Back to School Bonus.

Hey! It's me. I've got some great episodes in the works coming to you very soon. But after almost two years of making the podcast, I have some reflections about what I've learned and how this project has changed me. And bonus! Some updates on past guests that are doing amazing things.

Check it out.

EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION is produced by Courtney Kaplan.

Website: Iconic Leadership Coaching.

Follow me on IG @iconic_owl

Connect on Linked in @courtney-kaplan 

Music by Midwest Got It (IG: midwestgotit)

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, it's Courtney. I am back from summer break and I've been working on the podcast. I've got a couple episodes recorded and edited ready to go, but I wanted to say hello and thank you so much for continuing to sport the podcast and recommend it to friends and share feedback. I love when I get an email saying, hey, I love the podcast. I listen to the latest episode. So fun to be able to get feedback from all of you. So I know I originally started this project to share stories of people in professional change, right? And I think when I started the project 18 months ago, two years ago, the kinds of changes were which job offer should I take? Or I'm trying to get promoted, or things are going great at work, but I think I might want to do something different. And it's a lot's changed since then, since that first episode. I feel like we're facing more and more change. A lot that we might not have chosen, a lot that feels like we can't control. And that feeling of all of us facing an evolution or revolution of some kind feels very real. It certainly does to me. And so I wanted to do an episode where I got to share some of the things that I've learned from the 16, 17 episodes that I've recorded. And as you know, um, when you take on any kind of creative project, you take on that project and you shape it and design it and make it, and it makes you. As much as you're shaping and creating, it's shaping and creating you. And I've had a lot of realizations about the nature of change, and I wanted to share those with you. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you go to evolutionarrevolution.buzzsprout.com, there's a little spot that says fan mail, and you can record a voice memo, and I'd love to hear your thoughts about change and managing change and what you're learning and seeing about managing your own changes. For me, I realize a lot of times we are actually wrong about where we are in life. And what I mean by that is to our minds and bodies, every day is kind of the same or similar, right? Get up, go to work, come home, make dinner, go to bed, get up, go to work, you know, some kind of routine that's the same day after day. And it seems very unchanging. But there's a saying that goes something like, it gets late early. And I think that many of the people that I talk to, and certainly many of the people that I work with, face an ending or a change at a time they didn't expect. So although things felt like they were kind of the same day in and day out, radical changes were happening around them. Maybe not even so radical, but changes were happening around them that they weren't quite tracking. Um I think that that's because sometimes even our minds can kind of see and kind of process some of the change. Oh, I have to use AI and my goals. Oh, my companies looks like they're gonna do something big with a re-org or layoffs. We see those things and our brain can kind of comprehend and try and, you know, figure out some plans, but our body still lags. Like we don't radically change what we're doing day to day. And that's a big part of where coaching can be helpful to have someone else to talk to, unpack, make plans, set goals, set steps to make sure that the actions that you're taking every day are also changing. It's just that sometimes we don't keep up. Our self-awareness or our self-understanding lags. It lags a little bit. We're not reliable narrators. And I think that's an important thing when we consider making changes in our lives, that those changes may need to happen sooner than later. The second thing that I've learned in making the podcast and talking to people is that it's very easy to say we have a flexible mind, we're open to new ideas, but the truth is we hold on to old ideas. We hold on to ways of relating to things. We hold on to kind of our personal little secret rules about how life works. And those rules might not even be anything you could articulate or write down, but they kind of create this little world that you live in, right? You have a conception of how the world works through your life experiences or mistakes or painful moments. And you certainly don't want to test or question those things because it was painful to learn them in the first place. So we kind of come to live in this bubble of our own construction of what life is, what a job is, what a career is, what it means to change that, you know, what what money means, what financial stability means, what power means, what all these things that we have our conception that's quite, we think we can be flexible or open to new ideas, or opening and read a new book about it, hear a new podcast. But in truth, those things stay rather rooted and cause us to be very risk averse, which makes a lot of sense because it can feel like there's more to lose and it's risky and uncertain. So staying with what you've got or doing things the way they've always been done can feel much more safe. And I offer that because in my coaching more and more, I've worked to help people zoom out a little bit from their lives through some of the depth hypnosis work that I do, through some of the somatic work that I do and engaging your body in the coaching work. We're able to kind of see through the assumptions of things and see to the truth of things. Or if not the truth, a bigger perspective with more moves, more opportunities, more ways to make a choice. And I think that you know, that whole that holding on to old ideas is something that happens so automatically and isn't questioned. And so why would you look at those ideas and rules that you have for your life? And and my own life, right? This isn't just something I'm saying that I'm amazing about either. But for me personally, in the past year, my kids have grown from being middle schooler, elementary school kids to teenagers. And anybody who has teenagers out there knows that it's just a big shift. Your role changes, your relationship to them changes. How the family dynamic overall changes. And I noticed how I was still holding on to some of the old ways of relating, or the old ways we used to hang out, or the old ways that we used to talk to each other. And so as I share these, believe me, I'm learning as much as I'm learning as much as as much as I'm telling, I'm also learning. Thirdly, one of the things I really have noticed and believe in more deeply now than ever is that we have a network of people. Each of us in our lives has a network of people who are wonderful, wise, and generous. And we tend to underconnect with them, if that makes sense. We have friends or past coworkers or acquaintances or someone in our neighborhood who's might be ready to have a conversation, offer some advice, offer a referral, offer whatever. And we tend to underconnect and we tend to focus on kind of solving our own problems or making sure, you know, we're appearing like all's well in our world. Things are good for us. I don't offer that to advise, like, yeah, you should really go out and use all your friends and your network to climb. I'm not saying anything like that, but I am saying we're at this weird time where I think community is going to become more and more and more important. And so to start to get into some kind of practice of reconnection to community, reconnection to the people in your world, um introducing people to one another, offering referrals or recommendations to your friends, offering your knowledge to them, as well as asking for support from them. Um, you know, for me personally, I live in California and we've got earthquakes, we've got wildfires, and you start to realize I live in a neighborhood, and if each person is individually prepared for the natural disaster, that's definitely a good thing. But also talking and knowing your neighbors and knowing, you know, what what they have and what you have and how you might be able to help each other, or um, making sure that you can support one another in those moments that something unexpected happens. That's, you know, a physical location, physical neighborhood location situation, but those relationships extend. You know, you can imagine a professional network that helps one another, a friends network that helps one another, a family network that helps one another. All of these people that I think we just tend to underconnect with and under-connect to each other. It's a lot of untapped support and community. And then lastly, one of the things that I consider and experience in thinking about evolutions and revolutions on the podcast, in my work with clients and for myself is really the importance of establishing kind of a discovery phase for yourself. And if you've worked with me in sessions or in a class, I talk about discovery phases a lot. But the discovery phase is making a declaration that you're going to give yourself the next six weeks or the next eight weeks or the next till until the end of the year or the next year or the next two years, where you're declaring a period of time where your intention is to discover, right? So if you've worked in any design process, you know, a lot of times there'll be a creative, a discovery phase where you're doing research, exploring different options, trying things out, you know, interviewing people, gathering information. And I think that this discovery phase is a huge gift for any person right now because it allows you again to kind of lift your head up from the day-to-day, the assumptions, the rut of habit and routine, the ways we all kind of look at the world, and give yourself that specific time to extend or expand beyond with small experiments, getting engaged in something you're interested in, finding and developing that community that I was talking about, um, starting up a project that's just for you, a creative project or something that's important just for you, but to give yourself this discovery phase, give yourself some room to operate, some space, right? And be generous with the time, you know, now until the end of the year. And give yourself a little intention around the discovery phase. From now until the end of the year, I'd really like to make it my intention to reconnect with folks that have moved out of the industry I'm in into something else, because I'm curious to know. That was kind of part of what became evolution or revolution. Or maybe your intention is to get back into doing something that makes you feel more creative and resourceful and excited about life, your own creative projects or your own goals or personal things that make you feel like you're really changing and growing. Let yourself have that time and have more generosity. You know, as I continue to make the podcast, like I said, I live my own evolution, which is so weird to be talking to people about how they've changed their lives and talking as a host, saying, Hey, I'm a coach and this is what I do. And while this at the same time, what I do continues to change itself, continues to evolve itself. And so it's fascinating to give myself that my own space, my own discovery phase, my own permission to let my coaching work evolve, let my writing work evolve, let my let the podcast evolve, let things continue to build on what I'm learning and knowing now for the benefit of everyone who comes in contact with it, right? The format that I used 18 months ago might not work anymore. So as a coach, personally, I'm starting to explore other types of evolution and revolutions I'd like to talk to people about, other spaces that are experiencing evolution and revolution, all in ways that would still benefit you, the listeners, but kind of widening my own lens a bit. And as a coach, I've started to add more tools into my toolbox. So the somatic work that I do with clients, kind of re-engaging the body and the wisdom of the body, which almost sounds strange to someone, right? It almost sounds strange. What do you mean, re-engage the body? But reconnect clients to this true knowing that you have that's right with you, right in your body every single day. So much information right there. And the depth hypnosis work that I've been doing with clients. Again, depth hypnosis is a process that lets us kind of take the presenting circumstance and go deep to a root, go deep to a cause and change or heal or understand what's actually going on there. And as I worked with depth hypnosis with clients, people were like, wow, this is profound, this is very meaningful, this is changing so much more of my life. And I think it's well outside the bounds of the tips and tricks and coaching best practices. But I pursue it because it's been incredibly valuable for me personally in my own life and growth, and for my clients to reconnect to their own peace and power, to reconnect to a little bit more of what's possible for them, especially at a time right now when for sure we need to reconnect to our peace and power, right? Boy, what a what an endangered species that is, right? Someone who feels resourced and powerful and peaceful in the face of all that's going on. So thanks for joining me. Thanks for continuing to listen and review and share and recommend the podcast. Like I said, I'd love to hear from you. And you can drop me a voicemail or a note at evolutionorrevolution.buzzsprout.com. I think there's a little tab on the website that says fan mail, and you can leave me a voice message. So I'd love to hear from you. And I would also would love to give you a quick update on some of my past guests. It's just amazing to talk to people and have them share a moment in time with their business, their change, their idea, and then they continue on after our conversation, obviously. But it's fascinating to see what they've been up to since. So hang on, let me get my notes out and see if I can share some updates with some of my favorite guests. Uh, Danielle Malik. I remember Danielle from Rising Tide Residences. She started a career in UX and digital work. And today she opens homes for people that, you know, might have a harder time finding traditional housing. And she just opened another home for mothers and young children. And I think she's got a couple other projects in the works, but she's really expanding her ability to share safe, affordable housing for people in the Bay Area. You might remember Tina Santiago in Secret City Studios. She started an escape room with her husband and brother-in-law, and a bunch of IKEA furniture. And she continues to launch new immersive theater. So she's got new adventures in Toronto, in historic places with new themes, nighttime adventures. Amazing, continually in these new ways for people to spend time together in real life, having, you know, a fun experience. It's so great to hear it, see her work continuing to expand. Stacy Gordon. Stacy Gordon was at Google and Meta ServiceNow. And now she's also creating a life for herself as a writer. And her book, The Pearl Farmers, comes out November 3rd. And I saw that she's getting rave, what are they called? Pre-reviews? They put previews, pre-reviews? I don't know. Rave pre-reviews. And this past summer, her story, The Coldest Night, was published in the Capra Review. So not only is she just publishing a book, that book is out there. She's continuing to write, create work, share that, and get it out in the world, which is amazing. Anna Bloom, the founder of Lococo, she left her full-time job to dedicate her full attention to Lococo. And that included launching a new flavor. She's now getting into retail spaces where you can go try it out, like at uh Coffee Moose in Park City. And I saw some other sneak peeks of things coming on Instagram. So you can follow her at Lococo Magic if you want to keep updated. But her her hot chocolate empire is thriving and continuing to grow. You might remember Corey Gerloch. Corey and his husband decided to leave the suburbs and the predictability of that life and go all in on buying a boat and starting a new life sailing with their cat, Pineapple. And Corey has a substack called Radical Paths, where he does actually, I think, amazing writing about his journey and all that goes into it. They are living in Antiqua, Guatemala. They sold their boat and they're going to move back to LA this fall. So from I think they were in the Midwest out to the ocean, out to Guatemala. That's where I first spoke to spoke to him in a harbor in Guatemala. And now living in Antiqua and then back to LA. So another chapter begins, right? Brandi Cern, I think you remember her Posado. She was a woman, worked in marketing, did a lot of different jobs and marketing, and then moved to Brazil, found a small town on the beach, lived there with her boyfriend, and opened a little hotel. They're called Posados. And she was recognized in British Vogue's Best Hotels issue for Best Joyful Design, which is not bad for a year and a half in business. And she is hosting a weeklong group artist residency at the Posado, which is rad. And she just got married at her place. So not only did she build a business, she got married at her business, which is awesome. Congratulations, Brandy. I'm so excited to see that. And lastly, I want to thank my very first guest and my sister, Erin Ryan. You might remember, I don't know. If you listen to the first episode of this podcast, it's has it changed? Has it gotten better? Maybe I don't know. Um, she was a local midwife in Vermont, home birth midwife in a little town in Vermont. Very quaint, very hallmark movie. And then she talks about the realities of that, a huge kind of breakdown in her life. She went back to school, back to Berkeley to get her master's in public health. And now she's a global maternal health educator. And right now, as I speak to you, she's in Tonga, headed to Fiji, then headed to Australia on an eight-week trip all through the Pacific Islands and the Pacific. And um, I wanted to just give her a shout out because she continues to do amazing work around the world. But without her, I don't think that this podcast ever would have happened. She let me interview her twice. She waited for a year before I edited or launched anything. And she was always very supportive, super encouraging about this project. So I just want to say thanks so much. I know you're out there in Tonga doing your thing, and I'm so proud of you. And so I've got many more guests coming up. I'm super excited about people I've talked to. I've got two episodes ready to launch. Um, more episodes coming soon. I would love to hear from you. What questions should I talk about? What industries are you curious about? What evolutions or revolutions are you seeing that you want to hear more about? So thank you again for sharing, rating, and recommending. And don't forget to drop me a voicemail under the fan mail, evolutionarrevolution.buzzsprout.com. I'd love to hear from you. So until I get that next episode out, stay true to yourself.