Navigating Life's Invitations: Leadership and Self-Discovery

This episode explores the nuanced ways in which everyday challenges and interactions serve as unique opportunities for growth, reflection, and improved leadership. This episode dives into the art of responding to life's subtle invitations, turning obstacles into catalysts for personal and professional development. Discover how being present and mindful in every moment, even on vacation, can transform your approach to leadership, enhance self-awareness, and foster meaningful relationships.

Join Nathan, Dr. Linda, and Brian as we uncover the strategies to embrace life's complexities with grace and emerge as more impactful, empathetic leaders.

RESOURCES

• "Wherever You Go, There You Are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle
• "The Obstacle Is the Way" by Ryan Holiday
• The Five Minute Journal

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Have you ever stopped to think about what vacation truly means to you, or maybe what the purpose of a vacation is? Are there different types of vacations you take depending on the time of year or your life stage? Today in the podcast, we're going to be exploring these ideas and the connection between vacations, challenges and your leadership. You are listening to the Leadership Vision podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this for the past 25 years so that people are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg and we have a special podcast episode here for you. Today. We're doing something just a little bit different.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Brian and Dr Linda Schubering were recently soaking up the sun on a well-deserved vacation in Maui and, despite being away, brian took some time to record a reflection for us on the nature of vacations, challenges and life and the idea of invitation. Now, brian's insights come from not only this recent trips but several of his past trips, and he dives into what vacations mean to him and how it serves as a platform for self-reflection, learning and embracing the present moment. He's going to share how challenges, often seen as obstacles, can be invitations to go deeper into our inner selves, to uncover, to learn or unlearn aspects of our lives, or invest in relationships, new and old. Now, as you listen to Brian's reflection, I want to encourage you to just ponder a couple things here. Number one it's quite simply what do vacations mean to you, like? What are the purpose of them? Number two how do you perceive challenges in your life? Do you think of them as obstacles to be overcome or as invitations for growth and self-discovery? And number three are you truly present in the moment, responding to the invitations around you, or are you, like many of us myself definitely included often distracted by the future or even the past?

Speaker 1: 1:58

Now, after Brian's reflection, I'm going to share some of my thoughts on these things, a couple ideas I have around some of these themes, and offer you I guess we can call it a challenge for your personal and professional life. How can we apply the invitation concept to our everyday experiences to become more aware, to become more present and connected to ourselves and others? Now, we here at Leadership Vision, we believe that this level of self-reflection and self-awareness will enhance our leadership, so that we can be more present to those that we lead, ultimately becoming better leaders and do more for our organizations. Okay, so let's get into Brian's vacation reflection here for Maui. You'll notice that there's a bit of background noise. It's not our normal studio setup, but I got a hand at to Brian. He did a pretty good job all things considered and he shared, I think, a helpful reminder of the beauty and the depth that can be found in just some of the simplest moments of life and also the most daunting challenges. This is the Leadership Vision podcast, enjoy.

Speaker 2: 3:11

I'm not sure what vacation looks like for you. I'm sure it can look a lot different for anybody, for that matter. Maybe vacation for you is an adventure. Maybe vacation for you is time away with your extended family. Maybe vacation is something that is really adventurous and isolating, or perhaps even a big city In March. What does vacation look like for us? Well, vacation looks like two weeks in Maui. Now. Part of our time has always been with family and part of our time has just spent with Linda and I, but one thing is always certain we will always be surprised by what emerges from our time here.

Speaker 2: 3:46

Now, yes, I take my stack of books that I always had with me when I travel to read and to challenge my thinking and to really ask myself how am I doing? And do some type of self-reflection. That's surprising, but one of the things that stands out from my time here this year is this theme of invitation. The invitation can mean different things to different people, and for me, this year has been how I'm interpreting this idea of invitation in the midst of challenge. Now, in the past, I've always looked at challenges as something that I either need to work around or work through, or something that is an obstacle. That means to be moved out of the way. But there was something else reading while I was here that brought up this idea of challenges. Challenges are meant to be in that moment for you as an invitation to respond to something deeper that is within you, something that needs to be uncovered, or something that needs to be learned, or even unlearned, for that matter. Maybe it's even a relationship that is needing to be invested in, or a relationship that begins. And for me, this idea of invitation is something that has really caught my attention, because one of the things that I don't often do is respond to the invitation that's in the moment. I just have this way of thinking where my thinking is always leaning into the future, and that tends to be where I spend most of my time is thinking about what's to come and thinking about what's happening.

Speaker 2: 5:16

Oftentimes, I'm challenged to simply be more in the moment, and that's the invitation I need to respond to. So while I've been here, I've been asking myself how can I be present in this moment and respond to the invitation that's here Now? At times, that invitation has simply been to observe what's arom. Maybe it's seeing something for the first time, or maybe it's just listening more attentively to the sounds that are arom, maybe it's simply paying attention to the aromas that are in the air or something that I'm tasting, and even in that simple practice, I felt that I've become more in the moment, you could say, responding to the invitation that's here. I've also found myself responding to the invitation of exploring the things that are new.

Speaker 2: 6:07

Now, since we come to the same place every year here in Maui, there are a lot of things that are familiar, and yet, in the midst of that familiarity, there's also the opportunity for me to be open to the invitation to experience something new. And so, here on our vacation this year, we've been able to go to different restaurants and have different experiences of what we're eating. We've met new people here, people that we've maybe seen before, but we haven't had a chance to get to know them. We have responded to the invitation of relationship. We've also responded to the invitation to try different ways of relaxing, different ways to unwind and different ways to engage ourselves while we've been here.

Speaker 2: 6:54

Now, how does this apply?

Speaker 2: 6:57

How does this apply to those of us who are still facing the day-to-day invitations from the work that we're doing, from the people that we're interacting with, and maybe the greatest lesson here is the invitation to be more aware of who you are and how you're showing up in the moment.

Speaker 2: 7:22

There are so many things that we can or cannot control, there are so many things that we want to hold on to that are weighing us down, and so how can we respond to the invitation of simply letting go and simply paying attention, without needing to change anything?

Speaker 2: 7:39

And maybe that's the invitation in and of itself An invitation to listen, an invitation to hear, an invitation to touch, an invitation to smell, an invitation to taste. Maybe that is the invitation that we can bring into today when feeling distracted or when feeling overwhelmed. Maybe we pay attention to the invitation to what our senses are picking up. Maybe it's paying attention to the different invitations that other people are asking us to pay attention or asking us to pay attention to, or maybe it's just the invitation to simply sit, to remain and to enjoy simply how we are being in the present moment. I'm not sure what you're facing and I'm not sure the challenges that you're dealing with, but perhaps, maybe, just perhaps, whenever you're dealing with, or whenever challenges you're facing are simply an invitation to help you be more present and more aware of simply who you are and that that challenge that you're facing is what is supposed to happen right here in this moment.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Now, I've listened to this a few times and I've been thinking a lot about how vacations really serve so many different purposes. For some people, they're just simply a time to get away from the normal routines of life, to be present in a different context with those that you love. It almost doesn't matter where you go or what you do, just that you're away from home, away from the office, just away doing something else. For others, they serve as memory-making machines, creating experiences that will forever be imprinted on our minds or the minds of the friends or the kids or whoever you're with. These are like think of the big trips where you're just doing a lot of stuff, you're going to places, you're doing the sightseeing, you're doing the tourist thing, you're you know all. Just picture that type of vacation. And then there's also this third type. That's sort of like a refresher. You know where you just go in, you kind of sleep more, you just really slow down, you perhaps don't do very much, you're just kind of really needing to just get some refreshing rest. And it's fascinating, isn't it, how the concept of vacation can vary so widely among us. Yet I think there's this universal appeal as a time for rest or as a time for adventure or maybe, more importantly, just a time for reflection.

Speaker 1: 10:30

When my wife and I were first married, we pretty quickly realized that we had very different ideas of what a vacation meant. She was more of like a sit on the beach and read a novel sort of person. Well, I wanted to like go out and be the ultimate tourist and sightseeing and doing all of those types of things. And I think the longer that we've been married we're almost 20 years now the more that we've really come, I think, from either side of those extremes and really figured out like what do we need in the moment in the place, now that we have kids? That is even a different, completely different experience. Our family actually recently went to Disneyland, which I don't know if I would call that a vacation. It wasn't relaxing, but while I was physically exhausted, man, the experiences that we shared and the memories that we created, they just gave me such an energy beyond what I would have expected that it was relaxing. It was refreshing, rejuvenating, it was just so much fun and it was a completely different way to be present and out of the house and just doing something different.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Now Brian's insights here today into facing challenges not as obstacles but as invitations. They offer a powerful perspective, I think, really a shift in perspective. It prompts us to consider, I guess, how we engage with the world around us, how we're perceiving the events in our lives, and how we can be more present and responsive to the moment, not just while we're on vacation right, because it's easy to be more present when you kind of remove life distractions but how do you be more present every day, the rest of today? This is coming out on a Monday, so the rest of Monday, how can you be present with whatever it is in front of you? So here's, I think, kind of four, I guess, takeaways.

Speaker 1: 12:18

I've sort of summarized the short podcast and also I've included a couple of resources If you'd like to go deeper. There's links to these different specific things that I mentioned in the show notes. So the first one is embrace the present. Embrace the present moment, embrace the present time. Brian's practice of being more in the moment is, I just think, a great reminder for all of us to slow down and appreciate the. Now. It doesn't mean on vacation, but as you're driving to pick up your kids from school, or as you're racing to finish that last email or report before you leave for the day. How can you be fully present in that?

Speaker 1: 12:55

And there's a couple of books that I've read in the last couple of years here that I think are great. If you want to deepen, this is really about mindfulness, I think what we're talking about. So, if you want to deepen your practice or understanding of mindfulness, there's a book called Wherever you Go, there you Are, by John Kabat-Zinn, or the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, both fantastic guides to mindfulness, meditation being present, and, honestly, I more often relisten to those on a regular basis because, yeah, just good reminders that you need constantly. I have. There's a quote from Eckhart Tolle that says the present moment is your life that I actually have on my phone. It's a daily, ongoing reminder whenever I look at it, to try to remember that right here, right now, that is what's important. This moment is your life. All right.

Speaker 1: 13:41

Number two challenges as invitations. This perspective, I think, can be really transformative. When you think of the challenge in your life, that is an invitation to do something. It's not meant to be like a blockade that you have to try to run from, but it's an invitation to do something with it, to grow, to learn, to whatever, and there's a great book by an author I love called the Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday. They're just some amazing insights. It's a very easy read with some great stories, a lot of famous people from history, just about how we can turn our trials really into triumphs, aspired by Stoic philosophy. He's got a couple of different podcasts kind of around those ideas. I highly recommend it.

Speaker 1: 14:24

All right, the third piece here a takeaway is the power of self-reflection, and that's kind of everything I think that we're doing or talking about here today, but really just the bigger idea of taking the time to reflect on our personal journeys, to actually sit down and think about our choices and the different invitations that we've accepted or declined throughout the day, throughout the week. I think when we think about that, that can be really enlightening. I've gotten away from it a little bit here this year for well, no really good reason or excuse, but journaling is a great way to do this, to just sit down and think about your day, to think about how you handle different interactions, positively or negatively. I was going to list a couple different journals here, but there's just so many. The five minute journal is a great one. There's also another one called the Artist's Way Journal, which is, I think, more for creative folks. But honestly, paper and pencil, write down what happened in the day, how did it go, how did you improve it, or what did you want to just congratulate yourself for, and list gratitude, all those things you know. All of that All right.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Number four, the final one here, is building and nurturing relationships. Now, whether you're on vacation or just in the chaos, the hustle, if you will, of daily life, the relationships that we foster. They're pivotal for us. They're absolutely critical for our well-being, for our health, for everything. I would encourage you to take some time to think about the way that you're really investing in those relationships on a regular basis. If it's true that we're, what do they say? The average of the five people that we spend the most time with? How intentional are we to be being with those five people? Now, as we conclude, as we wrap up here, I wanna invite you to consider what invitations you might be overlooking in your life. Going back to what Brian mentioned a moment ago, what challenges can you reframe as opportunities? How can you be more present in the moment, not just during vacations, but in everyday life, as we've mentioned. Remember every challenge, every moment, every relationship. Every thing carries with it and invitation, and it's up to us to respond.

Speaker 1: 16:33

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this for 25 years so that people are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. If Brian's reflection has inspired you in any way, I encourage you to share this episode with someone who might also find value in these insights and please subscribe to our podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, leave us a review. It really helps other people find us. You can also follow us on social media. Join our free email newsletter, but I think, most importantly, let's continue to support each other in our journeys of personal and professional growth. We actually have a free online community if you'd like to take this conversation, or others like it, to another level. Until next time, stay curious, be present and embrace life's invitations. I'm Nathan Freeberg and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.