Creative on Purpose Live - Lindsay Recknell

speed of bytes, and boom, just like that, once again defying all expectations, we are live. Oh, and I pulled up the wrong script, so we're going to have to just wing it. Welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, conversations with inspiring difference makers to inform your journey and making the difference only you can make. I'm so thrilled to have with me my good friend Lindsay Ricknell, and she's going to be introducing herself as as I tell you that we'd love to see you visit us at Creative Our Purpose where you can pick up a free mini course on The Purpose Solution. Why is purpose important? Who is purpose for? How can you find your purpose? All these questions are answered inside this free mini course. Go to creativeourpurpose.com to learn more. And with that out of the way, Lindsay Recknall, welcome to the broadcast. Please tell the viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can people go to learn more about you and the difference you're making?

Hello, good morning. Thank you so much for having me on the show, Scott Perry. It is a pleasure to be here. I was very much looking forward to this show after you and I had such a great connection on my podcast. So, excuse me, thank you so, so much for having me. I am Lindsay, and I am a self-proclaimed expert in hope. I would say self-proclaimed expert because I'm not sure that anybody could actually become an expert in a topic like this, but I definitely have a real passion for this work. The science of hope as a field of study within positive psychology has been hugely instrumental in changing the trajectory of my life in a positive direction. And I think hope has a PR problem, and everybody needs to know about the power of hope and how instrumental it can be in, in changing lives for the better, creating a future better than today.

Awesome. Well, Lindsay, I'm guessing that little 9-year-old Lindsay didn't wake up one morning and say, you know what, Lindsay, you know what you need to become when you grow up? You need to become an expert in hope. So I'm just curious if my assertion is true, and maybe you did wake up one morning when you were 9 years old and dream all this, but guessing that you did not, what brought you to this work that you're doing now and what, what, what has been What has the journey been like?

You are correct. I did not wake up at 9 years old and decide what I was going to be for the rest of my life. I'm 43 years old and I'm not sure what I want to do for the rest of my life. But I will tell you, I have never felt more aligned to any work that I've ever done. I didn't realize I'd lost my hope until the day I recognized I got it back. It was one of those totally innocuous moments, you know, driving along, going for groceries. And I recognized that I had lost— I'd gotten back that zest for the future. And I remember sort of sitting up and going, oh, this is cool. And then sort of slumping down because I feel like I'm a reasonably intelligent, self-aware kind of cat. And how did I not know that I had lost my hope, that I had lost my, my positive thought for the future? And I think that that's something that happens more often than we care to recognize, is that we get into our day-to-day mode where we're going through the motions. Things are fine, status quo, we're, you know, we're going to work, we're dealing with our families, we're putting on pants, all the things that is required of us as adults. But I wasn't doing it in the way that I typically do, which is full of energy and full of life. And so, um, to to solve my problems, my answer is always to read, to learn, to talk to people, to ask questions. Lifelong learning is my number one value. And I— so I did. I just started to do all the research that I could possibly do. And that's when I found the science of hope and positive psychology. And I am probably the least cosmic woo-woo fluffy type person on the planet. At least 5 years ago, I definitely was. And when I learned that there was actual evidence to support the power of hope and, and science to back it up, I felt so validated to take this intuitive feeling that we all recognize, this word of hope that we all know the definition intuitively, and to realize how much power and that I could really leverage it in my life and the lives of other people. And so here we are 5 years later and We're trying to solve HOPE's PR problem.

Awesome. Just out of curiosity, what were some of the things that you did before you became a self-proclaimed expert in HOPE?

Well, my consulting career has been in IT, finance, and project management, although I'm also— I have an entrepreneurship degree, and so I've always had businesses on the side. Initially started with a professional— an online professional development company started with a partner. I had a wedding business, an online wedding business for 8 years, and currently run Expert in Hope as well as a workplace mental health business.

Fantastic and really fascinating. What I was hearing in your origin story is the something that seems to be a theme amongst many of our guests, which is, you know, life is you're bumping along doing all the things you're supposed to do, doing all the things that parents, society, friends, family, associates expect you to do. And then suddenly there's this calling to consider something else and to consider that there might be more to life than what you're doing currently, and that there might be more to you than the way that you're living currently. And so, you know, since vocation, calling, purpose is something near and dear to the folks that tune into Creative on Purpose Live, I I would love to just hear a little bit more about, like, you know, how did you go about hearing the call of this new vocation? And then how did you begin to heed the call as you were, you know, doing something else before all that happened?

I remember very clearly when I phoned my dad and said, I'm going to be an expert in hope. And he goes, I'm sorry, what? What does that even mean? And that was, that was the number one question I struggled with is Again, intuitively we know what this word means, but how was I going to explain it to people? And if I couldn't explain what it meant, how was I going to make a business about that? And immediately shut down and went, well, I'm just going to stick to finance and project management because clearly that's a sure thing, you know. And so it takes a lot of courage and persistence and tenacity to pursue something like that, especially something that is seen as so intangible. And it also— so it's taken a long time. I'm 5 years in and continuing to evolve in this space. I did and continue to do some consulting while I build this while I build this passionately aligned side of my business. But as the time goes on, I find that life, life and work has integrated in such a beautiful way, and that continues to give me the confidence and courage to keep going. Entrepreneurship is the most awesome and most awful job on the planet, and I would say it's not for the faint of heart, but It absolutely is worth all of the amazing messy stuff.

Awesome. Well, you've, you've said a couple times now that we have an intuitive understanding of what hope means, but I wonder if you wouldn't mind giving an explicit articulation of at least your understanding of what is, what is hope? What are we talking about when we're talking about hope?

Yeah, great, great question. And I would say that I would suggest that everyone probably has a different definition, their own definition. It's been really cool to explore what that looks like for different people. But the definition that has felt the most aligned for me is that the future will be better than today by taking action over the things we can control. So that the basis of that comes from the work of Dr. Rick Snyder, who has the concept of hope theory, which is goals, clear, obvious, our dreams and hopes, plus agency thinking, which is our motivation, our ability to take, to do what we want to do, plus pathways thinking, which is our ability to overcome the obstacles that are going to get in the way, the things that we can take control over. And so, that's where I've come from, from in my definition, that's how I've developed my definition. And the important parts in there for me personally, are the words future, action, and control. I believe that hope without action is just a wish. And for me, that action piece and doing something to get you towards that future better than today is really quite critical to the work. Yeah.

Yeah. Reminds me a little bit of the— I don't know who said it, but it's a reasonably famous quote. A goal without a strategy is just a wish. So one of the things that you mentioned in talking about your origin story is, you know, when you heard the call of vocation, you decided that, you know, it took courage and commitment in order to lean into that. And so what I was hearing is you know, this idea of a leap of faith. And I think for many of us that are kind of purpose-driven entrepreneurs, that, you know, we just recognize at some point, we— there's this thing that we can't not do. And so we take this leap of faith. And if that is— if I'm, if I'm reflecting that correctly, I'm just wondering, how do you discern the difference between hope as you've defined it and something like that leap of faith that you took, and, or maybe the two are complementary.

I would suggest that the two are complementary because the leap of faith in my mind implies action was what came to mind and continued action also. It makes me think about, so when we used to go to networking events and at the very beginning of doing this work and the idea of people asking me, what is it you do? You know, that's the number one question you get asked at networking events. And for me to say, well, I'm an expert in hope, you know, look at me sideways like, I'm sorry, that's your job. And it was that the idea of that I wasn't even in those scenarios, in those situations, the idea of that I had to push through and push past. And honestly, continue to do. And as a, as a tactic to make that a little bit easier, I looked for ways to explain myself in more, I don't know, politically correct ways or professionally accepted ways, which I'm not embarrassed to say that I did, but I also wish that I'd had more confidence even back then to say, no, no, like, this is important stuff. This is, you know, this is very, uh, I'm very passionate about this and I really believe in the power and its ability to help so many people. I'm getting there, but it's, it's a never, it's, it continues to evolve. Uh, I continue to take that leap of faith, faith almost every day. And I also would say that living this passion, uh, makes it easier because people recognize in my behavior that kind of hopeful intention and comment on it. And then it's easier, it's easier to bring it up and have those conversations when they've already recognized it in behavior.

Yeah. Well, what I, one of the things I love about your self-proclaimed title, you know, as someone who has a self-proclaimed title of his own, Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. And I just want to also acknowledge the courage and the vulnerability about leaning into these self-proclaimed titles because we are trained to, you know, we're supposed to be founders or CEOs or that sort of thing. And what I love about your title and what I love about any good title that we give ourselves or any, any branding that we do, the best branding, the best title invokes curiosity. I really encourage people to not just hit what they do right on the nose, because it's too easy for people to just say yes or no to. And people are inclined to say no to things. When you say expert in hope, I immediately go, oh, that's interesting. Yeah. What could that possibly mean? So I wanted to acknowledge that. I think it's a And, you know, you talked about the call, you know, it requires courage to embrace these kind of things. So what's the relationship between courage and hope? And, you know, does one fuel the other, or is there a reciprocal relationship between hope and courage in your experience as you've leaned into this endeavor of yours?

Excellent question. So courage is one of the core tenets of my being, I would say, but I do believe it stands, um, complementary to hope. I don't think you have to have one without the other and vice versa. I think— I don't— yeah, I don't think that they are dependent on each other. Definitely If you think about transformation and if you're standing, if we use the analogy of climbing a mountain as an example, and you're standing in the middle of the mountain and you're looking up going, "Good mother of pearl, how am I ever gonna get up there?" But then if you turn around and look and see how far you've come, I think that's where courage is the present moment where you're sitting there. And if I think about hope in relationship to courage, Hope is taking the action to get to the top of that mountain with the courage to continue taking those steps, but also to reflect back on where you've come and how, you know, how much tenacity you needed to take those first steps up the mountain and continue to overcome those barriers and obstacles and, you know, employ your pathways thinking and all that kind of thing to get you to the place you are. So I think, yeah, I think it's very complementary. But I don't— yeah, I don't think you have to have one with— you have to have them both, or you can't have one without the other or anything like that. Off the top of my head.

Oh, that's great. One of the things that you mentioned earlier was this idea of work-life-work, you called it life-work integration. We talk a lot about work-life integration. At Creative on Purpose. And I wonder if you would speak a little bit to, you know, how you felt you found that through, through the work that you're doing now. And just what, you know, and what does that really mean to you? Because, you know, what we are much more frequently hearing out in the world is this idea, this delusion of work-life balance. Work-life integration sounds a little bit more sane to me. So I'd wonder if you'd speak a little bit more to that.

Yeah, so I'm intentional about life coming first, then work in that sentence, and the integration, because I completely agree with you. Balance, balance doesn't feel like it's possible to me. And because when I think of balance, I think of, you know, a perfectly balanced teeter-totter. When I think about integration, it's more like, it feels more fluid or flexible, where you can sometimes life gets in the way, and you have to, you know, you have to focus on life things. And sometimes you get the opportunity to do cool work stuff and, and maybe life becomes less of a priority. And I— that's what the integration part is to me, is that ability to kind of flex your day, your week, your month, whatever, according to the priorities that are existing for you at the minute. And I also like life first because I feel like we, we, we get to live and have our work complement our life. You know, if at the end of the day, when we're thinking about our legacy and what we want our life to mean, I don't want my life to mean only what I contributed from a work perspective. I definitely want it to be a big part of that because I love serving. I love doing this work. I'm totally passionate about it, clearly, but I don't want it to be the only thing that defines me. And so putting life in front of work is just a good reminder for me to make sure that my priorities are in the place I feel like they should be for me. Totally want to encourage you to choose your own definition of that. But for me, that's how I want to behave in my day-to-day life.

Yeah, no, I love that. I love the intentionality of placing, placing life, uh, in front of work. That's, that's, uh, that's really beautiful. So as an expert in hope, I'm hoping that you can, um, provide our viewers and, and maybe me also with, um, you know, how, how, how can we, um, bring a little bit more hopefulness, uh, into our being, into our day-to-day existence, into the way that we navigate the inevitable challenges of a life worth living in work worth doing.

Can we talk a little bit about the science of hope and how hope works in our brain? Absolutely. Thought experiment. So I would love, Scott Perry and listeners, if you would find a piece of paper or pen, get out your phone, whatever you need to do. And I'd like you to write down 2 or 3 dreams, 2 or 3 big goals, things that you would like to accomplish in your life. Now, these are big, hairy, audacious goals and dreams. There is no limits here. There is no financial obligations. There is no time boundaries. There is only you and what you would like to accomplish. And if you can think about it, I'd like you to put these into a category of something you'd either like to be be, see, do, or have. Okay, so take a few seconds and write those down. Even if you just get one, cool. Something you'd like to be, see, do, or have, and be specific about what it— be specific about the achievement so that you recognize what it looks like when you have accomplished that thing. So be reasonably specific, but don't put any time around it. I think that's something that— a trap we run into sometimes when we're setting goals is putting time around it. And time is sometimes something that we don't have a whole bunch of control over. And so, uh, let's not even put that limit at all. Let's just focus on what we want to achieve and be specific so that we can recognize what that looks like. And once you have that goal written down in your mind, I'd like you to think about what it looks like to achieve it. What does it feel like in that moment? Who might be with you in that moment? What kind of opportunities might exist because of that achievement? How much you feel? What might it smell like in that moment? Really embrace all of your senses in really getting a great vision of the moment you have achieved this dream, this goal for yourself. Okay, get that, get that vision going really good. Really know what it— embrace your senses and all of your thoughts around this goal achievement. Now, once you have that, obviously, I don't know what your goal is. But I can imagine that in this moment, in this vision, You probably feel a sense of accomplishment, maybe some pride. You know, you might have people with you who love you, people, partners, maybe colleagues, people who are on the journey with you and have supported you along the way. You know, maybe you felt a sense of freedom or, you know, financial freedom. Maybe you have this sense of awe and accomplishment that you did this thing, that you've worked your butt off to get to this place. I suspect you also have hope that you can do it again, that there's something else there for you to, to feed off of, a foundation to do something next, maybe something bigger, maybe something that you've really been putting off because it's terrifying and how could you possibly do that. That vision is your brain on hope. Your brain can't actually distinguish real memories from fake ones, and it's working in the limbic system. So if we think about the limbic system in the brain, which has been called the hope circuit, there's 3 parts to the limbic system, and this vision is being created in your hippocampus. And you can think of your hippocampus like you're— like an elephant, not only because it looks like an elephant trunk, but also because an elephant never forgets. Okay, so think about these memories in your hippocampus, and then those memories travel along to the second spot in the limbic system, or the HOPE circuit, which is the amygdala. And you can think of the amygdala as your guard dog. This is where fight, flight, or freeze is controlled. This is where your brain decides what's good for you and what's not good for you, and sometimes we'll listen and sometimes we won't. But that's where the signal comes from, is there in your amygdala. And then once your amygdala decides, yep, this is a good thing, we're gonna, we're gonna go and try to accomplish this thing, that vision moves along into the last place in the hope circuit, which is the prefrontal cortex, or the PFC, which you can remember as your wise old owl, because this is like your command center, your, your project manager, if you will. This is where the action happens. This is where the priorities are determined and what comes next and what has to follow what and, and decide that you can accomplish this thing and how you're actually going to do it. So if we think about your vision going through that hope circuit, that is how you can really leverage the power of hope towards creating that future better than today. You can take that vision that you've just created and bottle it up And when you need it, because hope is contagious, when you need it, you can take that bottle off the proverbial shelf and uncork it and get it started in that hope circuit and really, really get those warm, wonderful feelings that I imagine you had during that visioning exercise to be able to, to maybe get some little more hope and a little more motivation to, to do the next right thing.

Love that. One of the things I love most about that is, you know, we are creatures that live and respond to our day-to-day unconsciously or subconsciously almost all the time. And that exercise encourages us to bring a little bit more consciousness into the equation. And, you know, as someone that has said that she's a self-proclaimed non-woo-woo person, it makes something very woo-woo sound very pragmatic practical. So I, I really love that. Um, just, we're coming towards the end of our time here. Two, two final quick questions. Um, the first is, what is, uh, what's Lindsay hopeful about, or, or what is she hopeful for these days?

Great, great question. So I am really hopeful for, um, being able to continue to spread my message, continue to have conversations like you, Scott, Um, people are embracing discussions about these topics more so than we ever have before, and I'm very, very hopeful about the positive transformation that people can experience when we talk out loud. Fears are louder in the dark, and I know from my own personal experience that when I share my story, when I talk out loud, other people can learn or can feel a little bit more hopeful. And like I mentioned, hope is contagious, and How bad could it possibly be to have more hope in the world? It couldn't. Only more, more hope is going to be a game changer for so, so many people. And I'm very, very hopeful that we get to, we get to raise collective hopefulness in the world by having these kinds of conversations.

Yeah, love that. More hope, more hope, more better. So Lindsay, the folks that are tuning into this broadcast are people that either aspire to fly higher in the difference only they can make, or they want to advance in the difference they're already making. And for these folks, I'm wondering if there's just one final tip, exercise, quote, something that will help motivate them to be a little bit more hopeful and engage their courage and commitment to fly a little bit higher in the difference only they could make. So what would be one final parting word of advice or encouragement that you would give them?

Yeah, if it matters to you, it matters, full stop. There is always going to be somebody in the world who has it worse than you, who has it better than you, who is going to judge you, who is going to support you. It doesn't matter. What matters is what's going on for you, what you are feeling called to do, what feels like is in alignment with your purpose. If it matters to you, it matters, and you get to do it. You get to explore, you get to learn, you get to talk about it. If it matters to you, it matters. Full stop.

Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. Lindsay and I really appreciate you lending us your valuable time and attention. We hope today's broadcast— we hope today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility, living your legacy. You can learn more about Lindsay and the difference she's making right over here at expertinhope.com. And of course, it's always fantastic to see you at creativeonpurpose.com as well. If you're listening to this as a podcast, please consider leaving a 5-star review. It helps more of the right people find these conversations. And now take the insight and inspiration from this conversation and fly higher in the difference only you can make. Lindsay Racnall, thank you so much for lending us some of your time and wisdom today.

It has been my pleasure, Scott. Thanks for the opportunity.