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

Each Enneagram personality type have their own superpowers--their ways and means of functioning in the world--that gets them through life, helps them to survive. But these very unconscious characteristics can also create their own versions of stress. They are patterns that we usually don't even fully understand. We also don't know how to break free of them and to make them more conscious, observab...

For many of us, the inner voice is generally loving and encouraging, maybe not enthusiastic, but in your corner, calmly evaluating. In fact, a good internal dialog should function more like a reasonable judge. Or like Lester Bangs tells his young protege William Miller in Almost Famous : “I know you think those guys are your friends. You wanna be a true friend to them? Be honest, and unmerciful.”...

Everybody procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator. And contrary to popular belief, procrastinating has little to do with laziness. It’s far more complicated than simply being a matter of time management. Chronic procrastination doesn’t discriminate based on gender, race or age; we’re all susceptible. So, to provide a brief definition. Procrastination is the voluntary, unnecessary dela...

The futurist Alvin Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”  In their book Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence , Chalmers Brothers and Vinay Kumar describe sixteen “enemies of learning.” They adopted them as first described by Julio Olalla, the noted coach, writer and teacher, and fou...

The idea of this episode came out of a recent media sensation from a study done in Florida, and it showed some gentle shifts in the personalities of the 7,000 people it studied.  The headlines are all over the place. (Links provided in our show notes and links.) On today’s episode we break down the latest findings, if they even matter for our understanding of personality, and why we want you to ge...

We have put “play” as one of our Big Self pillars from the very beginning, but I don’t think we’ve done a single episode on it. We do talk about creativity and gratitude. But that’s not quite the same thing. For one thing, it’s hard to really define what we even mean by play. In fact it’s so elusive to really define for adults, even after I had decided we definitely need to do an episode on play ,...

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."   –Thoreau Some of us are dabblers, some of us are obsessives, and some of us are hackers. Which one are you? They’re basically just different approaches many people take to learning. The dabbler loves when things are new. Just loves the shiny new object and everything about start...

To say our culture prizes the “outer” (whether it’s outer work or the apparent “outer reality”) is an understatement. And by contrast, you hear a lot of leaders and coaches and people who have learned through trial and tribulation that you have to do the “inner work” first.  But what is inner work, and how is it different from what we do at work every day? Many people already have commendable achi...

When I first started thinking about how powerful sadness is an entry point–as a huge territory–for growth, I immediately was like, “this would never make a podcast.” I can see it now: People clicking on the headline wanting to learn more about how they too can be sad. Doesn’t have quite the marketing hook of “how to be happier by thinking positively.” But in a way, that’s just the point. Sadness i...

Habits will make or break us. Habits will deliver results one way or the other. Our focus doesn’t just come from getting out our calendars and setting proper weekly and daily goals. It doesn’t emerge from understanding  the 80/20 rule . It comes from the application of principles that elude us because they come from within. What comes from within is less measurable, and often less clear at first....

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

If you’re like a lot of people, you don’t really care about the health effects of drinking, and frankly you probably don’t care to know. But the fact is that most of us have been drinking more than we want to for a long time.  And a lot of the time when we do this it also fills us with guilt, maybe even shame. Or to bring this full circle, maybe you really don’t think about it and don’t want to th...

Shelley shares her story of burning out and what she's done with it five years on. Chad asks questions based on what he's hearing and thinking about from her story. Shelley discusses how she began to take radical responsibility for herself and her "self" alone and how this led to the tipping point of recovery. We learn about how Social Twos have their own special sauce when it comes to control, an...

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

Burnout has become one of the most talked about workplace and life topics, and its impact is far-reaching. But too much of the conversation is focused on the problem vs. what we can actually do to break free from burnout. In her new game-changing, self-illustrated book, THE AWESOME HUMAN PROJECT: Break Free from Daily Burnout, Struggle Less, and Thrive More in Work and Life Nataly makes a compelli...

Today we speak with entrepreneur and investor, Ted Alling. Ted is a leader in Chattanooga who uses his entrepreneurial achievements to create opportunities for others. He is the co-founder and former CEO of a $500-million startup, Access America, which merged with UPS subsidiary Coyote Logistics. That initial success allowed Ted and his fellow Access America founders to create Lamp Post Group, a v...

Leading teams and organizations to greatness has never been more challenging than it is right now. But there is opportunity amidst the chaos. We are now in an era of post-traumatic growth. An Egon Zehnder study reports that 80% of CEOs strongly agreed they needed to transform themselves as well as their organizations—up from 26% prior to the pandemic. Employees want to grow. Leaders want to help t...

Anne Scottlin is on a mission around the world to help people from business executives to creatives to startup employees who wear a lot of hats to find their joy. What does joy mean? What does it mean to possess it and carry it around with you wherever you go? Tune in to find out. Plus, how Anne practices her own methods in her life. Also, what happened when Anne mind-mapped her life and connected...

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

We’ve been covering burnout from our inception at the top of 2020. We've suffered from it in different ways and at different times in our lives. Now we help organizations and leaders deal with it, and we had no idea how acute it would become and how the screws would tighten with the circumstances and chaos of the pandemic.  And who better to bring on the show to discuss her own unique strategies a...

“People change all the time,” write Peter Bregman and Howie Jacobson in their new book, You CAN Change Other People . “They make big changes like starting businesses, getting married, moving, or getting a new job. And they make smaller changes like eating healthier, waking up earlier, or listening better. But people change when they choose to change. If they feel like you’re trying to make them ch...

It’s that time of year! Time for reflection. Time for slowing down and chilling out after all the social functions. And time to recharge those batteries. We are taking inventory to pat ourselves on the back for our accomplishments, to get real about the small and possibly big ways we can improve our coming year. We break it down into five pragmatic and powerful ways to move forward in self-awarene...

Sebastian Matthews experienced a life-changing event that was almost life-ending. Besides the broken bones, part of his growth process for him and his family was dealing with the trauma.  He tells us that sometimes PTSD doesn’t even set in until a couple of years after the event. He also tells us that we don’t all have to go through such an intense trauma to experience things like burnout, anxiety...

The idea behind the name Big Self is a paradox. We encourage people to do the inner work before they take big leaps, so they know their ladder is leaning on the right wall in the first place, and that they're motivated for the right reasons. Or if they come to us in burnout or crisis, we still begin with inner work, which usually begins with self-awareness training, and personality "hacking."  Whe...

On this week’s episode we speak with Joe Sanok. In 2012 Joe launched Practice of the Practice to blog about what he was learning about business, marketing, and private practice. Since then, his income has gone up over 2,000%. In the beginning, he was making around $1000 per month. In 2015, he grossed over $200k. By 2019, he had sold his private practice.  Joe is a keynote and TEDx speaker, busines...