What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Sam Powell, Zach Elliott, Tom Schweizer, Dennis LaRue, and Michelle King.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
106 - Five Bold Choices: Rise Above Your Circumstances and Redefine Your Life - Chapter 5: Clarity
Can you truly design your life, or are you living it by default? Discover how the art of making bold, intentional choices can transform your work-life balance and lead to a more fulfilling existence. In our exploration of "The Five Bold Choices" by Jay Coughlin and Larry Julian, we uncover the powerful themes of adaptability, conscious decision-making, and the courage to choose the harder right over the easier wrong.
Join us as we reflect on the poignant end-of-life regrets of Steve Jobs and the audacious career moves of Joel Manby, former CEO of Saab and SeaWorld. These stories challenge us to examine our career satisfaction and daily authenticity. Drawing inspiration from Manby's book "Love Works," we delve into the importance of maintaining a consistent character across all areas of life and recognize the signs of imbalance. Through real-life transformations, such as a client's journey to regain balance by setting boundaries and prioritizing time, we highlight the profound impact of bold decisions.
As we navigate the complexities of post-COVID work environments, we underscore the importance of focusing on what truly matters. From managing time effectively to setting boundaries against distractions, like excessive screen time, we explore practical strategies to help reclaim your time. Drawing from insights in "Atomic Habits," we offer practical questions and systems to support desired habits, encouraging you to take control of your life story. Embrace the challenge of changing your thoughts to reshape your reality and prepare to write the next chapter of your inspiring journey.
Connect with us on our LinkedIn page School of Thoughts . We also value your reviews, subscribing, and sharing our podcast "What's On Your Bookshelf?" on Apple and Spotify.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Russo and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is our life and leadership podcast, where we are living out loud the pages of the books on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here with my co-host, sam Powell Powell, and we're exploring a book called the Five Bold Choices by Jay Coughlin and Larry Julian. This book is a short read. It's an easy read, but maybe hard to apply sometimes. It's about five bold choices that are going to propel your life forward with whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, and today we're on I can't even believe it we're on the fifth choice. I know it's great. We got through this one. Really, it seems like we read through this book really fast, doesn't it Sam?
Speaker 1:It does. Like you said, it's an easy read and it's broken up like even each of the five bold choices is broken up into little, tiny chapters. So like it's a real easy, like if you're somebody that doesn't have a lot of time to sit down and really immerse yourself in reading, this is a book for you because it's it's just, it's little snippets, it's, you know, it's easy to do and there's a lot. You and I were talking off camera about this book and how we hope people this is an interesting one for people to read themselves for sure, because, one, it's it's easy to do, but two, there's just a lot of like the stories they tell that we just don't get into because we're talking about how this applies to our own lives. But this is a good one. So if you don't, if you don't own this one, find it, and you can probably find it pretty inexpensively some places because it's been out for a few years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that you just shared that with the listeners, because we did talk about how you know we are not here peddling books.
Speaker 2:We're here transforming our hearts and our minds and our lives through what we're reading in books and just sharing the stories of how we did it.
Speaker 2:And we do really skip a tremendous amount of content that's actually written in the book as we try to bring those concepts to life in our own exploration, and so it's never necessary that you have to read the book to go through these episodes, but it's always helpful to be able to get a copy of the book and take your own deep dives, because your stories will likely be different than our stories, but in the end, this is really about an experience where these books come to life in ways that we talk about all the time, in the intro even of our episodes. It's about balancing your life and your leadership, and it doesn't have to mean leadership in business or managing people. It's about balancing your life and your leadership, and it doesn't have to mean leadership in business or managing people. It's about leading yourself through your life from today into tomorrow and into the future. So I'm looking forward to sharing time with you today, sam, as we talk about this concept of balance, which you said last week is going to be a really good and favorite one for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know, we I don't know anybody who hasn't talked about work-life balance or like balancing, you know, their family and their responsibilities and all of this stuff. I think balance is something that we are all constantly trying to fight. And as the world becomes more complex, as the world becomes more interconnected, as things move faster and faster and faster, balance just is harder to really attain at the end of the day. And I like the way that they you know the subtitle for this chapter is choosing the harder right over the easier wrong, and I think that that is so often the case when it comes to balance. You have to make choices.
Speaker 1:Saying yes to something is saying no to something else. Saying no to something is saying yes to something else, and you've got to be the master of your own destiny here in really choosing that. And they you know they start this chapter off of, say of like riding the waves of imbalance, like we are never. The sea is never calm in life. Right, there's always waves, there's always movement, and you've got to be able to adjust, be adaptable right, that was the third bold choice and really be finding that balance in the daily choices that you're making so that you can lead the life that you want.
Speaker 2:John Maxwell says that you can live a life by design or live a life by default, and so the question is are you going to accept your life or are you going to embrace how you live your life? For me, I often tell my clients and teams that I've led that there's no such thing as work-life balance. You have a life. Work is part of it. It's about balancing the things that are a part of your life, and so what I took away from this first part the riding the waves of imbalance. It started to get me to think about the fact that waves come in and waves go out.
Speaker 2:I live only about 20 minutes from the beach, and so being by the water is one of my favorite things, and I'm fascinated by watching how the water comes in and out.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing is that every wave that comes in is different than the one before it, and it will never be replicated again, and so the question is, as you go through your day and go through your moments and go through your life, when you close the chapter on those moments or that day, you will never get it back again. I talk about this probably more than almost anything else that I share in terms of what matters to me and the books that I'm writing and articles, which is around time and how important it is that time is the only thing, the most important thing, that you can never get more of in your life, and you can waste it, spend it or invest it, but it's a choice and these are bold choices. This entire book is about making bold choices, and so I do like what you were just saying about how, if you say no to something, it's saying yes to something else, and if you try to say yes to everything, you're actually saying no to the best.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and you're saying I think, if you're saying yes to too much, you are essentially saying no to your purpose, who you are, you know, supposed to be in this world, who you could be at your very best because you're focusing on things that don't matter. And, as somebody who's multi passionate, loves to do many different things like I, get that struggle. I just I feel it, I've lived it, I constantly live it. I'm like I could do all of these million things, but I have to pull myself back and say the reality is there's only so much time in a week, there's only so much time in a day, and so I have to think about what are the things that I am going to say yes to that are moving me towards the path I think I want to be on the, the path that I'm, you know, working towards, and everything else has just got to be a no, I can write down all my ideas in a lovely little journal.
Speaker 1:Here's the million ideas of Sam but I don't have to pursue them all, they don't all have to come to fruition, because this is just this one life I get. Maybe I get another one some other time and I can, you know, do those things, then. But in this, you know, in this universe, in the multiverse, this is the Sam that I am, these are the choices that I make, and so I need to say yes to the things that are aligned to the path that I want and the path that I feel my purpose is on, and say no to the things that distract me or slow me down or deviate me from those you know from, from those directions.
Speaker 2:Isn't this part of really defining what your core values are? It makes me think about you. Remember when Steve Jobs was at the end of his life and he basically said you know, I have all the money in the world I'm paraphrasing but he said I have all the money in the world but I have cancer. It's going to take my life and if I could have rewound it, I would have spent more time with my loved ones. I would have said I loved them more. I would have not just focused just on my work. And for so many years he was known as like not somebody really nice to work for Uber, successful right, apple, pixar, et cetera. Very successful in business, but felt perhaps a failure at the end because his life was out of balance. And so you know, maybe think about what does out of balance mean to you? And so you know, maybe think about what is out of balance mean to you. You know we balance our tires and our car to make sure that we have a safe and not bumpy ride down the road. What are the things that are out of balance in your life and what can you do about it? For me, I've been thinking about this a lot, because there is the whole thing in your holistic body, which is your mind, your body and your heart, and if your mindset, your heart set and your physical set are out of balance, then one of the three out of balance, then the other two are out of balance. It's a matter of really looking at that big holistic self.
Speaker 2:So the author talks about a story about Joel Manby, which I thought was interesting, because Joel has a book that we actually learned about at a John Maxwell conference called Love Works, and he talks about this story, about how Joel at one time was the CEO of Saab company car company but Joel actually also went on to be the CEO of SeaWorld and then he went on to be this bestselling author and a speaker and a consultant, et cetera, and so he chose each time throughout his career that maybe there was a bold choice that he had to make that made him change his career or change his path. It got me thinking really even about my own path, sam. I was telling somebody the other day about something that I was working on. That brings me full circle 30 years in the making of something that I've I started doing early in my career and uh, and so what are those choices you're making in your career?
Speaker 2:Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Do you wait for Friday and dread Monday? Do you have the zing that you had when you took your job or do you feel like you're just kind of going through the motions like that Dunkin Donuts commercial Time to make the donuts, time to make the donuts. You know what? What is your life like? What kind of things do you need to do to get back in balance with your life and your leadership, with your job and at home?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I part of the. They had like a quote of I think it's from his love, from his love works book, but at the very end of it he said I wanted, in short, to be the same person all the time at work, with my family, at church, when I was alone. That's a lot of what we feel is. It's like I feel like I'm living two different lives. I feel like I'm not the person that I want to be. I feel like I'm a different person in different scenarios, like I'm not showing up the way I want to show up. And so I think, like you really do know when you're out of balance and you know from here the authors really do kind of push you back into like finding balance requires hard choices you do have to make. I mean, these are, these are the five bold choices, and I think balance is the hardest of all of them because it is the constant wave of imbalance it's coming at us and you have to make daily hard choices to really get to be the person that you want to be.
Speaker 1:I had a client come to me. We did our very first session. I do like a free coaching session just to see like what is the person experiencing. Am I the right fit for them? Is there a different coach that might be better for them, or is there just a different avenue that they really need? And she said somebody who's very successful in her, her career, it's worked her way up the ladder, has, you know, done all of this stuff. But she said I just want my life back. I feel like I'm working all of the time. I'm not who I really want to be. I'm not who I and it was this like pleading I want my life back.
Speaker 1:And so one of the first things that we worked on was balance was well, what are you? What are the choices you're making every day? Right? When you get an email at nine o'clock at night, do you want to respond to it? Are you responding to it? Do you? Does it have access to your life? Right? How do you ever turn it off? Do you ever stop? You know, doing the space of this is not what you want. Then what does that really look like? And you know, I mean it took us months, but she worked through all of that. I mean it was such a like wonderful journey to watch her go through this transformation, and by the end of our engagement. I mean, she had her life back and she you know, that's what she said.
Speaker 1:She was like I, I, I don't want to do that. And then when she got control, when she got balance, she was making different choices at the end. Jobs were coming at her, opportunities were coming her way and she was saying, if this had been a year ago, I would have taken this job and it would have thrown me into, you know, right back where I was right, where I was working 80 hours a week, 90 hours a week, and I wouldn't have thought a thing of it because that was just the gear that I was in. And now I know that's not what I want. I know that just because this sounds great and I love this leader and I would love to work for this person and I would love, like the work is something I would enjoy, it butts up against a non negotiable.
Speaker 1:I now have right, and it's this negotiable. Like it's the space of balance, and I think that it requires us to really make a lot of hard choices to get ourselves in balance and then continue to make what feel like hard choices to stay in that space that you want to get into. Watch her go through this journey, because you can watch somebody change their own life by making the choice, by leaning into what they are getting really clear on, on what they you know, what they want, and I think that that's I don't know to me is just really what it's.
Speaker 2:What it's all about when it comes to finding, finding your path and finding, you know, the life that you really want to have years ago I worked for this very brash, bold, loud CEO, probably on the edge of being someone that you'd almost be scared to talk with, but yet was so admired because he was so passionate about his company. And I can recall there was a time this is probably Sam like 15 years ago. He was, I think, frustrated by getting all kinds of emails at all hours of the day and the night, just like many of us experience. And he made a really bold choice to tell us as a company, in an email an official email, which is going to be funny, it's an email about not sending email. So he sent out this note and it said basically, starting immediately do not respond to any emails after four o'clock and or not till the end of the week. And it was like this, this, this experiment, basically, and everybody was up in arms like, oh my gosh, I need to send off this email. But people were using email like text or like an IM. You know they were just back and forth where you'd get these emails that were like RE, forward, forward, re, forward, forward, forward forward, and you'd have to go through this long chain to even see what in the world is this email even about? Were the right people on it. Why was I even copied on this email? It just was ridiculous. It was just so much email clutter that it was insane. And he put his foot down and his bold choice was we're going to get back in balance and get back to work. These emails are taking us away from productivity and performance and our potential. These emails are taking us away from productivity and performance and our potential, and that's enough.
Speaker 2:And even though it was really hard to get through it, I remember it because it was 15 years ago about how impactful that it was, and one of the things I tried my best to incorporate that I'll say that I probably failed on more times than I succeeded was I knew that there were people that I led that were from different parts of the world on teams that I've led, and I didn't want them to feel obligated to have to respond just because I have insomnia and might write in the middle of the night. So I'd always write at the end. Something like this may not be from your time zone, so just answer when it's convenient for you, or I would set the email to like not deploy until a certain time Sometimes, if you do that, by the way, too, if you set your email to not be sent out, you might have a cooling off period where you realize, okay, maybe I shouldn't have sent that email. Or you might have a period of time go by and think, oh, you know what, I really would have said this as well. Then you don't have to reply again and say I should have also said this or that or whatever it might be. And so this is about that kind of balance, and one of the things that I love in the book is that Jay Coughlin, who's the second author in the book, or first author, I suppose he tells about this, this experiment that he does with his coaching clients. I'm totally going to try this.
Speaker 2:It's called the 168 test, and the 168 test and for those of you clients, I'm totally going to try this, it's called the 168 test, and the 168 test and for those of you listening, you'll be able to adapt this yourself as well is that he says that an entire week comprises 168 hours, and it's one of the few things in life that are fair. I don't know about fair, but it's definitely constant. We all get the same amount. Why is it that some people get more done than others. In fact, if you're listening to this, if we haven't already launched it, we'll have a special edition series coming out soon, unless it's already come out. That's called the 12-week year how to get more done in 12 weeks than most people get done in an entire year. And so what he says here is that he coaches people on this 168 rule, and this is something that we can all do together.
Speaker 2:He starts by asking people to list all the things they like to do that give them energy. This is sort of like the Ikigai test that we've talked about on lots of past episodes what do you like to do? And then, after you figure out what you like to do, then, how many hours do you do that or don't do that? How often do you sleep? How many hours do you sleep? Is your sleep rested or is it restless? When you multiply that over the week, and then your month and then your year, you're going to get a really good picture of how much time do you invest in doing the things you like to do with the people you love doing it with. But then he goes on to say let's talk about the time stealers or the time wasters or the time vampires. How much time are you scrolling through social media? How much time are you standing up from your desk and wandering around because you just need to have a break? How much time are you spending commuting? I mean, this is the thing I think you were talking about a couple of weeks ago, sam is that people now have a choice. There was a time when it was just normal that you went work nine to five, you commuted to your office and then you came home, but. But now there's a choice. How much time are you wasting commuting?
Speaker 2:I have a friend who, when the return to work policies came back, she was telling me about a story where she lives in a very congested city and so it took her almost three hours to drive to work, and so during that time she had to cancel all of her meetings because they were webcam meetings and she couldn't just do it over the phone nor be distracted from the dangerous drive in.
Speaker 2:She got to the office and because during COVID they shut down some of the floors in the building and so there wasn't seats for everybody, she spent an hour trying to find somewhere just to sit. So then she figured there's nowhere to sit, so she called her leader who was in another country and it was his night time and said what am I supposed to do? There's nowhere to sit. And so the manager basically said well, just go home and try it again tomorrow. So she went down to the cafe, got lunch, was able to say goodbye to some friends like she would have probably on a normal lunch day, gets in her car, gets on the commute back home for another two or three hours, had to cancel all of those meetings because those were also zoom meetings and got home and she said, denise, out of an entire nine hour day, I got zero done. Yeah, there was no balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that I love this test too that he proposes, and I love the way that he starts with get focused in first on what you would want to be spending your time on, right. It's not the three hour commute. It's not to be spending your time on right. It's not the three hour commute, it's not the wasting your time doing whatever. Right, where do you want? Like, what are the things you want to do in a week? Right, I want to walk my dog. I want to have dinner with my family, I want to have a night out with my friends, like, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. But starting with that vision of what you do want in your week, and then practically going through your week and adding up all the hours of well, I sleep for seven hours a night times, seven, right, like, so 50 hours are gone in, you know, just sleeping, right, so 168 minus 50. And, like, when you do the math, you get a very realistic picture of how much time is on there.
Speaker 1:I always have on my phone. I have that. I use the like little widget that tells you how much screen time you've had and what, what applications you've spent time on. And there are times where I'm like, oh my gosh, I spent two hours on TikTok today, like why on earth that's not like I like TikTok, I learned a lot Like it actually is like. I learned a lot like it actually is. Like. Like you know, I use it for personal development and you know like, and just learning about the world and things like that, but I don't want to spend that much time on it.
Speaker 1:Typically in a day I was like that's I don't know like 30 minutes would have been fine and how that's an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:I could have been doing what I could have been engaging with my husband, I could have been engaging with my son, I could have been doing things that I wanted to accomplish right. And so I think this honest look in the mirror of what really does this day look like right? I've talked with people same thing about going back into the office. It's like, when I really look at the time that I spent, I got nothing done right, like nothing happened. And I think that if we're finding balance, we have to be realistic in what that picture looks like. And so I agree, I love this test, I love this thing and it's an easy exercise for people to do, but I think it's one of those things that will really help you get a firm grasp on where you're at, and you might be a little depressed when you're done with it because you're like oh, I now have 23 minutes to do all of the things that I want, and so it's like then you've got to make those bold choices.
Speaker 1:You've got to make the hard choices of okay, my apps now have timers on them, right, Like TikTok shuts off after a half hour a day. Right, I'm making those choices and setting up systems right. So we learned in Atomic Habits you don't rise to levels of your goals, you fall to levels of your systems. You know finding those things that work for you, that help you focus on the things you choose to say yes to.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I want to make a point for what you just said about the Atomic Habits. If you're listening to this episode and it's the first one you've ever listened to we have now surpassed 100 episodes of content. It doesn't mean that you have to just start where you are. If there's something that you want to learn, go back and look at the show notes or the summaries of the past episodes. Go back and look at the show notes or the summaries of the past episodes and maybe start there. Like if you don't have a system of habits, start there. If you want to get a foundation for your values and the things that matter in life, then start with the coach wooden episodes.
Speaker 2:If you want to really explore how to elevate your happiness, maybe you're in a state where you feel like you're just not happy. We did an entire year about the topic of happiness, and so don't think that just because you are where you are now, that this is the only place to start from. You can always go back and catch up. I think that a couple of things that I'll end saying about this part of the chapter as we wind down is there's some practical questions, because it can be scary when you do this 168 test and you realize how much time you waste. Here's some of the questions the author poses that are practical questions that you can answer for yourself, which is how far out of balance really am I?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's a heart question, that's a mind question, but it's really a heart question. Are you really out of balance and what are you going to do about it? That's kind of. The second question is what adjustments do you really need to make? That might be a bold choice in itself. Is the adjustment to say no to something, to say yes to the best and leave out all the rest is something that is a choice. A third question, he said, is what decisions do I need to make to find better balance in my life? And, lastly, how can I enjoy life in spite of any difficulties?
Speaker 1:And I love the sentiment that he ends this chapter with of you know, the bottom line is we have the power and capacity to rise above our challenges and so, regardless of your circumstances, choose the harder right path over the easier wrong.
Speaker 1:And they say, from the author's perspective, like we believe in, your hope and perseverance will lead you to define and redefine the rest of your story, and so I think that that's it is that balance feels a lot of times like things that are happening to us, but I think those questions that you ask yourself and getting down to the truth of the matter, of really where am I in my balance today and this week and this year and this phase of life, and what choices do I need to take, do I need to make to take the right action to get me on the path that I want to be, to be living this life in balance, because you have the power and capacity to rise above the challenges that come across your, your plate, in your life and all the things that happen around us.
Speaker 1:So I think it's a. This one is the hardest of the five bold choices, in my opinion, by a long shot, and it's a constant thing that we have to assess and it's a constant thing that we have to be striving towards and working towards, and it's hard but it is one of the most worthwhile things that I think somebody can take.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Remember, friends, if you want different outcomes in your life, you have to change your actions or your inactions. But those actions or inactions come from the beliefs we have about the things that we do or don't do in life, and those beliefs stem from thoughts. So the author says when things are challenging and we're out of balance, we're in danger not so much from the circumstances but from our own thoughts. So if you get your thinking right, you can get your actions to change, which will put you in better balance.
Speaker 2:So we didn't get to tell the rest of the story, but that's what we're going to do next week as we get into the closing. And I'll just close with the quote that he shares in the last part of this chapter, which is regardless of whatever you've done in the past or where you are at the present, we have the privilege to determine the rest of the story. So, friends, I hope that you're able to take today and move into a better or different tomorrow. If that's what you want to do with your life. Join us again next week where we talk about the closing of this particular book, which is all about appreciating the journey. Anything else, sam, from you as we close out today?
Speaker 1:No, I appreciate the journey we went on today and I'm looking forward to the wrap up episode of this book. I can't believe it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. Me too. Well, friends, thanks for being with us today. My name is Denise Russo. On behalf of my friend Sam Powell, this has been another episode of what's on your Bookshelf.