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 Most people are under-resourced, but the problem is they don’t know what they want and need or how to ask for it. A meaningful life requires overcoming these challenges and finding the support of a tribe.  The Personal Circle is an intentional gathering of people who have already invested in your life to the extent that trust has been established.  Who loves you for you? Who offers wisdom and perspective? Who brings your strategic insight and advice? Who fights for you? Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength-Starters, are the four types of people we desperately need at our table. These people can help you take stock of your life, recognize the wonders and shadows you carry, and energize your mission, purpose, and calling. 

We all want a meaningful life but are becoming less willing to wait patiently. We are impulsive and fixated on the instant hit of endorphins, more so the substance of character. Meaning requires a developmental mindset, and that takes time. You cannot microwave the deep life. We also never know which moments may become a significant one, so we have to become more intentional more often. A meaningful life is costly, so draw courage, find your tribe, and start showing up! 

Have you ever been distanced or cut off by a family member, friend, or community without notice or choice? Or maybe you have done so to someone yourself. Of course, you have! We often use unhealthy Distance and Cutoffs to manage the fears, anxiety, and insecurities that arise in relational or communal systems. We find ways to self-justify our distance. We confuse boundaries without our behavior. And we find it easier to walk away than to move through.  While these strategies may offer temporary relief, they will stunt and undermine the opportunity we have to become more resilient, courageous, and connected humans. Those seeking to reach for a meaningful and purposeful life must learn how to do things differently in relationships. 

Many of us learned how to find safety and healing for the inevitable wounds of life by being more defensive, independent, or self-sufficient. To live a meaningful life requires letting down the drawbridge, coming out of the fortress at some point, and courageously reaching for interdependence with others. While Denial, Distraction, and Determination have become our three primary strategies for survival, they also lull us to sleep and threaten our futures. In this episode, we explore how the lens of "You, Me, Us" can offer a way to see our lives with others and help negotiate for the things that matter. 

Most people want to live a meaningful life, but there is often a gap between this hope and the reality of how they feel and what they do.  If you are tired, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the hustle and grind, you are not alone.  Let's explore how to make more sense of our lives, stories, and purpose in the world. In this season, let's highlight and face the threats and challenges that stand in our way.  If you become aware of a lack of clarity around your meaning, don’t worry. This truth is equally important. Far better to notice and attend to this need than to blunder ahead and lead blindly.  You don’t hear people on their deathbeds talking about the extra money they didn’t make or projects they didn’t complete. With our last breath on this planet, we want to know that we fought hard and lived deeply. We want to know that our lives mattered. That people will give a damn when we are gone because we meant so much to them.  

Bringing the Big Twelve to a close, Rob and Natalie spend time talking about feeling sad, calm, and lonely. What if sadness led to acceptance and hope instead of self-pity and lethargy? What if calmness opened the door to clarity and peace instead of avoidance or apathy? What if loneliness invited connection and solitude instead of withdrawal and isolation? Join us as we become more heart-engaged and emotionally intelligent. 

In this episode, we explore three more of the twelve emotions. Rob and Natalie cover the feeling of shame and how it can lead you towards being human or being in contempt of being human. Cared-for can be more complicated than you think, and feeling hurt doesn't feel very good for most adults. Keep listening, and let's keep learning!

In this episode, we continue to explore another three of the twelve emotions. Rob and Natalie talk about how anger is vital for progress, excitement for joy, and guilt for safety. Once we learn to understand and use the same words to describe our "insides," relationships can soar to new heights. I feel, you feel, we all feel for ice cream. Jump in and journey with us. Keep leaning in. I know this is a lot, but you're gaining altitude, and the learning will invite practice, and that practice will impact both your performance and your quality of life.

Learning to share an emotional language is vital for healthy individuals and communities. Feelings, much like the color of our blood, like death and desire, remind us that we are all equally human, created with common realities, common motivations, and common bonds that transcend the intricacies of our individual lives. Core Emotions and affect labeling have been used in varying numbers and forms throughout history. Join Rob and Natalie as they introduce the first three of twelve feelings (afraid, confident, lost) to offer you a starting point. Once we start to use the same words and subscribe to the same rules of engagement, our emotional intelligence takes on new energy and potential.

Who are you truly? Life has a way of pushing us into specific roles and responsibilities to survive and thrive in various seasons. Emotional health begins to emerge when we can start to recover and engage our core sense of self rather than be overrun by these roles. Join Rob and Natalie for this second episode of the EQ series on the Talk of Change podcast as they dive into self-awareness, core self, and their own stories of the Solider and the Survivor. Organizations remain dedicated to elevating valid topics like vision, mission, strategy, and operations, but it’s time to seriously consider including a process that engages and integrates all the parts of who we are as humans.

Join Rob & Nat: Are feelings good or bad? Do they help us or hurt us? I have spent significant time in my life and career researching, studying, practicing, and being mentored in the field of emotional intelligence and resilience. As a result, I have become keenly aware that these simple questions are answered in predictable ways that yield three distinct positions on the subject. Identifying with one or more of these three responses will give you some fresh perspective on how you were raised emotionally and the journey that has brought you to the present day. This conversation could be a powerful first step toward becoming connected to yourself and others in meaningful ways.

In this final episode of the Home & Work Connected Series, Rob interviews Heath Slawner on the topic of organizational culture. Heath works alongside some of the business world's leading thinkers and researchers (including Simon Sinek's team) to uncover how leaders can bring teams together to achieve extraordinary results. What do all great organizations have in common, whether they realize it or not? How do we consistently and effectively get people to listen, follow, buy-in, and take the next step? 

Organizations often fail to have, or capitalize on a corporate vision that can positively and constructively inspire, energize, and inform leaders and teams. How can you get better at transitioning from transactional to transformational and turning both you employees and customers into ambassadors? Rob Murray talks with Bob Westfall on this episode about navigating this type of organizational change, which starts with learning how to build an intellectual, emotional, and transformational case.

It has been well established that Purpose is an essential human need. It is easy to forget this when considering team culture. Rob Murray & Brad Stinson talk in this episode about the incredible opportunity that exists for leaders, teams, and organizations who seek to intentionally recover and align around Purpose both at work and home.  Purpose can be nurtured by discovering out what inspires teams, identifying their unique gifts, and fostering an environment of empowerment and growth.  Brad shares about when he stopped trying to help teams hit a number, complete a project, or meet a budget but instead started with assisting them in clarifying Purpose. 

While recovery from a leadership crash is usually possible, what if we could instead learn to recognize the prior warning signs and intervene before it happens at all? Join Rob Murray with Dr. Stephen Mansfield in this first episode of part two on the Home & Work Connected series, where they talk about ten very common behaviors that are almost always evident in the downward journey of a leader. Stephen reminds us that becoming aware of just a few of these could save millions of dollars, years of humiliation, hundreds and sometimes thousands of jobs, and much-lost good that might have been done.

There are limitations to what parents, communities, and governments can, and should even do in an attempt to shelter and protect young people from being bullied. However, children are not powerless to solve their social problems yet that’s become a foundational premise in our society. Rob Murray spends time with Brooks Gibbs on the Talk of Change Podcast (S2 Ep4) to explore an approach that seeks to grow resilient children, full of courage, strength, and awareness.  

Kid’s don’t need perfect parents. That statement is easier to say than to believe right?  Children, like a partner or spouse, offer a powerful opportunity to grow your capacity for connection. That growth can positively translate into other areas of your life, including at work.  Rob Murray spends time with Dr. Chip Dodd on the Talk of Change Podcast (S2 Ep3) to explore a less common approach to good parenting. Rather than overly-focusing to modify your child’s behaviors, what if you first learned to connect with heart, accept your own flaws, and resolve parts of your own childhood? What children need most is authentically engaged parents who offer them a place to learn how to be fully human in a hard, hopeful, exciting, and tragic world. 

In this second episode of the Home & Work Connected series, Rob Murray talks with Dr. Sue Johnson, an author, clinical psychologist, researcher, professor, and leading innovator in the field of couple therapy and adult attachment.  Relationships: How can we enhance, repair and keep them? When we feel safe at home in our relationships, it offers us the courage and the boldness to face the world with more passion and intention.  Visit www.talkofchange.com for your free change guide for this episode and others. 

Nothing about your life is happening within a vacuum. In this session, Jack Nicholson and Rob Murray set the tone for this whole Talk of Change series by sharing from the intersection of the human and the context in which they express themselves. You cannot risk overlooking either sides of this work and home polarity when desiring deep change and transformation. Download the FREE change guides for this series at www.talkofchange.com To keep living we are required to breathe in, but also out, and then to repeat both continually. If you polarize (stop on either end), you die. Jack’s Human Systems Polarity™ has radically impacted the work both he and Rob do with leaders, teams and organizations. It supercharges the systemic potential for improving and strengthening the whole ecosystem, starting with you!

You do not live and die within a vacuum.  Families are systems of interconnected and interdependent individuals, none of whom can be understood in isolation from the system. Emotional connections, rules, and agreements have and continue to be forged within that system, usually centered around managing anxiety. Once the research view shifts from the individual to the family or work unit, the scene looks entirely different.  Listen in to this episode as Rob interview Dr. Kathleen Smith, an associate faculty member at the Bowen Center in Washington, DC, which trains clinicians, clergy, and business leaders in the practice of Bowen Family Systems Theory.