Episode 199: When Your Life is in Constant Disruption, You Learn to Find Your Own True North
Does your past define your future?
Check out the latest podcast from Sarah Elkins as she and her good friend, Scott Ferguson, discuss Scott’s journey from adoption, enlisting in the military, to finding what resonates in life in his current work.
Scott Ferguson: Stories of Resilience and Success
Does your past define your future?
Check out the latest podcast from Sarah Elkins as she and her good friend, Scott Ferguson, discuss Scott’s journey from adoption, enlisting in the military, to finding what resonates in life in his current work.
*Note from Sarah: We're one week away from publishing our 200th episode! If you're a fan of the podcast, we'd love to hear from you and include your words at the beginning of that episode. Simply email your thoughts to sarahelkins@elkinsconsulting.com, or record a short voice memo on your phone and email it to me. The deadline is Fri. October 22, 2021. Thank you in advance for helping us celebrate this milestone!*
Scott shares the moments that shaped him into who he is today: A mentor helping to guide others through their struggles, using his own experiences and all he has learned from his own endeavors, struggles, and successes.
Listen to Sarah and Scott’s engaging talk about looking back at your past -and- forging on to uncover how that past guided you to where you are today and who you can be tomorrow.
"If you overlap your happiness, then you can keep happiness coming in the present, which makes for an awesome yesterday."
*Show notes contributed by Tracy Ackeret
About Scott:
Scott Ferguson is the podcast host of Time to Shine Today, Managing Director at The Ferguson Real Estate Team and Investment Group, Head Coach of Time to Shine Peak Performance, Chief Rainmaker at Ask4Ferguson, and more. Scott is also a U.S. Navy Veteran.
Visit Scott’s website and follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter to learn more!
ABOUT SARAH:
"Uncovering the right stories for the right audiences so executives, leaders, public speakers, and job seekers can clearly and actively demonstrate their character, values, and vision."
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 85: What Feels Like Internal Conflicts Are Likely Close Connections
Caroline Mays felt conflicted, almost like she had two completely separate lives. She had her life on the road as an endurance runner, with a group of peers and friends she could share all the aches, pains, and achievements of that sport. And she had her life as a writer, with other writers and friends she could share the disappointments, obstacles, and accomplishments in her work.
Conflicting Personal Stories Uncover Depth of Personality
Caroline Mays felt conflicted, almost like she had two completely separate lives. She had her life on the road as an endurance runner, with a group of peers and friends she could share all the aches, pains, and achievements of that sport. And she had her life as a writer, with other writers and friends she could share the disappointments, obstacles, and accomplishments in her work.
Deadline August 31, 2019!
Don't miss this opportunity to preorder my book, Your Stories Don't Define You, How You Tell Them Will. I'm offering valuable bonuses for the purchase of multiple copies, including one-to-one storytelling coaching sessions with me!
Click here for more information about the book, and to preorder your copies.
It seemed to her the two pieces of her life were always in conflict; few athletes she knew were professional writers, and few professional writers she knew were athletes.
But as she worked through her own brand theories and intentions, she realized those two parts were not in conflict, they ran in parallels.
Caroline is a writer of bios for professionals, but that doesn't even come close to describing what she does. That would be like saying Meryl Streep is an actress. There is so much more to the art and style Caroline employs to create a unique and compelling bio, in writing and via video storytelling.
Here's her bio, as an example:
To really stand out, we have to know how to share those unique parts of us, the parts that might at first look conflicting or mismatched. The best way to do that is to tell a story that connects us not only within our own lives, but to connect us with others.
Our conversation was broad and deep, and we spoke about everything from her endurance running to the why behind what we do with storytelling for our clients. One thing we agreed strongly about was that people often misunderstand their own stories, sharing them as if they were a linear experience, one thing happens, and then the next, without any context for what we learn and how we grow in between.
Connect with Caroline on LinkedIn to learn more, and check out her company’s website, Switchblade Lemonade, making waves, thanks to that powerful video.
Will You Disrupt Yourself? Or Will You Be Disrupted?
Disruption: Our Subconscious Mind Knows When We Need One
Photo credit: Pete Longworth
Whitney Johnson knew she found something really useful in the book she was reading, The Innovator’s Dilemma, but she had no idea that it would change her perspective about her career and life trajectory.
She was in the middle of a major project, doing research on disruption in the telecom industry when she realized that the description of disruption as a business concept could easily be applied to personal growth and career.
That seed turned into a full sized tree over the next few years as she started to consider all the other traditionally labeled business concepts that could be applied to career and personal growth. The beauty of those concepts is that they could help not only explain where we are in terms of learning and development in a job, they could help people create a visual representation to help people apply those concepts to ultimately improve their productivity and engagement at work.
In our conversation, I discovered two things about Whitney that surprised me: She didn’t cook until recently, choosing to avoid the connection between “women’s work” and her professional image, and she is a musician. She is a classically trained pianist, but had given up piano after completing her music degree. Even more interesting to me than learning those things was learning that she had taken both up in the recent past, learning to cook (and enjoy it), and coming back to the piano through the discovery of a love and connection to Gospel music.
I had to mention my love for Gospel and Spiritual music, of course. I’m not a Christian, but I get chills up my spine when I hear people perform this music with passion and a depth of spirituality.
Our conversation took some wonderful twists and turns, from our relationships with our mothers and children, to career challenges related to boredom and a lack of dopamine boosts from learning something new.
One of my favorite parts of this conversation was an “ah ha” moment related to the challenges of parenting adult children, and trying to avoid letting our “advice monster” out in conversations with them.
To me, the most important concept in our conversation was that our brains crave learning new things. When we aren’t exploring something new, whatever that may mean, we are likely to find unproductive activities to satisfy that craving. Have you found yourself in a job that isn’t satisfying, and suddenly either you’ve been let go, or you notice more drama going on in your personal life? Whitney and I shared a theory that when we aren’t actively learning and satisfying our brain’s craving, we often sabotage ourselves in different areas of our lives.
In her book, Disrupt Yourself, Whitney spends time exploring the S-curve (typically used to describe a business’s growth) as a visual representation of skill-building or the learning curve of a new job or career. When we reach the top of the S, we hit a plateau and either stay there for a while, or we jump onto a different S, usually having to start at the bottom again.
Because of our human need to learn new things, when we sit on top of that S-curve too long, we tend to get bored. In my case, that’s when I sabotage relationships and jobs. In Whitney’s case, that’s when she takes on new or renewed interest in creative outlets.
It was a pleasure to spend time with Whitney after more than five years of conversing through email and on LinkedIn. She was a major source of inspiration for me when I started blogging, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities she offered when she published one of my first posts on her website, and a follow up post a few years later.
Recognized as one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world (Thinkers50), Whitney Johnson is an expert on disruptive innovation and personal disruption; specifically, a framework which she codifies in the critically acclaimed book Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work and in her latest book Build an “A” Team: Play To Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve. (Harvard Business Press, 2018). She is also the author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream
She developed her proprietary framework and diagnostics after having cofounded the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen. This framework is complemented by a deep understanding of how executives create and destroy value, having spent nearly a decade as an Institutional Investor ranked equity analyst on Wall Street.
In addition to her work as a speaker and advisor, Whitney is one of Marshall Goldsmith's original cohort of 25 for the #100 Coaches Project, is a coach for Harvard Business School's Executive Education program, frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, is a Linkedin influencer, and hosts the weekly Disrupt Yourself Podcast. You can follow her on Twitter at @johnsonwhitney.