This  was one of those interviews where the interviewer simply holds the space for his guest, me 🙂   to share from a deep place. I could feel the love pouring out of me and Ian, who is someone I had never spoken to before, shared often how much he could feel it and experienced it. It was truly a beautiful interview.
I invite you to have a listen. Please let me know what you feel. Experience it on YouTube:
or on apple podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chit-chat-with-daniel-levin/id1536232499?i=1000504800623
where the crashing waves touch the shore. where the horizon is touched by the sky. where the darkness of early morning is lit up by the moon, there is where i meet you and feel touched by your heart amd soul.
i feel touched by all of creation in the beautiful simplicity of where one meets another. will you meet me there?
being an empath, sometimes, i feel people before i ever meet them. and when the person i feel is also an empath, it is almost impossible not to feel them. this is what happened with Sohee Jun. A stranger who appeared on my show had me on his podcast and then he had Sohee on his podcast too and he wrote both of us saying, i think you should meet each other. so when i invited her on Conversations With Strangers and she accepted i was happy. i have no idea how things like this happen, but without seeing her, talking to her, checking her out on social media, i started to feel her.
normally i don’t like to make contact with people before they come not the room, but i felt like i already had made contact because of how strongly i felt her and so i reached out to her and friended her on facebook. but that was really all that happened. a couple of messages about timing for the show and finding a good time to record. but that was it. and yet, when she came into the zoom room, i felt like had already known her, missing of course all of the details.
when i asked her, what was the 1 thing she would say to the world if she knew it was listening, here is what she told me: “Your great contribution in this world is your authentic presence and ability to make people feel heard, seen and valued.” those words could have come word by word from my mouth as well.
clearly we were connected. i think you will want to listen to this conversation. it was real, intimate, deep and vulnerable. i loved it and hope you will too . . .
here is what we spoke about:
the honor we both felt in being here in this room together
being the mother of 3 amazing children and working with high achieving individuals in business and corporations
the differing day to day reality to the answer of the question how are you doing
being a resilient woman and feeling tired and weary
what is it about this situation that is making her tired
where do we get connection in a time of forced isolation
the social media life shot vs the life shot of day to day life
the feeling of having to be a superwoman to handle all of the things in front of her
the silo of like minded people and thoughts and the need for innovation
what is the perfect 20:20 vision of the world of the year 2020
the desire to escape pain and the challenge of coved and the absence of the buffers we normally use to escape the pain we experience
what if it wasn’t as hard as we thought it was?
the story of elisa, my developmentally delayed daughter
what are the situations of life trying to say to her . . .
its ok, you don’t have to do more
being easier on yourself
how is it possible that someone i never met could feel exactly what i feel
the cardboard version of ourselves and vulnerability and going deep
the innovation workshop story and what it would take to change what we are doing on a dime
the re-starting of people and the reframing of concepts
how important it is to have meaningful community.
the ability to feel the energy of others and the feeling in the head that prevents that
returning to the basics of breathing, meditation and journaling and focusing on others rather than being stuck ourselves.
helping others and helping ourselves who do we we focus on
Conversations with Strangers feat. Josh Gryniewicz
you know you are in for something when 2 storytellers get together for a conversation. i knew nothing about Josh except that someone i met on a podcast recommended that we speak together, so instead of doing that in private, we had the conversation and filmed it for this series. it is so interesting to talk about the power of storytelling both in its ability to change perspectives and in its ability to lock us into realities that are not real but just stories we tell ourselves over and over again until they appear real. as we sit together some of each of those stories emerge. i think you will love listening to this conversation . . .
here is what we spoke about:
who Josh is.
storytelling for social change
growing up with parents who are artists and storytellers
family trips of trying to find Big Foot
the science of storytelling and what it revealed
the difference between the storytelling i use and simply telling a story
the biggest surprise he has had, finding his perfect job, creating an amazing presentation and then not getting the job.
watching the story that has been told in his life repeat itself but only this time the players of the story changed sides.
the work he did with many different public health organisations
the change of perspective and the shift from what he does to who he is and you can feel his whole energy change
how interesting it was to me that a storyteller could wrap his conversation in his story allowing him to escape the telling of his own story and how difficult it is to get to the story and the stories that come up that seem like his story but really aren’t
explaining the ADD mind and how it works
the introduction of the idea that “Nothing is as it Seems” and its ability to change the narrative of the story we are telling ourselves.
the old hag and the socialite and his diagnosis of ADD
getting nervous and feeling pushed and liking it
the story of the mirror maker
what scares him about telling the stories of others
the power of story to distort story
finding the courage to fall in love with his own story
and a whole lot more . . .
to learn more about Josh, please go to:
website: https://oddduck.io/
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgryniewicz
This is the publication that he mentioned (https://www.allindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PUBLICATION-FINAL-SEPT-30th-1.pdf). It is mostly for epidemiologists and data wonks, so a little inside baseball, but a week after he published the Digital Edition, he attended the Society for Professional Journalists Conference and they listed 4 of the stories he covered as underrepresented for 2020 (so if he could scoop the New York Times, he’s got to be doing something, right 😜).
It’s early morning in Rome. In two hours, she would be producing a video for a tour company and broadcasting to her hundreds of thousands of followers. she checked her email.
she didn’t remember the next moment. she blacked out. The most heart-wrenching blow of her life right before she had to be on camera. she did remember throwing herself on the bed and screaming into the pillow, “Why God?! Why now?” Then astonishingly, a clear answer came to her instantly from somewhere beyond her pain, “Because you can.”
Now, she has taken her passion for helping authors find the same success by publishing books with meaning. She is recognized as The Thought Leader Publisher.
but, i didn’t know any of this when Andrea and i started speaking. the was just another stranger that had wandered into my room. my first impressions when i saw andrea was of someone who was a little bit full of themselves, because out of character, i went to her website and watched a couple of her videos but i can’t tell you how wrong my first impressions were in the presence of who she is now . i believe this is an important conversation for you to hear.
here is what we spoke about:
the journey we are on to discovery parts of ourselves that are hidden what about her has remained hidden that she would like to come out from
what she wanted to still share – that she has run from pain and now she is ready to let go of expectations letting go and achieving more
how quickly andrea became open, honest and vulnerable
what would happen if you didn’t hide from your pain
the path of her being an entrepreneur
meeting the man that checked all the boxes very successful in all of her dreams and being at the top of her game but not realising her husband was envious of her and losing it all
from a 5 story mansion in malibu to living with mom in a bunk bed in a spare room hearing the message, “you have to share more” humility and alignment to service with others
what it feels like to have her success be the reason the man she loves leaves her
thinking there was something wrong with her when it was the insecurity of her husband who cheated on her with her best friend now she helps woman own their own value so they will never have to experience this type of betrayal
what did the pain you experienced want to say to you?
what would you say to a woman who wants to jump in to being themselves but doesn’t want to lose her marriage?
making more time for laughter and not having to have all the accoutrements of life to make her feel ok
when we experience pain and then protect ourselves in the silo’s that protect us, how did she bring that silo down?
the death of the fantasy that opened up her life to do what is real if this was the last day, did i fulfil my purpose here
