Episode 153: Humans are Complicated! Stories of Life, Discovery, and Ambition
"People's lives are largely a product of the decisions they make."
The theme throughout this conversation is self-reflection. When we understand ourselves, and can reflect on how we're showing up to the people and environment around us, we can make decisions in alignment with our ideals, our ideal vision of who we want to be and how we want to be.
When You Are Driven to Know More, You Make it Happen
Curiosity. Intelligence. Compassion. Ambition.
These are the words that popped into my head the first time I met Kristin Sherry. We spoke about how she started with the development of her hugely successful YouMap book and program, and I knew I was in the company of someone incredibly thoughtful, who was inspired to truly guide people to find their best fit in life and career.
"People's lives are largely a product of the decisions they make."
The theme throughout this conversation is self-reflection. When we understand ourselves, and can reflect on how we're showing up to the people and environment around us, we can make decisions in alignment with our ideals, our ideal vision of who we want to be and how we want to be.
We spoke about assessment tools like CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder), DiSC, Enneagram, and Kristin's tool, YouMap, and how the results can help us identify the most natural, instinctive ways our brains work. Which, surprisingly enough, is complicated.
There isn't one all-inclusive, perfect tool to describe who we are, how we think, what motivates us, and what choices we make every day. Not only are we complicated beings with far too many neural connections made in our incredible brains, add to that complexity the fact that we are constantly changing, adjusting our views through experiences and stimulants.
I love the way Kristin thinks about these things, the way she sees people in a multi-dimensional way, not flat, and she uses her vision to guide people to make choices that will eventually bring them to their best environments and roles so they can contribute beauty and competence to their communities, no matter where they sit.
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Learn more about Kristin by visiting her website, order her recently published children's book, You've Got Gifts! and be sure to preorder her new self-development book, Maximize 365: A year of actionable tips to transform your life.
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About Sarah:
In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I’ve realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don’t realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they’re sharing them with.
My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home.
The audiobook, Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available!
Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.
EPISODE 100: Community is the Key to Your Emotional Health and Personal Development
For this 100th episode, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate theme than Community. It’s my community that make me who I am today. It’s my community - that I built with intention - that bring me satisfaction, challenge, and joy. It’s my community that helped me be the person I aspire to be, and to raise our children to be independent, kind, compassionate adults.
Special Episode: Stories of Building Community and Our Identity
Music was our matchmaker. (Stay tuned to the end to hear the entire song from the regular intro and conclusion music!)
Twila and I met because our husbands were looking for other musicians to jam with. One of them answered the other one’s Craig’s List ad, they played together a couple of times, and then I invited them over for dinner and music. We never considered not making music together after that night. Our voices together created something entirely different than our voices separately. The complexity of our vocal tone and harmonies continue to make the hairs rise on our necks, and on the necks of our audiences. I call her my Soul Sister.
Today’s 100th episode of Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is sponsored by Uchi. Scroll down for more information about this new communication improvement app!
For this 100th episode, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate theme than Community. It’s my community that make me who I am today. It’s my community - that I built with intention - that bring me satisfaction, challenge, and joy. It’s my community that helped me be the person I aspire to be, and to raise our children to be independent, kind, compassionate adults.
The audio contributions from Heather Younger, Lynda Spiegel, Joe Kwon, and Neil Hughes were overwhelming! I am so grateful to you, friends, you make it all worthwhile. Truly.
Sarah and Neil at NLVDenver2018
“Special thanks to Neil Hughes for his critical role in bringing these 100 episodes to life. It simply wouldn’t be possible without him.”
I started to build my LinkedIn community about 10 years ago, slowly at first, finding my footing as a blog writer and contributor to the platform via comments and sharing valuable, relevant content.
The first people I connected with deeply were Heather Younger, Neil Hughes, John White, Dustin McKissen, Susan Rooks, Chris Spurvey, Lynda Spiegel, Karthik Rajan, and Larry Boyer. All of whom have transformed their lives since then, publishing books, starting speaking careers, building businesses, and more. These were the people putting out great content that I was learning from, engaging with, and sharing, which was the reason for the substantial growth of my LinkedIn network: People started to follow me because they trusted me to share relevant content, and to connect them with wicked-smart, insightful professionals.
Melissa Hughes and Zach Messler at NLVDenver2018
Those people are the reason for the existence of the No Longer Virtual events. I realized that bringing them together, face-to-face, would offer even more opportunities to deepen my learning from them, and our relationships. We’re heading into our fourth year, No Longer Virtual will descend on Chicago on March 12 & 13, 2020.
That first event in Atlanta in 2017 brought me face-to-face with many of my favorite LinkedIn voices, including Melissa Hughes, Zach Messler, and Amy Blaschka, who continue to be huge inspirations and support for me. Our relationships began virtually, and now I cannot imagine my life without them - or the others I mentioned - in it. They are my community.
For this episode, I wanted to explore what community means to people, and to share what my community means to me.
One of many music nights at our house - our community!
So I hit the record button in the kitchen at Twila’s house, while sitting with her, her daughter, Joy (featured in Episode 94), and our younger son, Max (featured in an April 2018 episode), and drinking coffee and eating delicious, fresh-from-the-oven banana bread.
Joy Gabiel, Life Coach
Two of us moved around a lot as kids (Joy and me), and two stayed in the same house and small communities all through their childhood (Max and Twila). That dynamic made for really interesting insights and discussion about what community means, it’s impact on us, and why it’s so important to be intentional about building a diverse community of supporters, challengers, and truth-tellers.
Joy’s perspective is significantly different from the others in the room. As an only child and a more solitary soul, community is critical for her emotional health in a completely different way from those of us who are generally more social creatures. She explained that as a Challenger (Enneagram reference), she isn’t a naturally trusting person, so her comfort zone is being solitary. But with that solitary life, she risks spending far too much time in her own head, which can cause what she called “disintegration”.
Max, Freshman at University of Montana
Max’s perspective leaned toward mine, that a healthy, supportive community becomes the foundation for curiosity and exploration of other communities and environments. He said that his foundational community, the peer group he has stayed close with since preschool and kindergarten, continues to help him feel secure in his exploration outside of that comfort zone.
I hope you enjoy listening to this 100th episode as much as I enjoyed recording it.
2011, Sarah and Twila at one of our many dinner parties with our community
Rocket to Uranus performance at the Silver Dollar Saloon, Butte, with guest vocalist Twila Olson
Today’s 100th episode of Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is sponsored by Uchi.
Uchi is proud to sponsor this milestone 100th episode about Community because uchi, in Japanese, means “in-group” or “inner circle”. The folks at Uchi believe people are yearning to feel closer to others. Not to everyone, but to the people who matter most to them.
Uchi is a free app, available for download on the App Store and Google Play, that helps make conversations easier.
It’s like those cards games where you sit around a table and share answers to questions, but this is online so you can do it anywhere, at any time and with anyone around the world. Community is about people and their relationships to each other. Uchi’s mission is to help people connect authentically with those who matter most to them in order to have more meaningful relationships.
As an official sponsor of the 100th episode of the Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will podcast, Uchi is contributing to Elkins Consulting’s, No Longer Virtual 2020 conference scholarship fund.
Episode 94: Using Personality Assessments as Tools for Self-Reflection & Self-Improvement
Joy Gabriel was an awkward kid. She struggled to understand social context and constructs, and had a hard time building relationships with other kids. Her time with adults was usually okay, and as an only child, she benefited from the focus of her parents on her development, academically and in relationships.
If They’re Accurate, Assessments Can Help You See Where You’re Getting in Your Own Way
Joy Gabriel Olson
Joy Gabriel was an awkward kid. She struggled to understand social context and constructs, and had a hard time building relationships with other kids. Her time with adults was usually okay, and as an only child, she benefited from the focus of her parents on her development, academically and in relationships.
Because she has always been cerebral, she spent a lot of time by herself, nose in a book, and gazing out windows and at artwork as she processed whatever she happened to be reading, philosophy, scientific theories, and at one point, anything Anime.
Though she has always seemed pretty comfortable in her skin, at least to outsiders, she often wondered whether there was something wrong with her. To address her worries, Joy had a way of taking on the characteristics of characters in her books and favorite movies and tv shows that she admired and respected, in our conversation she called them the “influencers I was imitating.”
As she worked through her late teens and early 20s, trying on different jobs, identities, and relationships, she discovered the Enneagram. Joy is one of those intensely self-reflective, curious people who loves to find and apply tools for more self-discovery and to use to help others, and the Enneagram was a game-changer for her. After participating in the training and becoming a trainer herself in that assessment, she realized her calling was to be a coach, and that she wanted to dig into another assessment to add to her toolkit. Now she’s fully certified in DiSC as well.
Our conversation was full of great insights about how the Enneagram, DiSC, and Strengthsfinder assessments provide interesting ways to present the complexities of personality, and methods to apply the results to improve communication and relationships.
Now, as a life coach, she’s putting her gifts to use, focusing her insightful applications of assessments to help “the imploders, the self-sabotagers, and the people-pleasers out there. Whatever you do in life, I want it to be your call— not someone else’s!”
Connect with Joy on LinkedIn, and check out her website, Read Your Own Mind, and Fighting Fair blog to learn more.