210: Why Bother? With Jennifer Louden

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. I am so excited and delighted to be here today with my dear friend Jen Louden. Jen is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the concept of self care with her first bestseller, the Woman's Comfort Book. Since then, she's written many additional books and articles on wellbeing and whole living with close to a million copies of her books in print in nine languages. She's been profiled or quoted in two of Brene Brown's books, Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead, and even appeared on Oprah, which I'm excited to hear more about. Today we're talking about her newest and most personal book, why Bother? Discover the Desire for what's Next. Jen, welcome to the show.

Oh I just am so happy to.

Be here with you.

You're one of my favorite people.

Well, likewise. Right back at you. I'm so happy we're here. I didn't share Pivot Podcast listeners. This is one of our Momo Momentum combined Pivot Podcast and book club calls. So I'm going to kick us off with some Q and A and then Momentum members will get a chance to jump in. This is a book we've all been reading and Jen and I first met, we were just, I was just trying to remember at the Life After College book launch party way back in March 2011. So I remember meeting you through so you had mentioned it was through Janet Goldstein who I saw you thanked in the acknowledgments she shout out to Janet and I remember sitting down with you at south by Southwest or wds. It was one of those. It was like a group of 10 bloggers. And I sat right next to you and I remember thinking this woman is incredible. So I'm so happy to have you here.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Yeah. What I love about this book, because with pivot, I'm often talking about map, what's next? You know, that's the whole question that precipitated the pivot method is what's next? Which you address. My editor had me cut the part of the book called Surf the Void. And I love. I feel like this is the missing chunk of pivot that the one one star review that said this book does not address how hard it is to change. And you have really done it. And you've even addressed the step just prior to working on change, which is why bother? Which is that malaise and that liminal space that doesn't even feel like liminal space. It just feels like dread sometimes. Talk to us about how you. How you knew this was the book you needed to write.

That's a great question. I just want to say, yes, surfing the Void. That's exactly what this book is about. That's brilliant. I'm so glad you saw that.

And I.

And your book is the book to read afterwards because I don't tell you how to make a plan.

I feel like, perfect, they can now be book siblings.

Exactly. Here's the sequence.

Go read that.

Yes, exactly.

A book sandwich. So I think this is the book I've been trying to write for, I don't know, many, many years. And I believe, and this is an idea that I talk about briefly and why bother, that we have signature themes in life. And I think this is one of my signature themes. And more broadly, my signature theme is help people make more of what they want. But when I, even as a young child, I was so frustrated with people who would just turn their back on life, so to speak, turn their back on more, who would give up, maybe not in their whole life, but maybe around their health or their creativity or their marriage. And so I think this is the message I've been trying to figure out for all these years. And I think the reason I really wrote it was because I tried to write a memoir that completely failed as a memoir. But it gave me this roadmap of all the times in my life that I didn't surf the Void.

I wonder, when you were saying that, it reminded me a little bit. Was it difficult for you with the Woman's Comfort book being such a mega seller? It's almost like the Elizabeth Gilbert problem of Eat, Pray Love was so successful that she felt this immense pressure after that. How do you relate to that at all as an author? And even trying to figure out.

Find your voice after having the initial work take off so quickly, I actually have.

A little bit different experience of it that turned into a very positive experience. But so that book was published in 1992. And very much my model of being a person in the world was pick me, pick me. And my first book got picked. It got picked by people. That wasn't the book that I got an Oprah for. That was years later. But it sold word of mouth really beautifully. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how to build on it, really. That's a different story. But I then fell into, pick me, pick me for every book. And that is such a disempowered place to be. And finally, why bother? I talk about how I finally turned away from that when Oprah picked me, and it wasn't enough. It wasn't good enough. It didn't assuage that desire in me to pick myself. So for me, the success of the book, it wasn't so much, how will I ever do that again? I never really asked myself that. It was more learning to choose myself and be a voice for my own work and my own ideas.

That's so powerful. And I feel like we all, whether we're conscious of it or not, that pick me voice can run our lives sometimes, certainly our creative projects.

God.

And, you know, the beginning before the pandemic, it was so loud in my head. And in some ways, this is terrible to say the pandemic was a little bit of a relief because it turned me back to myself because I was very much in that, pick me. Where's the media? Come on, I'm going to do a big book tour. Everyone's going to love this. And then it all went away. And I'm like, at first, I was, of course, devastated, depressed, and, you know, eating myself my weight in bread every day, of course. But after that pass, I was like, okay, pick you again. Read your own book. Pick you. What are you going to do? You got to return to that desire.

And it isn't always the case that whatever you, whatever you're going to write about, you're about to get a master's degree in, not a PhD, right?

Well, I can over and over again, like seven PhDs.

Completely, completely. Like one for each chapter. I couldn't help but feel when I was reading the six, even the six stages of why bother that I thought, how prescient. It kind of maps to the times that we're in. It's almost these six stages would help somebody navigate even something as upside down and uncertain as the pandemic. So in a way, your book is right on time for that.

Yeah, I've heard that now a number of times, and I hope so, because I think what I'm wondering is, naturally we're seeing some of the things we bother about more. You know, being connected to our loved ones, people, simple pleasures. Those kinds of things are really coming out. We're seeing, I think, the systematic racism and in our country, at least in the US and how that's disproportionately killing people through the pandemic. So we're seeing things like that. And I think the question is really going to become when it starts to ease up, whenever that's going to be or however that's going to look. I think a lot of us are going to be, oh, my God, I'm supposed to go back to the way I bothered before, and I can't.

Absolutely. And it's almost like there's two bother tracks, but there's the. During the pandemic, because I feel that I'm always cautious of when I say, like, before, during, and after, because I actually think this is going to come and go in waves. But there's during. I mean, how many of us have had days of complete stir, craziness, or complete why bother? We're like, oh, my God, I'm in Groundhog Day. Why bother? Or I'm doing what I think is the best thing to do for myself, my business, my family, my community during this time. But it's so quickly, tips.

Why bother? And then what you said, which I'm super fascinated in, how many people are going to say, why bother going back? Those days are done, and it is time for me to carve a new way forward. Even if they don't 100% know what that looks like, right?

Or 100% can't do it right away because obviously a lot of us are going to be in financial difficulties. I mean, my business has been impacted, you know, greatly because I do live events, I do retreats. Those have all been just cancel, cancel, cancel. So, yeah, there may be questions of why bother that we have to wrestle with for a while. A lot of people said to me, I can't. I don't know how I'm gonna go back to the hustle. I don't know. I'm gonna go back to the office. How am I gonna go back to the commute?

Also, another theme is desire. And I wonder if it's hard for people to give Themselves permission to focus on what they desire when. When, like you said.

Our bottom line has been so impacted.

I think it is. I think it's an incredible opportunity for those of us who do have some spaciousness. And a lot of us don't, but those of us who do, I think that's the opportunity pandemic. The thing that I don't want us to do is come out of this if at all possible. And of course, for many of us, it won't be so exhausted because we have been shoulding on ourselves because we have been denying desire. And there's a couple basic ideas in the book, and the one about desire is desire is the flow of life. It's aliveness, it's delight, it's creativity, it's everything juicy coming to you through these simple signals of what do you want? And they can be so simple. Like yesterday I was between podcasts and I'm like, oh, you should do this, oh, you should do that. I'm sitting in the sun with my dog and I just let myself so delight in that, that little moment of desire. Or I've been collaging at night, right? Total just desire to play with paper and form and nests and glue stuff. It's not going to get me anything. I'm not going to show it on Instagram. Right? Oh, cool. And that reigniting of desire is what gives us the ability to do your process, to pivot. Right. And without desire, it's often why those plans feel so empty and fall apart, because we haven't rekindled that human need to fill and feel our desires, even if we don't know what they're going to get us or what form they're going to take or anything like that, that's beside the point, right?

And that even something that looks perfect on paper, if it's not connected to our desires, it doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen. Or you'll do it, but you'll be so bored and unhappy.

Right?

Trust me, I've done it.

Well, so that brings me back to Oprah. I think it's. I've never heard somebody say it the way you did. I've heard people talk about celebrities, let's say Jim Carrey in the documentary on netfl, saying, I had all the money, the power, the fame, and it wasn't enough. And that is when he found spirituality. I've never heard somebody put it the way you did about the pick me voice and that getting picked by Oprah the Queen herself, you know, that even that wasn't enough. Can you tell us a little more about first of all, how the heck that happened, but more importantly, what your insight was on the other side. Like why? Because maybe that's an example of the perfect on paper picked pick choice, you know, like I don't know the right word. And then, and then if it's not aligned with your true desire and your true calling or your signature theme. I love how you put that, that it, it's not enough.

I think the reason it wasn't enough as I was making the classic mistake that I know many of us have made, maybe, maybe women more than men. I'm not sure that I wanted someone else to tell me my work was real, that my thoughts and ideas counted, and that this is, by the way, book four I was on by this point and that I am one of those people who I make stuff up. I go out and I talk to people, I read stuff, I put it together. I'm a synthesizer, I'm a maven. I don't know all those different ways that people talk about things, right. I'm not a hardcore researcher like Brene Brown. And so I always have this self doubt that we was what I'm doing actually. Okay, is it valid? And again, it didn't matter. The feedback I got from people using it, it didn't matter anything. And so somehow I got the crazy idea that if I got on Oprah and she said, I like your work, I would finally trust myself and what I was doing. And it's so funny to say now, like that poor woman, why I ever put all that stuff on her. I'm so sorry, Oprah, but I did. And of course I also there's another part of it which I fell into for years and years. If I just do X in this case, you know, Oprah, done. And then I will, then I will. Everything will be easy after that. I mean, what entrepreneur and creative hasn't had that thought? If I just have this, that makes as much money, right? If I get on this podcast, if Tim Ferriss likes me, I don't know, fill in the blank, then I will be done. In this endless sort of, I got to do more. I got to do more won't happen anymore. And that really causes why bother? Because it can never be done. To be done is to say my life is over. To be done is to turn our backs on desire. To be done is to put ourselves in a box. And just saying it makes me want to cry because of all the years I spent in some iteration of that. And now my work and my joy is to go. It's all a mystery. It's all opening. It's all here right now. And why? What done is so beside the point, so boring, so dead. And I'm not saying it doesn't come through where I'm like, well, you know, it'd be nice to not have to ever market something again.

Can I raise my hand? I agree.

As I spend the next year marketing my book. Right? But then I can turn to the, like, the desire to be here with you. Like, it's so present. Like, oh, my gosh, I saw this on my calendar day. I get to be with Jenny Blake and her community. Like, how delightful is that? How can I stay there and in this connection with you instead of, does Jenny like me? Am I doing a good job? Is this a value?

Will Jenny's podcast create the tipping point? Will it be the next one? Will be the next one. Yeah.

And somebody important hear it and order thousands of copies.

Totally. And then the launch will be easy.

Exactly.

Just the right person here's just the right podcast. Then the perfect number of books will sell. And fresh, fresh, fresh. But, you know, I'm so. Wow. First of all, I'm blown away. Way to just voice what so many of us are constantly thinking. You have a real gift there. You said something this. This thing about if I just get picked and if I get on Oprah, I'll be done. I want it to work so hard for me. That ties back to what you said, and it's so powerful that you said you don't want people to come through this time exhausted. I feel like a large part of this hoping and praying to get picked and picked by the right person or the right traction and tipping point.

That we do have this calling within us. It's like, I don't want to work so hard anymore. I'm exhausted. One of the mottos I share in momentum is let it be easy, let it be fun. And you're right. If this counts as marketing, podcasting and being on shows, I'll do it. But half of the rest of the stuff feels so hard and so exhausting. So I wonder what part of why bother is also indicating. You know, you said in the book that there's some niggling thought we sometimes have that we're being selfish, we should be grateful for what we have. Or I have one around hard work. If I think we're easy and I want to get picked so things are easy, I'm entitled. I'm spoiled, I'm lazy. You know, but I think it's kind of BS the way society trains us to work. And you're the one, you're the originator of the women's comfort book, you know, and like that there has to be a better way.

I cannot tell you. I mean, if you could see me over here, I'm sort of vibrating and nodding and, you know.

I am in.

The middle of some kind of sea change inside of myself. I don't understand it. I don't know what's happening. I'm sure the pandemic has brought it to the forefront in some interesting ways. But last year I worked really extra hard to make enough money to produce this book because it walks like a book, it quacks like a book, it's distributed like a book in all your bookstores and Amazons and around the English speaking world. But I PA for it. I functionally self published it using somebody called Page two, an organization.

I saw that. I was so excited for you. You're like, myself.

Yeah, I picked myself. And that's exactly why I did it, because I started to fall into, pick me, pick me. And I'm like, nope, you're gonna put your money where your mouth is. But I ended the year, last year, almost on the edge of real burnout, which I haven't I flirted with many times in my life. But this is a long time since I've been there. And then it started again with all the things that we had planned for this book launch. And then the pandemic came. And again, it's a little sick to say this, but it was such a relief to me to cancel so many things because I was doing too much. And I was very much in that pushing over. It's got to be hard. I've got to work hard. This is what it takes. And so I have thrown it all up in the air while my business is cratering to go, where's the real delight here? What am I really called to do? Let's experiment. And really sitting with myself when I get an idea and going, do I really want to do that? And it's, it's really fun and weird and I don't know if it's gonna.

Work.

But I'm with ya. I'm just with ya.

Well, I can relate so much because I also have not turned on the burners, if you will, of let me go fill in all the missing income right now. I better start making sales calls and get on the phone. I don't want to. I have like an inner kid that's saying, absolutely not. I will not go to and. Or my inner intuition that's like not even a child. The one that actually knows it's not the time. And just like you, no matter how much my income has dropped and I, of course it is a privilege to even say that. Even have enough to get by as is.

But.

You know, we've been talking about this on multiple. On the podcast, on various mastermind groups I've been in. What are you secretly relieved to be able to say no to? That went away.

Right.

What are you secretly relieved not to have to fake bothering about?

Yes. And even something like a book tour that you are mostly excited for. Like, for me speaking. I actually love traveling. I like hotels. Not all the time, but I make the most of it. It's like my own little private retreat for myself.

But this is the longest I've been home without traveling. And I'm relieved. I feel a rest. Deeper rest settling in than I've probably ever had.

Right. And I felt guilty at first for feeling relieved.

Yeah.

You know, but then I went, you know, look, you're relieved. You don't have to put outfits together. You don't have to. You know, I'm dyslexic, so travel is always a little stressful for me. I have to check things over and over again because I will be in the airport and miss a plane because I read the clock wrong. So there's relief around it, and there's a relief about the simplicity of it. And the truth is that I am being called to something deeper right now. And the calls can come at really inopportune times. And I think part of what this book is about is you've got to listen to that call. When it comes to. When the call is to. I've got to change something. There's something that has gone or ended or been taken from me, and I have to leave that behind. I had to leave behind my vision for the launch of this book. And it took a couple weeks and I got depressed and ate all that bread.

And then I'm like, okay, you can leave it behind now. What's here now? What can we ease into here?

Well, that's what's so important about this book, is that you address that compassion. It's like the whole book creates space for this state and this transition from why bother and that dejected feeling, feeling that there's something wrong. What I love is that you're turning the why bother on its head. And it's, in fact, not a problem that you're feeling down or discouraged or dejected or drained by what was. It's actually, you're saying it's a signal and we got to create space and listen. And I just love that the entire book expands this moment of permission and.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's so. It's so important and what you said, that it's so often not convenient. I mean, isn't that the case, like.

Oh my gosh, it's so inconvenient.

If the change were easy, we wouldn't even notice we're in some kind of liminal. We wouldn't be in a liminal state. We would just be doing it and flowing with our life. But this is that record scratch. Because in a way, I think it's not just the practicalities of change, it's really some piece of our identity or some assumption or story that we've told ourselves about how society works or how business works or career, who we are. Yes.

I mean, every time that I've resisted this process, which is just about every time I have, it's been because. But I want to be X. I want to be important, I want to be special, I want to be successful. I want to be a writer with a capital W, for example. And therefore I cannot let go of my grip on that. And definitely there are stories in the book about people who don't want to let go of their success even though it's dead to them.

Right.

It's that that business or that career or that outlet is dead. But they're hanging on to dear life because what's next? I don't know. And I'm saying that what's next that that liminal space, that's where you're going to have to hang out. And that's what the book is there to companion you and give you something to hang on to.

I would imagine that it also felt. Well, again. Okay, let me ask it as a question. So I don't just assume, but it must have also felt like a lot of extra pressure self publishing this book, because that does take more investment. You're not only not getting paid in advance, you're investing more upfront. How has that unfolded for you in terms of like sitting with the risk of that during this time. And I know it's going to be perfect. I know that long term it will be the best decision. And I just. Your energy, even in the book, when you talked about it, it's so powerful. But it's just curious how your experience has been.

Can I call you when I Forget that it's all going to turn out okay.

Yeah, anytime.

Got it.

Yeah, I've just been real up and down about.

About it.

Real up and down. Like after the pandemic really got going, I just looked at my husband and like, what the hell was I thinking? And he's been very steady and he really believes in me, so that helps. And then at first we were getting really bad sales numbers and I was like, oh, my God, my list hasn't responded. What is going on? I thought I was doing everything right, but that turned out not to be true. We had good sales numbers out of the gate. We've had incredible amount of reviews on Amazon a real short period of time. And so I got a little bit of encouragement, but then I have to be really careful, Jenny, that I don't get hooked into like checking the numbers every week and like, you know, having that little short term pick me sort of. It's good because people are buying it and really invest in that big long term. I want to do this in this really entire. This way that follows. I don't even know that emerging sense of peace and well being.

Well, if it's any help, when the year Pivot came out, my words that I chose for marketing the book were magic and serendipity.

Oh, I love that I'm stealing those right now.

They're yours. I hereby pass them over to you.

Thank you.

And I also always repeated Atosha Silver ism, which is that the perfect readers will find this book at the perfect time.

I'll repeat that every morning when I wake up and before I go to bed at night.

Yeah, it's just this, like, I surrender this entire thing as Tosha. She wrote a book called it's not yout Money, but as she would say, it's not your book.

Right.

And I've had that experience with seven or eight or nine books or whatever.

I know. I can't believe you have so many. I don't need to tell you this.

Well, no, I mean, but. But I've had it over and over again and I've had it raising a child who's now 26 and going, oh, my God, she has an entire world that I will never know. I mean, she shares parts of it with me, but she lives in Seattle. I live in Colorado. Right. She is a fully human being. Whatever, you know, and I don't. I started her and I started this book. So I'm good at the surrender part, but I have to. I have to be good at the trust that Enough will come back to me.

Yeah. And it's almost like we're all getting extra tested. If we thought we were good at surrender, well, this year, 2020, we'll make damn sure.

No kidding. Surrender and acceptance and just like. Well, okay.

One of the things you talk about in your book is celebrating your desires in community and taking refuge in belonging. So with that, I'm going to open it up for MO members to ask questions. Momo, you can come off mute if you want, or I'll read your question out from the chat. And we're going to start with Megan, our fearless book club director. Megan, over to you.

I have a new title. I love it.

Hi, Jen. As I was saying before, or we hit record, just want to thank you so much for joining us today. There's so much in the book and I'm about 90% done. I think I'm on to, like, the second to last chapter, and there's so many things in there that resonate that I just had to underline. So at this point, I think the entire book might be underlined and highlighted. Two things. One is just kind of a, you know, something that I really appreciated and liked, and the other is a bit of a question. So the first thing is I love the idea of how you were able to turn things on their head, both in the thought of why bother? Which typically has this negative connotation. It's when you've almost given up and really having that hope and that want to move on. But you also did it in another part in one of the chapters called Settling, which again, normally has that negative connotation.

But you talk about it being kind of this necessary thing to be able to kind of find that. That mode of desire. And I was curious how those came about. And was that a conscious decision as you were kind of writing the title of the book and the chapters?

The book came together when I was coaching with Jenny Nash, who's a great coach and who marries book coaches with clients through her matching service called Author Accelerator. And she had been coaching me on the memoir that failed. And then she gave me an idea, sort of. She really had the idea for a book, and I tried to write that and that got turned down by my agent. And then this book came and it came in a conversation with her, and she was like, what do you really want to write about? And I said, I want to write about why bother? So for me, that phrase is where everything started to come together. And it was specifically around a conversation, ongoing conversation with a friend who had Woke had awakened one morning in her life and went, oh, my God, I have no idea whose life this is. I've never done anything I desire. I do no longer like, love or want to be married to my husband, and I don't know what to do with myself. And we had been corresponding and I was so curious about what would I write to this person who didn't know why to bother about anything. So it all arose out of that. That phrase. But honestly, I didn't realize that the two sides of it, right. It's like it's baked into the whole book. But it took me a while to go, oh, my God, yes. You can't have the dark without the light. You can't have the light without the dark. You have to have both. You have to be in that place. You have to be in that place of why bother to take care of myself during the pandemic? Or why bother to, you know, whatever the question is about any area of your life, you have to actually be willing to ask it.

And then the subtle part for me, instead of calling it get quiet or something like that, it's that feeling in your body.

You know, that feeling, that grace of inner stillness. It's always there. It's right under the surface waiting for us. And it's not that the mind gets quiet. The mind's still going meow, meeh. But underneath that, there's this body sensation that I can feel right now. I bet we all can. Stillness. And if I stop the moving and the pinging and the letting things come and ping at me, then I feel that. And without that, I can't connect to desire.

Love that you have such a way with words. Even on this call I've written down, you know, the way that you express things like that grace of inner stillness. It's such a beautiful way to express that idea of settling in.

Yeah, that feeling that we have. Right. So maybe you felt it, you know, when you get a massage or after yoga and Shavasana or. Or in a sauna, you know.

One other question and a shout out to our first book club author, Charlie Gilkey. I was listening to the podcast you did with him when it came out this weekend, and you talked a little bit about one of the chapters I haven't read yet, which is at the end of Being seen and the idea of it being more of kind of this. You talked about how it was even harder for you to be seen with people who maybe know you, as opposed to kind of just the general public. And I would love for you to expand a little bit more on that, because I feel like that's one of the things I feel is holding me back is that kind of being scared to be seen by, you know, people in my life that have known me forever but maybe don't know certain parts of me.

Yeah.

Oh, I so relate. I hid. I lived before. I lived in Colorado now in Boulder County. Before that, I lived on Bainbridge island near Seattle. Small islands. The island's actually not small. It's the size of Manhattan, but pretty small population relative. And I really. I just didn't like people to know what I did. It was this combination of, I don't want to be special, but also I don't want. Like, what if you don't like what I do? And you know too much about me, I don't even know what my thoughts were. So I completely relate. I think the place that I came to with this book that is so different and with my work in general by going through that whole why bother? Process and really embracing my desire. And there's a piece in the book. I don't know how clear it is, but it's been becoming more clear to me since writing the book. I'm not sure, again, if it's in there. I rejected to some degree my work for many years. I judged my books. I hated being called the comfort queen. I wanted to do. I wanted to be a fiction writer or screenwriter. I always kind of reject. We could say I rejected my dharma, right? I rejected these things that were calling to me. My signature themes and the forms they were taking. And I think that's why I didn't want people to see me when I came to really go through this whole process again, a lot of which is in the book and is the process in the book. I came to such a deeper acceptance of what I can't help but do. And I'm like, why wouldn't I want the people in my life to know me that way? I mean, that's like. Because I don't. I stop judging it. So I think when we're unwilling to be seen by our community, whatever community, the communities we aren't willing to be seen by, then I think it's an inquiry for us. And it may not be lead you to anywhere where it led me. It may be, oh, I actually just don't feel safe with these people, for example. Or I know they're not gonna get it. It's like, who do you give your book to? For early beta readers, don't give it to your grandma.

Right.

So there can be a lot of reasons, I think, and some of it can be very valid. But for me, it was. I was judging myself and hiding from myself.

Thank you for that, because that is definitely something. I'm getting to the point of that. Coming to that question of why wouldn't I want the people in my life to know this about me and see.

Me that way and to celebrate it with you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Those are great questions.

Thank you. Megan, I love, Jen, your focus on helping us distill the way you put it. What I can't help but do that core essence, the signature theme of our life. And why do you think it is that we have such a strong inner essence, and yet why is it sometimes so hard for us to see it in ourselves?

Well, maybe because sometimes it's too easy. Go back to our easy, hard conversation earlier. It's very easy for me to do the things that are associated with my signature theme. And I think I got a message pretty early on, and not necessarily a negative way from my dad, that, like, when life is hard, but, like, you're gonna work hard. Like, I worked so hard to be successful. You really worked for 30 years to make a really successful business, and worked and worked and worked and worked seven days a week. So I think I internalized some of that. So. And it's not that I haven't worked really hard, too, but that there can be, I think, a delight in it when we're listening to those things we can't help but do. But then I think it goes to the, you know, the Gita and, you know, where we don't, you know, Arjuna didn't want to accept his dharma. He didn't want that to be what he needed to do. So I wonder about that in our lives, right? That there. Maybe there's things we're given to do in this life to grow, to serve, to mostly to grow for ourselves, and we're just like, that's not what I want. I don't want to do that. I want to do this. And I don't. I don't know. I mean, what the Gita tells us is, you got to do your dharma, even if it's, you know, not what you want.

It's like the hero's journey, rejecting the call. Yeah, no, not that.

Anything like that.

Exactly.

Don't make me go out of my hobbit hole.

I am with you, though. In addition to that, you know, what is that itchy scratchy thing that is really going to help us Grow, of course. But also delight was my year of 2015, and my theme of the year was delight. And I remember at the time because I had just come off of a year that was the hardest I had probably ever worked and scrambled to pay the bills. I remember thinking, is this frivolous to follow delight as a guidepost in life and business? And then of course, by the end of the year, absolutely not. Turns out delight is one of these master keys of life and our direction. But at least in US society kind of gets a bad rap as something that you do on the side that works. Not meant to be delightful. Right.

Or you do it to get something right. That's the thing I had to keep saying in the book is, oh, I know right now you want to plan for what's next, but you need to go get Jenny's book pivot for that.

You want a plan. Any plan you come up with now is going to be too small for who you're becoming.

Yes.

Our next question is from Valerie.

Ok, so first of all, I want to just shout out, I joined Jen's Oasis community a little while back and it's so lovely. For anyone who has not checked it out, I highly recommend it. I look forward to getting my little audio every Friday and sitting down with my journal.

I made the best one for the this week. Oh my God.

Yay.

And also when I heard that this was the title of your new book, I just smiled and laughed because I have a podcast called what's the Effing Point? Which kind of feels like the same. And I say that, you know, with also both sides like you do of like we can go into that sort of existential despair, but we can also come to that place where there is a big effing point. And it's maybe not the same for everybody, but. So yeah, I'll have to catch you on your next round of after you've had a break from.

I'd love that. I'd love that.

But anyway, I guess my what I want to ask maybe isn't so much a question, it's just a stuck point that I'm hoping I know other people will relate to. So hopefully it's not just for me. But in your Leave behind chapter, you give a kind of a little section for all these different sort of like reasons or excuses that we give ourselves of why we don't bother of like, I'm too ill, I'm too broke, it's too late, I'm too old, I'm not good enough. All these things and which there could probably be a whole book in and of itself. And I'm just noticing as I continue to try to figure out why am I still stuck? Why do I feel like in some ways I'm circling the same drain over and over again? I think that I'm really stuck on the excuse or idea of it's so oversaturated, it's so been done a million times and better by other people and so why bother? What is the point? And even if I try to bypass and leapfrog over that, which I do, but then I end up half assing everything.

And I appreciate your idea too of not being a perfectionist. I think we, and Jenny talks about too, we've got to, you know, we've got to just like launch and iterate. And so I appreciate that. I do that. But then I never really get to the point of whole assing. And so I'm just curious when you hear people or you yourself have been at a stuck point like that, not necessarily advice or guidance on the way out of it, but just anything you.

Want to say about that. Well, tell me what whole assing would look like.

Isn't that a great idea? I mean, I guess I have more of like the outcome in mind. Like I would, I would have, you know, created a course that was successful. I would have actually built an audience and an email list that I can survey and connect with. I will have actually done those things instead of just like, you know, reach step one and then keep circling there.

That's your answer.

I don't know if you saw the post that I wrote today, but it was. Is exactly about this, how we actually have to realize and I think a lot, and I'm waving my hand over here, don't like this, but it's going to take us more effort to get our work out than it made than it was to make it. I will spend more time promoting this book to get it to what I call the classic stage than I spent writing it. And I have to find ways to desire that and love that and be of service in that. And also I have to find ways to focus my attention on what is it about those processes that I have some pleasure in that I can like so it doesn't all feel, you know, onerous. And I am also in the position where I've made enough money in my business and you know, trying really hard to continue that this year where I do have a team that can do a lot of things that I'm really bad at. Again, learning disabilities, Dyslexia, don't let me near the HTML code. So I do have some help with some of the details and things that I mess up. Dates, times, things like that. But primarily, I mean, they're very much a part time team. So there's. I'm the one who does the marketing, I'm the one who writes the copy. I'm the one who writes emails every week. Lots of things that are chop wood, carry water. And I think the thing that we may fail to do when we're trying to build a following, build a business, is really, look at that work of building is the work. It is just as valid and we're going to spend more time and more energy on it. So what is it about it that we can focus on that we love? Obviously you love podcasting.

Do you?

Yes.

Okay, so that's like, okay, I love doing that. Now what is it about that that I can then find that I can connect to the people who I want to listen to the podcast? So I have this thing that I love doing and that's fueling me and now I have to find those people that want to listen to it. How am I going to do that in a way that I really love or that I can tolerate or that I can break down into some small steps that I can do every week? And the other thing I see people doing when they get into this, why bother about sharing their work or building a business is there and you, I hope you're not doing this, but God knows I've done it. And it's like, listen to everybody and their brother about how to do it and pick up one method and then it doesn't work in a week and so we drop it and then we go do the next method. So that kind of really gritty focus. And I just did it with the book launch. I was all over the map. I was trying to do 10,000 different things. And again, thank you, pandemic. I'm like, okay, remember that key entrepreneurial word, Focus. Focus. What are we going to focus in? We're going to focus on. The things I'm focusing on next are Facebook ads.

Right?

Okay, let's really rock some Facebook ads on this. Do I want to write Facebook ads? I'd rather stick my notebookers in my eyes. How am I going to make it fun? How am I going to make it interesting? How am I going to break it down?

Right.

So this is not a sexy answer, my friend.

No, but I appreciate that. And I know that continuing to work through the book is really going to be helpful and just showing up, because I think a lot of us creators, we make the thing and then we just set it on the table and go, well, why isn't anybody coming to.

Look at my nice thing?

I know.

And that is not okay. That is not okay. Because what that is saying is what I create doesn't matter. And I don't know what. I'm not a.

I don't understand signs or symbols, but I just want you to know a red tail hawk flew right by my window right there.

Ooh, that's so cool. Someone's got to look that up.

I will.

I've got my animal totem bull.

Yeah, go look that up. It was a red tail. It was a juvenile red tail hog. How cool.

Please do report back so we get it even on this recording.

Thank you, Jen.

And shout out to Valerie, who is podcasting daily. She loves podcasting. Oh, damn good at it. That. Not only does she have what's the effing point? She has recharged the new Daily Show. That is so beautiful.

There's something there. There's something important there.

There is. And I'm just reflecting. Valerie, I gave you a shout out. I'm laughing because you might not even know yet because we're both podcasting daily. When on earth would we listen to anything when. When you're in your zone of genius. Like, how could I not give you a shout out? Like, your show's been awesome. I love what you're doing. The birds are chirping in the background. It's different than everything else that's out there. Your even intentions behind it are not about giving advice. It's just a mini muffin size, as Val calls it, treat for your morning. It's so good that. That I shared it on my podcast. And I have a feeling that when we're truly aligned like that, it's not that we don't do the chop wood carry water of spreading the word, but that somehow the magic helpers and word of mouth magic starts to happen at the same time. And they almost have to happen simultaneously because if you just rely on that, the universe doesn't like that.

Yeah. So earlier part of our conversation, right? Which is if it feels, oh, my God, I can't do this. We have to listen to that. We have to get curious. We have to maybe journal there. We have to ask some different questions. Maybe some of the ones in the earlier chapters of the book. I'm not saying it's got to be like this grim march at all, but it has to be that willingness to keep showing up in a consistent way and being seen and then really thinking about marrying this beautiful thing, in this case, these beautiful podcasts with, where are my people hanging out? And how would it be fun to get them to listen?

Right.

How can I be fun and consistent?

Yeah. And I'm increasingly convinced that if people like you, Jen, me, Val, people I love so intensely and respect, you know, if all of us feel allergic to a certain element of the way things are being done right now, I just feel so passionate. There must be a new and different way forward.

Yes.

I just don't know what it is yet, but I am hereby going to light the torch for us that there must be a way.

I agree. I am with you. I am so with you. I am so with you.

Thank you. We have a question from Alexandra, but before we get there, I wonder if you can just quickly say, because it sparked my curiosity, I have an open loop around. You are saying the memoir that failed, and I am wondering. I get this question a lot. When to persevere and when to pivot. Talk about chop wood, carry water. How did you know the memoir. How did you know? And I know that you don't say failure with a capital F like you just kept moving into what the book was meant to be. But when did you decide that it wasn't going to work and to shift into what it is now?

I hired Jenny Nash to read it, and she told me, okay, but how'd.

You know to listen?

Yeah, well, I knew it was right in my body. I actually felt. I mean, I got some tears in my eyes. I think I was on a plane. And maybe. I mean, I definitely had this moment.

But then I heard this refrain in my head, ding dong, the wicked witch is dead. I swear. And I had this huge feeling of lightness. And it confirmed my own knowing that this was an unwieldy manuscript. And what I mean by failed is I had a goal to write a narrative memoir, like Educated or Wild, that you would sit down and read and be like, oh, my God. And she took me on a journey through one slice of her life. I did not do that. I did something else that didn't work, but it gave me the roadmap. It gave me so many things.

It gave me.

It changed my life. It changed my perceptions, gave me the roadmap for the why Bother?

Book.

And of course, there were stories I took out of the memoir that are in the why Bother book. But, yeah, it didn't. It didn't work. And I trusted her very much so. And it. I had had this. I had a coach before her who told me the book was fantastic, and I didn't trust her. And that's why I hired Jim.

Wow.

How interesting. And that's so how it goes too, with creative projects where you might literally hear, like, the exact opposite opinion, and then you're the one that has to discern. You do your own guide, your own, how you want it, what resonates, what doesn't. On the topic of getting out of one's own way, I'm going to throw it over to Alexandra for the next question.

Thanks, Jenny. Well, first of all, I just want to say I loved this book.

Jennifer, thank you.

Thank you, thank you. Not that I want you to pick.

Me, but thank you.

Thank you.

No, no.

It really spoke to me on so many levels. And one of the things that really stuck with me and is still kind of marinating in my brain is the idea of getting out of your own way. And the sort of the formula you gave us, and I can paraphrase here, it's if I care about something, I'm afraid that something else will happen. And that means that, you know, insert worst possible outcome here. And that certainly resonates with me. And I'm still mulling that over. And I loved your idea of doing these nano tests, as you say, and like, really just dipping a toe in the water for these big hot fears to sort of dispel them. And I think from now on, my momentum community is going to be my testing waters for all of this. Yeah, I just, I was so fascinated by this idea of the nano testing. If you could maybe speak more, a little bit about that and what happens after that.

Right.

You do a few little nanotest, you get a few toes in the water and then what? I think I'm not there yet, but I think I'd just love to hear some thoughts on that from you. So thanks.

So this is my take on the immunity to change work that.

Bob Keegan and Lisa Laskow Leahy do at Harvard, and they have a book, Immunity to Change. And it's beautiful work. And I've always found it incredibly complicated. So over many years, I've been trying to work with myself to understand it more and simplify it. And this is my version of in the book. And we'll see if it works or not for people because it is deep work. And I think sometimes maybe you need to do it with a coach. But the idea is that you get to those.

The big idea is that we have something called an emotional immune system. And that emotional immune system is about keeping us defended. And the big idea that I got from Leahy and Keegan was we're not afraid of change. We're not self sabotaging ourselves. We're not afraid of success. We're afraid of being undefended because we're mammals. We've been prey for all of our evolutionary history. And there is a part of us and our awareness and our brain that is scanning the environment four times every second to see, a, is there something better? And B, is there something? And it's going to threaten me. And so when we are doing anything that is connected to desire, in a lot of cases we're going to feel undefended. That isn't safe. My parents told me not to do that. That's too easy. Why should that work? Oh my God, what are people gonna think of me? You know, you name it, just fill in the blank. And so we need to kind of begin to. We don't need to. We must make our emotional immune system a little bit broader, a little bit bigger, a little bit more robust. It's always going to be there. We're always going to knock up against the edge of it, like in the Truman show, right? And the edge of the set, in that case, in that movie with Jim Carrey and. But that we can keep expanding it. And so this is one way, there's lots of ways to expand it. But I love this work, which is looking at our biggest, deepest fears, the one that makes us prickly with sweat and the one that we really don't want people to know. And that's what that first prompt is, to dig down into it. Sometimes we have to dig down a few times, right? Sometimes we have to discuss it with someone else, a therapist, a coach, to really see it, a partner. And then we're not trying to disprove it. We're not trying to give ourselves pep talk, pep talks. I can't say that pep talks. We're not trying to give ourselves affirmations. We're not trying to talk ourselves out of it. We're trying to give ourselves verifiable experience to say, huh, what happens when I take a little movement towards the edge of my emotional immune system? Is this worst thing really going to happen? Maybe it does. And then we're like, okay, great, don't go there anymore. But maybe I gained some other information. So we're really looking for factual feedback. And sometimes those tests can happen in the moment of, let's say, Being with a group of people who you feel like you don't belong with. And we'll go back to the example of sharing your work in your local community or with your family that we were talking about earlier. And maybe you decide in the moment to go, wow, I'm in this safe space with this friend and I'm going to talk about my work, but first I'm going to check it out. Do they have time? Is this a really good opportunity? And I'm going to do a nano test right here and I'm going to talk about work and see if my worst fear happens, which is that they're bored or that they look away or that they make fun of me. And then all I'm going to do is pay attention to maybe what they do. But more importantly, how do I feel in the moment of sharing? I'm just gathering data. And where does it go from there? Well, that's where we move into Ginny Blake's work. Right? That's where we work into what am I gathering here about where I might want to pivot, if at all. But my plan with the nanotest is to just begin to expand that emotional immune system so you have more room for desire.

That's wonderful. And that really ties in with a lot of the work I do. And when you talk about this emotional immune system and gathering data, it's very similar to what Susan David says in her book of emotional agility, of emotions are data, they're not directives. It's just giving you information.

And not to change it, but to use that data in maybe a more productive way. So thank you so much for that. And I find that what also comes up for me, it's very ironic that for me and teaching emotional intelligence, I guess one of my big hot fears is being vulnerable and what people will. How people react to that, when really the people I admire the most are the ones who are raw and real and vulnerable and shocked. Show their. And show that and share it with people. And yeah, so I'm just. I'm just sort of working through all of this.

I get it.

I get it.

Very, very helpful.

So thank you for that.

Oh, you're so welcome. And so often we are. I'll use the word envious, which is not your word, but this is true for me. I'm envious of what someone else is giving themselves is an indication of what I'm really doing, desiring. And I don't mean the form like, oh, I'm desiring to be, you know, number one on Every bestseller list. Oh, yes, I'm desiring that, but that I can't do anything about that. I can take the actions I can take. But what I'm desiring is the way that they're, you know, speaking up freely or, you know, the way. Does that make a little sense?

Oh, yes.

Right.

What you admire in other people, what, what kind of creates that. That not jealousy, but that burning desire, as you said, is really, again, that's information telling you what you really want.

Yes. And to take action on and to enjoy.

Yeah. Great.

Thank you. Oh, thank you.

Awesome. Thank you. Alexandra and Jen, love what you just shared. Valerie is back with our spirit animal report on this red tailed hawk. Valerie, over to you.

Yeah, so I picked up my animal speak book by Ted Andrews and there's a few pages on hawks that I'll dig into a little deeper later. But this pull out with a beautiful picture of the red tailed hawk says this powerful bird can awaken visionary power and lead you to your life purpose. It is the messenger bird and wherever it shows up, pay attention. There is a message coming.

Yay.

Right?

Pay attention, girl. Something about getting your work out there.

Okay, I think we probably have time for one more question. Theo, over to you.

Hi, Jen. I loved everything that you were sharing and the wonderful questions that people had to ask. And I am going to read the book. I think it's something that I could use. I have a chronic illness. I experience sensations in my body that my brain interprets as pain. I've had it for most of my life. I have something called chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. I'm in the process of looking for a full time job and it's taken me 12 years to get here and it's a difficult environment that just got more difficult. Why bother?

I have enough money to survive. I've been doing this for a long time, for 25 years. And I'm not ready to give up. I'm obviously not the only person who's facing some of these big challenges and things like that.

Absolutely. So tell me more about why you do want to bother to get a full time job.

I got rescued out of relationship and from there I've been going to all kinds of self improvement stuff and spiritual stuff and meditation, yoga. And I met Jenny six years ago and Jenny and Momo, our community changed my life. And it was a really important part of changing my life. And through all of these experiences I realized that I have a lot to offer that I'm not in any way any. I feel like I'M in first gear or second gear. I have so much to offer and I've realized that over time I've done a lot of things to get to this point where I'm ready to make that leap of getting off a disability and going out and working full time and then dealing with the things that everyone else deals with when they're working full time. So I think the big thing is I have a lot to offer. My own personal growth is the most important thing to me and I know it'll enable me to grow in a much faster way. I know from my sort of self actualization that going out there and working is really, really important. And I'm ready to do it.

That's a beautiful answer to why bother? It brought tears to my eyes. I believe you all the way through my body and being. Yeah, your why bother Is so strong. And like, I am. I'm gonna be a different person for having hurting, right? I am a different person already. I can just feel my heart feels bigger and stronger and I just want to go like. And then there's the reality of whatever you're up against, finding the right fit and now the pandemic. And those are two different things. You know, why you bother now? Does it fade out some days? Does it feel weak? Of course it does. For all of us. But you're so clear, Theo. And then the mechanics of it, right, that's different. And I think separating those two out and just letting yourself feel determination and passion and dignity and why you bother to get this job whenever it's gonna look like and when it happens, you better send me an email so I can celebrate. And you know, and then like, yeah, this sucks. This timing sucks, this market sucks, whatever it is. I mean, that's true, right? That's true. We're not denying that. We're not glossing that over. But they're two different things.

Can I just share with this one thing that changed everything for me? You know, given you heard a little bit about my background and given when I was coming out of this stuff and even when I was in the middle of it, I kept saying, like, you know, I did this human thing and I said, why me? Why me? Why me? And I remember doing this exercise in this, in this self improvement thing where you repeat something over and over again. You write out your story about something that happened and you read it over and over again and at some point you just start laughing because you realize it's so ridiculous. And then it's a story.

Right? You've probably Done. Many people probably done this exercise. And so I was asking this question about why me? Why me? Why me? And I got so bored of it. Then I realized, then I asked myself another question. Why not me?

Yes.

Like, why should someone else get a chronic illness? Why should someone else be an abusive relationship? Why should someone else. And the reason that's interesting is because then why shouldn't I be the one that's successful? Why should a software developer. Why can't I change someone else's life? Why can't I create something that's going to change the world? And that becomes a much more interesting question.

It does. That's beautiful. I love that. Theo.

Anyway, thank you for letting me share. I look forward to reading your book.

Thank you.

Yeah. And thanks for spending this time with us and everyone's great questions.

Theo and Jen, what an epic lion roar. That was good.

That was awesome.

We have two spirit animals for this conversation. Jen, this has been so wonderful and delightful and joyful and wise. Thank you for sharing your perspective on all this. Where can people find you if they want to learn more and keep in touch and even join oasis?

Yeah.

So Jennifer Loudon L O U D E n dot com is my home on the web. There is a. If you sign up for my email list, we send you the first chapter of the book for free. If you just want to test it out. If you buy the book and you go to jenniferlouden.com y father and you give us your receipt, let me show you how right there. Then we have some special gifts for you. So those are two ways to learn more about the book and about me. And the Oasis information is also. You can see a tab right there. Jenniferloudin.com Awesome.

I think we also learned a great coaching tool which is when you find yourself asking, why bother? Have a friend ask you, you tell me, why bother? Because everybody had the most brilliant answers.

They do. I think A lot of times we know. Not always, but sometimes.

Jen, what a joy. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here.

Oh, totally.

Big hug.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get shown from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.