The Way Through Transformation with Rebecca Reynolds

In this episode of the Book Thinkers Life‑Changing Books podcast, host Nick Hutchison interviews change‑expert Rebecca Borland Reynolds about her new book on navigating change. Rebecca explains that change follows a cyclical process she calls the four thresholds: Instigation, Liminal, Metabolization, and Manifestation, each with distinct emotional and practical characteristics. She offers concrete strategies for the Instigation stage—calming panic, leaning into change, gathering support, and reframing stuck moments as energy sources. The conversation delves into her personal history of frequent moves, school changes, and a formative experience translating 18th‑century opera letters in the Vatican Archives, which honed her ability to read people and adapt quickly. Rebecca uses the nautilus as a metaphor for change, highlighting how the mollusk grows by adding new chambers while retaining past ones, symbolizing how past experiences buoy future growth. She positions her book as a navigation tool—a GPS for change—helping readers identify their current threshold and select appropriate resources, rather than segmenting audiences. The discussion also touches on her broader view that aptitude for change is a skill like any other, and that compassion grows through witnessing others’ struggles. A brief sponsor segment introduces Ken Rusk’s “Path to a Successful Life” course. The interview concludes with practical advice for listeners in the Instigation phase and a final message: trust your innate ability to change, observe without judgment, and use change as a path to your unique, evolving self.
Chapters
So, 2 things that are really important in instigation. One is to get out of your self-judgment and stop panicking and thinking that change is a problem to be solved. Change is not a problem. Change is our means of growing and expanding ourselves. So, that's the very first thing, to calm ourselves, because what we're feeling is just absolute panic. I've been there. I still get there in moments, right? Right? And then I remind myself, wow, okay, hold on. This is like a big roller coaster and we're at the top, right? And it's like, we're going for a ride. So see if you can go toward it, you know, the expression of leaning in. Secondly, then also you can ask yourself, what do I need to be able to do this? Sometimes we need to line up some support, right? Line up some people that are willing to be there for us as we embark on this change. Sometimes we need a little bit of information. We need a book that can help us. This book is very much meant to be that way. It's meant to companion people through change. And there may be other things that we need. So it's about creating readiness. And then finally, there's a great question that we can ask ourselves when we feel stuck.
Rebecca, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I am very excited to chat with you today. And before I have you introduce yourself or anything like that, I'd actually like to read a quote from chapter 1, page 1 of your book, because I think it'll set us up nicely for this conversation. Here's the quote. Change. It's a little word that covers a lot of ground. Both noun and verb, it refers to events, a cyclone, a wedding, and processes, aging, metamorphosis, choices, sell a company, have a child, and actions, lose weight, start a capital company. It happens on the smallest scale, sock change. Or the largest, climate change. We can decide to make a change or have change foisted upon us. We might see change coming from a long way off, or it might broadside us from out of nowhere. So here's my first question for you. With change meaning so many different things, how the heck did you decide to write a book about change?
That's a great question. I actually resisted writing a book about change for a really long time. I had many other sort of themes or central sort of ideas that I wanted to cover. One of them was being human. But when I started thinking about this book, it was way back in 2013. And being human was a little bit kind of woo-woo at that time. I mean, now it's like everybody's talking about it. But I thought, wow, you know, I got to choose between something super esoteric and something that is so ubiquitous. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books on change. If you think about it, really every book that's written is about change, if you think about it. And your whole podcast, I mean, I love being on here because every book you talk about is about change. Now, so when I finally decided, all right, I'm going to do it. The reason I was able to decide that is because I decided to look at something higher up, a more meta view of change, which means instead of looking at change for what's changing or who's changing or where it's changing or how big or how small, I was going to look at the change process itself. And it's my contention that change has a process very similar to the seasons. You know, we all know what winter, spring, summer, and fall are. And we, if we say winter, we know what we're talking about. But in change, change also has a cycle and stages. But without any names, we have to keep describing all the little particulars. And that's why there's so many books on change. So after 30 years of working in change with hundreds of projects, thousands of people, I saw that I was using this sort of change process. And I thought, let's see if I can write it and share it, because I think it'll make change easier for everybody.
Well, you just alluded to something, which is that there are so many books on change. You can change your health and your fitness. You can change your relationships. Uh, what differentiates your book other than the fact that it's meta and it's about the underlying foundation?
Well, so in addition to that, what I like to say about my book is that you can locate all those books inside mine, right? So if there's a book called Wintering, it's a great book. And it's about when we've lost something deeply important to us, we need time. We need time to grieve. But grieving is not just sobbing our eyes out. Grieving is being in the stillness and the quiet. of ourselves. And we often need to get away from the day-to-day, right? The hustle, the bustle, the worldly stuff. And a lot of times people can feel guilty about that, uncomfortable. It can feel like you maybe are a little cuckoo, there's something wrong with you. This whole book about— that's called Wintering, interesting that it's named winter, is about giving yourself permission. It's one woman's story about her doing that. Now, wintering fits right into one of my stages. So I also think that the value of my book is that you'll be able to know which resource to go to depending upon where you are in the cycle, in the process. Does that make sense? So these books— I'm sorry, these books now will make better sense. They'll have a fit and they'll work together to help you.
Yeah, I think that's an interesting way of putting it. I often tell people that my book, Rise of the Reader, helps you get more from the other books that you're reading, because I teach how to retain and implement more of the information you consume from podcasts or from other books. And what you're doing is helping people understand where and how to make those changes from the, the books that they're reading or the information they're consuming from all over the place. Is that like a fair assessment?
Well, so I use the word navigation a lot. I mean, we all know that, that change is a process. Right. I think what I struggle— what I notice people struggling with, the ones I coach and work with, is that they don't know where they are in it. They're suffering, they're uncomfortable, they might be resisting it. Understanding where you are, it's very much like in the world. You know, if we're headed somewhere and we know where we're going and where we are, we know how far to drive or whether we need more gas or whether we want to get directions. But if we have no idea where we are, we kind of just sit there. So it's a navigation tool through change, which also helps you to know what book you need, right? It might be that you don't need Wintering. You're in a different stage and you need something else, right? So it's kind of a reference, you know, a GPS for where you are in change.
I have a ton of things that I'd like to unpack there, but since we've alluded to the 4 thresholds, do you want to just give everybody a very brief overview of the different stages?
Yes, absolutely. So the first one is instigation, and I called it that because it's where change starts. It starts rearing its little head. Now, if we want change, we often don't even notice it, right? It's just if we get excited and there's something new in the air. But if we don't want it, then we get really uncomfortable. Something's starting to destabilize. Something's not working that has worked forever. And it doesn't matter whether it's in your personal life or whether we're talking about global environmental change, right? The way we live on the planet no longer working so well. We got to figure out something. So the instigation stage is where change is first appearing, and noticing is so important in that stage. Next is what we call the liminal stage. Now, liminal is a word that wasn't used as much when I first named these stages, and I chose it for a very specific reason. I wanted to draw people's attention to it. It is the place where really nothing can be done About the change you're in. You need to just sit. It's like, I always like to say, it's like grapes that have been turned, that are going to be turned into wine, and they sit in a cask. Nobody touches it. It does it on its own. We're the same way. We're a natural force. So change in us has to happen in the dark of the knowing mind. We don't figure it out. We don't try to keep working on it. It's like when you, you know, you get a bad email and you need to, you're trying to come up with an answer and you bang it out and you ask a million people. But if you just sleep on it for a night or two, amazingly, it comes to you. Nobody knows how or why. So that's the liminal where we are supposed to just do nothing about what's changing. Then metabolization, that's where the change has been made internally. But this is where it begins to sprout into the world. We might notice new behaviors that we're doing that we always wish we could and never, never were able to. We might notice synchronicities. We might notice new opportunities. And also our energy starts returning. We don't feel that need for wintering, for that quiet, for that deep interior time. And then in metabolization, what we're doing is we're playing. We're playing with how is this new change inside of me going to take form in the world? It's a very exciting stage, but too often people race through it because they've been so miserable in the liminal, they can't wait to grab onto something. But I say, don't play with the bubbles, play with the excitement of these new opportunities. And then, like Goldilocks, you'll find what's just right. And that's when we hit manifestation. And that's the great lauded stage that everybody loves and everybody wants to be in. But, you know, manifestation can only happen if we've done the other 3 stages. And it happens bigger and better, the better at the other stages we get. And then guess what? It starts all over again. It never ends. So those are the 4.
I love it. Well, thank you for the explanation. And, you know, I think sometimes it's important for me as the host of the podcast to give A little bit of context for everybody listening, since most people know my story and a little bit about our business at Book Thinkers. You know, change is something that a lot of people struggle with in the business world and in the personal development world. And, you know, I'm definitely not immune to that. And despite having read amazing books, I still feel a lot of resistance to change. And one of the things that we did a few months ago was hire Fractional COO to come in and kind of rebuild the backend infrastructure of our business and put SOPs in place and do a lot of the things that I know we need to do to elevate to the next level and grow our business. But everybody on the team faces a little bit of resistance and that change becomes more difficult. So what stage would you say that we're in? Like, we've paid for this consulting, we're in the middle of implementing it. It's tough to get everybody on board. Where am I sitting in that process?
So what's fascinating about the cycle, right, these 4 thresholds, is that everybody is in their own. So you are most likely ahead of where everybody else is in the business. And we need to remember that when we are leading, right, we're leading into change because everything's always changing, right? I mean, we could sit in manifestation for a good long time, but you probably felt something Hmm, something's got to shift here. And you put your finger on it. You made a decision about what it was going to be— systems, strategies, all very good. And, but right now we've got to get the other people to go through the same process and to get where you are. So if we can remember, just, I would say to you, look at the 4 stages and ask yourself, where am I? And then where's everybody else? And how can I talk to them to help them move ahead, move forward? And I do a lot of that in my work with groups, a lot of that.
Yeah, I think that's a great suggestion. It's almost scorecard everybody and see where they are in the phases and, you know, in the stages, and then, you know, kind of work with each person individually. And I was actually recommending your book to the consultant that we're working with because I think that your language and your system would be fantastic for him to implement.
Oh, fabulous. Thank you very much.
Yeah, you're welcome. So in the beginning of the book, I thought this was a really interesting metaphor. You talk about the mollusk as a metaphor for change. Can you describe what the heck that means to everybody?
Well, the actual metaphor is the nautilus, and everybody knows what a nautilus is, right? In fact, the picture behind me is the COVID picture of my, of my book. And this is not obviously a nautilus. This is bridges, 3 bridges. Thank you for showing that with the, with the river underneath. And what this is trying to show is that change is like a subterranean river. It is always flowing, right? And but we move through these thresholds, right? So I picked the nautilus, one, because it's an enduring symbol. It's been here 500 million years. That's 200 million years before the dinosaurs. I mean, this thing is ancient. Most people know it for its shell, its beautiful spiral shell. And But it— the thing I learned about it in terms of its biology is that its change process is absolutely fascinating. And just quickly, it's a little mollusk. It's a little rubbery creature inside this beautiful shell. And it grows just as we do. And it outgrows the part of its shell that it's in. And so it needs to create a new bigger chamber, is what it's called, a chamber. And so what it does is it creates the shell and it moves into this chamber and then it seals off the old one behind it, right? And each of those beautiful ribs inside the shell that we see that make the different chambers is what makes that gorgeous spiral, right? And so what it's doing is it's just growing in that spiral pattern. And what I loved about it is that it's brilliant. It brings its past with it. All those past chambers stay with it. And they create greater buoyancy. for it because each one of those is gas-filled. And that means it can move through the ocean better and find more food sources and so forth. So as it grows, it's expanding. And this is a great metaphor for us. We don't leave our past behind. And we leave places and things behind. But all of our experiences are with us and can inform us for the rest of our lives.
So Rebecca, I love that metaphor. I think that's really interesting. And I want to go back in time with you to your past since we bring our past with us. And talk about your time moving 5 times before the age of 9 and attending 10 different schools while you were growing up. So I can't even imagine what that was like in terms of managing change. How do you think that those experiences helped your ability to adapt and thrive in new environments?
Yeah, I, I absolutely know that that life circumstance would have you know, was pivotal for me. I was the only person in my family to have that experience. Of course, my family all moved together. But I, even when we would move, I would still change schools nearly every year. It was circumstantial. It was very, very strange. And I didn't like it. I suffered a great deal. And I remember my mother would say to me when I would come home crying in 3rd grade about how boys teased me or girls would shun me, She would say, remember, the first 3 weeks are always the hardest. And that told me something right there, that there was something the same every time. And if I could start to pay attention to what was the same rather than what was different, I could perhaps feel more at ease. That discovery was the beginning of my work for my, my entire career.
That's really interesting. So as you would transition to a new school or a new environment, you came to expect that things would be difficult over the first couple of weeks. And once you realized that it was going to be that way, that it was the same, and you expected it, it probably shocked you less and it allowed you to adapt a little bit more efficiently. Is that right?
Going through that much change that young honed my ability to really read people, read fast. It was survival, right? So where was I going to feel, you know, pain? Where were people going to bother me and tease me and harass me? And where were my safety people? You know, and I also started to really rely a lot on teachers. And I think that also helped me sort of get a different perspective in the world. I mean, my teachers often became, friends to me because they were adults, and I think they understood better what I was going through. Does that make sense? Whereas kids, you know, they'd been there their whole lives. They didn't even— they didn't think about it. I'm just the new kid, right?
Yeah, it does make a lot of sense. And it's funny that the things that cause us a lot of stress or anxiety or trouble as we're young oftentimes create the superpowers that we can apply to our professional life in the future. I mean, if you didn't go through that experience, you wouldn't have developed the same level of awareness, pattern recognition, you know, and the ability to read people so efficiently, which is what's created your entire profession, uh, in the business world. So I imagine today when you step into a business and you're sort of, uh, what's the term, like a, a change agent, a change companion, uh, to use your language, uh, all of those skills originated back then.
That's right. And I would say that's true of all of us for our whole lives. The things that cause us to suffer are often our— the greatest crucible for bringing us to our bigger selves. And if we can know that and trust that, we can more easily move through even very difficult, unpleasant times.
Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. And your journey did not get any more normal after that. I mean, you know, from translating 18th century documents in the Vatican archives to Leading arts companies, organizations, ballet, and things like that. Um, you know, you've had a very diverse background. Do you think that's also helped contribute to your ability to see change happening in so many different areas of life and business?
Yeah. And I also think I want to say this to, to you and particularly to your, your listeners. I do believe this podcast is very much about change, and a lot of people that are drawn to it probably have more of an aptitude with it than, than a lot of the general public, I would think, because they're drawn to learning about how to change easier, better, faster, bigger, right? So the thing that is important about this is to remember that change, the ability with change is an aptitude, just like being good with numbers or music or not having a fear of heights. But unfortunately, because change isn't viewed that way, if you're good with change, People just think either you're a genius or you're crazy. And if you're good with change, which I am, I mean, I was born in change, raised in change, right? As we all are, but mine was very accelerated, right? It meant, it means that I've got my own aptitude is bigger for change. I want it. I get tired faster of situations, environments, places, work. So that's why consulting for me was perfect because I could change jobs every, you know, 3 months, 6 months. I could have 5 things going at once that suited my temperament and change. Now, I want to be clear, having an aptitude for change doesn't make you a better human being. People that stay in the same job or the same marriage or the same, you know, city their whole life, that is fine too. I'm just trying to explain that an aptitude for change can often look like A lot of different things happening in life.
I'm sitting here today with Ken Rusk who has done hundreds of millions of dollars in business. He's also sold tens of thousands of books and changed countless lives. We're sitting here today because he is sponsoring today's episode. So Ken, tell everybody about your course.
Well, thank you. I built a course called The Path to a Successful Life. It's designed around trying to get somebody unstuck. You know, sometimes you're feeling like you're kind of stuck in where you are and you're not really sure what you want your life to to look like or how to go about getting it. Well, for the cost of about dinner and a movie and maybe the time you'd spend on a weekend, you can exactly what you want your future to look like and how to go about getting it.
You know the power of vision. That's why you watch podcasts like this. So click the link below, get signed up, and let me know what your experience is like. I have one follow-up question about the Vatican Archives. I've always thought the Vatican Archives were interesting. So is that an experience where you were actually able to like enter a forbidden room and start translating documents, or was it done remotely? Like, what was that like?
Wow. Yeah, most people have their idea of the Vatican Archives from that movie, the Dan Brown book, and Tom Hanks and whatever. It's nothing like that. It is, it's one of the greatest stories, actually. I was very young, 24, and I just kind of got, I had some information that led me to think that there might be something in the Vatican that I needed. I first went to the library. They said, no, you need to go next door to the Vatican Archives. So I, long story short, I ended up walking in one day. I was wearing a skirt and a sweater. I knew I needed to wear a dress. You don't, you know, you don't wear pants. This was in 1984, by the way. A million years ago. Nothing was online. Nothing. The organizational systems of the archives at that time were pretty old themselves. In fact, The index that I used to look for what I was looking for was itself an 18th century manuscript that was kept by this very wealthy family of their archives.
Wow.
Are you ready? So when I touched it, I mean, it was itself an 18th century book and there were no gloves, no nothing. I walked in, I started talking to the guy at the desk and he could tell I didn't speak Fluent Italian. And so he shunted me off to this father, this priest, who evidently was Scottish. And he looked just like Friar Tuck. He was gigantic, balding, had a— he wore the big brown cassock with the rope around the waist. He was lovely and charming and helpful. And he got me this, this 18th century index and we started looking through it. And it was just a bloody miracle. That, I mean, it was just everything was so ordained. It was unbelievable. But I will say the second day that I went back in, I did the exact same thing I'd done the first day. I went back upstairs. I'd filled out my little request. The way that works is they go back into the archives and get you what you ask for. You're not allowed in there. Absolutely not. You're in a big reading room with desks like a library. And I was the only person in there. My, anywhere near my age and the only layperson in there. Everybody else was either a nun in the black outfits or a father in the, you know, in whatever they were wearing. So I stuck out like a sore thumb. But the second day when I went in, I filled out my little, what I was looking for, my request, and I handed it to the man. It was a different man from the day before. And he said to me, okay, where's your permit? And I said, what permit? And he goes, you need to have a permit to work in the Vatican Archives, signorina. And I went, okay, well, I was here all yesterday and I didn't have a permit. I mean, he just freaked out. So he took me to the director, the secretary general of the Vatican Archive. And I walk in the room and the man kind of is looking at me like a little bit laughing, but a little bit trying to, you know, get me in trouble. And he says to me, Signorina, I understand that you snuck into the Vatican yesterday. And he's— this is all in Italian, by the way. And I said, no, no, I didn't sneak in. I walked in. And I said, look at me. I said, I stick out like a sore thumb. And he said, well, can you describe the guard that let you in? And I thought, I'm not going to get anybody in trouble. So I just told him, you know, he's dark, dark hair. He's about 30. I mean, that describes every Italian man. And so he just laughed and he said, what are you doing here? What do you want? And I said, I'm studying 18th century Italian opera. And the Italians love opera. So he said to me, all right, signorina, I'll give you a permit. You can have 3 days.
Oh wow, that's— yeah, that truly is an amazing story, and it's a lot of fun to hear you tell it. You're a great storyteller. I can envision this entire thing happening. Uh, what a fun experience to have in your early to mid-20s. And I think that part of the reason that you're so comfortable with change and that you've developed this awareness and skill set is because you've had so many different experiences. And, uh, I would encourage anybody listening to the show today to be a little bit more curious and to get out there and try new things. Because whether you're scuba diving or whether you're, you know, in the Vatican Archives translating like all the, you know, Latin documents or whatever the case is, like, that's how you get experience. And the experience leads to connections in different areas of your life and business and Anyway, it's just such a funny experience that you've had in life.
Well, and it was definitely, um, it was, it was the experience of doing the work, finding, finding these letters was about perseverance and, and also connection, connecting with people, getting their help, uh, and following breadcrumbs. And that's very much like how we can go through change is change happens to us with little signs and little, little indicators. It doesn't happen just wrong. Now, I mean, sometimes we get broadsided and we're in it in a big change. all of a sudden, right? If somebody dies or we have an accident or we get fired or whatever. But the process of going through change is very much about noticing and being perseverant. The other thing that that gave me was an ability to stand back from a situation. And because I was, I wasn't Italian and I didn't live in the 18th century, right? I was able to look at it differently. I mean, very much like historians do look at history, but I was even more— I was looking at myself because I was a singer and I wanted to understand the roots of my tradition, women singing. And the best and biggest singers of all time were 18th century Italian opera singers, women. And I wanted to understand their history. And so what I found in the Vatican were 7 letters that were from one of these opera singers to her patron. the person that sponsored her, and they revealed so much about her life. And I'll never forget how it felt to get inside another person's experience and have it connect with my own. It was, it was sublime.
Yeah, I can see it on your face. It really does feel like it was sublime for you. I'm, I'm curious if there are people that are listening to the show today, and maybe, maybe anybody that is listening to the show and has made it this far into the conversation, might be more likely to understand the conversation or have context for change or be more— I don't know what the language is, but they're ready for this kind of conversation. But for those that are stuck in the instigation phase, they feel the itch, they're aware of some type of change that needs to take place. Do you have any actionable strategies or practices that people can use to slow things down, to start noticing, to become a little bit more aware?
Yeah. So there's 2 things that are really important in instigation. One is to get out of your self-judgment and stop panicking and thinking that change is a problem to be solved. Change is not a problem. Change is our means of growing and expanding ourselves. So that's the very first thing, to calm ourselves, because what we're feeling is just absolute panic. I've been there. I still get there in moments. Right? And then I remind myself, wow, okay, hold on. This is like a big roller coaster and we're at the top, right? And it's like, we're going for a ride. So see if you can go toward it. You know, the expression of leaning in. Secondly, then also you can ask yourself, what do I need to be able to do this? Sometimes we need to line up some support, right? Line up some people that are willing to be there for us as we embark on this change. Sometimes we need a little bit of information. We need a book that can help us. This book is very much meant to be that way. It's meant to companion people through change. And there may be other things that we need. So it's about creating readiness. And then finally, there's a great question that we can ask ourselves when we feel stuck. We can say to ourselves, rather than berating ourselves, I'm stuck, I can't say that, we can say to ourselves, how is what is happening right now actually helping me to become ready? That's a very empowering question, because it assumes that our stuck strategies are actually helping us. Because remember, change, we need to build the momentum and the energy to go through the entire change process. And if it's something big, we need to build a lot. And our, our, our upset and our, our anger or our panic or our frustration, all of that is energy. And we can see that it's actually, that we can use it to move forward, like, you know, an engine behind us, if you will. So those are some ideas, but the book has many more.
Yeah, no, I, I think those are great answers to the question. And on the companion piece of things, I was reading your recently published Kirkus review before we jumped on, and there's a line in there that says, This book is a solid primer for those seeking a change companion in literary form. So, uh, as we get towards the end of the podcast today, Rebecca, when you initially set out to write this book, who did you have in mind for a target reader?
Oh my goodness, that was the most difficult part of this. In fact, I resisted writing a book for a very long time, and the reason is because When I'm talking to one person or even a group of people, I can read so fast where they are. I know exactly what to say. I can tell where they are in their change process. I can tell what their metaphors or their sense of things is. And I know how to speak to them. So, thinking about writing a book about change, which is the most ubiquitous experience if you think about it, right? Everything living on the planet changes and beyond the planet. So, to think about writing a book, I was like, who in the world am I writing to? Am I writing to the people who absolutely hate change? Am I writing to people who actually love change and embrace it for themselves? Am I writing to people who are working with others in change? And I decided that I just wasn't willing to segment. I didn't— the problem with change for me is how much we slice and dice it. Right? We have books on financial change for this kind of business. We have books on this little piece. All of that is great, but I was committed to writing a book that would cover it all. So if you notice, as you read it, I used examples from everything I could think of, and I used voice and expressed experiences and strategies that would cover sort of the panoply of the types of people that might read this, because I'm trying to bring us together in change, as opposed to saying, well, I'm only going to talk to the change practitioners, or only talking to the individuals who are good at change, or I'm only going to talk to the people who think they hate change, right? Because if you think about it, we've all hated change somewhere, sometime in our lives, right? Even no matter how good we are at it, we've all hated it at some point.
Yeah, it's true. And I think that because— so obviously you have the competence side of things down. Like, you use all these examples, you're well studied, you've done a ton of consulting, you have all these different experiences, and that all helps me say, okay, you're a credible person to write this book. But like, charisma and know-how also has the warmth side of things, which involves, I don't know, compassion, for instance. And Given your experience and the different services that, you know, you've kind of— or the different experiences you've had in service, like from the federal grand jury stuff to hospice stuff, like you come across as compassionate and warm at the same time. And I think that the balance between those 2 things, I don't know, it makes me feel like you're the right person to communicate this message in a lot of ways.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's the other thing about change is when you see people like I have, thousands and thousands of people in so many different situations suffering in change, I think your compassion really grows.
Yeah.
And I wasn't always like that. I was more impatient because I am good with change. And so I'd be kind of like in my mind going, come on, let's just do something already, right? But then over time I realized, right, that everybody's path on their journey of change is theirs and it's for a reason. And my job is to be with them wherever they are, not wish they were somewhere else. And the more compassionate I am with others, the more compassionate I am with myself.
Right.
It's a two-way street.
It is. Yeah. And I remember you talking about that realization early in the book that just because you're comfortable and literate and aware and understanding doesn't mean the entire workforce that you're working with is. And so you sort of need to back up a little bit and get back to the basics, which I think is important. As we get ready to wrap up, 2 final questions for you, Rebecca. The first is, where can people go to learn a little bit more about you or grab a copy of the book?
So, the book's available October 1st. It'll be on Amazon and a bunch of bookstores. I really, really love bookstores, indies particularly. And there's a list on my website and my author site. It's a little long here, but it's my name, Rebecca Borland Reynolds, And that's R-E-B-E-C-C-A-B-O-R-L-A-N-D-R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-S.com. And that's also my Insta handle.
We'll get all of that in the show notes so it's easy for people to click to. Okay, the final question for today, since Luke was not able to join us. He loves to ask, if your book disappears, all of your experience, any podcast interviews that you've participated in, it all disappears, but you can leave the world with just one message, what would that message be?
Trust your innate process, your innate ability to change. That means pay attention to your life. Notice what comes in. Don't judge it. Don't compare to other people, but use it for yourself, for yourself, for your own growth into your own unique, beautiful version of who you are going to become the rest of your life.
Yeah, it's a beautiful message. It really is. And you— it reminds me of something you say in the introduction that I wrote down. You said change is as natural and essential as breath. And if you just slow things down and focus on your breath and you don't compare, like you said, and everything else that you— you said it much better than I could recap or summarize it. Just do what Rebecca said, everybody. All right, Rebecca, thank you so much for the conversation today.
Thank you.
And for anybody that is listening to the show, you can also check out some of our book reviews on Thresholds of Change on Instagram as well.
Thank you. All right.
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