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EPISODE SUMMARY:
Jason Rhoads isn’t the type of leadership coach who will sell you fluff or help you chase the treasures of the world. He’s going to help you build a life that aligns to who you are and who you want to become. Leading with his mind-shifting concept of Eleutheria, Jason helps you understand why the life you built might not be the life you should be chasing — and he gives you simple, actionable tools to make the shifts you desperately need. Listen in and experience his coaching first hand as he steps in and offers a spontaneous coaching session to Lindsay as she navigates through a tough moment in her own life.
EPISODE NOTES:
After spending more than 20 years as a pastor and leader, Jason Rhoads has coached, mentored, and trained hundreds of people. He pairs this experience with a Masters Degree in Leadership. As an avid learner, he reads and studies leadership to stay on the forefront of leadership and coaching.
IN THIS EPISODE:
The tool he used to help him embrace the insecurity of his mid-life pivot and run towards it, instead
DHT: What it means and how it shows up in his life
Why good leaders need to understand the difference between living as you please versus living as you should
The difference between joy and happiness
4 questions to ask if we want to find our purpose
Why we need to give ourselves permission to slow down if we want to build resilience
How Jason creates space for himself so he can stay in alignment with who he truly is
How to remain present –even during the hardest moments of life
CONNECT WITH JASON:
Linkedin @onemicroshift
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Lindsay: I’m Lindsay Hotmire and welcome to StoryHouse. This is a podcast about growing your business, but it’s also about slowing down the noise so you can give the world the best parts of who you are. So if you’ve struggled with all the buzz around storytelling only to feel like you don’t have a story worth sharing, or if you’re tired of being forced on the wheel of marketing, it doesn’t feel right.
But also feels impossible to ignore and be sure to meet me here every week to hear from real business owners as we dismantle all the should do’s and must do’s of business. Hear how they’ve wrestled through their own struggles and walk away with strategies that help you authentically and sustainably grow, scale, or pivot the business you’ve built.
There are hundreds of thousands of coaches and leadership coaches out there, but if you get the chance to sit down with Jason Rhoads. [00:01:00] You need to do it. He spent more than 20 years as a pastor and a leader. He’s coached, mentored, and trained hundreds of people through their highest moments and through their lowest moments.
And he pairs these decades of his experience and coaching with a master’s degree in leadership. As an avid learner, Jason reads and studies leadership so that he can stay on the forefront of leadership. And coaching, but I would venture to say while he’s an expert in leadership coaching, that’s not what makes him so powerful.
Jason has a really unique approach to the way he steps into leadership coaching in a really powerful way that he invites those that he coaches with into his orbit and into this sphere of quietude of rest of rhythm and of reflection. I was lucky enough. to intersect with Jason’s world a few months ago.
And the moment that I met him, I knew immediately that I wanted to be able to have a deeper conversation with him. You cannot talk [00:02:00] to Jason and leave that conversation unchanged. The things he says to you, the ways he invites you to see the world, the perspective shifts that he gives are little nuggets.
of wisdom and information that that haunt you for weeks after you’ve talked to him. They nudge you to change and to shift and to think through things differently. That’s the power of Jason Rhoads. That’s the power that you’re going to be able to step into as you sit with us through the next hour and listen to this conversation.
So thanks for joining us today,
Jason. I’m so excited that you are here with the Storyhouse audience today. I know that you have loads and loads of wisdom to share. And so I’m just really happy and excited that you said yes. So thanks for being
[00:02:49] Jason: here. Yeah, absolutely. It’s, I’m excited to be here with you and your, your audience today.
[00:02:57] Lindsay: Just going to jump right in, you know, you and [00:03:00] I have known each other for, gosh, I don’t even know how long now. Has it been a year?
[00:03:03] Jason: It’s, I think it’s a little
[00:03:05] Lindsay: over a year now. Okay. So, you know, when I, when I first met you, you were really trying to flesh out what is it, the thing that I have, you know, like really, what is it that I, That I really kind of hinge my messaging on and part of your story that intrigued me so much, I think, because it just like automatically made us have some synergy, knowing that we had a shared set of values, a shared worldview is that you spent all of these years prior to the leadership coaching that you’re doing now, you spent all of these years as a pastor, talk to us about that journey from being pastor To leadership coach, what did that look like?
Because I think that that is so important for us to start with, because it’s a huge thing that you help your clients through now, the same type of pivot. So tell us your pivot story, I guess. Let’s start [00:04:00] there.
[00:04:00] Jason: Yeah. So I want to, I want to just go back and explain. I didn’t go to school to be a pastor. I wanted nothing to be, I didn’t want to be a pastor at all.
And so I was selling real estate, newly married. Enjoying life as a newlywed and God called me to sell my business and to be a pastor. And I did and then fast forward 20 years later, and I believe God released me from being a pastor and from from our church. And then over the course of six months as he as doors closed, and I didn’t have anywhere to go.
It’s like, well, Come, come to the end and, uh, the reside, you know, I’ve resigned from the church so the church can move forward and, and, uh, wake up the next day and I go, now what do I do? And my wife said, you know, you’ve been coaching young pastors for the past. Four or five years. [00:05:00] Why don’t you do that?
And I thought, Oh, can you make money doing that? And it was like exciting. And it was like, Oh, this could be fun. And naming the, naming the company and just kind of thinking for a month. And then after a month, it sank in and I, and I started to have these real doubts. Do I have what it takes? Am I enough?
Why would an executive, why would an entrepreneur, why would a manager, why would a leader listen to me? What is it that I have to offer? And. So I went through a real period of, of examining who I am and the confidence that I was lacking and realizing over the course of, of time that that’s something that I should lean into.
Because if I’m feeling that then there are others that are feeling that, especially when you get promoted into a new position. And so that’s where I started to embrace my, my insecurity. If I can, I’m just going to call it that. [00:06:00] I can embrace that insecurity and that and lean into that and ask questions.
That I was asking myself or that I wish that somebody would have challenged me with.
[00:06:10] Lindsay: Yeah. I want to dig into that a little bit because I previously had a conversation on the podcast with rain Bennett and he’s a storyteller. And he talks, he talks about this same thing. He’s a, he was a film documentarian and he stepped in to this really big, sexy world of, of, you know, filmmakers and he had.
He had just this tiny little camera. And so he’s like, how do I compete? And it’s this, he echoes the same thing, embrace my weakness, embrace my insecurity, which feels so counter cultural to what we hear in the mainstream, even the mainstream leadership coaching, uh, find your strength, show up with what you do best at, you know, this is how you live your best life.
And so how do we, I think it’s one thing to hear. Embrace your [00:07:00] embrace that insecurity run towards it. And then it’s another thing to do it. And so how did you actually do that? Like, how did you have the strength, the courage, whatever it took to actually embrace it?
[00:07:12] Jason: Yeah. So there’s, I stumbled upon a tool and I.
When I saw it, it was called the comfort zone of psychology and there’s this, there are these concentric circles and the smallest circle is the comfort circle and that’s where most people live just outside of that is fear and then just outside of that is knowledge and outside of that is growth. So it’s this progression that if we want to grow, we have to.
Move through our fear. And so when you look at these four circles, you get to the edge of the comfort, most people want to stay in the center, you get to the edge of that comfort zone, right, right up against the fear. And you feel that sense of almost anticipation and reluctance at the same [00:08:00] time. And what I decided to do and what I coach people to do is to take, just lean into it.
Don’t even take a step over it. Just lean into that fear a little bit, whatever that looks like. And I have a shorthand for that, uh, for it is DHT and that’s do hard things. It’s something that I, my daughters really dislike that phrase because they grew up with it. You know, they’re, they’re bored or they don’t, you know, they don’t want to stand up in front of the class to, to read their book report or whatever.
And it’s like, do, do something hard, do something challenging every single day. And that could be something really small. And it’s part of the reason that my company is called micro shift is small change, small steps. And so that’s. What I realized I needed to live. I need to lean into this fear, this lean into this insecurity that I have and just make the phone calls and be me.
[00:09:00] And it’s okay to show up and bear myself. There’s, there’s also a book by Patrick Lencioni called getting naked. That’s what it is. And it’s a, it’s a story of he’s a, he’s a great storyteller in his books. And he talks about the. a consultant or a coach who doesn’t have all the answers. And I’m like, that’s me.
I don’t have to have all the answers to if I know how to better ask questions. So the journey of, of self discovery asking myself, Challenging, more challenging questions, which is a practice that I, uh, still do pretty much on a daily basis, trying to ask myself something that is uncomfortable.
[00:09:44] Lindsay: Yeah. One of the things that we talked about, you know, in that first conversation or two, is this concept that you use in your leadership coaching called Eleutheria and [00:10:00] you described it to me as.
It means that you should live as you should not as you please. And when you first said that to me, and even now, like recounting the story back, the hair is standing up on my arms because I’m like, Jason, wait a minute. This is the thing. Like, wait, this again, to repeat the word counter cultural, like everything we’re hearing.
Is telling us to run towards the thing that brings us joy. That makes us feel good. You know, as a business owner, if it doesn’t light me up, I should just stop doing it. Like all the advice is counter to this idea of L. Euthyria. Yet this is the concept that you use to help your clients clients in. And high profile leadership positions achieve the type of breakthrough and freedom that they need.
So break down this concept of LUTheria, live as you should, not as you please explain that to us so that it doesn’t feel so like mind blowing. [00:11:00]
[00:11:00] Jason: Sure. I’ll, I’ll give it a shot. So a lot of people want, want more freedom in their life. And our culture tends to view freedom as. Live as you please, as long as, you know, do what you want, when you want, how you want, as long as you don’t hurt, harm, or hold anybody else back.
And the problem with that, that I was seeing is that we’re chasing these things that we see on social media or in commercials on that, that the world, that culture, that companies are selling to us. And we get these things, we get the house, the title, the car, whatever it, whatever that thing is, the vacation.
And we get it. And then we realize that it’s not nearly as satisfying as we thought it was going to be. And I was running into this and, and being, being a pastor, I, I know a little bit of Greek and Eleutheria is a Greek word for freedom. And it does mean live as you should not as you [00:12:00] please. And so then I started thinking, well, how should I live?
How should We live and it’s not that that I want to dictate to people that they need to live like me. Instead, they choose how they are going to live their purpose. What is, what is your purpose in life, in work, in relationship, in business, your faith system, what, what you believe and hold to be true.
Taking that when, when you’re able to articulate that in one to three Sentences just really get a nice, concise, then you can start to live out of live through that and identifying some of your personal values, core values, whatever phraseology you want to you want to use there, but these purpose and values help us to make the decisions of life and work that are going to bring us joy.
I see too many people who are think [00:13:00] they’re pursuing joy. But really, they’re, they’re really going after happiness, happiness. And so the distinction that I make there is happiness is temporary. It’s, it’s a puppy that’s, you know, runs into the kitchen table or into a screen door, a baby that just starts laughing.
Uh, it’s things, things like that, things that are temporary. Joy is something that we hold on to. that goes beyond our emotions. Joy is that thing that holds us even when life is hard. And it’s generally found in the purposeful work that we do or the volunteer work that we do. So it doesn’t always have to be what we’re compensated for.
It could be an organization that we love and we want to be part of and we want to serve. And so that’s, That’s what I’m finding for executives for entrepreneurs is discovering that life is more than just [00:14:00] work or your title or your income. What is it that you want to leave behind? How do you want to be remembered?
What are, what are the ways that, what are the, the filters that you. Make decisions for, for work, for your business, for your family, for your kids. And so Eleutheria that live as you should, that choosing to live in a way that not everybody is going to fully embrace or understand, but it fits for you.
So
[00:14:29] Lindsay: when would be a time then that I would say, so if it’s, it feels like if I’m living in a way that fits for me, then ultimately I am living as I please, so differentiate for me, when would be a time that I would not live as I please, if I’m pursuing the idea of Eleutheria.
[00:14:50] Jason: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s a really good, that’s a really good question. It does have a sense of, of live as you please, but you’re choosing, when you choose to [00:15:00] live as you should, it is at its core, how you really want to live. The live as you please, that the culture, that culture offers us, or that is advertised to us, the consumption mentality is something that other people are telling you that you should have.
Whereas if you live as you should, then you are living as, as you want to, as you truly want to, even when it’s not comfortable, whether that be you have a worldview that doesn’t connect with political climate. Or your business doesn’t, doesn’t sit well because of a new story that, that is just broke you still choosing to live as you should and holding to that purpose, knowing that it’s not going to be the popular thing and knowing that you might get some blowback or some feedback that doesn’t, that could be harmful to your business, to your reputation, [00:16:00] but you still choose to hold to that.
Yeah. Live as you please would just bail on what’s hard. So when life gets hard, are you going to stick to who you, how you’ve made the choice to
[00:16:13] Lindsay: live? Yeah. And like, from my perspective, seeing that live as you please, like, that’s where I’ve seen over the last few years. And even recently brands and marketing teams stepping into issues that feel really expedient, like this is the hot issue of the day.
So we should align ourselves here. But then when pushback happens, like even just with the Budweiser situation, when pushback happens, Happens because Budweiser didn’t do that internal alignment of, are we going to stand on the side of this issue or not? Like, either we’re in or we’re not, they didn’t do that.
So they got caught and now they got caught in a mess. And that’s what I’ve seen a lot with, with brands, with businesses is when they don’t have a true understanding of that alignment of their core purpose of [00:17:00] their core values. It is really easy to be jerked around. I want to circle back to your discussion on purpose, because recently I would say the last 6 months or so, I have seen an uptick in conversation of people pushing back against this idea of finding your purpose and it’s intriguing to me.
And I’ve even had people say to me, like, finding that big why, like that, that big purpose, that’s not rooted in the present moment. That’s really hard. And my answer is always, yeah. Yeah, it is. And so I don’t know if you’ve heard similar conversations of people pushing back against spending time discovering your purpose, but if not just your thoughts on that type of pushback, like why is it so important to truly understand our purpose really beyond even beyond the moment?
Why does it have to be anchored in something really [00:18:00] deep?
[00:18:01] Jason: Yeah, I have a facilitating aspect that I that I do on purpose and values and within a framework, and I think that it’s, I believe that it’s important to understand your purpose because it. Then you aren’t tossed around. We, we’ve talked that we both have a biblical, a Christian background, and there’s this idea, this parable about not being tossed around like a boat on the waves, and a purpose really is something that anchors, that anchors us.
And discovering that purpose or choosing the purpose, sometimes it’s not discovering, sometimes it’s choosing it and and that can be kind of the two sides of the same coin. I have found of all people, there’s a guy by the name of Andres Zuzunaga and he’s an astronomer. Astrologer. I always get those mixed up.
I don’t remember now. Uh, Andres Zuzunaga, who [00:19:00] he developed a, a Venn diagram and he calls it the purpose Venn diagram. And he didn’t do it to become famous. Most people don’t know who he is. His Venn diagram has actually been connected to the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai. And those are two very different things, but he has four questions.
Uh, and I’m going to try and remember them, but they are, you know, what, What do you love? What does the world need? What can you be paid for? There’s a fourth question. It’ll probably come to me at some point, but the, this idea that if we can articulate those, those four questions, and they might seem easy on the front end, but when we look, when we really, what are you good at?
What are you good at? That’s the fourth one. When we take the time to really answer those questions, not with, you know, the top of mind. Response. We really start to understand [00:20:00] what it is that we are good at what our purpose is. That is one of the ways that we can discover that we can discover our purpose.
[00:20:07] Lindsay: Yeah. So you. You help clients through a lot of these different types of discussions. And so three of the concepts that you really dig into are the concept of rhythms. Clients are coming to you really struggling with the different rhythms in their lives. Pivots. Or confidence. I guess maybe what I want to ask is, first, what are some of the common frameworks or ideas that you often have to spend time undoing or dismantling before you can really start to dig in to some of this deeper
[00:20:45] Jason: work?
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s a, that’s a, that’s a good question. A lot of times when it comes to entrepreneurs and executives is they’re so overwhelmed that they need a little, a little bit of space. So generally the first four to [00:21:00] six weeks of coaching and I, and I coach weekly, that’s because you get into a rhythm, you get into a habit of, of doing that and you have some accountability in the things that you’re working on, but just trying to get some space.
So that we can do some of the deeper work that is going to benefit them long term. So for some clients, it’s getting getting their their team in order or doing a better job of delegating so that it’s not all on them. And so getting to that. That place where you can do the deeper work, but they got to have some breathing room because they’re, they often come to me overwhelmed and working from the time they get up till the time that they go to bed and they don’t have much of a home life.
They’re not seeing their kids as much as they would like. They don’t see their spouse. Maybe that relationship is strained. And so there are all these other. Aspects and it tends to be centered [00:22:00] around work. So if we can get some breathing room there and and I can’t really go into like how to the specifics on how to do that because it’s situational.
That’s that’s part of my coaching. I don’t have a step by step process. It’s really more intuitive based on the client. I want to know them and how they work. Things like that. Once we get it. Once we get beyond that, and it’s generally four weeks, six weeks, uh, I had one client recently, it took us four months for him to, he, he’s an executive, and then he and his wife own four other businesses as well.
Uh, you know, so he, it took a little while to, to unpack and give him some space. And once, once there’s some space, we can start to then look at. We can start to look at how do you want to live? How do you, what do you want life to look like? And then we can so almost reverse [00:23:00] engineer. That, that aspect so that they can start to live as they should, and it’s really how they want to like at their core, how they want to live all of my clients, they want to spend more time with the people that they love and serving organizations that they care about and doing, obviously doing good work where they’re compensated, but there are these other aspects to life that they are so drawn to and they want to be part of.
Yeah,
[00:23:29] Lindsay: that idea of creating space takes me back to what you talked about when you stepped out of your pastoral role. And you said, essentially, you said, you know, I had to take some space to really ask myself some hard questions, which is. Interesting to me, because as a pastor, I would think you’ve are, you were, are you spent two decades in the deep end of life, right?
You weren’t somebody afraid to think through those hard things. So, what [00:24:00] is it that gets in the way of ourselves being able to do that work? I mean, you do it for others. It’s the same type of work I do for others and yet doing it for ourselves. Is so hard, and so I think that that’s sometimes what prevents us from getting help sooner is that we think we ought to be able to do it ourselves, especially those of us who are intuitive, discerning, you know, aren’t afraid of the deep end of the brain, that type of stuff.
So, what are some of those blockers that get in our way of being able to explore these questions of being able to create the space to really be able to walk in alignment with who we are?
[00:24:41] Jason: Oh, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a tricky question, Lindsay, because, because what I’m about to say is going to fly in the face of how people are receiving our conversation.
[00:24:53] Lindsay: Okay, I’m excited. I want to hear what
[00:24:56] Jason: you might not be. [00:25:00] Technology. Okay. I, I love technology. I, I’m a technology person, but it is starting to run our life instead of be an assist to our life, which I think was the intent, you know, 30 years ago for technology was to make life easier. And now we. Our phone dings when we get an email or a message or the app and we get an or we get a new story house 15 podcast loaded up and we get notified of it.
And so we’re, we’re constantly bombarded with messages and advertisements and. Videos and stories, short stories digitally, but then also at work with the emails and getting the instant access from your kids who are at school, who are messaging you. Can I go to some, can I go to Bobby’s house after school or your spouse that says, Hey, can you swing by the store?
And so we’re continually bombarded and, um, [00:26:00] taking space to. To disconnect from everything, to unplug, really, is, I think, so valuable. I have a part of my day, something that’s in a regular part of my task list, that I call deep work, where I shut everything off and I have one question for myself. Usually, I go and find a question, and then I’ll journal about it.
And I’m, there are no distractions. Uh, I’m by myself and it’s me alone with my brain for 15 minutes. Now I’m very comfortable with, with being inside of my own head. That’s for those who know me, that’s a scary thought. Like to be up inside my head. I don’t have a, I don’t turn the radio on in my car. I’ve had, uh, my forerunner for about 15 months.
I’ve never turned the radio on. I don’t know how it works because I, I would rather drive and be introspective, be [00:27:00] thinking about myself or my family, how I can better take care of them, how I can better serve them. For people who are wanting that space. I would take five minutes, shut everything off, shut everything down and just sit outside.
If the weather’s good, go sit outside for five minutes. No agenda, just be there and just listen and look up at the clouds and look at the leaves moving, notice things, what’s going on in the world, and over time, increase that to 10 minutes, 15 minutes. If you’re, if you, if journaling is something that you want to do, journal about your experience.
I also journal at the end of every day. So for me, writing is a, is a great outlet. For those who want to take it a step further, you can find digital detox retreats and things like that. I’ve not attended any of those, but I have found places [00:28:00] where, up here in northern Wisconsin, where you can still go and rent a cabin that has no Wi Fi, there’s no cell phone signal, and three days, two nights.
There’s a different rhythm. I’ll take some books and that’s about it. And some journaling, some paper and pen. And just go and be with myself and give myself that space to think and breathe. I wonder if so much of the anxiety that we feel… In our workplace comes out of always being notified of something that phrase notification.
And for me, I only have my text message notification on my email. I checked that twice a day because I don’t want it to run my life. I’m not, I don’t, there’s nothing that is so important that I need to respond to it immediately and be distracted. And there’s a lot of research. Around [00:29:00] stopping one task to move to another and then how long it takes us to get back on track with that original task and that just creates so much.
I wonder if that creates so much anxiety. And worry fear within us, not to mention the physical ramifications our body consumes, or excuse me, our brain consumes so much of the energy that our body needs to operate. And when we’re jumping from one test to another, it’s like, you know, slamming the gas pedal down when you’re leaving a stoplight.
You don’t need to do that. You can accelerate nice and slow. You can and make it consistent and then you have better fuel mileage. It’s the same with our brain. Our brain is an engine. It’s a, it’s a CPU and it’s going to consume the most energy. So we need opportunities to let off the gas, to power down, to allow [00:30:00] our brain to rest and do other things, to be introspective, taking that space.
Yeah.
[00:30:06] Lindsay: I think a lot of, for a lot of us that that’s going to require an unlearning or in a retraining, like a willful, it’s almost like. A cigarette smoker who decides to quit smoking, some people can do cold turkey and be just fine. But most other people, it’s a process or any other medication that you’re coming off of.
And to know that there is oftentimes like a terrible, painful withdrawal process that goes, that you go through when you’re stepping away from things like that, you know, medications. Can go through a terrible withdrawal. Same for this type of stuff. Like when it’s been attached to us as almost another appendage and we decide to cut it off, recognizing that it’s going to hurt.
It’s going to feel uncomfortable. We’re going to be sitting there in silence and think this is so stupid. I could be being really proactive here and be doing X, Y, Z, or.
[00:30:59] Jason: People [00:31:00] say that, but really they’re, they’re thinking I’m not being entertained. That’s really what they’re thinking. Oh, I could be more productive.
I could go do this other thing. No, you just want to go scroll on social media. You want to be entertained. We and that’s, that’s what I see is part of the part of the issue. Well, how
[00:31:19] Lindsay: do you know, I know the people that leaders, the executives that you work with. Their brains do have to be always on, like, they are always being barraged with things.
They have teams that they can’t just ignore. I mean, I’ve thought about this a lot. You know, I mentioned to you earlier before we hit record. My daughter’s getting married in 9 days over this last month. Like, I have intentionally put a. Wall around my business and just had to tell myself almost daily, you, you’re just keeping the ship afloat right now, Lindsay, this is not the time for new things this is, and it irritates me and it frustrates me because I feel like I’m being stagnant, you know, and so it’s just this constant.[00:32:00]
Inner inner conversation that’s happening that I’ve still yet to accept 9 days out from the wedding, you know that I can’t take this blessing that I’ve been able to slow my business down so that I can give my daughter are my focus. And so how do leaders and executives give themselves the permission.
To do that when they know stepping out for a moment or refusing to answer the notifications, they know that there are ramifications. There are team members who can’t do their work or how did they balance
[00:32:34] Jason: that? Yeah. Before we go there, I want to kind of flip it around a little bit, take the situation that you’re in and you, you feel like you’re kind of floating right now.
It’s like, okay, we’re just going to, and it feels stagnant and feels, what is it that. Makes it feel that way for you?
[00:32:54] Lindsay: Well, I don’t know. It’s a good question that I think I’ve [00:33:00] kind of tried to think through. Cause if I can just like find the thing to blame, whether it’s myself or something else, and I can solve the problem, I think that it’s a combination of the noise out there that I’m still involved in.
You know, the, the business noise, as far as you should be doing X, Y, Z, me looking at my revenue chart ahead, knowing if I don’t stay active, then my. You revenue does just doesn’t happen magically. It just doesn’t fall from the sky like manna. So I think that there’s like, you don’t shut the business mind off.
You know that if you’re not constantly growing, if you’re, if you stay stagnant for too long, then that’s the death of a business. And so I think it is that probably like thinking back through that, that wheel that you talked about, you know, and maybe it is the fear. Maybe it’s the lack of planning on my part.
I don’t, I don’t
[00:33:48] Jason: know. And again, before I move on, so what’s, what’s going on inside of you as, as you were talking about that, because the audience can’t see, but I, you and I are looking at each other. [00:34:00] Through through this amazing internet that we have, and I could see the conflict in on your face as you’re as you’re talking about these, your business is wonderful and amazing.
You do you do such incredible work and then you have this your daughter’s getting married and what a special day that’s going to be. And they’re almost at odds, but they shouldn’t have to be. Right. So that’s why, what, what’s, what was going on inside of you as you were, as you were talking through that, I
[00:34:31] Lindsay: love this.
I love this little live coaching that’s going on right now. I can’t
[00:34:36] Jason: help it. See, I can’t, I can’t turn it off, right?
[00:34:40] Lindsay: I don’t know. I think, I think, you know, like I said, going back to that circle that you talked about, it’s, it’s that fear. It’s probably me being stuck in that fear of, Okay. If I’m not moving, then there will be nothing ahead for me on the other side.
And I’ve just, I’ve just pushed pause to [00:35:00] focus on the thing that matters most to me when I take put my hand back on the play button. There’s not there’s going to be nothing ahead, which. Isn’t true. Like that’s just, that’s just a dumb story that’s being told, but it’s being told loudly, loudly enough that there is that it’s just adding to the tension, you know, that’s already there with all of, you know, other life, wedding planning and all of that.
It’s just one more piece.
[00:35:27] Jason: So what would it take for you to give yourself permission to slow down? Because that’s the question that you asked me about when, when I work with people, that permission to slow down.
[00:35:39] Lindsay: I think talking through it, saying it out loud, which is the value of a coach, right? Is hearing yourself say things out loud, talking through it, getting it out there so that you can.
Things look differently outside your head than when they’re swirling around inside your brain. And so just speaking it out loud gives a lot of power to [00:36:00] be able to say, like, that’s just such an invalid fear, Lindsay, move past it. I think that for me, that’s a big piece of things. Yeah.
[00:36:09] Jason: And there, there’s been a lot of talk about over the past few years around the idea of resilience and Gail, Gail Wagnold, W A G N I L D, I think is how you spell her last name, wrote an amazing book on resilience and a lot of the idea around building this, building resilience.
And this is, this is going to circle back to. Getting that permission to slow down the idea of we need to build resilience. And so the site, this thought process, the word bill, just using that as part of the phraseology of building resilience in our lives is the idea of, of pushing, of striving, of doing something else, of doing the next thing.
And then within that, we’re building this resilience to be able to handle things that, that, that come and what I’ve [00:37:00] realized is. The philosophy of yin and yang right to two similar things that are that are opposing that seem like they’re opposing, but they’re actually synergistic or two sides of the same coin to phrase it differently.
Is that we can push, but we also, it builds resilience when we learn to pull back that when we’re always pushing, then we just wear ourselves out. And when we learn that it’s okay to, and we give ourselves that permission to slow down, to pause, to, to pull back. That’s, that’s how I like to talk about it because we’re not stopping, but what does it look like to pull back and we can build resilience.
Sometimes it’s the, it’s an underutilized aspect of, of a leader’s toolkit or is being able to slow down, being able to pull back.
[00:37:59] Lindsay: I [00:38:00] think hearing you speak through that makes, you know, to circle back on your question to me, that idea of prioritizing rhythm. Which I know is a huge piece of your work. It’s also a huge piece of my life.
Like I am somebody who has always placed some pretty hard boundaries around the rhythms of my life. I don’t have a lot of apologies to say, Nope, not going to do that. I can’t, I can’t step into that right now. That’s too much. Like I have very much built my business to fit within the rhythm of the life that I, that I know I need to live in order for my brain to, Stay clear.
Mm-hmm. . But even though I know all that, it’s hard to accept it because it doesn’t feel like it keeps, it doesn’t feel like it mimics the most successful entrepreneurs. I see. And so it is that comparison game of, well, if that’s what success is supposed to look like, that’s not like, I’m not always just churning and driving and [00:39:00] doing that, like rhythm is so important.
It’s just a hard thing to embrace and accept. And I have to think that that is something that you see out of clients that you work with as well, because they are in very driven, high impact roles where they can’t don’t feel like they can let their foot off the gas pedal.
[00:39:21] Jason: Yeah, it’s, uh, if, if life was linear, it would make things so much easier, but we tend to just kind of go all over the place, this idea of, of rhythm building rhythms there, I like to think when I started out with rhythms with, with clients, it’s generally outside of work.
I like to talk about a morning rhythm and an evening rhythm. And I phrased that almost like. I don’t know the last time you went bowling, but bowling, I haven’t been bowling in years, but I love the, the imagery of [00:40:00] each day is rolling the ball down, down the lane. The bumpers are like, are a morning and evening rhythm.
They keep us aimed at what we’re really moving towards. By bookending our Our day with some sort of rhythm that gets us up and gets us moving. I have a morning rhythm. I have an evening rhythm. It’s, it’s pretty much non negotiable by the time it gets to a certain time in the evening. My phone is gone for me.
It’s my phone is gone. I don’t touch my phone in the first. Hour and a half or two hours of my morning, I do some mobility work cause I’m getting old and I still want to be able to get down and play with grandkids when I have them someday. And then in the evening, just helping my body to relax and drinking some tea and slowing down and reading a book and journaling, finding the rhythm that helps you start your day and end your day.
I think that’s gives us the most. [00:41:00] The biggest bang for our buck. And that’s where I start with clients. It’s something physical. It doesn’t have to do with, with work. And I believe it was Seneca a couple thousand years ago, who said something I might, I might not get it exactly right. But if we treat the, the body harshly so that it will be obedient to the mind that, that our body is, is not it.
Separated from the mind and yet our body has desires for food or love, acceptance, whatever, and you can say that comes from from the mind and we can get into some sort of conversation around that. But if we can control the body, if we can capture that and build it into a rhythm, a habit, if you will, of this is what I’m doing every morning.
Then the mind has opportunity to really get into the day and do the things that it needs to do in order [00:42:00] for someone to be successful, whatever that looks like their manager, if they’re an executive or if they’re, if they’re getting their kids to school, whatever that looks like, whatever successful looks like for them, rhythms help to keep us focused on down, down the lane so that we can knock down as many pins as we possibly can before the end of the day.
[00:42:25] Lindsay: All right, last question, which is a good way to end based on what we were just talking about, because I read 1 of your more recent blog posts where you talk about the day that your daughter graduated is also also the day that your guys’s family dog. Passed away and like anybody who loves their family dog knows like how emotionally excruciating that probably was.
And yet you said you were able to still be fully present in the moment of your daughter’s graduation, because [00:43:00] that was a big moment for for her and for you for your family. And so. How did you do that? And how do we do that? You know, for me in these next nine days, how do I remain fully present even when craziness is swirling around me?
[00:43:17] Jason: Right. So as my daughter’s graduation party, and that was actually this past Sunday. So the, our dog has been, he was 14 and a half and he’s been, he’s. Slowly going downhill, losing weight over the last several months, still has, has those puppy moments at 14 and a half where he thinks, you know, let’s go on a run.
Cause he was, he was my running partner and biking part, all those things. He’s my adventure dog. And Thursday evening, he stopped eating and drinking and it’s like, okay, we’re, we’re almost to the end. And so Friday, Saturday, and then. Getting up Sunday morning and he was at [00:44:00] 630. He was, he was still breathing and I laid on the floor with him for a little bit.
And then I went downstairs and my wife came down a half hour later and said, Romeo’s gone. And I share that just to phrase it to frame it. But also it’s therapeutic for me to recount. And that’s something that I think we need to, to do is when we’re engrossed in the business of living, there are things that are going on.
How do we be present? Well, we, we recount the stories that got us there. The most recent stories that. That got us there. So we spent we talked as a family. Our daughter came up and and we said, you know, sorry, you know, Romeo was his name. He passed away. And we know that you have a party. Let’s let’s take an hour, an hour to an hour and a half.
We put, we put a timeframe on it and we said, we’re going to grieve, we’re going to talk, we’re going to laugh about silly things that he did. And then we’re going to [00:45:00] move on and compartmentalize. And that’s one of the beautiful things about our brain. We can compartmentalize for a period of time. Let’s let’s grieve for a little bit.
Let’s get ready for the party. Let’s have a great day because that’s what Romeo would have wanted. He would have loved to seen all the people. And so we’re able to to really set aside the grieving so that we can be present with the people who are in front of us. And that’s really the things that are I guess for, for me being in engrossed in the business of living, being fully present in the moment is all about choosing to ignore the phone, the task list, running to the store, whatever else is going on so that you can be with the person that’s in front of you.
Lindsay, I know you have a hundred different things that you need to do. You have a wedding to prepare, you know, that you’re getting prepared for. You have life, you have your [00:46:00] spouse, you have all of these things. And yet you and I are present with each other. And I do too. I have, I have coaching client later.
I have a cohort that I’m leading later today. We have all these things, but for now it’s just you and me. I wonder if people have forgotten that it’s okay to. Just shut your phone off. If you’re having a conversation with somebody now, if it’s just a passing conversation, you don’t have to turn it off. But when I go to the coffee shop, I like to try and mute or put it on airplane mode or whatever, turn it off so that there are no distractions.
If you want to be present. In life, then close out the distractions, close out anything that’s going to move you away from who you’re chatting with, who you’re talking with, and in that you can be fully present in the conversation, really listen to what people are saying.
[00:46:56] Lindsay: Yeah. And so what I’ve heard in this whole [00:47:00] conversation is just the intentionality required.
To live a life full circle back, a life that is colored by that concept of Eleutheria, it doesn’t happen by accident. And if we just allow ourselves to be kind of on default mode, which is what a lot of us do, we’re allowing our lives to be ruled by the input. That’s coming in instead of really us focusing on the output that we’re giving out and that that requires such a level of intentionality and with.
They did that idea of being fully present, but I really loved is that you took the time and the space to acknowledge my note is acknowledge the thing like you didn’t just say, oh, my gosh, this is awful, but we don’t have time for this. We have to move on. Well, what happens when you do that? Is it? It creeps in and seeps in and forces.
It’s it’s itself to be acknowledged. I have a [00:48:00] friend and mentor sharing Spain on. She talks about that all the time. She’s a. Leadership executive coach as well. And she talks about, you have to acknowledge the system, whatever it is, you have to at least acknowledge it. It demands to be acknowledged. And so you, you created the space to acknowledge the thing you acknowledged the grief, you gave it space to honor it.
And then you were able to compartmentalize. I think, you know, in my own life, when I don’t do that, that’s when I feel really fragmented and fractured because I haven’t taken the time to. To acknowledge the thing, whatever it
[00:48:37] Jason: is, and maybe for you as the wedding is coming, knowing, okay, wedding work or being with my family or whatever that looks like is during this time and during this time is work and compartmentalization is not good long term, but.
In the short term, it’s we’re, we’re built that way. We’re designed that way [00:49:00] to be able to handle things.
[00:49:04] Lindsay: Well, Jason, thanks so much again for being here with us. Is there, there anything you want our audience to know, or where can they find you if they want to get in touch?
[00:49:14] Jason: Oh, sure. So, uh, you can find me, my website is one micro shift.
com. That’s O N E micro shift. com. And just one small change. Can really set things moving forward, but then also on LinkedIn, I’d love to connect on LinkedIn. I do write articles there and if, if somebody wants to something that I offer and I’d offer this to your client or to your audience is somebody wants to just experience what it is that I do, I offer a free discovery call.
They just need to email me and they can do that from my website. Or reach me through a LinkedIn and just inquire about it. Something that I, that I love to do. I love to serve people [00:50:00] through coaching. So,
[00:50:01] Lindsay: all right. Well, thank you so much, Jason. As founder and CEO at Storyhouse 15. My vision is to build a world of people who have answered the call.
That’s been uniquely placed upon their lives. So if you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. And if you’re ready to grow and pivot with clarity and confidence, be sure to stop by and say hello at storyhousefifteen. com.
