25: Opt Out: Say No to the Good So You Can Say Yes to the Great

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Hi, I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of the book Turn what's Working for your into what's Next, which comes out with Portfolio Penguin in September of 2016.

In this podcast I talk with peak performers to reverse engineer their most successful career. Pivots interview experts on what it takes to be agile in a rapidly evolving economy and open the kimono on what happens behind the scenes of my book and business. You can learn to capitalize on risk, fear and uncertainty as the doorways of opportunity. My promise is that you will leave every episode with practical tips, tools and tactics. For show notes from this episode, visit JennyBlake Me podcast.

If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Learn to say no to the good so you can say yes to the best this is one of my favorite quotes from John C. Maxwell and I have actually misquoted it most of my life in saying say no to the good so you can say yes to the great. Either way, that's the topic of today's podcast. We are going to talk about opting out saying no. As I've thought more about Pivoting and what is required to figure out what's next and move in a really resonant direction. One of the things that is almost universal is having to make a tough decision and to say no to something good, to open oneself up to the possibility of something great. Or as the actual quote goes, to the best. Now, I don't know if I believe in the best, categorically speaking, but I do believe in that we hit plateaus and something that once felt great starts to merely feel good. And if we don't pay attention when it's feeling good and it then sinks into feeling painful and anxiety producing and health negatively impacting, I know that's not exactly a phrase, but you get what I'm saying. Our opportunity is not to be totally flippant and non committal and say the second something isn't good, I'm out. That's not the point. But what I want to talk about today is for these big life decisions, how do we say no to the good? It's something really hard to do when something is obviously terrible or not a fit, whether it's a job or a relationship, it's easier to walk away. It's easier to say, this isn't working, I'm out. Sometimes those choices get made for us. People get fired, their company gets acquired, they have to fold their business. In relationships, someone breaks up with you. And so in those cases also, we're catapulted already. The decision is made for us. Change chooses you and you're catapulted into that next direction.

We know from our email inboxes that part of the key to life and sanity is opting out, is when we get a message, something is creating more clutter than utility. We get to click a little link at the bottom of the email that says opt out, unsubscribe. I don't want to be on this radio station anymore. Whether that's a newsletter or sometimes it's people in your life. This opt out button is something we're used to now in our digital era, but it's still hard to do in practice and for much bigger life questions. And one thing I've gotten really curious about is why do we have such a hard time in our own lives saying no to the good? I remember one of the interviews that I have pangs of regret about. And I have since emailed the reporter, this amazing reporter named Annie at UCLA was interviewing me for a story on my time at the Daily Ruin and my time at UCLA and what I've done since. And when she called me back to double check the opening to her story, she said that the lead had something to do with Jenny Blake is defined by quitting things. Something along those lines, or, you know, Jenny defines her life by the things that she's left. And in the moment, I was a little defensive and I thought, oh. And I actually said to her, I don't know if I feel comfortable with you opening the story that way. Which P.S. a subject doesn't really have the right to say to a reporter or an interviewer anyway. But Annie was very gracious and we talked it through and I just said, I don't want to send the wrong message that my focus in life is quitting things, you know, because I quitting sometimes has a negative connotation. But in the months after that interview, as I've thought back, I thought Annie really nailed it. She was right that the biggest moments in my life, the times that were the biggest catalysts for transformation were when I left something behind. When I was writing for the Daily Ruin my freshman year, I was a news reporter. My whole life up till that point had been dedicated to journalism. I'd been doing a monthly family newspaper since I was 11 years old. I was the editor in chief of my high school paper. I got a scholarship in communications at ucla, and I just thought, this is what I should be doing. But it was creating a lot of stress. It was taking away from my schoolwork. And I started to wonder, is there more out there for me? Am I meant to be a journalist? Or should I open myself up to other things? And so I quit the newspaper my freshman year, and that's when I added political science as a double major. That's when I became a research assistant to my college professor, Lynn Bavarik. And that's what got me the job at the startup company where I left UCLA my junior year to go work at this startup in Palo Alto doing online political polling. And it was that experience of leaving school. So there's another, you know, I didn't quit altogether. I later went back to finish. But I left school, I worked at the startup, and it was that experience that inspired me to start the website Life After College. So you can see how that one choice of quitting led me down this amazing path. And then, okay, Life after College, Now I'm talking about leaving college. And I wrote a book on it. And as much as in the years since, I haven't wanted to define myself by what I left. Then I quit Google when the book came out, and I became known to people on podcasts as the girl who left Google. And even that, I sort of didn't quite own it at the time because I wanted to be defined by something beyond just what I was leading. But when Annie said that about her story and the lead and I started to put all these pieces together, I realized that this opting out, saying no to something good did open the way to something great and to growth. Ultimately, we don't have any guarantees in life. We're not entitled to anything. Just because we make a hard choice doesn't necessarily guarantee some fixed outcome or attachment that we have. However, if we make these choices and say, I'm open, I surrender, show me the way. And we have a spirit of growth, and we trust that these things will lead us to our next best step, Even if there's some rapids and turbulence in between, then it works. One of the biggest reasons that I think holds us all back from saying no to something or opting out is this idea that the devil you know versus the devil you don't. Sometimes we feel a sense of safety and security with the devil we know. Again, whether it's a job, a relationship, a city, a lifestyle, a perspective on the world. And we are human. So we do want some amount of safety, security, predictability, but at the same time.

That'S a perspective rooted in fear. Okay, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. I mean, that's something that keeps you in place. So as I broke this down, I realized there are. Well, first of all, let me say there are always logistical concerns about making a choice. And so when we can look at opting out, there are external based concerns. And then internal, external might be things like, if I quit my job, how will I earn a living? Where will I live? How will I pay the rent? These are really important questions. And so we're not going to go into all that. But that's just to say that sometimes there are external process based concerns that are very real and those fears are healthy and they're going to help you plan exactly how you want to proceed and when, how much money you have in the bank will dictate your pivot Runway, how many months you have, whether you need to take a job right away, or if you have time to take a step back and reflect. So those are real. But a lot of these concerns are often internal. And there are four main internal concerns that I'm going to talk about. One, fear that you won't find anything better. Two, second guessing yourself. Three, saying no is hard, actually communicating it. And then four, fear of the time in between move A and move B. What if you feel suspended without a sense of direction? All right, so number one, fear that you won't find anything better. How often has this kept you in place where you know something isn't working, but you think to yourself, well, am I just being too picky? And so that fear kind of relates to the second one, which is second guessing, saying, maybe I'm asking for too much. Maybe.

I'm just being entitled. That's what I thought when I thought maybe I should leave Google. I thought I'm just one of those spoiled, entitled Gen Y brats that everybody talks about. If I can't be happy here, I can't be happy anywhere. And I remember this feeling that. And we hear it all the time. People say the grass is always greener. This is one of the sections in Pivot, actually where I talk about, well, yeah, Sometimes the grass is greener. And again, this is not to promote a sense of flightiness and unwilling to dig in and do the hard work at a job or in a relationship and really commit to things. However, when your gut is starting to tell you something isn't working, sometimes the grass is greener. We can't all be expected to live on the same plot of grass. What's green for someone else might be starting to turn brown for you. My example of this is Google. And I thought, well, I'm doing coaching and career development. I was helping manage the Authors at Google program. I was building this global manager coach training program. What on earth could other grass possibly provide for me? Not to mention a great salary and great benefits. But I left exactly five years ago and there has not been one second of one day where I said to myself, I made the wrong choice. That grass was actually the greenest grass for me. Not one second of one day. And you all know I've had ups and downs of running my own business. It hasn't always been easy. I can't. But even when I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent, I still didn't think, oh, I made the wrong choice for me, the grass is greener. Working for myself. And I had no idea this was gonna be the case. I thought for so long I'm not cut out for entrepreneurship. I am like a straight A student. I love taking direction. I'm a really good employee. I had this idea that I wasn't cut out to do the big picture strategy and sales and marketing and all the things that would be required to run my own business. And I didn't know if I would be happy by myself all day. Well, the truth is, I love it. I live and work alone all day and then I leave the house to go to yoga or meet a friend for coffee or dinner. And that really works for me. So as soon as I left and I could create my own lifestyle of reading in the morning and meditating and journaling and then digging into work, setting my own schedule, leaving in the middle of the afternoon so I can take a break. I mean, these things have really created my container of what great looks like for me. What Saying no to good so you can say yes to the best. And sometimes we can only assess that through experience and through trying. Decisions are data. You won't always know just from speculation what your good versus great or good versus the best is. So when it comes to this fear that you won't find better, one thing about that is questioning it. When I was thinking about leaving Google, I had the thought, what if I end up in a van down by the river? And I had to start telling myself at the same time it was okay to have that thought. But also, what if I earn twice as much in half the time? And that's been a guiding framework for me. Some people say, you know, I heard someone say to me the other day, what if I can't find my ideal clients? What if these people don't exist? They're a new coach starting out. Well, okay, but what else could you ask yourself? That's a more productive question. So instead of focusing on the fear that you won't find better, what is the better that you want to find? And how can you frame that as a more creative question? How can I find incredible clients who fit XYZ profile on the second guessing piece and the shoulds. It is so easy to unconsciously hook into society's shoulds. You should get a job after school, start dating, get married, buy a house, get a dog, have kids. And it's not to diminish any of these social norms that we have. But that same path will not fit everybody. And even if it fits many people, it may not fit you. And that's just the example I gave of kind of like the meta narrative that we tend to have around the American dream. And for some people, that is truly the dream, and it fits and it feels awesome, and there's a reason why so many people do it. For others of you, you might feel like, wow, I want to opt out of a piece of that. At a certain point, maybe I don't want to get a job right out of college and I want to take a gap year and go travel. Maybe I want to change industries. Maybe.

This relationship seems like it's perfect, but something feels like it's missing and I need some time to reflect and think about myself. The range and the ways at which you may need to at times veer from this societally prescribed path of shoulds. It's challenging. It's really hard. And part of what has helped me do that in the past is getting very clear on my values and why, what the shoulds are and recognizing that they're shoulds. Whenever I hear myself saying I should do this or I feel like I should take this job or should take this client, that's a red flag for me. And so I look for, well, how could I do that joyfully? Or moving on to this third prong, how do I say no? One of the Hardest things about opting out and saying no to the good is actually having to say it. A lot of people conflate decision making, and there are many. There are about four different parts about making a decision. One is getting clear for yourself, what do you really want? And whether it's leaving a job, a relationship, a city. Again, some people are leaving their religion from their upbring. It's what do you want? What feels true to you? What do you know in your heart and your gut to be true? And some people, when I say they conflate decision making, they're so afraid of having to communicate this decision that they don't even let themselves think it in the first place. And they try and stuff it back down where it came from. Like, no, no, no, that can't be true. No, you can't be telling me I have to make this really hard choice. And I know in the past when I've known a relationship was coming to its end and I was maybe gonna have to have a hard conversation, my first reaction was like, no, no, there's gotta be a way. There's gotta be a way to make this work. And of course, again, it's, you wanna try and know you've given everything your best. But once you're clear, give yourself the space to hear that voice that says, this is the decision that needs to be made. And then give yourself permission not to have to communicate it right away. So just because you're clear, let's say you are ready to leave a job or move away from your family or something. That's hard to share. Well, you don't have to share it the second it enters your awareness. Now, the second piece you can kind of consider, well, how do I want to communicate this to the other people who are affected? And when. Then the third piece of communicating a hard decision is actually having the conversation, and then a fourth is dealing with their reaction or the consequences. Sometimes these hard conversations are like an earthquake. And you kind of deal with the earthquake in the moment. But then there are aftershocks because the other parties want to think about this information and secondary questions may come up. So just know that it's hard for all of us to say no. I mean, it really is. Honestly, I admire so much the people that don't have a problem saying no or opting out. I mean, there. And we all are probably on a spectrum with this. And.

For those of us that have a hard time saying no, for me, it's my tendency toward people pleasing. I don't want to upset people. But the thing that upsets people the most is not being honest with them or staying in something past its expiration date, or not communicating at all. So I think you'll find that when you can be honest with yourself and then communicate clearly, directly and from a place of truth with other people, there's great respect to be had there. So on this decision making framework, just to repeat those steps, number one, get clear for yourself. Number two, then plan how and when you might want to communicate. Three, have the conversation. And four, deal with any aftershocks that come up.

The fourth piece around opting out and the fear that comes in is this fear of the time in between. One of my favorite stories. You can google it. It's called the Parable of the Trapeze. It's one of my favorite parts of life after college and it's the one I didn't write. And the author, Dan and Perry, talks about how change can be so terrifying because it's almost as if we have to completely let go of our first trapeze bar in order to grab the next one. And that it's almost as if fact we have to let go of that first trapeze bar in order to grab the second. And there is this time in between where we are completely suspended, we're not holding onto anything. And that time is terrifying. And yet it's when true growth occurs.

Think about that. That's where the growth is actually. It's when we're not holding on to anything and we recognize how vulnerable we are and we, we search inward. Because when we don't have the outer bar, the job, the brand, the person.

We have to go to ourself. And to me, and I'm so fascinated, as all of you know, by studying the wisdom of insecurity and uncertainty and change. And that the truth is this change is the only constant. It's like we know it. But I think that the times we've viscerally feel it and get to become more acquainted with that is when we are right smack in the middle of that terrifying place where we don't have our old familiar framework of security. And that it puts us in touch with reality and it gives us compassion for anyone else in that situation. And it reminds us what is truly important. And it's not things, and it's not our attachments to the way things should be, but it's about being present and really trusting the wisdom in our life's events. And that I believe it's that time in between bars where we get insight about how we want to show up for the next opportunity or the next person.

So those are the four pieces of why it can be hard to say no. Fear we might not find better second guessing ourselves or falling into shoulds. Saying no is hard. So just coming around to having to communicate something and then fear of this time in between.

Okay, so if that's what we're afraid of, well, how do we deal with this? How do we opt out with integrity and without scaring ourselves half to death? Okay, one. A lot of people hear me say, a lot of my friends, I'm always saying to them, I believe in a nonlinear universe, like space and time are illusions. And I really think that. And when I say that, I mean, of course we are all operating on a clock. Days have 24 hours in them. But when it comes to new opportunities and who we meet.

The universe is nonlinear, meaning there is not a fixed prescription of how long something is going to take or where life is so unpredictable. This is what I love about the idea of serendipity. That you can't say like, oh, it's going to be so hard for me to find another job. Maybe you can say that the average length of unemployment now is eight months. So of course you want to be prepared for that reality. At the same time, can you open up to the possibility that something could drop into your lap tomorrow? And what is it going to take to have that open, trusting, curious perspective and to not fall into linear thinking? People say all the time, oh, dating in New York must be so hard. It's awful. And I mean, it doesn't matter whether that's true or not. I refuse to say that thought out loud because if I say it, I'm sort of adhering to this nonlinear universe. If I say, oh, it's 60% women, it's 40% men. Then if you look at the 40%, let's rule out XYZ. And if I were to do that on a very linear data based approach, or I'm reading the book Dataclysm by the founder of OkCupid, says women over 30, they're like, you know, it's hopeless. Anyway, the point is it'd be really easy to fall into these linear rules and rules of thumb about living and about what's possible. And I for one refuse to do it. And that works for me. I encourage you to do the same. And of course, I'm a realistic optimist. I'm realistic at the same time, but I've had enough cool things and cool people and Opportunities enter my life at the most random moments in the most random ways. That, to me, is what I hang my hat on. Trust is a big piece of this. And trust, and I would say surrender, go hand in hand. So as I've thought more about serendipity this year and what are the ingredients to serendipity? How do we cultivate this in our life? There's a sense of surrender that says, I'm open. I'm going to leave the house today, and I'm open to who I meet and to where I feel called to go and to any insights that pop up. And the trust piece is trusting that cool things will happen and that. And I'll just share my beliefs. You can have your own framework. Whatever works for you. I truly believe that everything that happens in my life is a lesson. It's an opportunity for my growth and development. And that's not to say they're all fun, absolutely not. But that everything that happens is perfectly selected for my highest growth and evolution. And I also hold that intention for other people. And I wish for the highest good for all involved of any situation that I'm involved with, even if that means that at some point things have to dissolve or hard choices have to be made. And so in holding that belief, it helps me to stay open and surrender and say. One of my favorite Zen parables is called we'll see. And that when something bad happens, it's a guy of a farmer and I'm gonna completely butcher it. But it's like a stray horse wanders upon his farm and his neighbors say, oh, that's so fortunate. And he says, we'll see. And then the horse breaks his leg and they say, oh my gosh, that's so terrible. And he says, we'll see. And then his son comes home from a long travel and they say, it's so wonderful. And he says, we'll see. And then his son gets sick, and that's tragic, and he says, we'll see. Anyway, so I just made up a bunch of events I'm going to link in the show notes to the actual parable. But the point is, you can take this. We'll see. It's not attaching to the good things and it's not trying to squeeze the good for all it's worth until it's past its point of even being able to give you anything. And it's also not dwelling in things that seem bad. I love thinking about blessings in disguise and things that tend to shake us up and they feel terrible in the moment. And we wonder, why did this happen? But they can also so often be the turning point that creates our next huge leap in growth and development and learning. And then in learning and growth, we're able to serve and we're able to turn around and have so much more compassion for anyone that's been through that same situation. And that's, at a minimum, that our key takeaway is compassion. And that's plenty for a lifetime to just have empathy and compassion. But then we even have the opportunity to serve more and to take action and to teach or speak or write or share our story in ways that helps others heal. And so trust and surrender. And then finally, what helps me is this thing that I call courage cookies. So I realized that sometimes we're waiting to opt out or to say no or to make a hard decision. We're waiting until we feel courageous. In actuality, we have to take action first, and courage comes second. One of my personal mottos, build first, courage second, meaning the universe does not give you courage just for the heck of it. And it doesn't come down first. Actually, you need to take the steps, and then you get rewarded with the courage cookies on the other side. So in taking action, in having hard conversations, in speaking your truth, in being willing to have that time sustaining suspended in between trapeze bars, that is when you start to feel courageous. Once you've started taking the steps. And the cookie piece of this is that I have found when I do something courageous, then I'll almost always get this cookie on the other side, like some really sweet affirmation. I also call it the universe rolling out the red carpet. For every step you take, another chunk of this red carpet unrolls right under your feet. And that's how you know you're on the right track. If you start taking action and all it feels is crippling anxiety and you're not getting any courage cookies, and there is no sense of serendipity or universe rolling out the red carpet. Okay, you might be still off a little bit and on the wrong track. What I see among myself and countless others and coaching clients and people I've interviewed for the book is that when they take a courageous step, almost always there's a person or opportunity or next step for them to take that shows up. And again, it's not about attaching to a fixed outcome. If I do X, then I want Y to happen. Y being some very specific next outcome. It might be the exact company you want to work for or this person you're Trying to win over. It's not that. It's trusting that if I take these steps and I do X, I trust that whatever why shows up is the one that's next on my path and being open to what that looks like and being willing to be surprised and sometimes have curve balls thrown. Wow. I thought I wanted this, but I guess what I really needed was that.

Take a few moments now to reflect. I've shared a lot about my thinking and philosophy on saying no and opting out. But I want you to reflect. Look back at one or two of your proudest life moments and unpack those a little bit. Your biggest catalyst for transformation, did they involve opting out in any way? What within those experiences did you have to say no to in order for you to say yes to the next phase? And in having to do that and say no and opt out, what gave you the courage to do that?

Think back to how you felt at that time. What enabled you to finally take those steps, those courageous steps and move forward. And what happened on the other side.

In reflecting on our past and times where you've made tough choices and had the courage to opt out so that you could say yes to the best. We can see that this isn't new. None of you listening to this podcast, you've all been around, you've done this before. I'm not saying anything new, really. If you think about it, you can look at your own life and now put language to courageous things that you've done in your past and see that you've already done this and you already have these skills. And I encourage you to unpack the times that you have opted out and what your fears were before you did that and then what ended up happening instead on the other side.

By the way, sometimes we need our worst fears to come true. And there's the breakthrough. So my worst fear was getting to zero financially. And once it happened, I felt free. Once it happened and I didn't die and I figured my way out of it, I felt really free. And that's what inspired me to write Pivot. When I had a relationship that ended where we were talking about getting married, and it ended and I felt freer than I have in my whole life. I just felt like I'm free of this attachment to the one and needing to find the one. And I had been so fixated for the first 31 years of my life on finding the one. And when that relationship ended, something released in me and unlocked and I felt so much more open and unattached. To that idea. And that had been a big should in my life, a big part of my social narrative. Well, 31. Time to find the one. So, anyway, I digress. The next reflection exercise for you to do is look ahead. What in your life, or actually start right where you are. What in your life have you outgrown?

This might be a hard one to answer. You might just have a little niggling in your gut about what that is. But I encourage you to just consider what have you outgrown in ways big or small? And for some of you, this answer might be leaping out of your earbuds saying, oh, my God, this is it and I know it and I've known it for months. And for some of you, it might be smaller stuff, maybe you've outgrown. People pleasing can be a totally an internal thing. It doesn't always have to be so big as these big decisions that I've talked about earlier.

Most of all, pay attention to the whisper in your gut around this and ask to receive guidance around next steps. Just because you know that you want to opt out of something doesn't mean you have to know exactly all the next steps on the path or even what to do about that. Just be open to receiving that information. And I do encourage you to meditate. I know at this point it's like saying, eat your spinach, but that that's where I've received the most guidance about my next steps. And then think about, what have you learned about saying no and opting out, and what have you learned from this experience? So this thing that you've outgrown obviously has served you. Even if it's something like people pleasing that has served you to an extent, it's helped you get to where you are. So our strengths, our weaknesses, the people in our lives, our work opportunities, clients, they've all helped us. They're all valuable. I think about these moments. It's like this thing you might be opting out of is like a little emergency packet of vitamins. And you put this packet in your water, which is really your spirit, your soul, and you let the nutrients dissolve, and then you get to drink this cup of water. But there's a dissolution process that happens. Like now that packet is gone. But you got to integrate all the lessons and insights and vitamins and juicy goodness into your soul and your spirit. And so different people and opportunities are with us for different amounts of time. It's not like the second we find something, it has to dissolve and go away as quickly as an emergency packet But I think that's a way to honor these transitions, that in the dissolution, it's part of the process and wishing the highest good for all involved as something dissolves. But that dissolving is really the key, and it's sending people and places and jobs off with light and love. Like, there's not a need for resentment. I forget how that saying goes, but that resentment and anger really is poisonous within yourself. So whatever you need to do to kind of let go and release and let those things dissolve opens you up to then say yes to the best. And so as you think about doing this, the final questions are, what's possible on the other side? This thing you've outgrown, It's. It's very uncomfortable to say no and change and have to stretch ourselves. So what's going to make that worth it to you?

What is possible if you take these challenging steps forward?

What is more important to you than your fear?

And finally, what is one next step that you can take so you don't have to do it all at once? It might just be, I'm going to meditate tomorrow or today. Even better. It might be, I'm going to journal. I'm going to do three pages of morning pages or handwrite. It might be bigger. I'm going to have a tough conversation and let some other party know what's on my mind. So just think about for you, what's one small next step that you can take another? One of my mottos is live big, start small. And in starting small, that's how we make these big choices and changes.

To close, I want to read to you from a book I'm reading called Total Freedom by J. Krishnamurti. Funny how books work, because I bought this book in 2010 at my yoga teacher training. And I only felt called to pick it up off the shelf this year, January of 2016. So this is, yeah, five and a half years later. Krishnamurti is a fascinating guy. There was this organization called the Order of the Star in the East. He was born in India, and it was founded in 1911 to proclaim the coming of the world teacher. And they made Krishnamurti the head of the order. And so for 18 years, he was groomed to be this head of the Order of the star. And on August 2, 1929, the opening day of the annual camp, he dissolved the order in a talk that he gave before 3,000 people. That's pretty wild. So here's this guy. He's been groomed 18 years. And.

As soon as he takes it over. He says, I dissolve this entire organization. I don't want you following me. And Krishnamurti went on to give lectures all around the world to millions and millions of people. And I just love the courage that it took to do that. You want to talk about opting out? You've been groomed for this thing for 18 years. And then in front of 3,000 people, you tell them, peace out. I don't want you following me. And I don't think you should follow any religion or sect. You should find your own freedom. He says, truth cannot be brought down. Rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. And that's his way of saying that, don't listen to me. Go. Go climb that mountaintop for yourself. I can't bring it down to you. So I love that. But truly, what really resonates with me on such a deep level with Krishnamurti is this. He says, I have only one purpose. To set man absolutely, unconditionally free. To urge him toward freedom, to help him break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the self.

I love that I have only one purpose, to set man absolutely, unconditionally free.

That is my hope, my wish, my challenge, my loving Hug through this podcast for all of you as well, to help you and for all of us to continue to take steps toward our own freedom and the freedom of those around us. And in doing so, to live a life filled with joy and growth and compassion, even when it seems the most challenging to do so. Thank you for listening and I would love to continue the conversation on the blog. So let me know your thoughts on all of this @jennyblake me podcast. And that's also where you can get the show notes. And I send out a newsletter every two weeks where I share the best of what I've found around the web. So I would love to keep in touch and I wish you all nothing but the best and all the courage cookies in the world as you opt out of what's no longer serving you and take really powerful steps toward whatever feels great and the most resonant in your life.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. To learn more and get in touch, visit JennyBlake me where I blog about systems at the intersection of mind, body and business. Or find me on Twitter ennyblake. And remember, build first. Then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.