Sound Insight

In honour of National Poetry Month (and a recently fractured collar bone) I'm practicing "less is more" this month. And nothing illustrates that more perfectly than poetry. Each week in April, Sound Insight will feature one of my poems along with a brief reflection inspired by the poem's theme. This week's poem is Threshold. We tend to think of thresholds as lines to cross, doorways to enter, or edges from which we leap. If we are held there longer than we want to be, we become impatient, agitated, or even despondent. We rarely consider the value in the threshold itself. This poem was written during one of those difficult threshold seasons, April 2020, our first COVID-19 lockdown. You can find a full transcript of this episode that includes an inquiry to support your practice by subscribing to my newsletter, The Slow Sip on Substack. The Slow Sip will introduce you to a world where less is more, slow is fast, failure is funny, and relief is just one slow sip away. 

A Simple Way to Make Everyday Choices that Matter. Over the sweep of a life, it is the tiny, seemingly insignificant decisions we make every day that can make the biggest difference. On their own, they don't seem to matter much, but as they accumulate over time, they can make the difference between a rich and fulfilling life or one filled with regret. In this episode, I share a simple approach for recognizing and making the tiny decisions that matter.  Small Decisions for a Big Life first aired in Season 2. In season 5, I'll be bringing back some of Sound Insight's most popular and favorite episodes. If you'd like a transcript of this episode plus much, much more, check out my newsletter, The Slow Sip on Substack. The Slow Sip will introduce you to a world where less is more, slow is fast, failure is funny, and relief is just one slow sip away. 

Welcome to Season 5 of Sound Insight. In episode 1, I share a simple reflection and a personal story to inspire and offer encouragement in a turbulent time. Return is a personal ritual of recovery and re-alignment of our body, mind, heart, and spirit. It is a return to the fundamentals that anchor us. When our lives become stormy and chaotic, return is how we remain grounded and whole. It is a gesture of coming home to yourself. Returning again and again to that inner sanctuary that is always waiting for you.  In season 5, I will dive into the theme of return and its practices more deeply, but to begin, I invite you to take a long slow breath, listen, and enjoy.   Here's where you can find more. If you'd like a transcript of this episode plus a more detailed overview of what is coming in Season 5, you can find it here. Also, consider a subscription to The Slow Sip on Substack. The Slow Sip will introduce you to a world where less is more, slow is fast, failure is funny, and relief is just one slow sip away.   

When I think about finishing strong, I think of marathon runners. The good ones that keep just enough in the tank to mount a heroic sprint to the tape. I think of that triumphant moment when they raise their hands in the air as they cross, just before they collapse on the track in exhaustion. But finishing strong is not only about crossing finish lines. Often we're so eager to get on to the next thing that we blow right past the most important ingredient to a strong finish. In this episode, I share a story about a more powerful finish; the kind of finish that most of us skip.   Looking for more? If you'd like to reduce the slog and dial up the inspiration in your life, consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my monthly newsletter, The Slow Sip. 

Have you ever wondered why you keep working against your own interests? Or why, when you are on the verge of achieving your goals, you start doubting and sabotaging yourself? Meet The Committee, an unruly band of shadowy critics, doubters, and second-guessers who dwell inside our brains. They are participants in the most common and effective conspiracy of all time. The conspiracy to take control of your life, to keep you small, to keep you safe, and to make you as miserable as possible in the process. In this episode, I take you undercover to reveal the inner workings of The Committee. Because  once you understand how it works, you have the key to get it to stop messing with your life.   Looking for more? If you'd like to reduce the slog and dial up the inspiration in your life, consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my monthly newsletter, The Slow Sip.  For actionable strategies, practices, and tools developed over 20 years of professional coaching, subscribe to The Slow Sip today.  

Does your September arrives with a wall of new routines, obligations, and deadlines? After a slow, lazy summer, September can feel like standing on the beach trying to stare down an approaching tsunami. In this episode, I offer an alternative to the typical angst inducing, adrenaline pumping hard reboot. Maybe it's time to try something new. Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a free or paid subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox. .  

Confessions from over-eating at the buffet of life. Do you have a habit of taking on too much? Have you tried all the standard advice about priorities and saying no, but still find yourself rushed and overcommitted? There may be more going on in your complex and beautiful mind than you realize. In this episode, I explore why we (or maybe it's just me) repeatedly sabotage our efforts for a more spacious, creative, savor-worthy life with this compulsion to keep doing more. And the most powerful weapon you have for breaking this habit for good. Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a free or paid subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox. Links to people and resources referenced in this episode: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. The 5 Agonies of Ambitious Multipotentialites by Jennie O'Connor  

The Inner Work of Greater Peace How can we protect our mental and emotional well-being in an environment that is becoming increasingly toxic? Are we all at the mercy of our circumstances and our environment? Or can we control our emotional state to reduce our suffering and the suffering in the world? I've learned in my coaching practice and in life that the truth is more nuanced and complex than either of those questions suggests. Join me for this episode as I explore, the inner work of greater peace.

Did you launch another personal improvement project this year? I have to ask, now that we're nearing the end of the month, how's that working out for you? Is your motivation crumbling? Did your 30-day challenge not make it past day three? Or worse, are you reading this while sitting in a stupor, eating storm chips, and binging on Netflix? Don't despair. You're not alone. It's not too late. There's a better way.

The business case for starting with a strong finish. Studies show that a temporal landmark, like the beginning of a year, can have a strong motivational effect on people's intentions to pursue their goals. Psychologists call this "the fresh start effect." But here's the tricky part. The reason a fresh start is so motivating is it allows you to disassociate from your past actions and your past imperfect self. Blowing past the year you've just lived and what it has to teach you, may lead to another disappointing cycle of wash, rinse, and repeat. A powerful antidote to a weak start is a strong finish. And a great tool for that is a Personal Year-end Review.   Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a free or paid subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox. Links to people and resources referenced in this episode: Tiago Forte at Blog - Forte Labs and author of Building a Second Brain Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results.  

How to Enjoy the Ride, Part 3. So much of navigating life in a way that brings you joy and a feeling of being fully alive is a mental game.  It is waking up to the experience of your life for brief moments and then slipping back into autopilot. In this third and final episode of this series, I share five of my favorite reflective practices for more fully experiencing this remarkable ride called life. Here are some links to resources I reference in this episode: Ali Victor Binazir's 2021 article entitled, You, the Miraculous: What Are The Chances of Being Born? The Last Time, Season 2, episode 12, or read it on The Slow Sip here. Finally, here is a link to my post, The Shut Down Sequence on The Slow Sip.  

How to Enjoy the Ride, Part 2. In Part 2 of my series, "How to Enjoy the Ride", I explore some hard truths about our lives that actually make life more worth living.  In this episode, I discuss: •    The two kinds of happiness and how an over focus on one versus the other can make us miserable; •    Cognitive time travel and how we can improve our enjoyment of life by learning to operate our inner time machine; •    How we don't really matter as much as we think we do and how that is a good thing; •    And finally, how embracing change and the shortness of our time on this planet can actually be liberating. Here are links to resources I mention in the podcast. Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman. The meditation app, Waking Up by Sam Harris. This link leads you to a free trial. And finally, here is the wonderful essay by Jane Park, called What is the greatest unit of time for living?  

How to Enjoy the Ride, Part 1. I'm excited to share the first of a three-part series called How to Enjoy the Ride. In this episode, I discuss three common mental habits that have a powerful upside for our performance. But when they become unconscious and ingrained, they can also make us miserable. Sometimes the path of learning to enjoy your success is to unlearn the very things that got you there in the first place.

In my last episode, I shared a full-throated endorsement of the virtues of sloth as I ventured off on a glorious six week hiatus.  But is there such a thing as too much sloth? Unfortunately, yes. An abundance of sloth can lead to the dreaded state of "drift." Drift is that feeling of listlessness and lack of motivation that comes from drifting down the river of life without a paddle for too long. That slow realization that it's September, there's a tsunami of work headed toward you, and your canoe is lodged in the riverbank. Listen to the cautionary tale of my experience with drift - what it is, the tell-tale signs, and what to do if you find yourself there.   For a transcript of this episode and more, join me on Substack at The Slow Sip.

Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 4. When we think of an arresting drum solo, we think of the beat. The sound. But what gives the sound depth and interest are the rests between the beats. A great rhythm is an intricate relationship between beat and break. It's the dance between sound and silence, substance and space.  Our days are consumed with thoughts of what's next and what we must do. We are focused on filling spaces versus welcoming or even creating them. And yet, so much of what makes life worth living unfolds during the breaks in the action, the liminal moments. Our most memorable moments were created in these spaces when we stopped striving and simply savored. In part 4 of my series on Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync, I explore the underappreciated art of taking quality breaks, and how to use them to create better work and greater depth, meaning, and joy. Some links to resources mentioned in this episode: For a transcript of this episode, see my post on The Slow Sip,  For tips on how to create an end of day ritual, read my post, The Shut Down Sequence. Here's a link to an article on Leslie Perlow's Boston Consulting Group Study, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/remaking-the-workplace-one-night-off-at-a-time/ And a link to her book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone Here is a link to Stephanie Pollock's article, The mental load might be killing my ambition Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.  

Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 3. This episode was originally recorded in 2022. I updated it to include it as part three of my series Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync. How many of us have tried to reduce our stress and improve our lives by becoming better managers of our time? What if we're building the wrong skill? In this episode, I explore how developing your attention skills unlock your superpower. How building the wrong skill is making us miserable. How attention, not time, is the currency of greater value. How your devices may be eroding your cognition and your ability to focus. How the ability to observe, direct and sustain your attention is a superpower that you can develop. Three critical skills attention training develops and how they can improve the quality of your life. Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.  

Finding your rhythm in a world out of sync, part 2. In part two of my series, "Finding Your Rhythm in a World Out of Sync", I introduce the connection between your best energy and your most important work. I share the results of an experiment I conducted on myself in an effort to overcome my life-long struggle to build a consistent and sustainable writing practice.  In this episode, I explore what is your most important work and how do you distinguish that from all the noise? What is best energy and how do you find yours? How do you deal with all the other important demands on your day? And finally, what is possible for all of us, when we put our personal well-being at the center of our relationship with work. Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.   Here are links to some of the sources I reference in the episode: I reference Cal Newport's excellent book, Deep Work, which was very helpful in helping me understand both the conditions I needed to create and the benefits to my productivity and peace of mind of creating them. For a deeper, and admittedly nerdier, dive into my BIG THING system, check out my post What's Your BIG THING: How to get traction on what matters most. For more on ultradian rhythms, see the links and resources referenced in my post at The Slow Sip, Finding Your Rhythm in a World out of Sync. For more on chronotypes, see this article from The Sleep Foundation, and find Dr. Michael Breus' free chronotype quiz, here.

A different path to balance.    In this episode, I explore the connection between the natural rhythms that govern our bodies, our environment, and our lives and their impact on our work. I discuss the significant upside for our health and performance when we pay attention to these rhythms and work with them rather than against them.  "When I let nature's rhythms guide my life, nature delivers. Adopting a more natural rhythm and pace in my work has delivered the single greatest boost to my creativity, productivity, and general well-being." Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.

The elastic nature of comfort and courage. "How does a woman who six short years ago, trekked one of the most isolated places on the planet, sleeping in freezing tents along side piles of goat dung, become paralyzed by the prospect of taking a 15-minute cab ride?" In this episode, I share a personal and somewhat embarrassing experience of dramatic comfort zone shrinkage, as I reflect on the elastic nature of comfort and courage.   Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.  

Sometimes the hardest lies to spot are the ones you tell yourself. In this episode, I reflect on my descent into burnout and three pervasive myths and a lie that kept me in a destructive cycle of over-commit, crash, and burn.   Notes: Here is a link to the poem "You can't have it all," by Barbara Ras featured in the newsletter The Marginalian by Maria Popova. Looking for more? Consider pairing this podcast with a subscription to my newsletter, The Slow Sip. By becoming a subscriber, you'll get transcripts of each episode, access to my full archives, plus tips, practices and special subscriber-only offerings delivered directly to your inbox.   Please take care of yourself. The ideas, concepts, recommendations, and practices I talk about here are for general information purposes only and should not be considered advice for your unique situation or treatment for mental illness, trauma, or other health conditions. If you are having difficulty functioning or are experiencing persistent anxiety, depression, or other symptoms, please see your family doctor.