Sound Insight: Recent Episodes
Cathy Jacob
Welcome to Sound Insight, the podcast that explores our complex relationship with work and life. I’m your host, Cathy Jacob. For 20 years, I’ve coached executives, professionals, entrepreneurs, and creators to do the work they love without sacrificing the rest of their lives in the process. For inspiration in an earbud, each episode will challenge your thinking, expand your perspective and offer practical strategies to take you from tired to inspired.
For a written adaptation of each episode, visit my blog at cathyjacob.com/blog. You’ll find a transcript of the episode plus more articles, recommendations, and practices on the topics I cover here.
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.
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."
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.
"I can’t tell you exactly how I landed on the bathroom floor.
All I can tell you is, in that moment, the cold tile was soothing against my cheek. I felt the purest sense of exhaustion I’d ever felt. I was done. There was nothing left to do but lie there, astonished that my breath was still moving in and out of my body."
In this episode, I share the personal story of my experience with debilitating burnout. I talk about how I got there, the costs, and how it led me to the work I do today.
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, 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.
Welcome back for Season 3 of Sound Insight!
One of my New Year's resolutions is to read the stacks of journals collected in my closet. I’ve been journaling since I was about 15 years old. The greatest gift of this exercise is the opportunity to time travel, to be in a kind of conversation with my past self. Not to be fooled by a selective and unreliable memory, but to actually listen to the voice of my younger self.
What I didn't expect was what she would have to teach me.
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.
What does it mean to lead from heart?
When we describe someone as 'having heart' we tend to mean two things: they show compassion toward others, and they demonstrate strength and courage. Leading from heart demands that we be compassionate. It also requires inner strength. When we work with leaders, we begin by supporting them to strengthen their inner core.
In this episode, Cathy explores:
- What it means to build a strong inner core and why it matters to leadership and to life.
- How training your inner core follows some of the same principles as physical core strength training.
- Three practices you can adopt to strengthen your inner core and build the essential foundation to lead and live with strength, courage, and compassion.
If you'd like an adapted transcript of this episode, you can find it on Cathy's Blog, Field Notes.
For more on self-compassion from pioneers in this area, read The Transformative Effects of Mindful Self-Compassion, by Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer.
For more on why so many of us struggle with self-compassion, read Why Is Self-Compassion So Tough? - Cathy Jacob
For more information on the leadership development programs referenced here, visit Fire Inside Leadership's website.
Three “in-the-moment” practices to reduce stress and support your well-being at work.
Why is work/life well-being so challenging?
In this episode, Cathy explores why so many of us struggle with work/life well-being.
- What makes this issue so complex?
- How does seeing it as a complex issue show us a way forward?
- How can we begin to take steps to create greater well-being in the workplace and beyond?
Finally, she shares three in-the-moment practices to reduce your stress, open up new possibilities, and put you in a better position to affect meaningful change.
If you'd like an adapted transcript for this episode, you can find it on Cathy's blog, Field Notes.
In this episode, I reference the work of David Snowden and the Cynefin Framework. You can find out more about his work here.
I also quote and recommend the book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead, by Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin.
After decades of promoting work-life balance, stress and burnout are still rampant, if not growing, in our organizations. Have our efforts to create work-life balance failed?
In this episode, Cathy discusses how our ways of thinking about work-life balance and quality time, which came into widespread use in the 1980's, not only failed to fix the problem, but in many ways, made it worse. She explores:
- The central problem with how most of us think about the struggle between work and personal life and the debilitating stress it creates.
- How our well-meaning advice on solving the work-life balance issue has exacerbated the problem.
- Her own experience with burnout, her process of recovery, and what she needed to unlearn to begin to forge a healthy relationship with work.
- A shift in perspective and a way forward for leaders that puts the responsibility for the problem where it belongs - within a complex relationship between the individual, the culture, and the organizations in which they work.
- Finally, she proposes that as we debate the future of work and what it will look like, we need to put personal and collective well-being at the center of the conversation.
You can find an adapted transcript of this episode on Cathy’s blog, Field Notes.
“We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” Attributed to Mother Teresa.
In this episode, Cathy shares the impact that these words have had on her life. But it wasn't until she dug deeper into the question of what creates psychological wellbeing, that a deeper meaning began to emerge. Cathy explores how these simple words parallel what research tells us lies at the heart of psychological well-being.
- What does it mean to have healthy sense of self?
- How can we cultivate psychological well-being?
- How does that relate to our effectiveness as leaders?
- And how through this understanding a deeper meaning for these words began to emerge.
If you’d like to read an adapted transcript, you can find it here.
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, Cathy shares a simple approach for recognizing and making the tiny decisions that matter.
When everything in your world is changing too fast, sometimes the best thing you can do is stop trying to keep up.
In this episode, Cathy reflects on the years since the onset of the pandemic and how the new normal sometimes feels like no normal. From the steady drumbeat of natural disasters, wars and gun violence to rapid advances in technology, and shifting norms in worklife and the culture at large, the pace of change feels breathtaking. All of this upheaval has produced sometimes physical, sometimes psychological displacement.
She explores the question, how do we navigate in a land of no normal?
You can find an adapted transcript of this episode on her blog, Field Notes.
5 Ways you can work with your future self to create better results with greater ease.
"After years of suffering the consequences of working against myself, it slowly dawned on me that I had a future self worthy of consideration and respect."
In this episode, Cathy explores the surprising benefits of cultivating a healthy relationship with your future self. Whether you are trying to improve your health and well-being or pursue a life-long dream, thinking of your future self as a friend and ally can produce powerful results.
She shares personal stories of how this simple shift in perspective can result in positive changes in your behavior and offer new insight when you are stuck. Finally, she offers 5 practical strategies she uses with herself and her clients to enhance well-being and deliver better outcomes with greater ease.
You can find an adapted transcript of this episode on her blog, Field Notes.
How to Deepen Your Relationships and Sweeten Your Life with this Simple and Ancient Practice.
What if you knew that your next conversation, your next piece of chocolate, or your next kiss would be your last?
In this episode, Cathy shares how you can bring more appreciation, joy and connection to your life with this simple but powerful practice from the ancient Stoics.
For an adapted transcript, check out her blog, Field Notes.
At a time when the risks of speaking up have never been higher, how can leaders encourage good faith conversations to tackle important and complex issues?
In this episode, Cathy explores seven strategies to help you engage in good faith and become a leader in creating spaces where it is safer to have these crucial conversations.
You can find an adapted transcript on Cathy’s blog, Field Notes.
How to turn limiting beliefs into empowering stories.
The stories we believe about ourselves can empower us, inspire us, and sustain us. They can also hold us back.
In this episode, Cathy explores how the stories we tell about ourselves shape our identity and our experience including:
• A personal story of how a faulty set of limiting beliefs contributed to a professional and personal crisis. • How our stories become embedded in our identity and how that can be both empowering and limiting. • How to recognize and question limiting beliefs and create more empowering ones. • The key to finding lasting freedom from the stories that hold you back.
You can find an adapted transcript of this podcast at Cathy’s blog, Field Notes.
The truth about the hard work of loving yourself.
Do you struggle with self-compassion? Are you tired of people saying you just need to love yourself? For many of us, it takes more than platitudes to put compassion at the heart of our inner conversation.
In this episode, Cathy explores: • Why most self-help advice on self-compassion doesn’t acknowledge how challenging it can be. • Why telling someone to stop being so hard on themselves doesn’t help. • Why trying to silence your inner critic can actually make it worse. • And finally, what she’s learned from her clients and her life about what it really takes to love yourself. You can find an adapted transcript of this episode on Cathy’s blog, Field Notes.
What does it mean to live life more deeply? What is the cost of living life in the shallows?
In this episode, Cathy explores:
- What happens when you take the time to dive deep.
- The value and fulfillment that come from deep work.
- Why our current workplaces are ill-suited for deep work.
- And the transformative power of deep connection and conversation.
In this episode, Cathy explores the critical questions surrounding the impact of rapidly evolving information and communication technology on our behavior and our minds.
- How is our use and relationship with technology evolving and what is the impact on our health, our relationships, and our performance?
- What is the impact on our minds of living and working in an environment of constant distraction?
- How are the rapid advances in communication technology changing our workplaces and what are the impacts on culture, performance, and employee mental health?
- Given what we know today, what should we do to protect ourselves and our organizations?
How can you build lasting self-confidence? For many of us, self-confidence is like a bad friend – one minute it’s by your side and ready to take on the world; the next, when you need it most, it’s “outta here!”
In this episode, Cathy explores:
- The difference between lasting and fleeting self-confidence.
- Why so many successful, accomplished, and brilliant people still struggle with self-confidence.
- The simple question that holds the key to lasting self-confidence.
- Steps you can take to make your sense of self-confidence stronger and more durable.
You will find an adapted transcript of this podcast here.
Want to go deeper? Find links to related articles here.
What would a Slow Season look like? In this short episode, Cathy shares three simple things you can do to slow down and bring a little comfort and joy back into a stressful season.
Thank you for this!
Love you,
C
How my inner critic stole Christmas
If you're beating yourself up because you think you should be able to sail through the holiday season with more grace, less stress and less frenzy, this podcast should make you feel better. With a little humor and not that much exaggeration, Cathy reveals her "Lovely Girl", the inner tyrant who lives in her head and shows up every year to suck the joy out of Christmas. You might recognize her.
Think of this podcast as "at least I'm not that bad" therapy.
What does it take to become an outstanding leader? In this episode, Cathy shares 10 discoveries on what it takes to grow your leadership from two decades of working with leaders from all walks of life. She explores:
- What happens when you think beyond the narrow view of leadership as a role or set of particular qualities;
- The difference between training and development that many leadership programs don’t take into account;
- The role of intrinsic motivation in outstanding leadership;
- The role of emotional intelligence in leadership effectiveness;
- The myth of the ideal leadership personality; and
- Why developing your leadership may be the most urgent challenge you face.
How many of us have tried to improve our lives and reduce our stress by managing time? And yet, with every time saving strategy and device we’ve employed, we’ve become more time starved and miserable. The problem is, we’re focused on building the wrong skill.
In this episode, Cathy explores how developing your attention skills unlocks your true superpower.
- How attention, not time, is the currency of greater value.
- How companies have created an economy around capturing and monetizing your attention.
- 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 and how to develop it.
- Three critical skills attention training develops and how they will improve the quality of your life.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, Cathy reflects on how so much of our experience is beyond our control. At times like this, our greatest opportunity for influence is not in focusing on how to change our circumstances but in focusing on what we bring to those circumstances.
The first step in becoming calmer and more grounded in situations like this is in becoming aware of where you are. Cathy shares a technique for heightened awareness she calls “the systems check” to support you to bring your most resourceful self to challenging situations.
The life-changing practice of embracing your inner slug.
In this episode, Cathy mounts a vigorous and ‘tongue-in-cheek’ defense of Sloth as an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. Sloth has a bad rap, particularly given its addition to the list of the Seven Deadly Sins, alongside gluttony and lust. But it has experienced a recent resurgence in popularity during COVID-19. Research now suggests that sloth (aka rest) in moderation could improve your health, performance, and longevity, not to mention the health, performance, and longevity of Netflix.
Cathy shares helpful tips for how to embrace Sloth as part of your health regimen including:
- How to discern what does and does not count as sloth from an array of leisure pursuits.
- How to create 'sloth optimal' conditions.
- How to build a sloth wardrobe.
- And how to avoid the dangerous side-effects of too much sloth.
When you own a business, taking the summer off can be risky. In this episode, Cathy shares how despite lots of advice and evidence to the contrary, she has been taking summers off for 20 years.
She reveals how this annual ritual has changed the way she thinks about the relationship between work and leisure. She will also share 5 surprising insights that you can apply to any situation to make more space for rest and leisure.
Beware of the road marked easy: Two secrets self-disciplined people know.
The road marked easy can sometimes be the fast track to somewhere much harder. In this episode, Cathy explores how avoidance and procrastination can look like the easy road but lead to a whole lot more pain and suffering. She takes a closer look at self-discipline and two simple secrets that can get you on the real path to greater ease.
What’s the worst “life advice” you’ve ever received?
It seems whenever we have to make a big life decision – what to study, what career path to follow, what goals to pursue – there is no shortage of platitudes on offer. A lot of them have been around so long, we never question whether they really help.
In this episode, Cathy talks about why some of this advice, when taken to heart, can do more harm than good. She explores two common pieces of advice we all received at one time or another in our careers and how they can point you in the wrong direction.
In this episode, Cathy shares the story of a pivotal experience in her life that changed her relationship with failure. Until that point, her life had been about learning how to succeed. What she really needed to learn was how to fail. “I believed that hard work and extreme preparation and control could keep me from failing. I was terrified of failure. It kept me from taking risks. It made me drive myself in ways that were not healthy. I became obsessive.”
Sometimes life delivers exactly what you need when you need it. In this episode, Cathy shares two stories of how a little ritual made a big difference at a critical point of transition. She explores: * Why life transitions, even welcome ones are so difficult. * What it means to be at the edge of change. * The two parts of honoring and why they both matter. * How the simple practice of honoring yourself and each other can open a path forward. * And how she and her colleagues are using it to move through a big change of their own.
In this episode Cathy explores how our relentless drive for progress in a hyper-connected world leads to anxiety, exhaustion, and burnout. While a life drifting from moment to moment leads to stagnation and what author and organizational psychologist, Adam Grant calls “languishing.” She makes the case that a life lived in the delicate and conscious balance of progress and presence is a life fueled by purpose and a life filled with meaning. When you can both dream and be awake to the moment to moment experience of your life, surprising gifts await you.
Is our always on, always connected work culture taking a toll on our mental health? In this episode, Cathy explores... * the growing prevalence of anxiety and depression among working adults through the lens of our ‘always on’, 24/7 work culture; * the role of the Pandemic and the conditions that were already present in the workplace that contributed to this trend; * how technology, instant communication and ever-accelerating work processes combine to create more and more stress; * how embracing our limits offers a way forward; * the role of boundaries and the three things people who are skilled at boundaries have in common; * and finally, the case for seeing our limitations as sources of creativity, value and freedom.
Here are some links to resources she references in the episode.
A January survey on the prevalence of anxiety and depression in Canadian adults from the Center for Addictions and Mental Health
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
In this episode, Cathy shares five things that have inspired her during the pandemic and what she has learned about how to feel more inspired and how to inspire others as we steel ourselves for another winter of infections and lockdowns. She also shares a simple practice to support you to stay more connected to inspiration than despair.
In this episode, Cathy explores the annual ritual of the January do-over. She explores the dark side to do-overs and the unending quest for that ideal future self. She talks about how “project ideal you” can be a form of perfectionism that not only sets you up for failure but can end in you unfairly berating yourself for a lack of motivation of discipline.
Start here, invites you to a subtle but profound shift in thinking about how to create a fresh start in 2022.
For more on how to make a fresh start, visit my blog at www.cathyjacob.com.
Welcome to Sound Insight, the podcast that explores our complex relationship between work and life. I’m your host, Cathy Jacob. For 20 years, I’ve coached executives, professionals, entrepreneurs, and creators to do the work they love without sacrificing the rest of their lives in the process. Think of Sound Insight as your personal coach in an earbud. Each brief episode is packed with inspiration, strategies and practical insights that you can use to reduce the slog and grow the inspiration in your life.