Finding Brave

“We’ve made a social contract to come into this organization, however, contracts can be broken. Whichever direction it gets broken, we have to take the responsibility and either take care of ourselves and get out of it, or help fix it. There’s really very little in between, and we’re not supposed to see how much crap we can take.” - Andrea Goeglein Asking for help, especially in the workplace, often feels like we’re waving a neon sign of weakness. However, today’s expert guest -- who literally wrote the book on being brave regarding asking for help -- explains how asking for the right kind of assistance is essential to reducing stress, positively impacting our results and building a foundation for strong relationships. Dr. Andrea Goeglein has a fascinating personal and professional story, complete with important and powerful lessons learned, starting with what she realized after altering the truth of her age (of 14) to land a job at a Wall Street brokerage firm. By 24, she opened her first operating business – a Haagen-Dazs ice cream store in Reno, Nevada. Many businesses and a PhD in Organizational Psychology later, Andrea has experienced enough stress and anxiety to be an expert. Today she is a Success Catalyst and known as Dr. Success™. Andrea is the founder, curator and author of the Don’t Die™ self-development collection of books. Her latest book is Don’t Die Waiting to Be Brave. As an expert in Applied Positive Psychology, she is her clients’ success Sherpa, guiding them as they climb the mountain of success. In today’s Finding Brave you’ll not only know when to ask for help, but who to ask and how to do it in order to flourish in your professional life. The choice to ask for help is ours, and we will create even more bravery and success when we know how much choice we really have. To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://servingsuccess.com 

“You just have to believe that there’s a higher version of you that you can tap into and that can access higher-level wisdom, insight, solutions, strategies, people and connections. If you believe it, and if you believe it strongly, it’s amazing what happens in your life.” - Kathy Caprino Most of us know from experience that New Year's resolutions and the huge, hairy goals we dream up for our lives often arrive with great gusto, but all too frequently they die on the vine very soon after we've written them down. Today, I’m excited to share a helpful year-end strategy of reflection -- the process of reflecting back on the past year in an in-depth, careful and probing way, exploring all that you’ve learned and experienced, created, and also “failed” at -- as an effective step to get clearer clear on what you really want in your life. This reflection process helps you connect in a powerful, juicy way with your ultimate dreams and desires, and it highlights where you’ve been living “off course” - far away from what your most authentic self really wants. In this episode, I explore what I've found to be six essential reflection questions that are perfect for this time of year, to help us take stock, expand our gratitude and appreciation for all that we are today, and set the wheels in motion for shifting our approach to how we operate, communicate and engage with others and with our core challenges and power gaps. This reflection process hatches important new revelations, and sets the stage for a brand new future. As always, be gentle and compassionate with yourself as you reflect, and remember that everything that’s happened can be used to bolster and uplift you, if you let it. At the end of the show, I sing a little song to welcome in the New Year, from my heart to yours. I’d love to hear how your answers to these six questions impact you. And I welcome your suggestions for any future topics or interviewees that you’re interested in. Please reach out to me by email, or on social media via LinkedIn, or on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and say hello and share your ideas! I wish you and your family very Happy Holidays and I’m looking forward to serving you fresh, new episodes of Finding Brave in 2019 that will move you forward to create life and work as you dream it to be. Happy New Year!

“When you’re getting together with family, friends, your parents, and with your siblings, don’t keep using the stories from the past as an excuse to feel what you feel today.” - Kathy Caprino You may think that pain and conflict with family and friends during the busy holiday season is unavoidable, but on today’s episode of Finding Brave I’m giving you 5 practical and doable strategies that will help. These strategies aren’t just what I’ve encountered when coaching and helping others, but what I talk about today touch on challenges and struggles I’ve personally experienced. Using these strategies will allow you to find ways to be loving, compassionate, joyful, and grateful all at the same time. So dig deep in your heart and spirit this holiday season and embrace the good, kind, the loving and compassionate – in yourself and others. Make a commitment to see good and to emphasize what you have in common, what you love together. And your holiday will go very differently, I guarantee it.

“If you’re not feeling so positive and you go engage in a simple positive habit, and then you feel better, you’re reminding your brain that your behaviors matter.” - Michelle Gielan One of my favorite topics is how to speak bravely, and today’s Finding Brave guest is someone who can back up the importance of doing this with strong research. What she shares today reveals how our language shapes and influences our reality so much more than most of us understand. Michelle Gielan is the bestselling author of Broadcasting Happiness: The Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change and was named one of the Top 10 authors on resilience by the Harvard Business Review. She is the founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research. Michelle is also the Executive Producer of “The Happiness Advantage” on PBS and a featured professor in Oprah’s Happiness course. She formerly served as anchor of The CBS Morning News. Michelle has spent the past decade researching the link between happiness and success and her research has received attention from dozens of media outlets including: The Washington Post, Forbes, and The New York Times, among other major outlets. What you’ll learn in this episode is that although being happy may be challenging sometimes, happiness is indeed a choice. In the long run, we will all have a much great chance of achieving happiness if we are deliberate and committed to achieving it on a daily basis. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://michellegielan.com/ 

“You have to think about pitching as a two-way dialogue. It’s not, ‘let me sell myself.’ It’s not, ‘let me announce what’s great about me’ to the world. It’s a two-way dialogue and you have to be thinking just as hard about that journalist on the other end of your email as about you and what you have to say.” - Mark Fortier In this episode of Finding Brave, my special guest will reveal not only how you can get the attention of top media, but also how to make the most of your appearance and then absolutely rock it. My guest, Mark Fortier, is a 25-year veteran of public relations work, and President and Founder of Fortier Public Relations, a PR firm specializing in business books and business thought leadership. He has worked on well over a hundred bestsellers, eight #1 bestsellers and books by dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs and 32 of the Thinkers50 list of the world’s leading business thinkers including Jim Collins, Clayton Christensen, and Seth Godin. As you’ll hear, it’s very doable to get picked up in the news, but you do need to be smart in the way you approach it. Mark shares his deep experience and insights on the best strategies to use to be successful in landing great interviews with top media and putting your best foot forward, as well as the common pitfalls many professionals experience when attempting to achieve and attract top exposure in the media. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://www.fortierpr.com/ 

“You know when you go to a dinner party and you end up chatting to that one person that you didn’t expect to, and you have that really rich conversation that takes you into all sorts of interesting spaces? That’s the voice that I want to have for our authors.” - Lou Johnson Have you ever thought about writing a book, but you weren’t sure of how to approach a publisher after it was written? In today’s episode of Finding Brave, you’ll not only hear how to do this, but you’ll learn powerful tips and strategies from a top publishing expert on how you can entice great publishers to say “YES!” to your book project. Lou Johnson is an experienced, dynamic and highly effective business leader with a deep passion for supporting creators, developing people, workplace culture and business performance. She is a well-known publishing industry figure with over twenty-five years of industry experience including senior roles at Random House, Allen & Unwin and Simon & Schuster, where she was Managing Director between 2010 – 2014, launching her own startup, The Author People and now Publishing Director at Murdoch Books. In addition, her industry representation includes Vice-Presidency of the Australian Publisher's Association (2012–2014), Chair of the Book Industry Collaborative Council (BICC) Distribution Expert Reference Group and board membership of The Stella Prize and founding committee member for The Indigenous Literacy Foundation She has worked on a vast range of books including authors like Rhonda Byrnes, Kate Morton, Elizabeth Gilbert, Khaled Hosseini, Al Gore, Philippa Gregory, Hillary Clinton and JK Rowling. Lou’s insight on how her company considers submissions by authors, along with the clarity she provides about how best to approach publishers, is invaluable. If you’re an author or an aspiring one, and are confused about the publishing process or losing hope, don’t despair because your message is needed. Listen in here to get the best advice and direction on how to spread your book messages with the world. To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://www.murdochbooks.com.au/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsonlou/ 

“You are like a thumbprint. You are absolutely unique. Now you have to understand how and leverage it and be strong enough to be powerful.” - Kathy Caprino In this episode, I share key findings from my in-depth research with thousands of professional women around the world about the 7 most damaging power gaps that keep people from thriving and succeeding in both life and work. Here, I outline how these 7 gaps steal away our power, confidence, energy, vision, connection and influence, and I explain how these gaps derail us from achieving our highest and best goals and visions. You'll hear some specific, actionable tips and new approaches to help you recognize the gaps that are impacting your life today, and support you to move forward to close them once and for all.

“Look at your individual industry and role and see where you are in danger of being automated, and how you can upscale or rescale so that you are adding unique human value to that position.” - Alexandra Levit You’ve undoubtedly noticed that technological change and advancements in the workforce are happening faster than ever before. Are you concerned about how to lead and thrive in the organization of the future? Today’s expert guest on Finding Brave answers this question brilliantly, and shows us why the future world won’t be doomsday, but instead, will be exciting, rewarding and full of opportunity for so many. Alexandra Levit’s goal is to prepare organizations and their employees to be competitive and marketable in the future business world. A former nationally syndicated columnist for the Wall Street Journal and writer for the New York Times, Fast Company, and Forbes, Alexandra has authored several books, including the international bestseller They Don’t Teach Corporate in College and Humanity Works: Merging People and Technologies for the Workforce of the Future. Alexandra recently became a partner with organizational development firm PeopleResults. She consults and writes on leadership development, human resources, technology adoption, entrepreneurship, innovation, career and workplace trends on behalf of numerous Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Canon, Deloitte, DeVry University, Intuit, SilkRoad, and Staples, and has spoken on these topics at hundreds of organizations around the world. In the last several years, Alexandra has conducted proprietary research on the future of work, technology adoption, the millennial generation, gender differences and bias, and the skills gap. She also served as a member of Business Roundtable’s Springboard Project, which advised the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Department of Defense on current employment issues. After listening to Alexandra on the future of work and where humanity fits in, you’ll know why it’s now a time to take brave action, and not sit back and let things happen to us. Change is here -- let’s embrace it. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://www.alexandralevit.com/ 

“To awaken your Joy of Genius, start with a commitment that’s just giving yourself permission to discover more of what your genius is. Out of that commitment comes a whole new wealth of ideas that will come forth.” - Gay Hendricks Today’s Finding Brave episode is all about how to address negative thinking once and for all, and also claim your true creativity and work and live from within your zone of genius. This is a special conversation, and I’m honored to speak directly with the inspiring Gay Hendricks whom I’ve admired for years, especially since reading his amazing book The Big Leap. Gay joins the podcast to share the essence of his new book The Joy of Genius, a powerful new sequel to The Big Leap. Gay Hendricks has been a leader in the fields of relationship transformation and bodymind transformation for more than 45 years. After earning his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1974, Gay served as Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Colorado for 21 years. He has written more than 40 books, including bestsellers such as Five Wishes, The Big Leap, Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After, (the last two co-authored with his co-author and mate for more than 35 years, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks). A true embodiment of living in our zone of genius and creativity, Gay is also a mystery novelist, with a series of five books featuring the Tibetan-Buddhist private detective, Tenzing Norbu, as well as a new mystery series featuring a Victorian-era London detective, Sir Errol Hyde. His latest book, The Joy of Genius, shows how to eliminate negative thinking and bring forth true creativity. Gay has appeared on more than 500 radio and television shows, including Oprah, CNN, CNBC, 48 HOURS and others. Gay shares his concept of The Genius Spiral, which is a big part of his latest book, and he reveals how to take life’s difficult moments and turn them into springboards to genius. The best part is that what Gay talks about won’t take you hours a day to master. You’ll find that a commitment to giving just a few minutes a day will help lead you to discover your true genius and creativity. To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://hendricks.com/ 

“I can’t teach you any trick, any layer, or any tip about “Start questions with these words”, et cetera, unless I share the fact that the outcome of your questions -- the responses to your questions -- are laid in the foundation of intention.” - Chad Littlefield What if the key to building stronger connections with the people we work with started with asking powerful questions? Today’s inspiring expert guest on Finding Brave has made it his life mission to “gently eradicate small talk” in the hopes that it will bring us all closer to what really matters to us all. Chad Littlefield is the co-founder of We!™ and creator of We! Connect Cards, a tool to spark conversations that matter in 50+ countries around the world. He has spoken at TED, and most recently he and his partner Will Wise launched their new book, Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations that Matter, now a #1 Amazon Bestseller. As you’ll hear, it all starts with gaining a deeper awareness of our intentions, as well as a genuine curiosity and touch of bravery to get to truly know the people around us. It just takes ones step on our part, but even a tiny act can have profound effects. And you’ll explore with us the idea that small talk can keep us from forging the true bonds we’re longing for, but our efforts at making connection can backfire if we’re not more careful and conscious. To learn more about today's guest, visit: http://www.weand.me/