Creative Spirits Unleashed

My guest for this episode of the Creative Spirits Unleashed Podcast is Kathy Taylor of HerdWise Leadership Coaching. We started this conversation with a quote, which launched a very interesting conversation about what it means to be true to ourselves. The quote was behind her and it said “Be full of yourself.” I was pretty sure there was a double meaning, so we started our conversation there.
We came around to an interesting question. Kathy said, "What does it mean to be a safe person to ourselves?" Now, if that's intriguing for you, it got even more interesting because she likened what we were talking about to filling a little honey bear jar with all kinds of nooks and crannies.
What she does is help people find all the nooks and crannies inside their bodies and their mindsets that keep them from being who they were born to be. We're talking about balancing acts, we're talking about how we can be more true to ourselves, and we're talking about the steps it takes to get there. I will never see a honey bear jar the same way again!
She gave us some of those steps in this conversation along with lots of ideas on how we can learn and grow.
Here's a little bit more about Kathy.
Kathy Taylor is an Embodiment & Nervous System coach who also incorporates horses and nature in her practice. She works with highly successful women who don't want to believe "this is all there is," but just can't quite seem to get where they want to go and are exhausted from trying.
Kathy was aware her people-pleasing, perfectionism, and proving were holding her back, but she didn't know what else to do. The latest self-help book, new strategies and "trying really hard" had gotten her only so far. She put a lot of pressure on herself to succeed like everyone else had and nearly gave up. When she discovered it was her own well practiced stress and trauma responses getting in the way, she knew that more head knowledge couldn't take her where she wanted to go. By learning how to work with her own body and nervous system she was finally able to acknowledge her needs, show up as her *real* self and take meaningful action. With her intellect and intuition working together at last, Kathy shares with others how to access the wisdom of the body.
Topics:

• What does it mean to be true to ourselves? (0:02)
• Be full of yourself and take up space. (2:49)
• Taking responsibility for your life. (8:32)
• The importance of coming back to center of safety. (13:47)
• Cold baths and ice baths. (17:31)
• Physical assessment of the nervous system. (22:31)
• Pushing through the fear. (26:53)
• How did you come to this point of consent? (31:36)
• Why horses are so valuable? (36:46)
• Horses have better sensors than we do. (40:51)
• The importance of air traffic control. (45:22)
• Trying to change the mistakes in our bodies. (50:09)
• Leaving yourself behind creates a little hole. (56:29)
• What can you do to make connections in your body? (1:01:57)
• Boundaries between what's mine and what's not mine. (1:06:52)
• How we invite the injury. (1:11:04)
• The sway test and its power. (1:17:27)
• How to get in touch with her. (1:22:54)
• The journey to the self. (1:29:11)

It’s time for a new podcast! My guest for this episode is Judith Manriquez. We had a memorable conversation with tremendous depth.

One of my favorite things about doing this podcast is how it gives me the opportunity to meet new people, from networks I would otherwise not be part of. Judith is one of those people I met through podcast guest Hannah Pasquinzo. This conversation came at exactly the right time for me. Judith challenged me in this conversation to think differently, and immediately I experienced her gift as a business mentor. She has a way of seeing possibilities that opens the door to whole new realities. It truly is mind boggling how our own belief systems can warp our perspective. It’s incredibly helpful to have someone who can gently help us see things differently. My guess is that anyone listening to this podcast will take away a new way of seeing something. I know I did.

Here's how Judith describes herself:

Judith Manriquez is a spiritual business mentor and visionary intuitive to intuitive women leaders who are ready to show up in their full power and gifts.

With over two decades of experience in business and intuition, she’s supported hundreds of women with leadership development, business and soul mastery, and the refinement of their soul gifts through personalized 1:1 mentoring, advising and consulting.

She’s a claircognizant empath with a Master's in Public Affairs and an entrepreneurial heart, who has worked for a mayor, the chairwoman of a major state agency, non-profits, and corporate businesses as well as healers, coaches, energy workers, lightworkers and hundreds of entrepreneurial women changing the world. She also founded a successful branding, marketing, and web-development firm during the dot com era. For the last 15 years she has run her own consultancy.

When she isn’t playing with, and in, others’ businesses, she spends time with her two college-aged boys and teen girl, and visiting new places across the globe.
Guest Contact Information
Website: judithmanriquez.com

Instagram: @judithamanriquez

LinkedIn: judithmanriquez

In my latest podcast episode, I again welcome daughter and colleague Jen Maneely. We are continuing our series on The Elegant Pivot. In this episode, we talked about the Chapter titled Master Your Stories.

We had SO many stories about making up stories. All too often, we think we know what the other person is thinking or why they said something. More often than not, we are missing the full picture. In fact, I would dare say we never have the full picture, because we can’t truly get inside someone else’s head.

The problem with making up stories is when we act on them as if they are true. I’ve done this myself way too many times to count, often with hilarious results. We tell a couple of those types of stories. But we also talked about situations where our stories caused us grief.

Making up stories about why something is happening or why someone is doing something is completely natural. Getting invested in those stories as if they are true – rather than treating them like the theories that they are – is at the root of many of our breakdowns.

Assuming positive intent is the best move I know to interrupt the cycle. It’s a simple move – but as my book explains, certainly not easy. We get very real in this episode about the challenges of moving from believing our stories to testing our stories.

I would love to hear what you like about this conversation. All you have to do is go to the podcast page on my website at www.lynncarnes.com and click the “send a voicemail button” on the right-hand side of the page. Super easy to do and it helps me know what to bring you in future episodes.

Of course, also share this episode with your colleagues and friends. I hope you enjoy this episode.
Additional Topics

• We are always going to tell a story, can we not be invested in the story?
• Being invested in the story means we can’t change it
• Context matters in the creation of our stories.
• Instead of making up a story about a situation, when we get an opportunity, we can go ask questions to see what is really going on.
• A lot of our stories come from fear.
• Mastering our stories is a journey and overriding our natural instinct is part of the journey, certainly not the easiest part of the journey.
• What you accuse people of is what you do. Which is a hard pill to swallow.
• A great question is “How is this useful, what does this lead to?”
• Language is generative, “What am I generating?”
• The Story I’m Making up is...
• How do we master and rewrite our stories?

Additional Links

Water Logic: Edward De Bono

The Elegant Pivot Book

The Elegant Pivot Workbook

Guest Contact Info:

Website: ManeelyConsulting.com

Email: [email protected]

When the shutdowns started happening last year, we all had to take our “engagement game” up to another level. Suddenly, our meetings became virtual. Once we mastered the “unmute” and “turn on video” buttons, we had to also master keeping people engaged without the benefit of being in the same room. We could no longer read body language...or yawns.

Vernon Roberts started mastering virtual engagement before it was cool. He and I worked together in the 90’s, teaching accounting, banking, loan approvals and other dry topics. In that environment, Vernon brought life to the classroom. When he formed Evoke Virtual in 2003, he was ahead of his time.

As it often does, this conversation took many interesting turns; not surprisingly, it was engaging start to finish. He has so many tips and tricks, from setting context, using open ended questions, understanding our own interests in a conversation, to hearing what really matters to those we are talking to.

Vernon Roberts is an author, master instructor, coach and speaker. Vernon creates a positive learning environment and provides masterful coaching that allows participants to achieve rapid and permanent growth in their skills as communicators and presenters. Vernon coaches and consults face-to-face and virtually in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Co-author of The Gift of Success and Happiness (Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), Vernon challenges readers to transform their lives by utilizing dynamic business process principles. He has also published in T+D magazine and client newsletters and delivered seminars on work-life balance to audiences in such institutions as the Wake Forest University Schools of Business. Vernon holds a B.A. in Economics/Business Administration from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) and an M.B.A. from Loyola University’s Sellinger School of Business and Management in Baltimore, Maryland.

Michele Stowe has a thing or two to say about leading change. She also has a thing or two to say about a lot of the most joyous – and least fun – parts of corporate life.

From the title of the podcast, it’s probably no surprise to you that Michele Stowe is also a self-described comic book nerd. In our conversation, she tells us about how and why she decided to leverage a comic book tool in her coaching repertoire. It’s the kind of thing that makes you tap your forehead and ask “Why didn’t I think of that?”

If you have ever been through a corporate downsizing, whether on the receiving or “giving” end of it, her story about an early experience will hit home. Memories of several of my experiences came flooding back as she described her role, which happened very early in her career. I could just picture 22-year-old Michele wearing her only business suit telling bankers twice her age the reason their badge failed to operate that morning. The story shaped her in very important and useful ways, as we hear in this conversation.

This podcast is like a master class in leadership development and change management – and in taking risks. One of my favorite quotes was this:

“I can...try some experiments, fail, learn and try again, I can emerge to be someone completely different, I can emerge to be that someone that I was meant to be, or at least that I was meant to be for now.”

Michele has also learned a LOT about true motivation and purpose from working in Mercy Housing, led for many years by Sr. Lillian Murphy, one of my favorite people ever. You can hear Michele a talk titled “Annie Get Your Nun”.

Here’s what Michele has to say about herself:

For over 20 years, Michele Stowe has been guiding individuals, teams, and leaders of a wide range of organizations to create authentic, equitable, and fulfilling change, producing real, sustainable proven results.
Born in the US and raised in Germany, where she also lived and worked for many years, Michele graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and earned her Master's Degree in Organizational Psychology at Columbia University. Following an executive career at Fortune 100 companies that spanned almost two decades, in industries ranging from real estate to pharmaceuticals, she executed a professional pivot into the nonprofit sector, and became Chief Operating Officer of Mercy Housing.
A self-described "leadership development junkie," her diverse experience in the for-profit sector - opportunities to leverage her multinational background - helped stoke her professional philosophy, but it was her time at Mercy Housing where it caught fire. One of many achievements, Michele created a comprehensive talent management program for the company's leaders that structured everything from onboarding to succession planning, all wrapped around the organization's core values.

Five years ago, Michele brought her vast array of knowledge and experience to bear and founded SkyRocket LLC, a coaching and consulting service that leads clients through a dynamic and thought-provoking process. Drawing from her own C-Suite experience and incorporating research-based approaches that foster creativity and self-discovery, Michele is able to tap into the client's own resourcefulness to help them align and clarify goals, elicit solutions, and hold them responsible and accountable. Certified by the International Coaching Federation, Michele is also a Hogan Assessment practitioner and a highly sought-after speaker, offering these services to any size audience or venue through SkyRocket.