We are in the midst of a tremendous amount of flux. The desire for change is palpable, even if the way is not yet clear.
This week’s guest thinks a lot about change, writing in her new book that “radical change involves construction and destruction. In my experience, there’s also been a lengthy period in between the “before” and “after” pictures.”
Stephanie VanZytveld is the author of I Am Gold Dust (And You Are Too): Mindfulness and Authenticity in the Workplace. She is a leadership and strategy consultant who leverages emotional intelligence, design thinking, and data storytelling to guide change.
We cover a lot of topics in this week’s episode, including racial injustice, mindfulness at work, authenticity and how we can get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s a conversation about what it means to think about how we’re living and to lean into it all with love.
TAKEAWAYS
Here are a few stellar moments from Stephanie’s book:
- “Trusting inherited maps and stacking up dominoes eventually stopped working for me. Trying to manage every aspect of my life so that the outcomes matched my desires was impossible, exhausting, and fueled my penchant for self-destruction. I had to learn a whole new way to live life. And face some subjects I swore I’d never wrestle with again.”
- “Whether you’re consciously aware of it or not, your authentic self is on and sending out signals to direct you where you need to go. The challenge is in learning how to tune into those frequencies and ignore all the other stimuli competing for your attention.”
- “When I stopped living life by my brain power and sheer force of will, and started approaching life from the perspective of one node of a much larger whole, (a speck of gold dust amongst other specks of gold dust, if you will) I found myself suddenly questioning other big ticket items in life: like whether or not I actually wanted to get married again, or have children, or stay in the same career.”
- “The single most important facet of mindfulness training is our own personal experience of learning how to observe our thoughts instead of getting caught up in them. I can read every book and article ever written about surfing, but that will still not make me a surfer. There’s no substitute for time spent in the ocean trying to get up on a board and ride it.”
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Thanks for being here. See you next time!
