 days are also giving us a “resilience” workout.

As the 18th century Irish writer, Oliver Goldsmith said, “our greatest glory in living lies not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.” More importantly, research shows that, in fact, obstacles and hardships act as a catalyst for more engaged, authentic and motivated individuals. Take Starbucks’ former CEO, Howard Shultz, for instance. Growing up in the inner city in a very poor family, he witnessed his family’s struggles to make ends meet. When his father was laid off after an injury, with no health insurance to cover medical expenses, he vowed to build a company that his father would have been proud to work for, one that respected his employees and offered healthcare protection even for part-time employees.

So how to work the resilience muscles such that regardless of what happens to us happens for us on the long run?

  • Always cling to something positive. Train yourself to see and be grateful for at least one positive thing in your life, even in the midst of the storm. As long as you can still count your blessings, you are not defeated. Hope dies last and with it, our humanity.
  • Frame what the story is. Journal what’s happening, objectively frame what you are facing, possible outcomes and ultimately what may or may not be under your control. Depending on the situation, think about your worst case scenario (and see public speaking coach Maryna Shkvorets’ article on this).
  • Allow yourself to feel negative emotions. If you are angry, hurt, upset…those are emotions you shouldn’t try to repress. Give those emotions the outlet required for their processing. Unresolved emotions get trapped in your body and, sooner or later, they will resurface in more toxic and emotional ways.
  • Power through action. Identify one step that you could take to mitigate or minimize what’s happening. Oftentimes after you allow for your emotions to come out, or you have journaled about what you are going through, you can think more clearly in terms of next steps or actions to take. Or simply show some self compassion via an activity that you know is life-giving. Or reach out to to help those who, after all, are less fortunate than yourself – moving the focus away from your own problems will give you some respite from figuring out your own, while putting things into a more balanced perspective.

Robert Glazer, author of Elevate: Push Beyond Your Limits notes that “behind each story of achievement, you will find many untold stories of failure and adversity that needed to be overcome.  In this life, you will face unexpected setbacks; it’s just a matter of how you respond and if you keep going.”

While we can’t control what life throws at us, we can control our response. Resilience is therefore one of the most precious gifts to give ourselves – because it’s the key to a life of overcoming and with overcoming comes thriving, growth and authenticity.

Posted on by Helene Johnson · 3 Comments

How To Ace An Interview

To set the right expectations, acing an interview requires preparation in terms of verbal presentation, identifying why you might be the best fit for the position and communicating persuasively on such conviction.

Whatever or wherever you are interviewing for, start with the belief that you can make your mark in the process if you show up as the best and most authentic self. Irrespective of your level of experience compared to other candidates, your skillset, character, values and potential do set you apart.

How to demonstrate that you are the best candidate in an interview process?

  • Do due-diligence on your prospective employer prior to going into the interview. Candidates who struggle to come up with a few descriptive items on the prospective organisation and its mission, or fail to be specific in their interest might make it to the top of the list based on experience and skills, but if two candidates score the same in all except of the specific interest shown, the candidate displaying the most specific interest in the organization or industry is more likely to move to the next phase in the interviewing process.
  • Find out who you will be interviewing with. In most cases, you will receive ahead of time information on your interviewers – names and job titles. You could think about the type of questions that they would ask based on their roles. If you understand their potential pain points, you will better relate during the interviews. Such connection will also give you a better chance to understand how you will be interacting with those folks, and ultimately, if the team and role are, after all, a good fit for you.
  • Increase your level of energy. Interviewing for a position can be draining and emotional especially if the role appears as the ideal next step for you or if you are in desperate need of getting a (new) job. Pressure and anxiety may take a toll on your confidence and presence. Don’t wallow in those negative emotions and show your strength and motivation for getting this role by doing whatever is necessary to get yourself back in the zone. Reach out to your coach, friends or mentors to regain a peak state in terms of energy and self confidence. Or do whatever works for you (e.g. going to the gym, meditating, listening to music) to reach your peak mental performance. Such positive vibe will make you a more memorable candidate, with enough energy and strength to take on the world.
  • Be mindful about underselling or overselling your experience and expertise. There is a balance to achieve in terms of communicating on your prior experience and expertise. If your communication is too light or informal, it could falsely signal a low level of experience. The opposite is true as well – complicated and complex terms, used to oversell experience and skillsets could easily be ground for questioning that at the end would only demonstrate a shallow level of experience. Balance your responses with practical examples of your achievements – this will be a better and more honest way to demonstrate your expertise in a professional way.
  • Know your learning curve in the role. It can be one of the questions asked. Or you can talk about it, which demonstrates your expectations going into the job are realistic, while knowing what your focus will be on during the first few days, weeks or months on the job. This may also give clues to organizations as to the appropriate support to be put in place for you for a smooth transition and successful integration.
  • Prepare your answers to classical questions. They are called classical because they are being asked often in an interview. Those are questions like what your biggest strengths, weaknesses, achievements or failures are, or what are your leadership style, strategy and vision for the new role. Even if these questions are ultimately not being asked, you have rehearsed them enough to be able to more easily and naturally place positives, examples and stories on your strengths into the discussion. Same goes for questions to ask back – for instance on the role, company or its culture. This will spare you some moments of awkwardness if you have no questions for your interviewers.

Preparing for an interview is ultimately digging inside you to find out what makes you, you, then to communicate explicitly, compellingly and enthusiastically on the alignment between your most authentic and best self and the advertised position. It becomes easy when you have done the “digging” work and at times after going through a number of interviews – as Steve Maraboly says “rejection is just redirection to something better”.

Posted on by Helene Johnson · 2 Comments

A Story Of Excellence: Empowering Students In Their Journeys To Learn

Growth Is A Journey is honored to share Emilia’s story of service and excellence. Emilia is an English teacher at an elementary and secondary school in a small rural community in Romania. Over the last years, Emilia has engaged in multiple initiatives with other schools in Europe. In many of those programs, Emilia’s school was the only school or among very few participating schools in Romania and Europe.

GIAJ: Can you tell us a little bit how your interest in such initiatives started and how you moved from finding out about those programs to pursuing them?

Emilia: First, I am glad to be here and talk about education as I consider it to be very important for all of us and for all countries. A famous German philosopher said : “A people without culture can be easily manipulated” . I totally agree with this idea.

My passion for educational programs started in 2008 when I joined the European community of enthusiastic teachers called eTwinning. I really enjoyed learning by sharing and I tried to find ways to motivate my students to learn a foreign language in a practical way. As my students couldn’t afford travelling abroad for summer camps or with their families to practice their English language skills, I decided to partner online with different European schools and work together in a collaborative and communicative way via the eTwinning platform. Our projects were eventually successful and our school was recognized by receiving an eTwinning Quality label award. Little by little, kids started dreaming about meeting each other one day and enjoyed mailing nice postcards, brochures and souvenirs from Romania. So through these international projects, I focused on sharing about my country’s values, culture and traditions, while learning about tolerance, respect and friendship. It’s a practical way to enrich your life when we travel online without spending money and having in mind an educational goal.

GIAJ: I know your proposals were rejected several years in a row and representing a school from a rural community might have been a disadvantage, however you continued to submit year over year. What kept you going?

Emilia: Yes, I have applied for 3 years. The first year we were on the back-up list. We had a good score but the European Commission’s budget wasn’t sufficient that year. It was disappointing that the project was so close to being accepted and financed, after the huge work put into finding the international school partners and a project around common needs and problems that we face every day in our schools.

I continued applying thanks to the support of my team and colleagues at school. I discovered that they really wanted to make a change for our school. In this small community we want to bring innovation and new ideas to involve more our students in their learning. I realized that without people to support your ideas, who are ready and open to apply new things, you can’t succeed. Fortunately after 3 years of hard work, to our big surprise, all my projects were approved and we are now implementing four projects with schools from nine European countries. One project is called “Unblocking Limits Together” and is focused on social inclusion, diversity, empathy, tolerance and resilience. Students share experience and knowledge with schools from the UK, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Italy. Another project is “Wise Online Web Surfers” with a goal to make students aware of the importance of staying safe online and of becoming wise digital citizens. For this project, my students will collaborate and visit with students from Spain, Greece and Lithuania.

GIAJ:  Can you share with us what ages the participating students generally are and what changes you have seen after the experience of those programs?

Emilia: Participating students are between 11 and 15 years old. I think this type of international and educational program positively impacts students’ lives and futures. It opens their horizons. Two years ago while attending a seminar, I  met a former student. She was happy to thank me because as a student at my school she used to take part in an eTwinning project doing online collaborative activities. This experience was a small but impactful step for her towards learning about other cultures, how to collaborate and share ideas with fellows in a diverse world.

I also generally see a change in my students’ behavior and attitude. They become more responsible and eager to get involved themselves in different activities for our community and of course to put into practice what they have seen and experienced in the schools visited abroad. They are more receptive and motivated to change the community and the world around them.

GIAJ: When looking back at past trips, countries and schools visited with your students, can you share with us a couple of memorable moments?

Emilia: Yes, it’s a pleasure to talk about these moments. For example, I remember how excited my students were to prepare for our trip and to fly for the first time. Also it was a first time when they were apart from their parents for a whole week. Everybody was excited and also anxious –how would they manage alone in a foreign country, trying to put into practice what they had learned at school? In the midst of such mixed emotions, the host school welcomed us warmly by singing songs in the native language of the partner schools. I also still remember how during breaks we were surrounded by different students from the host schools trying to talk to us even if not all of them could speak English. I can see their curious eyes, smiley faces, waving their hands and trying to communicate with us : ”Ola! Hello! Ciao! Bonjour ! Buna!”.

GIAJ:  What has those experiences most taught you as a teacher and at a personal level?

Emilia: These experiences have showed me that everywhere you can meet wonderful people, starting with a simple person on the street. During our educational trips we met friendly people eager to learn from us and to hear about our country. I learned once again that it’s not good to judge a book by its covers. I am referring here to my official meeting with the Romanian Ambassador in Dublin, who in spite of her function, showed us her friendly personality during our visit to the Romanian Embassy in Dublin. The Ambassador gave an informal talk  explaining to my students the roles of an Embassy in a foreign country. In turn, my students recited some Romanian and Irish poems, which made the Ambassador express her wish to come and visit my school. For all of us, this was a special and unique event, for many of us it was the first time in an Embassy.

As a teacher, you learn all your life. This is not a myth at all if you like your job and you want to keep up with new methods and trends. All these projects are different and represent pieces of a big puzzle that at the end will lead to a richer personality and a more motivated and enthusiastic teacher.

GIAJ:  By pursuing all those programs, you and your colleagues engaged in those initiatives are doing something unique and exceptional in your community and profession, behind which there is a lot of hard work. What is your hope in doing this?

Emilia: Through these programs, we want to open new doors to our students, make them aware that our world is in continuous change and movement and that we have to live in peace and harmony by understanding better what social inclusion and diversity mean. Generations are also changing thus we have to stay relevant and in touch with technology and the new trends in education. We also hope that our students will be more responsible and more involved in their communities.

GIAJ: As we are at the end of the interview, do you have any special message for the Growth Is A Journey community?

Emilia: Yes, I have. It’s important to guide children with this Chinese proverb in mind : “Tell  me and I will forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I will learn”. By starting with small steps and involving them in their own learning process, the experience and teaching will stay in their minds for a long time. My experience as a teacher showed me this. Making their learning memorable is my aim.

In a post-interview exchange, Emilia shared the letter below written by a London school professor for Emilia to read to her students upon their return from the Dublin trip. This is not only a beautiful token of the power of those programs but also a good reminder for all of us during those COVID-19 days to stay strong and positive.

Posted on by Helene Johnson · 4 Comments

The Paradox of Separation and Connection

In these unprecedented COVID-19 times, more than ever, we are connected by this pandemic. We all face a similar struggle to make sense of each day, weather the crisis and keep sanity. At the same time, two parallel worlds exist – one with people at home in isolation, another one with heroes fighting the pandemic and caring for the sick. Connection and separation co-exist.

We live this paradox of separation and connection at a smaller scale too. As human beings, we crave for connection and belongingness. Maslow’s pyramid of needs includes the need for connection once basic physiological and safety needs are met. However, separation is unavoidable. Our personalities, experiences, backgrounds and roles in life are different: one cannot fully comprehend what another person is feeling, living or doing. Therefore separation, at a smaller or larger degree, is inherent.

So how can we strive in the midst of this paradox of connection and separation, between the yearning to belong and connect, and the unavoidability of separation?

  • Embrace your purpose and differences. We all have our paths in life. When we step into our own purpose and potential, the connections among individuals and communities are enriched and more authentic. Anything short of it makes for a suboptimal connection, leading to frustration or separation.
  • Surround yourself with like minded people. There is an African proverb that says “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. A community of like minded people is a catalyst for growth and therefore stronger connection.
  • Filter out negativity. Negativity can take multiple forms. At times, negativity may come from people we most love. Without an exit strategy in the realm of options in this case, what we can control is how much weight to give to other people’s actions or words.
  • Stop making assumptions. Hurt comes when we let fears and past experiences interpret actions and words for us. The text your friend hasn’t responded to yet …it could simply be that your friend is having a long and tiring day.
  • Increase empathy but don’t lower your standards. Developing empathy challenges our beliefs by forcing us to see things from another person’s point of view. Building a bridge across two positions however doesn’t mean we should compromise on our values and principles.
  • Clarify your beliefs and values. What unites or separates us is ultimately found in our values and beliefs. Used as a compass, they will shape our decisions for connection vs separation and give us the courage to move forward with our choices.

The pitfall of this paradox is two-fold:

  • Unhealthy balance towards connection or separation, which might result in unfulfillment (either because we are too busy connecting rather than walking into our purpose, or because we feel disconnected, and therefore unfulfilled).
  • Rationalize a behavior, emotion or response, which might ultimately work against us. In his book “How you will measure your life“, Harvard Business School professor, Dr. Clayton Christensen, talks about the concept of marginal cost thinking in life and business: “The marginal cost of doing something ‘just this once’ always seems to be negligible,...but the full cost will typically be much higher. …It suckers you in, and you don’t see where that path is ultimately headed or the full cost that the choice entails.”

What we allow to connect or separate us becomes significant.

Our beliefs shape our actions, our actions shape our characters, and our characters shape our lives.

During these unchartered times, unwillingly to all of us, COVID-19 connects us across nations, social statuses, and generations… Let us also be connected – and not separated -by our positivity, strength and responsibility in response to this crisis.

Posted on by Helene Johnson · 8 Comments

Book Club – Guts & Grace

Title: Guts & Grace, A Woman’s Guide To Full-Bodied Leadership, How To Lead Consciously, Dissolve Glass Ceilings, and Dismantle the Patriarchy Within

Publishing Year: 2020

About the Author: LeeAnn Mallorie is a leadership coach, who started her career as an executive coach in 2005, working with C-level leaders and teams around the globe. As the founder and CEO of Leading in Motion, LeeAnn has spent the last decade helping leaders combat both meaning-depletion and burnout by bridging the gap between the hard-driving, logical mind and the deeper, more subtle wisdom of the body and intuition. LeeAnn has taught courses on embodied leadership at the Berkeley Hass School of Business, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Strozzi Institute. Her client list includes brand names like NASA, Capital One, Roche, Campbells Soup Company, Mattel, Nordstrom, Salesforce, Logitech, and the US Naval Air Systems Command, along with startups, non-profits and foundations.

Growth Is A Journey summary consists of a series of questions and answers, intended to share 1-2 key nuggets of insight and personal takeaways. The summary is designed to be an invitation to you all to read the book in its entirety as part of your own journeys of personal and professional growth.

Key message of the book: Guts & Grace is a book about growing leadership skills, by understanding and building upon the connection between body and mind. As strange as it might sound when hearing about it for the first time, there is a powerful connection between body and mind. We understand this oftentimes when when we are tensed and our body aches. Once this deep body-mind system is activated via embodied practices, a more authentic, grounded and stronger leader awakens in each one of us.

What to know before reading: The book is structured across four Themes – Embody, Empower, Activate and Inspire. Within each theme, chapters are focused around a leadership myth. Dispelling the myth involves replacing it with a new leadership truth, backed by a piece of research or other books on the myth, as part of a science section. LeeAnn ends each chapter with a practice section with 1-2 recommended embodied practices to integrate and experiment with. There are 12 embodied practices in the book, the core of embodied leadership teaching. Playlist recommendations are a bonus to each chapter.

To make it more concrete, as an example, chapter one is about the leadership myth that when we are leaders and striving to make an impact, it is normal to feel exhausted, body and joy coming the last. This is a lie we tell ourselves especially as new leaders or from time to time when we normalize the feelings of being overwhelmed. The truth however is that if we don’t prioritize feeling good in our bodies and mind, sooner or later we will end up missing on “powerful and compelling leadership”. Replacing the myth by the truth is supported by past research and science. For instance, LeeAnne points to John Ratey’s research findings. As a clinical associate professor at Harvard Medical School, Ratey was puzzled by the rise in physical and mental disease despite the technological and medical advances over the past few decades. Via his work, Ratey found that our sedentary lifestyle choices are a big driver in this trend because these lifestyle choices are violating our original biological design. In other words, we were built to move, and by not doing so, our bodies are not functioning at the optimal level. Therefore, Ratey’s advice is for us to find ways to return to our wilder, more original nature – the medicine needed the most by modern-day human beings. The two embodied practices LeeAnne is recommending in this chapter are anchored in this research: (1) commit to a Joy workout class every week (e.g. dance, pottery, cooking, piano,…) – meaning an activity that brings you JOY; and (2) take a daily happy dance  – which will activate joy, creativity, play, and the inner child in you. Such physical practices will energize you and will improve your capacity to make new moves in other domains as well, at work or in your personal lives.

Other leadership myths in the book pertain to time management (e.g. the myth of being at the mercy of others and deadlines), saying no, having difficult conversations, effective and long-lasting change…

All those myths replaced by leadership truths are foundation to the 4 principles of conscious leadership -Embody, Empower, Activate and Inspire.

Biggest personal learning from the book: My key learning from the book is the idea of using our bodies to strengthen leadership skills. The recommended practices are making this learning very practical as they literally build the capability to awaken to our bodies, to listen within (to our bodies and intuition), and to connect with ourselves and our emotions, all in order to grow in our leadership capacity in a way that is both gracious and authentic. My only regret is to not have read this book much earlier!!! 

One specific learning from the book: A practice that I found powerful and a practical tool to grow to a next level is around two key concepts presented in Guts & Grace. Those concepts are: the Core Dilemma and the North Star.

– The Core Dilemma is the one thing – behavior or emotion – that, consciously or unconsciously, stands in our way and sabotages us. It’s the “internal glass ceiling”, the “Achilles heel” , the “survival strategy” that served us once to survive and which likely impacts both our personal and professional lives. Core Dilemma could be beliefs such as “I need to do all to show I am strong” or “It’s better to not speak up to keep peace”.

– The North Star is a declaration for a specific outcome, embodying a commitment to a new form of existence or emotion. “I am a commitment to speaking up and being seen” or “I am a commitment to loving and letting go of the need to prove myself”. Having a North Star practice for a specific intention (e.g. a particular physical posture while affirming your new commitment) will be the catalyst for the intention to be embodied. We ultimately become our North Star – the body will take on the natural shape the North Star declaration inspires.

How is this book different from other leadership books: The book is truly a guide taking the reader from one myth to another, from a practice to another …. with the intent for the reader to find and use the inner wisdom of the body. I love the practicality of the book via the 12 embodied practices. Even after an initial read, the book remains a practical and life-long tool for continued growth or when particular leadership myths make their way back into our beliefs and lives.

The author’s special message for the Growth Is A Journey community: “I’m excited to support you through a journey of growth and transformation as you read my new book Guts & Grace. Whether it be at work or at home, taking the lead requires courage and strength… but it also requires knowing when (and how!) to surrender to forces bigger than yourself and trust that they will carry you through. Guts & Grace is designed to help you heal old wounds, release anxieties, build resilience and really step into your whole self as a leader, regardless of your age. I hope you and your community have an amazing journey with Guts & Grace, and always remember to trust your gut!” (LeeAnne Mallorie, March 2020)

Additional resources: For more details on Guts & Grace embodied practices, please check out Guts& Grace and the resource page: https://www.gutsandgrace.com/book-resources-page.

Comments/Feedback: I would love to hear from you with comments, thoughts and testimonials on Guts & Grace and your own journeys of embodied leadership.