Now That You See It

Sometimes, usually without consciously realizing it, the behavior you use to cope with something you're trying to avoid ensures that exact outcome. Joe Hudson calls this the golden algorithm. We act in ways designed to prevent an unwanted outcome, and those same behaviors ensure it. Once you notice the pattern, it starts showing up everywhere. In this shortisode, Kim and Pancho trade examples from...

We think of constraints as an added challenge. They tie us down. We don't have enough time, money, energy, emotional bandwidth - you name it. They box us in. So Kim wanted to do a shortisode about how, sometimes, they liberate us. In this shortisode, Kim and Pancho explore why constraints can create freedom rather than diminish it. Pancho connects Jocko Willink’s “discipline equals freedom,” Barry...

When COVID made it possible for Wesley Warshawer to work remotely, he Googled the American city with the highest percentage of Trump voters, packed his bags in Silicon Valley, and moved there. His goal was simple: to gain a firsthand understanding of the people outside his political bubble. What he found was both surprising and reaffirming. Beneath the binary choices of American politics, people s...

Capitalism gives you a number of convenient ways to measure whether your life is going well: salary, title, house, savings, status. If one isn't careful, it can become easy to confuse the metrics of success with the definition of success itself, losing sight of the bigger picture. In this shortisode, Kim and I talk about how to cope with capitalism without letting it swallow the rest of your life....

Capitalism is the water most of us are swimming in. Whether you love it, hate it, or have a complicated relationship with it, you still have to figure out how to live inside it. In part one of this two-part shortisode, we talk about some of the ways we think people cope with capitalism that don't actually help. Pancho starts with terror management theory and the temptation to use wealth as protect...

Sometimes the fight over the dishes isn't really about the dishes. Judy Hu, licensed mental health counselor turned boundary coach and author of The Boundary Revolution , returns to explore how family history, culture, trauma, and the experiences of previous generations can show up in our relationships. Her work with couples starts with a simple question: when your reaction feels wildly disproport...

Advice is a tricky thing. Most of us think it's a good thing, and that when we give it, we are helping. But sometimes the advice has nothing to do with the person receiving it, and it's all about the person giving it, making it far less useful. Sometimes it helps, and sometimes it hinders. Or worse, it hurts. In this shortisode, we each share the best and worst advice we've ever received. In real...

Some of the most powerful beliefs we hold aren't ones we consciously chose. They're the stories we inherited from our families, culture, workplaces, and communities about who we're supposed to be, what success looks like, and what we're allowed to want. This week, executive coach and author Stephanie Peirolo joins us to explore how those hidden narratives shape the biggest decisions of our lives....

Feeling stuck can start to feel like a permanent state. You stop saying, “I’m having trouble moving forward,” and maybe even start identifying with it - “I’m stuck.” In this shortisode, Kim and Pancho each bring five ways to get out of a rut. They explore how changing your environment can interrupt familiar patterns, why an easy warm-up task may work better than forcing yourself to start with the...

Christina Reynolds is a coach, a former scientist. At one point, she left a long-term relationship, quit her corporate job, and hiked across the country, all in the span of just a few months. The thing she can't unsee is that there's no such thing as the right decision. Not really. A choice only becomes right or wrong after you've made it and watched how it plays out, and even then, the meaning ke...

This is our second Shortisode, a short-podcast format discussion. As Kim calls it, it's Punch O'Clock! This one is about why people don't change even when they genuinely want to. Kim brings five reasons plus a bonus, and Pancho adds three more. They cover the obvious stuff and the sneaky stuff: Not having felt the full pain of the status quo Not being able to picture the benefit of a change you ha...

Welcome to our first Shortisode, the first of a new short-form format. It's Punchy O'Clock! This one is about the five worst things you can say when someone shares a challenge with you. Not because the people who say them are bad, but because almost all of us reach for these phrases with good intentions and end up making the other person feel worse. Kim ranks her five: "It could be worse" "Here's...

Noelle is back. She founded Lumia Coaching, trained both Pancho and Kim, and is the reason the two of them know each other. This is their second conversation with her, and it picks up a thread from the first: when you change, people get weird. The three of them pull that thread from every direction. - What happens inside the relationships when one person starts growing and the others haven't yet....

Dr. Bruce Chalmer has been a couples therapist for over 30 years. Before that, he was a statistician. And at some point in the time between the two, he went through the kind of despair that changes how someone approaches adversity forever. That experience, and what he found on the other side of it, is what led him to clinical work. It's what he still brings into every session: a specific non-relig...

Salvatore Manzi lost his voice on stage the first time he tried to speak publicly. His dad was a public speaker, and his mom facilitated large group events. It was obvious that he would also become a speaker and facilitator. The first time he stood in front of a room, he lost his voice and had to walk off stage, humiliated. That was the beginning of a 20-year project to help himself and others use...

"Comparison is the thief of joy" is one of those phrases that gets repeated so often that we take it to be rock-solid wisdom. Pancho calls BS. Comparison is not the thief of joy. As a matter of fact, it's not a problem at all. It's one of the most fundamental tools the human mind uses to understand anything, including itself. Without it, there's no sense of self, no theory of mind, no way to disti...

Kim took a real vacation. For what she believes is the first time in her adult life. The ones before were those "vacations" where the laptop comes out on the beach. They were weeks of checking email only five times a day while everyone else looked on in confusion. This time, it was a full, committed, nothing-on-the-calendar week where she said no to a job offer, canceled future plans to go to a co...

Pancho came into this episode without a ready-made insight. He came in with a problem, angst, and some half-baked thoughts. He's building a coaching practice in an economy that isn't generous to people just starting out. The feedback from clients, platforms, and recruiters is overwhelmingly positive, but his business bank account tells a different story. Somewhere in that gap, there's a frustratio...

Kim read a book she couldn't stop taking notes on. Pancho pushed back on one of its central ideas. What followed was a conversation in which we're not quite sure if we agree. The book is Masters of Change by Brad Stulberg, and the thing Kim can't unsee is this: when you're in change you didn't choose, there are ways through it that don't require becoming a different person or pretending you're fin...

Just because your coworkers trust you'll do your job doesn't mean they trust you. This episode goes deep into the practical side of Pancho's relational leadership coaching: six tools he brings into corporate teams, startups, and individual coaching engagements that consistently change how people work together. Most of them require nothing more than a shared document or a different approach to the...

Matthew Kimberley wrote a self-help book at 27 called How to Get a Grip . He was certain he had things figured out. And he's spent the last 20 years finding out how little he knew. In this episode, Matthew joins Kim and Pancho to talk about what he can't unsee: his own fallibility. It's been a gradual process: kids born with health challenges, a marriage dragged through the rocks, career swings th...

What if some of what you've always called your personality is actually anxiety in disguise? That's the thread Kim and Pancho pull on in this episode. It's genuinely hard to untangle the overlap between who you are and what your nervous system has just gotten used to doing. They look at how traits like conscientiousness, planning, and people-pleasing can be anxiety in a disguise that seems reasonab...

What happens when the version of you that has been working for so long no longer fits? This episode explores the slow process Kim took to understand herself and the resulting coming out to her friends and family. We explore how coming out is more than a process for people to publicly step into a more self-affirming sexual orientation. Coming out is a process for anyone who has to share something a...

Chris has spent much of his life looking ahead. Ahead to the next race. The next film. The next goal. In this conversation, he reflects on what’s led him to slow his forward momentum. We talk about entering a three-day darkness retreat and being told, “You’re just an animal in a cage.” About what surfaces when fight-or-flight kicks in without your usual coping mechanisms. About asking yourself, Wh...

Motherhood does not arrive quietly. It changes your body, your brain, your calendar, and your identity. And then the world starts treating you differently before you’ve even figured out who you are becoming. In this conversation with Julie Bacon, founder of the Mothership Collective, we discuss the identity shift of motherhood, both from within and from without. Julie shares what it was like to mo...