Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Category: Relationships

EP: 209 The Hidden Power of Every Person Around You, with Carl Shephard

There is a saying ‘You are the sum of the 5 people around you.’ By proxy, you will likely start to pick up the behaviors and habits of who you spend time with. So who do you surround yourself with, and do they encourage you to grow and become your ideal version of yourself? Gaining new knowledge and being consistently inspired by the people around you can drastically enhance the course of your life.

However, sometimes it’s tough to find time in an already busy schedule to go out to meet and connect deeply with the people you are really searching for. Work, family and previous commitments are all too common of hindrances that stand between us and the person we want to become. Sometimes, we need to break the pattern, break the habits, and dive right into an experience that completely redefines and aligns who we are, for the better.

This week on the Unconventional Life show is Carl Shephard, Carl shares how the people you choose to simply spend time with will alter the course of your life. Plus the release of an exciting new venture called EntrepreneurShip.

Carl is the founder of Insider Expeditions, Co-Founder of CNS Global Advisors, curator of 500 international experiences across 7 continents and two-time circumnavigator but beyond all of that he seems to be the living embodiment for the art of collaboration.

Carl is a man who really dreams big, which is why he has curated The EntrepreneurShip event sailing out of Rome this summer. The event is bringing together 500 innovators, leaders, artists and entrepreneurs together for 5 days aboard the Seabourn Encore, a luxury ship cruising the Mediterranean Sea.

This vision for this event is built upon connection and inspiration. The idea is to connect different communities together to collaborate at a larger level for social good and global impact. The event is meant to be a catalyzing ecosystem where one conversation has the power to inspire, realign and evolve you to the greatest version of yourself.

One of Carl’s favorite quotes is “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room” He would always choose to be a “small fish in a super interesting, colorful, magical pond,” which is great unconventional wisdom. So often we are taught to be the ‘big fish’ and be at the top of the ranking or game but what if you just kept jumping ponds. You would be able to surround yourself with and collaborate with people who would continue to move the needle further in your life. Carl believes that to get to the next level is only possible with collaboration, different perspectives, and more experiences.

On the ship are people from all different types of nationalities and cultures, big industries, small companies, seasoned entrepreneurs, artists and people who are wanting to start a new venture or want to do something creative. A few of the organizations and people that are behind this movement include; Daybreaker, Entrepreneurs Organization, Maverick 1000, LiveItUp, guest speakers such as Mark Hyman, Rahda and Miki Agrawal, Julianne Hough with performances by the Human Experience and Gone Gone Beyond and that is just a few. If you are looking to uplevel your life and business then this is definitely the event to join, where one conversation, one perspective shift at dinner, or one workshop can inspire you to new heights while living your best life 😉

Click here to find out more and get onboard!

February 24, 2020
Ep: 190 Creating a Movement with your Message, With Internationally-known Speaker, Williams
Most people know the classic acronym for ROI as ‘Return on Investment’ but the acronym you might not have heard of yet is ‘Ripples of Impact’
How much impact you have in the world is also your direct return on investment and the number one way to increase both versions of ROI is through learning how to become a powerful communicator.
If you have the ability to impact your listener’s at their heart, then it’s much easier for them to join your movement and take inspired action. This will have a positive ripple effect not only in your career but also in your personal life and the lives of the people you serve.
This week on the Unconventional Life show is Joe Williams. Joe is an internationally- known speaker, who coaches entrepreneurs become world-class speakers. Whether you need help finding your message, developing your message, or learning how to take the stage with confidence and aliveness then Joe is your go-to guy.
Joe was the head trainer and lead speaker for peak performance coach, Tony Robbins. For 15 years Joe spoke to “roaring crowds, got standing ovations and rock star treatment all around the world” but what he realized was that he was living someone else’s dream. What Joe was really craving was more family time and to create something more meaningful with his life. Joe pivoted and designed two offerings that stem from creating a lifestyle and career based on what you actually care about.
The first is the Creative Performance Group, which helps people master their message through ritual programs, a live event called the Speakers Bootcamp and 1-1 mentoring. The other is a book called “The Impact Awakening – How to go from having a calling to changing lives.” Ps. Click the link for a free download of the book 😉
In this episode, Joe drops some unconventional wisdom on how to master your message and how to structure your message so that the audience stays engaged and is left feeling inspired to take action.
Have an idea so big that it walks the line of being possible.
Your idea needs to be big enough and different enough, from everything else that’s out there. “You don’t create movements based around the status quo, you don’t create movements by an incremental improvement of what’s already out there, you tend to create movements by having an idea that is so big that the idea walks that line of being possible.”
Designing your Message of Mastery
Your message has three major parts
1.Your life story. What has your life uniquely primed you for to be the emissary of this message? “ Learn to tell both, the upsides of your story and, more importantly, the downsides of your journey with a moral of what you learned.” Likely you have had an experience in your life that has shaped who you are and in going through that experience you are able to authentically help and guide others to find their own way and become the hero of their own story.
“Great storytellers don’t retell stories, they relive them.” – anonymous
2. Your passions. Your passion is your greater why and will give you the motivation that you need to keep going when challenges arise. If you create your business based on your passions the joy that it brings you will effortlessly come alive through your words and within your being when you are speaking about it.
3.Your offering. How can you serve the world, what results you can really help people receive?
Communicate Effectively
The next step is learning how to communicate, how to present your message powerfully and in a way that moves people emotionally. Your goal here is to motivate people to do something different, to take action, as a result of listening to your message.
Joe shares that he took all of the classic training, Toastmasters, Dale Carnegie ect and they all taught him the same thing… script out your talk, memorize it, rehearse it and perform. He found that methodology outdated and the performance aspect did the opposite of the desired goal, to connect and have a conversation with the audience.
People can tell the difference between performing versus you showing up as your most empower self and having a truthful conversation. So Joe developed an amazing way of teaching that shows you how to tap into the specific mental and emotional state that is needed in order to deliver your message. He guides you to be able to tap into your excitement and enthusiasm to the point where your brain turns on and the words just flow out. He also teaches a great method for the structure of the talk and what areas are the most important to focus on. For a more in-depth look at the structure below, you can download the Impact Awakening Book.

The Structure

Begin with the end. “This is always your starting point when laying out an outline or structure for everything from a presentation to a book to even coaching or consulting session. What is the result you want to achieve when you are done and things have gone well?”
Create the start. “Your opening should be strong and get attention. Open with a question, a bold statement or a challenge.”
Balance “big ideas” and stories. “You will need time to introduce it, teach it, share a story to bring it alive, answer questions about it and have the audience do something to experience using the idea.”
Close with a call to action. “Decide what you want your call to action to be and then everything you do to design and deliver your message will lead to that action. All great learning experiences end with leading you to take action on what you just experienced.”
“People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou
Giveaway!
Joe is giving away a 1-hour private session where together, you will get to dive into crafting and mastering your message. This session is valued at 2,000$ and one of you will receive it for free 😀 Thanks, Joe!
September 30, 2019
Ep:179 Taking the First Step – From Zero to One, with the founder of Amplio Recruiting, Chris Chancey

Finding a job in today’s economy is challenging. Finding a fulfilling job is even tougher. Now imagine being a refugee, with little to no relevant experience, in a new country and a new language… Near impossible. However, Chris and his project Ampilo have trained and placed thousands of refugees into careers they thrive in. If it can work for them, it can work for you.

Chris Chancey is an advocate for the refugee workforce and the founder of Amplio Recruiting, a staffing agency that helps great companies hire dependable employees from the refugee workforce. Chris and his team have placed over 4000 people who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution or natural disaster into employment. These people have been stigmatized in the workforce and in the community but the truth is that they are very dependable, highly motivated, growth orientated and legally able to join the workforce.

Amplio has found that these people want to give back to society, get an education, share their voice, participate in society, vote and pay taxes. Just like many immigrants before them.

In this podcast, Chris talks about Amplio and the techniques he uses to help empower refugees, or anyone looking to start a business.

How to find your big idea

See what is happening around you, just outside your door. As you become more involved with your community you will see the problems people are facing and you might be inspired to provide a solution.

When Chris met his neighbors and people in the area he realized that most conversation’s ended with people asking him if he knew of any job leads. As the relationships with his community developed further he realized that these people were strong and reliable people and this lead to the creation of his Amplio Recruiting.

An exercise that Chris has found helpful was to keep a small piece of paper in his pocket and when he “saw a gap in the way the world worked” and how he felt it could be better he would write down the solution. He then assessed if taking action seemed inspiring and exciting enough to tackle. For one week, open your eyes a little wider and look out for any obstacles that your community is facing and see if you have any creative solutions to these problems.

How to go from an idea into action

“ The risk at failing at this idea is worth the positive impact if it works- if you get to that point where the potential impact is so great it’s worth failing for, then go for it! “

Any effort you make to begin to take notice of the things that are happening around you, you might realize that you are uniquely positioned to actually make it happen.

Start and find your way step by step. It’s impossible to know exactly how this idea is going to take shape. Most people feel they need to know step one hundred before they can take step one. So just take that first step and the rest of the clues will uncover themselves.

Failure is a part of innovation and could possibly be the most important function. We receive feedback from each action we take which enriches our learning experience and sets the stage for future iterations of development. We can also reframe the concept of “failing” into “collecting data” so we keep our minds in a positive flow and effective at problem-solving.

A few mindset hacks along the way

Cultivating the right mindset along your entrepreneurial journey is essential. If we have our warrior mindset qued we will have no problem treading uphill during challenging moments.
Below are three values and keywords that Chris uses with his team to keep everyone in a positive mindset.

Humble + Action = “Humbition”
This world is a reminder to not take yourself to seriously and to try to have fun in this pursuit. Maintaining your commitment and dedication to your project is important but have a sense of humility that you can control the outcomes.

Buoyancy
“Recognizing that the role that you are in is endless- there is always more to do, it’s a neverending pursuit.” Think of that buoy on the waves and no matter how big the wave is, it still comes back upright. Just because you get knocked over by a wave doesnt mean its a sign to stop. The concept of buoyancy is a reminder that you are resilient.

“Only by rising back up can you see what the next opportunities that are coming down the pipe look like.”

Stay true to your values. Every day you will be faced with many choices and each decision may feel existential that will largely affect your business in the long term. What is required is a guiding principle, some greater metric to help you navigate. Communicate what is important to you and represents the ethos of your business. When your values become embedded in your work, they will also become embedded into your brand. These values are your foundation in which your project is built on

July 15, 2019
EP:176 Engineering Human Connection: How “Being in the Now” Addresses the Loneliness Epidemic with Seth Bunting
Your morning train ride is packed wall-to-wall with a sea of people swaying to and fro, the white glow of phone screens illuminate faces as they madly swipe, click and text. The train is silent.

In a fast-paced world of constantly packed schedules and instant communication, authentic and meaningful human connection is hard to come by.

Enter Seth Bunting. Seth has made a life of creating outside-the-box, immersive atmospheres, and events that are conducive to connection. Using human loneliness as a roadmap, experiential designer and scalable live experience curator, Seth Bunting, walks us through the realities he creates where carefully designed physical spaces and experiences draw event participants out of their phones and into the present moment.

“People are seeking to come back into connection with each other and they don’t know how. We believe it’s possible to begin redesigning social spaces, physical and digital environments, the places we are interfacing with every day…how do we redesign all of that so that we have more connection with each other?”

We are living amidst the largest loneliness epidemic mankind has ever seen. Our current society values hyper-individualization and rewards self-reliance. From pop culture action figure icons touting the “I’ve got this”, solo warrior mentality capable of saving the world on their own to the self-help movement, guiding people towards the notion that all answers lie within themselves, a world where people need each other is not the story of the hour. The result– a lonely generation glued to their phones for a sense of belonging and connection.

A nationwide survey of 20, 000 adults found that 54% of respondents said they feel “no one actually knows them well”, while 40% stated that their “relationships aren’t meaningful” and they feel “isolated from others”

Through his projects Presence and Equilibrium, Seth Bunting makes actionable change towards addressing what he sees as the two core concerns that inhibit meaningful human connection.

Human Connection

Presence

“Everything that we are creating for is just to drive people to states of being. The states that we hope to achieve are just to bring connection to each other.”

Seth creates alternate worlds for his experience attendees. The goal: to invite authenticity, play, vulnerability and an essence of magic into the mix. Using a technique called the deictic shift (the phenomena that occurs when you become consumed by the emotional journey of your beloved Grey’s Anatomy characters) he designs experiences where people become the lead character of their own story, interact with the world around them and connect with one another.

How to cultivate presence daily

Designate a time in your day to be tech-free

Set that timer for one hour, maybe even two or three and give yourself a well-deserved reprieve from the constant stimulation of your phone. If you walk and text, which most of us do, it’s near impossible to be present with your surroundings, the people walking past you and the stunning bloom of spring around you. Unplug, unwind and look up!

Improvisational theatre (I know it can be scary…I dare you!)

Improv is the embodiment of the moment, off the cuff and unscripted exploration created completely spontaneously. We spend so much of our lives in our logical, thinking mind and activities like improv get you out of your head and into your body.

Eat a meal with no distractions! No book. No Music. No Phone.

Take this time in your day, the time you’ve set aside to nourish your body as a time to connect with yourself, your food and take a well-deserved break. Building a positive connection with your food means also being present with it while you’re eating it. Ever heard the phrase you are what you eat? The mindstate you are in when you eat influences how your body interacts with your food! You are far less likely to overeat and far more likely to enjoy your meal when you give it your undivided attention.

Meditation

Introducing a regular meditation practice into your life offers a multitude of benefits from reductions in stress and anxiety to a more focused mind, less prone to distraction. If you’re a beginner and need some direction, consider signing up for a class at your local yoga studio.

Movement/Exercise in nature

Sweating and increasing your heart rate daily is the key to overall health and vitality. The combination of movement and being outdoors adds an extra level of nourishment to your practice.

Connect with your senses

Removing your shoes and getting your toes in the sand, grass or mud (oh I went there!) connects you with our beautiful earth. Close your eyes. Now: what does the ground below your feet feel like? Can you feel wind or moisture in the air? What does the air smell like? Turn your focus to your 5 senses and ask yourself to identify something you are detecting using with each – eyes closed!

Weekly Giveaway! One free ticket to the Equilibrium Event!

The Palace of Fine Arts, Sept 13-15th in San Fransisco

*Really interested? Send us an email and let us know why!

Written by Olenka Toroshenko
May 27, 2019
EP:175 Three Ways To Cope With Grief To Live Courageously, With Kirsten Schowalter

In today’s world, you might feel that you are constantly fed with ways to level up and be brave.

This advancement is engrained in our society and living up to this level of advancement could feel like you are carrying around the weight of expectations.

What if I told you that the key to reaching these higher, more advanced levels was actually to revisit all the situations where you felt pain? Only when we take the time to be with our pain and properly grieve can we rise up to something greater.

This week on the unconventional Life show is Kirsten Schowalter. Kirsten is the Author of “In My Own Skin” and founder of Ageing Courageously, a community that inspires people to make dreams come true at every age and The Flip Side of Life, support and resources for a new way to grieve. Kirsten fills us with insight and knowledge about a topic that is so misunderstood and often so silent.

“If you want to see a rainbow you have to learn to see the rain.”

― Paulo Coelho, Aleph

Embrace Your Growth Cycles

We all go through change, we lose a job, have a shift in identity, we feel dissatisfied, our weight fluctuates, we have money struggles or we find a new romantic partner.

If you observe nature and the cycle of a tree, you see that in each season it grows, blossoms, shed its leaves and hibernates. When the leaves drop they decompose to provide nutrients that support the continued growth of the tree.

You are hardwired to mimic nature.

You too have cycles where you go into hibernation, shed layers and usually, need a period of rest and reflection before you are ready for your next big move. You probably don’t view the tree as dying just because it sheds a few leaves but just a natural process of growing.

Once you are able to get acquainted with these cycles in all aspects of life, the more resilient you become. By not getting knocked down by figurative death you learn to release what is no longer present and for you and this can be an awakening experience to a fuller life.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Your Feelings

Are you ever hard on yourself for slowing down? Or try to hide sadness because you think you should be happy? Often it’s not how you feel but how you think about how you feel that shapes your experience.

For example, If you are feeling sad but say to yourself “I shouldn’t be sad, be positive, put on a smile” this won’t be an authentic expression and will actually require more effort to pretend.

When I feel in a funk I ask myself, “What is the most nourishing thing I can do for myself? It could be watching Netflix for 4 hours, having a bath or letting myself cry. The most important part is to not feel guilty or label emotions as negative experiences. By doing this practice I have found that I have become stronger and much better at navigating any painful experiences in my life.

The number #1 question that Kirsten receives from her clients is “how do I talk about my grief or sadness? , what do I say?” Kirsten says, “That peole are afraid to talk about their fears because they think that their sadness or grief could be contagious. In reality, the pain from grief is the footprint of your love.”

Shortcut The Lows And Accelerate The Highs

Let’s face it, life is a rollercoaster ride, there are high- highs and low- lows. So how do we find balance and ease throughout this process?

Kirsten shares that once we get in the habit of navigating our emotions and giving ourselves exactly what we need in each moment we are able to find inner confidence and rise up to something greater.

Kirsten says that “courage comes from a lot of vulnerability and we can build the strength and skills to live with and dance with vulnerability to become more courageous in our next step”

Giveaway! “How To Cope With Grief Masterclass” – A 9-week program Learn how your grief can lead to your passion and purpose.

Check out Kirsten’s website and Book

Access the Free webinar “How to Talk about Grief”

+ A recording of the talk Jules references from the National Life Insurance Conference.

By: Lisa- Renee Delwo

May 20, 2019