Every so often, an interview literally changes the way I see my life.

This is one of those interviews.

Whatever you’ve got going on in your life, I can almost guarantee this conversation will be a blessing to you.

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

My guest this week is the incomparable Shelley Paxton, making her second appearance on my show.

Shelley is the former CMO of Harley-Davidson and is a 26-year advertising and marketing veteran whose legacy is imprinted on iconic brands like McDonald's, Visa, and Harley-Davidson. At the pinnacle of her career as CMO of Harley-Davidson, Shelley was shocked to find herself feeling success empty instead of successful. And that awakening led her on a profound journey that became her mission, business, and bestselling book, Soulbbatical, A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life. Now Chief Soul Officer of her own life, Shelley works with leaders and teams to advocate for redefining success in ways that celebrate humanity, well-being, and soul.

Just when I think Shelley can’t get any wiser, she blows me away in a new way.

Gems 💎

• How a life threatening and totally misdiagnosed illness forced her to confront the one thing she was “pretending not to know” about her own life.
• How that single question “What are you pretending not to know?” has the power to transform your life.
• How the “arrival fallacy” robs us of our joy and energy, and how we might replace that fallacy with a far deeper, richer truth.
• Shelley’s nightmare moment on a TEDx stage and how she recovered from it.

Resources

• Read Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life by Shelley Paxton here!
• Learn more about Shelley Paxton

Follow Shelley on Instagram @theshelleypaxton and check out her updates on LinkedIn!

This week’s podcast episode* is focused on something that has literally been keeping me up at night— getting my kids into college. My firstborn child is headed to Boston University in the Fall. But I’m not gonna lie … the process was excruciating.

Someone who has been ringing the alarm bells on what has become a “toxic achievement culture” in the U.S. is the amazing Denise Pope, Ph.D.

Dr. Denise Pope is a senior lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and co-founder/strategic advisor at Challenge Success. She is the author of, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001), which was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal, 2001, and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (Jossey-Bass, 2015).

Denise and I get VERY real on why even the most well-resourced kids are suffering, crashing, and burning in this insane drive to get into the “right” schools.

Gems:

✨How to help your kids define “success” in terms that contribute to actual satisfaction and well being. [4:16]

✨The game changing, life changing magic of sleep … and why most teenagers aren’t getting enough of it. [9:30]

✨The one thing you can do as a parent to cultivate authentic resilience in your teen. [24:11]

✨What the college ratings system does and does not reveal about “top” universities in the U.S. [30:02]

Resources:

Connect with Denise Pope:

https://www.facebook.com/ChallengeSuccess https://www.instagram.com/challengesuccess https://www.linkedin.com/company/895857 https://www.linkedin.com/in/denise-clark-pope/

Books / articles:

• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker, Ph.D.

• A “Fit” Over Rankings: Why College Engagement Matters More Than Selectivity

• “P.D.F. Tips” Challenge Success

*(Note: If you do not have kids, or don’t yet feel any kind of low-grade panic about the College Industrial Complex, this might not be the episode for you. On the other hand, this is affecting so many young people, it is an issue that will eventually touch us all.)

Ah, therapy.

The one place we can go to let it allllll spill out. The good, the bad, the ugly.

But there seems to be one topic of conversation that doesn’t always feel welcome.

God.

While the therapist’s office is the ideal spot for excavating the darkest reaches of the mind and the heart, it doesn’t always feel like the best place to explore the divine. The uncanny. The unseen.

In this conversation, I speak with the brilliant Dr. Leslie Carr about this very issue.

Leslie and I talk about why there seems to be little room for the spiritual/religious in a therapeutic context, and how we might work to expand the conversation both as the therapist and as the patient (or, depending on the setting, “client”) ).

Leslie is a psychologist and an expert in how trauma, stress, culture, and digital technology impact the mind. She's been active in mental health advocacy and public psychoeducation for almost 15 years, and her work in this space has been featured in the LA Times, ABC News, and Ask Dr. Drew, among many other places. She's the host of a podcast, The Nature of Nurture, which explores how people respond to their environments in complicated ways. Learn more about her podcast here, thenatureofnurture.com, or check her out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheNatureofNurture

I’m hoping this conversation sparks a much broader conversation about how we can collectively cultivate a more active relationship with something bigger than ourselves.

The Gems ✨

How do you differentiate between organized religion and spirituality, in terms of personal experience of the divine? [00:17:45]

How can we protect our energy from draining people or negative influences in a work environment? [00:21:30]

What are some easy ways to begin to explore our spiritual inclinations without feeling weird about it?? [00:26:03]

Resources Mentioned ✨

Learn more about Carl Jung and his theory system.

Check out Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert.

Want to work with me?

Head over to https://www.bronwyncommunications.com/work-with-me/ to learn more.

As always, thank you for the gift of your time and attention, and SHINE ON. We need your light.