Reconsidering

Now that season 1 is wrapped, we're bringing you a special mini-episode to tide you over while we work on season 2. The tables are turned as Meredith Black and Aarron Walter interview their co-host Bob Baxley to uncover his origin story and why the themes of Reconsidering are important to his personal journey. Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/10

Shanti Brien received a phone call from her husband that changed everything. Authorities started a criminal investigation into her own husband’s company and he needed a lawyer to defend him. As a criminal defense attorney, Shanti knew how to navigate these situations but not when it was her own husband facing jail time that could tear her family apart. In this episode, Shanti shares how this moment of crisis and reflection helped her rethink her career as an attorney and inspired her to start a non-profit called Fogbreak Justice and write a book called Almost Innocent. Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/9

On this episode, Katherine May discusses the power of rest and retreat during difficult times, embracing 'wintering' for personal growth. Topics include work addiction, illness, guilt, and transforming through hardships. She explores self-care, resilience, and embracing discomfort to build inner strength, along with reflections on past ambition and present realities. The importance of prioritizing rest, self-regulation, and finding fulfillment through stillness is also highlighted.

Hustle culture keeps us grinding, busy, overcommitted, rushed, and subsequently ungrounded. It’s a phenomenon Brad Stulberg calls “heroic individualism” and it’s something he knows all too well from his own life and his performance coaching work with people doing their best to reach their peak. Brad wants to shake us out of the hustle mindset and help us find a more grounded, sustainable existence. His book The Practice of Groundedness provides the framework. In our conversation with Brad he shows us how to neutralize negative talk, be present in the moment, and recognize that how we spend our time day to day is ultimately how we spend our life. Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/7

We all have those moments of uncertainty where we don’t know if we should stay put at our careers or jump ship. And sometimes we don’t have a choice and are forced to jump. It can lead to an existential crisis. Who am I now? Do I have anything left to offer? What’s next? These are all questions pop up in our conversation with our guest, Maria Giudice, who has navigated career change many times with grace. Maria Giudice is a design executive who has had quite the career in Silicon Valley. She had her own design firm Hot Studio for over 15 years, sold it to Facebook and then went on to lead global design teams at Facebook and Autodesk. After all that time working with executives and championing design, she started to reconsider what her next career chapter was going to look like. Her journey is relatable and honest and full of twists and as you’ll find out towards the end of the discussion, also a surprising turn.Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/6

Listening. It’s a skill that is hard to perfect in a world filled with distractions. But cultivating a satisfying life filled with rich relationships, growth, and connection requires this foundational skill. Getting good at listening to others can also help you tune into your own inner dialogue and emotional state.In this episode, Ximena Vengeochea, author of “Listen like you mean it” explains the art of listening and why it makes us better thought partners at work and at home, provide us with some tips for cultivating the listening mindset, and shares how we can become more empathetic listeners. We also talk about how listening can change the way we build lasting relationships—handy for many of us after a pandemic has stunted our social skills.Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/5

For many of us, time slips by mysteriously. It’s gobbled up by email, social media infinity pools, and the flotsum and jetsum of life. At the end of the day we’re left wondering, “uh, what did I do today?”John Zertasky, co-author of Make Time, wants us to be more aware of and intentional about how we spend our most precious resource—our time. John spent years working at Google and GV, the venture capital arm of Google. With that sort of background you might think John’s perspective on time management slants towards productivity and optimizing output, but you’d be wrong.Years in the tech industry grind where attention is fragmented and speed is fetishized have given John clarity that a laser focus on what’s important is the path to satisfaction and balance.John’s perspective will help you reflect on what’s most important in your life so you can allocate your time accordingly and find highlights every day.Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/4

Careers, careers, is there anything else so central to our lives that is so ill-defined and largely misunderstood? Academic career, sports careers, college careers. It seems we're awash in careers, and yet when it comes to our professional career, the one that really matters, many of us feel somewhere between uncertain and confused. Unable to see or appreciate the common patterns or longer arcs that might allow us to understand, process, and position our own ambitions, successes, and disappointments.On this episode we talk with Judy Wert, co-founder of Wert & Company, an executive recruiting and search firm that specializes in creative and business leaders. Trained as a designer, Judy has a unique and powerful perspective— one that's been honed over her 25 years of talking to designers, building relationships, cataloging conversations, and coming to understand the journey, challenges and patterns many of us move through as we evolve in both our personal and professional lives.Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/3

Nearly 50% of the US workforce is reconsidering their career and thinking about leaving their current job. Was the pandemic the driving force behind this? What does this mean for employees right now? We dive into this with Vipula Gandhi, Head of US Enterprise and Managing Partner at Gallup Inc and the author of a very popular article that some of you may have read called The 'Great Resignation' Is Really the 'Great Discontent'.We talk in detail with Vipula about why people are re-evaluating their current jobs, what employers need to do about it, and what the future of the workplace actually looks like.Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/2

For most people the ingredients that go into a satisfying life are mysterious. Certainly career and relationships play a big role but they don’t always go as planned which makes satisfaction and happiness mercurial.Bill Burnett, Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford, founder of Stanford’s Life Design Lab, and co-author of two best selling books Designing Your Life and Designing Your Work Life, thinks of life as a design problem that can be prototyped and iterated upon using design thinking.Maybe you’re the type of person who already has a life plan. Congrats, you’re a rare breed. The problem with most life plans is that our pathway in life is ever changing. How do we plan for the unexpected?In our conversation with Bill he helps us see that change in life is a feature, not a bug. It creates opportunities for incremental improvements and growth.After a historic year of transformation we are all well positioned to rethink life and design something new for ourselves with clarity of convictions and a recognition of what’s real. Bill’s approach to life design will help you get started in your own process.Show notes and transcript: https://reconsidering.org/episodes/1