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What do overwhelm and opiates have in common?They’re both addictions that are far too common in our society today.One may seem significantly worse than the other on the surface, but the deceptive nature of our addiction to overwhelm is truly insidious — and don’t let it tell you any different.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

We’ve been spending the last couple months going through a few classes from the Learning for Change course. Learning to orient yourselves to change in a healthy and productive manner is an important skill set for anyone who endeavors to go down the road of self-mastery, but it’s also a critical skill set for everyone in the world as we know it at the end of 2020, when this episode originally releases.This series focuses on how most of us tend to orient ourselves towards the process of change, almost as a default, and how we can shift that to more easily embrace the reality of change.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

In the last episode, we looked at the first 2 of the 4 stages of relating to change — Ignoring and Dabbling — and how they correlated with the first 3 of the 5 stages of engagement. This week, we’ll examine the last two stages of relating to change, which will bring us full circle and parallel our conversation about discovering your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Sometimes in life (pretty often, actually), reality holds up a mirror and forces you to see a reflection of yourself. This doesn’t always come in the form you expect, it’s almost never when you expect, and it’s generally easy to shrug it off and just keep ignoring whatever reality is trying to remind you about. But if you do keep ignoring life, you will continue to experience suffering — because life doesn’t cooperate with being ignored. In this episode, we’ll discuss the first two stages of relating to change, beginning with ignoring, and how you can start evolving the way you relate to change and your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

We just wrapped up a series on The One Thing from the Learning for Change course. Over the next three weeks, we’re going to continue working through this course, focusing on the four stages of relating to change.We’ll build on what we learned about The One Thing, and you’ll hear from some people who are still grappling with what their one thing is and how it relates to their values. This series will also build on The 5 Stages of Engagement, which were introduced in episodes 90 to 94 and expanded on further in episodes 277 to 279. You don’t have to listen to all of that to get value out of this series, but those episodes will provide additional context to help you navigate change.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

We finish up this series on The One Thing by examining some tools that can be used to identify it, like writing your own eulogy or reverse engineering your one thing from your greatest achievements.If you’re willing to go deeper and commit to finding your one thing, you can sing up for the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com.

Last week’s episode brought up a big question: What is your one thing? Or what’s the question that you will dedicate your life to?But don’t worry if you don’t have a definitive answer to those questions yet. Even just thinking about the question with intention puts you closer to the right path.And today, I’m going to give you some questions and tools you can use to continuously re-orient yourself towards fulfillment as you stumble towards your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Last week’s episode brought up a big question: What is your one thing? Or what’s the question that you will dedicate your life to?But don’t worry if you don’t have a definitive answer to those questions yet. Even just thinking about the question with intention puts you closer to the right path.And today, I’m going to give you some questions and tools you can use to continuously re-orient yourself towards fulfillment as you stumble towards your one thing.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Management is a constant exercise in shepherding change, internally or externally.But most people don’t like change, internally or externally. It makes most of us feel uncomfortable, and maybe even a little icky.Which leads me to what may be bad news for some of you: whatever it is you want in life will require you to change.But how do you even know what change is necessary or what steps you’ll need to take? That’s the question we’re going to address today — and when you’re able to find an answer, it’s going to make almost every single other question easier to answer.This four-part series is an excerpt from the Learning for Change course at ClearAndOpen.com. You can sign up for the course and check out a free preview by clicking right here.

Being an adult means never having to say, “I have to.”At the end of the last episode, I shared why this idea that you have to do anything is just one of the most commonly shared delusions — a delusion encouraged by the structures of capitalism, sure, but a delusion nonetheless. What does the alternative look like, then? What does it look like to practice adulthood as a verb and embrace saying “I get to” instead of “I have to” or “I should?”That’s what we’ll be exploring in this final piece of our dialectic on adulthood.If you want to keep going deeper on this subject and start applying these lessons, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.

In the last episode, we started a dialectic to investigate the truth about adulthood. When does it start? What does it mean to be an adult?The answers to those questions aren’t so simple, though, and the definitions seem to keep shifting over time, both for us as individuals and for society as a whole.This week, we’re going to move past the logistics and legal considerations for adulthood and start addressing the concept of Emotional Adulthood and the “I have to” delusion.If you want to go even deeper on the subject, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.

Do you consider yourself an adult?If you’re 18 or older, you probably answered to yourself, “Yes.” You might even have thought it was a stupid question to ask. And by the way, if you’re not 18 yet, kudos for listening — you’re way ahead of the curve.Now, especially if you rolled your eyes at that first question, consider the answer to this: What is the definition of an adult?The answer isn’t quite as obvious as you might think, and there’s a good chance that you’ve just never considered the question. But it’s a critical question to answer on the The Accountability Path, both as a manager of others and a manager of yourself, and it’s the question we’ll be engaging with over the next three episodes.If you want to go even deeper on the subject, you’ll find this included as part of The Accountability Path 2.0.

To close out our first guest series, Matt Niblock shares how to identify the best candidates for the long haul in a high-pressure job and how hiring managers can create a good candidate experience — which doesn’t always mean making the candidate comfortable, although any good job interview should still be a safe space for truth. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

Matt Niblock returns with more hiring and recruiting insight. We’ll walk through the early stages of the hiring process, touching on some common mistakes that people make along the way, when the hiring manager should push back against applicants, and how the idea of “gut meets data” that we discussed last week can be applied in practice. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

Every organization has to deal with hiring and recruiting. So it’s funny that so many of the people who are responsible for hiring have little to no idea what they’re doing — even though there are experts out there who are happy to tell you exactly what works. Experts like Matt Niblock, VP of Employee Experience at Phase2, who has been working as a recruiter since you had to mail or fax in your résumé. And in the first part of this three-part interview, Matt will introduce us to some recruiting best practices and how hiring managers can start looking for the right person instead of the right skills. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

In the final episode of this series looking at the five stages of engagement through the lens of accountability, you’ll learn what keeps most people from achieving flow for more than a few fleeting moments of their life and how you can get closer to achieving flow — if you’re willing to put in the work (or, paradoxically, stop working so damn hard to get there).   Take the course: The Accountability Path 2.0   Learn more about the Five Stages of Engagement model: Ep 90: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part One – Crisis Ep 91: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part Two – Survival Ep 92: The Five Stage of Engagement - Part Three - Security Ep 93: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Four - Thrival Ep 94: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Five - Flow   I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

In the last episode, we reviewed the first three stages of engagement: crisis, survival, and security. Most people get stuck in those first two stages, engaging with a chronic stress response that makes upward momentum seem insurmountable for most of their lives. And if they eventually reach the stage of security, it can feel so comfortable that they settle in. But for those of us that don’t want to settle, or for those of us that don’t feel comfortable with security, there are two more stages: Thrival and Flow.  In this episode, I’ll talk about making these critical transitions, especially as it relates to your level of accountability and the accountability of those who you manage.   Take the course: The Accountability Path 2.0   Learn more about the Five Stages of Engagement model: Ep 90: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part One – Crisis Ep 91: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part Two – Survival Ep 92: The Five Stage of Engagement - Part Three - Security Ep 93: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Four - Thrival Ep 94: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Five - Flow   I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

In this series, we will be revisiting the five stages of engagement — but this time, we’re going to examine the model through the lens of accountability. If this is a new concept for you, you won’t be lost starting with this episode, but you can find a more foundational introduction to the model back in episodes 90 to 95. Links below.   Take the course: The Accountability Path 2.0   Learn more about the Five Stages of Engagement model: Ep 90: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part One – Crisis Ep 91: The Five Stages of Engagement – Part Two – Survival Ep 92: The Five Stage of Engagement - Part Three - Security Ep 93: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Four - Thrival Ep 94: The Five Stages of Engagement - Part Five - Flow   I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

A fair warning before going into this episode: it starts on a pretty emotional beat, and it might be a little triggering for anyone who is currently being overwhelmed by feelings of grief or loss. However, if you can listen through that, I think hearing the participant on this coaching call walk through her feelings can also be a healing experience that helps you process those emotions, as we discussed in the last episode. This experience of working through grief also serves as a microcosm of the spiritual journey that I first discussed in part one of this series, and hearing that process should help anyone who is committed to spiritual evolution. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.

Over the last two episodes, we’ve clarified the content of our reaction to COVID-19 and the context of that reaction — the content being our egoic emotional reaction and the context being the perpetual state of not knowing. But getting to the point where you can hold both of those simultaneously is difficult. It doesn’t feel natural because it’s not common in our society, but our minds are actually well equipped to process these emotions and move beyond them. We just have to learn how to let it happen. So, in this episode, you’ll learn how to go about processing the fear, anxiety, grief, and other emotions that are being brought by the pandemic, get what you need to from those emotions, and then make room for that emotion within the greater context of yourself. I’d love your feedback. Click here to leave a rating & review for the show on Apple Podcasts.