you know, how do you deal with that? I love that you asked that because, you know, I've I've never seen more imposter syndrome than going into a room of senior executives that have every business being there. They all tell me that they're dealing with imposter syndrome because I think the more that you get closer to that thing that you believe is gonna be what unblocks you from imposter syndrome, the more imposter syndrome you get because you're now elevating with other people that you've been maybe thinking are like, I fangirl all the time about these people that I'm working with, and I think, oh my gosh. Like, I shouldn't be here. These are people that I've admired, or these are people that are in this work and have been in research for a long time. You know, all these things. It's something that is persistent with people that continue to to grow and wanna be challenged, and they're pushing themselves all the time. And it it I it takes work for me to say, no. I deserve to be here. I mean, I put in the work too. I put in my ten thousand plus hours. Like, I know what I'm doing. I have mastery. I think there's a healthy, sort of appreciation for people that are incredible, and you can admire them and respect them. But when it's this persistent state of feeling like, yeah, like, I shouldn't be here, is it can be really dangerous. And I have had times like that, and I still do that. And I tell Jim, like, I don't know what like, how this happened. And, like, I'd feel so scared, and I'm so nervous about this thing I'm doing with these people. And he's great. He's just the best pep talk. He's like, don't talk like that. We have this thing when people say and the kids too. We have this thing where they're, like, saying, like, you know, I'm not good at this. We say, don't talk about my friend like that.

I love

that. He'll remind me. This was a nerdy saying that I came up with, so I don't wanna embarrass Jim and make it sound like that's, like, something that he's come up with, but he does remind me that I say that to the kids all the time. And so I think it's been really healthy to say, yeah. Like, if I was talking to someone that I knew that had all these wonderful things, I'd say, come on. Like, you're amazing, and we have to do that more for ourselves.

Yeah. We do. That narrative is just so strong, and we have to be careful what we say. Right?

Mhmm.

Because our language becomes a reality.

I think it's really generous of you to just offer that perspective because I I think it's something we all deal with. I heard a really cool an entrepreneur just tell this story about climbing a mountain in Fiji and getting to the top of this mountain and looking out and seeing another mountain on the other side of the ocean, just miles and miles away and asking his guide, you know, oh my gosh. Is that part of Fiji too? Could I how long does it take to get to that mountain? And he talked about this guide putting his arm around him and saying, you really need to start appreciating the mountain that you're standing on and not be so concerned about the next the next mountain. It was this beautiful illustration. I think his point was we're all standing on a mountain of brilliance, but we just often don't see it.

I love that. I love that. That's such a wonderful way of thinking about it, and we do I do tend to not celebrate the milestones as much, and now I do I do work on that to say, okay. I'm here. This is a great place to be. And I'm kinda doing that this summer with the sabbatical, taking some time off, and I'm doing, you know, maybe a couple of hours of work in the morning, but really focused on just recovery, you know, following my own advice and taking time to just appreciate what I've done in the last little bit, reconnect with family, making sure that I'm spending lots of time with them, and and having a guilt free summer, which I am. I'm, like, really enjoying myself. Good for you. Yeah. And, that is it's not easy for me. So and it it took time. That's why I think when you're taking time, like, you can't just take a week off to rec you know, that whole idea. Oh, we gave our employees a week off to recover from burnout, and then nothing changes and they go back and start burning out right away again. I mean, you need if you're really gonna take a rest because you're feeling at that precipice, you need a a solid amount of time to, to recover. Yeah.

So as we bring things to a close, the question we aim to ask everybody we bring on into these conversations is for a piece of advice to anyone who's feeling stuck. And if I could elaborate on the question a little bit for you because of what you've written about and why are we here and this idea of hope, and that's such a central theme in your book. And this idea, I think it's Snyder's hope theory where he talks about there's two dimensions. It's do I have a way to achieve, and am I motivated to achieve? And so if you could give some advice to anyone who might be listening to this who's feeling stuck, and maybe that's a bit of a backdrop for diagnosing, am I do I have a pathway, or do I just need to get motivated? Would be a really cool direction for you to take any advice you might give.

Well, and they you know, I think that's really wonderful about Snyder's theory. It's really about, okay, if this pathway doesn't motivate me or, you know, then I need to find a plan b or plan c. You know? Write as many pathways as you can until you feel motivated or you get there. But, you know, the idea for sure, people are feeling stuck everywhere right now. I mean, we've got the highest level of active disengagement that we've seen in a decade. We just see women dropping out of the workforce because they are feeling burnt high levels of burnout. I mean, we're not in a very healthy place, and Gallup's calling it the great detachment. So it's more like this just feeling of, like, what's the point is, you know, the reason why I wrote why are we here is based on the question that is feeling increasingly pervasive about the work we're doing. You know? Why am I here? Why are we here as leaders? Why are we here, you know, as an employees, as a workforce? So many reasons why all these different demographics like Gen z's are like, you know, what's the point? Xers and boomers have modeled this terrible experience of work, and they're all burned out and quitting. Like, this is not what I wanna be doing. One of the things that, you know, you've heard, many people have heard, hope is not a strategy. You know, hope is a myth. And I love changing people's minds around that because the idea of the the academic research around it is, you know, Snyder's theory is that there's sort of these three components. One is, you know, just agency, so the ability to choose and come up with goals. I mean, that's really important. It's just, like, come up with a goal. And so often, we think about goals as big, huge, like, you know, Lulu calls them big, hairy, audacious goals. So, you know, I wanna cure cancer. Like, I wanna, run a marathon or, you know, all these big, huge goals that we have. Instead of looking at what Schneider says is we need to have micro goals. And when you look at therapists, what they look at for developing hope is really like, hey. You're depressed, like, severely depressed. How about you get out of bed tomorrow morning? Like, set an alarm and get out of bed. How about now that you've gotten out of bed for three weeks, how about you take a shower? You know, like, that's how we need to be thinking about goal setting is that those are goals. Those are significant goals. And so the idea is like, okay. So now I have a goal. I have a goal that's reasonable, challenging enough, but a goal that's reasonable that I feel like I can accomplish. So for everyone, that's different. And then let's create a plan a, a current plan b, a plan c to get there. That's really the second step. It's like, okay. I'm gonna make plans. So no matter what, my brain can rest and that if this thing doesn't work out, I've got this other thing to rely on. You know, I've got this other way of doing it. And so you you kinda, let yourself off the hook of feeling like this one plan I've made to get to that goal is the only way, which can create fear and likely demotivation, and then you won't execute on your goals. And then the third part is ensuring you have the resources to get to those goals. So making sure that I have the ability to, you know, to get to say for you know, hope goal for a week could be just cleaning my desk. Hope goal for the week could be reaching out to that one client that I've been procrastinating on or dealing with that one customer that I've really been avoiding. Like, it can be that one thing that you know you have to do. You do it, and at the end of the week, you go like, you were epic. Good job. That was great. And then you create a vision towards those bigger goals, but they're not reliant on that thing. Every week can be something totally different in a personal professional way, and that helps you just, like, create a hope strategy, which is really critical for people to feel like they can get there. They're unblocked, that they're motivated, and they start to feel really proud of themselves. And that confidence leads to you feeling more effective, which then leads you to feel more motivated.

That's awesome. And I don't know if you know much about our unblock yourself program, but, that's essentially, like, what we do. We help people, you know, set these goals because people are really bad at it. Like, they don't set goals for themselves, and, you know, we help hold them accountable and all those things. So I think we're on the right track, which is awesome.

Yep. I love that. This is a whole thing that I'm telling organizations to implement. And so the idea that you can be doing that for them, I think, could be a major win for leaders that are so sandwiched and so burned out and so tired they don't know how to execute these strategies. It's like, yeah, you can have people help you get your team to get there as well. But sometimes and I and I feel often an external source is really a good way to have people not come in where, you know, where they are already unblocked because they don't have the bias. They don't have the cultural, kind of the the heaviness or the sort of the history that can hold you back. And most people then are also asked internally to volunteer their time to help with mentorship and things like that. It's so good to have an external resource that comes in and just can come in a way that really guides people without, you know, all that history holding them back. Yeah. For sure.

Well, we have one last question. And, yeah, I'm curious how you're gonna answer this one. But we ask everybody, if you have one book or maybe it's a podcast that you'd recommend that maybe has inspired you, and you can say your own. That's fine. We're definitely gonna put your your, your books in the in the show notes for people anyways. But if you have one that's inspired you, what would that be?

God. I have so many I read a lot. Like, I'm reading I read every day and, finish a lot of books, and there's been a few that have, I think, really inspired me. And it's interesting because I read mostly fiction. I read very little nonfiction. I read the books that I need to for, you know, for work. And I because I am into so many research papers, all I read is fiction. And there's this book called A Little Life, and I don't it's I don't wanna say the last name because I always butcher it. It's I wanna say Yngara, but, maybe you can find it for me so I I don't say it wrong. But, this book, A Little Life, really did transform me. And and I would say Cloud Cuckoo Land two by Anthony Doerr is another one that really inspired me. They're, like, my top fiction. And I think the reason why I these books were so impactful on me were that it was, a story through history. Like, it goes spans especially Cloud Cuckoo Land spans, like, from way in the past, like, sixteen hundreds, fifteen hundreds, all the way to the future of, like, space and living in space and what that would look like in that post apocalyptic world. But every single part of the that story of the Cloud Cuckoo Land is about a thread that is a book, that is an idea that moves through time. And, both of that, A Little Life really is about this, like, manifestation of overcoming. And same with Cloud Cuckoo Land too. It's just this power of overcoming, but also guiding society in a way that's principled and ethical and moral and kind. And that for me is how I wanna leave my legacy is, you know, writing down how, you know, I feel. And it's, again, not in an egotistical way. Like, I'm not changing the world, but but your words can and do matter. And when you write them down and other people can read them and share them and pass them along, it can maybe influence people in a small way. And so for me, that's what I think we need to get back to a bit. We've lost a little bit of that, but there is a lot of empowerment and I think a lot of hope that if we still hold on to these traditions and continue to pass them along, good people like you guys and people doing good work, will make things a more hopeful place in the future.

Yeah. Those are those are big, you know, high praise, and we appreciate that, Jen, but it's a little life. Hania Yanagihara?

Yes. I have to figure out. I need to spend some time because I say that book a lot, and I say the same thing. Like, I don't wanna say the last name wrong.

Well, thank you for both of those. And it's nice to get, get recommendations for for, fiction. I I think I tend to just only stay in the nonfiction lane.

Fiction is an excellent, tool. It's really highly recommended to build cognitive empathy. Like, it really is one of the most travel is really critical for building empathy and and reading, fiction is excellent for build building empathy. It it works within the brain to construct, this the stories and putting your having to visualize putting yourself in people's shoes. And so you do that constantly by coming up with ways of empathizing with characters, and understanding characters that are flawed, and finding the good in people, and it builds up your empathy, you know, part of the brain the more you read it.

I think that's great advice. Thank you for that, and thank you for your time today. This feels like a round two is in order. We'd love to talk to Jim, and then maybe we will have that follow-up conversation in the future where we can just dig into what you were starting to talk about, the complexities of running a business with your partner, which we live every day. And there's great things about it, but there's also some interesting challenges.

Not so great things about it. Yeah.

And complexities running a business in general. Exactly. It's not even the husband wife thing. It's just, you know, dealing with with that all those things, you know, that come with, having to be in a volatile market or some political shift can change your whole company. I mean, there's so many things that can happen that can put you off course. So, yeah, very I think that could be a very dynamic, conversation.

I've learned we're at highest risk for burnout.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. That's great. Well, Jen, thank you for the extra time. This is so great. Yeah. We're just so grateful for your time.

I'm so glad to be here. It's always great to talk to you both.

Awesome. Thank you, Jen.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Unblock Yourself podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to follow and rate the podcast. Your ratings and feedback mean the world to us. We'd love to stay connected with you via our biweekly newsletter called the Vienna five, where we share ideas and advice that we found helpful on our own journey to live with more intention. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Instagram. For those Gen z listeners out there, no, we're not on TikTok. But if enough of you ask for it, we'll just have to do it at some point. The links to fund us in social are in the show notes. The Unblock Yourself podcast is edited and produced by Bespoke Productions Hub. Thank you for being here.