Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 595. Navigating Life's Transitions + The Mission of The Flight School - Abby Falik

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595. Navigating Life's Transitions + The Mission of The Flight School - Abby Falik · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the good community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: So let's get started.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Favorite human alert anyone.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Oh my word.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: It is a good day when we get to hang out with this human right, becky.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I think you have quoted this individual more than anyone else on the podcast ever.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: It's true.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: So I mean we're going to try to top that conversation, but to get to have an ongoing, threaded conversation with somebody that just walks through life, moves through life in a way that we want to model more and we want to amplify.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: It is just an honor to have a conversation with Abby Falick on the podcast today.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: You may know her as the founder and CEO of Flight School.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: That's her latest chapter, but today we are talking all about navigating transitions and this is so core to our work.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: I know how much that just things have shifted for us since we launched.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: We Are For Good, but also like keeping that fire alive and keeping that North Star really clear.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: And this is something that I really look up to Abby doing, because not only is she the social entrepreneur, she's a speaker, she's a seeker who believes that there's an education higher than higher ed, and that has been a North Star to her journey and the way that she shows up and pours into finding a solution and socializing ideas and trying new things, because she has just been this proponent of finding power in life's transition.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: She's an advocate for learning on purpose at any age.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: She spent the last year exploring radical educational models around the world with her family and just three carry-on bags.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, let's process that for a minute, because we all like our things.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I can't.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: One pair of shoes is all you get.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Yes, but she's been featured in everything from Fast Company to New York Times, the Chronicle Philanthropy we could go on and now, of course, the we Are For Good podcast.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: I got to shout that out, but let me tell you this In 2008, she founded the acclaimed post-secondary fellowship Global Citizen Year and that was a remarkable journey.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: And the last time we visited with Abby on the podcast although we've worked with her at different events since then she told us a lot about that story and we'll definitely drop that in the show notes because we'd love to hear the journey that led her to that moment.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: So many things were really paramount to how she walked through that organization.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: But in 2022, she left and joined the Emerson Collective as an entrepreneur in residence, and this is where her story gets really interesting to us, specifically today, because she is a seeker.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: She really took that time to re-examine her life and kind of explore different ideas and try different things on, and that really laid the groundwork for what the flight school really is showing up today, which is reinventing the transition of what after high school looks like, and so we're going to have her unpack that with us today.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: But the way that she so thoughtfully processes life and thinks through things is just something that we want to model in this community, so it's a delight to have you in our presence, abby.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: She lives out in Oakland, looking over the beautiful hill and the bay today from her office with her husband and young sons.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: And in another lifetime, abby this is my favorite part of your bio She'd be a forest monk, a rabbi or a rock star.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: She's committed to anything and anyone that helps her become more human in a world becoming less so.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: Abby Falick, always an honor to be in your presence.
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: My friend, Delighted, honored, honored.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: And the two of you and everything you're building here makes me feel more human, thank you for seeing me and accompanying me through these transitions and chapters, and I'm just so looking forward to our conversation.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: The honor is all ours.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Thanks for coming back on the show.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I do want to lift the prior episode to hear your full journey, because we won't take the time today to go back and hear that.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: But I'd love to hear about the transition.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, a lot has changed since you came on the show.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: I wonder if you'd catch us up to what that pathway looked like, and we're going to kind of double click on that journey a little bit too as you unpack it.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: Terrific In listening to you read my bio and about my journey.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: It's remarkable to me how the dots connect in hindsight in ways that they never could possibly connect.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Looking forward so, I vividly remember our last conversation.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: I was sitting in my childhood bedroom I don't remember quite why.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: I was at my parents' house and I was on the cusp of a radical breaking point that I probably sensed was coming but could not possibly have articulated.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: And in many ways, like with most transitions, it's better that we don't know what's coming.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: I think it's so important that we're just readying ourselves for the constant change of these lives.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: There's a beautiful Zen cone that I think about all the time, which says the bad news is that we are all falling.
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: The good news is there is no ground.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: Is there is no ground May seem a bit obscure, but the way I experience that is, our lives are constantly in flux.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: We never know what's going to happen from one moment to the next, but we're scrambling for solid ground that does not exist, wow.
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: And so what happened after our conversation was a breaking point at the organization I had built and led and nurtured for almost 15 years, and as we were coming out the other side of COVID in the spring of 2022, I had energy and ambition and vision for reinventing the organization and everything we were doing, and I had a board that was hungry to get back to normal as quickly as possible, and it led to an irreconcilable breakage that sent me to ask the question of whether it was time to scramble to find the ground and the solidness and the security and the sense of this is my organization and my identity or to practice what I had preached for decades about the power of letting go into the unknown, of taking that exquisite risk of a step into what you don't know is going to come.
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: And so it was a sort of moment of recognizing that what I had built was no longer the right vehicle for me or for the mission I was on, and finding the courage I needed to essentially set myself free to step into the unknown, as dizzying as it was to make room for what was ready to emerge.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: So it's very poignant talking to both of you again now, feeling like I've spent the last two years in many ways in that liminality of a transition and that I'm beginning to find my footing again in a really exciting way.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Wow, I mean, abby, I don't know how you do it, but every time you come in it is such perfect timing for where I am, where we are for good is sometimes, and I would even venture to say that there are probably so many people out there who are working through whatever the struggle is in their life.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: I know I'm one of them and I'm starting to be in that first few steps of the leap.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: And can I quote you back to you?
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: You just said something before we got on here and I think it was so profound I want to repeat it so everyone else can hear it.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: And you said you have to let go of something to allow something else in, and so I love that so much.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: I love the visual that you created about the monkey bars and how we swing, and we need that momentum from the next rung to the next, and I just think that that is such a grounding way to be in abundance and to let go of that control, something that I am doing as well, and I think that there's just a lot of people going through transitions right now trying to find that grounding whenever that mindfulness is that's going to help us stay centered in who we are and what is our purpose.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: And I want to kind of tap into that with you, because I mean, you go out into like the woods for like a week and don't say anything to anybody right Like this is like a silent meditation retreat.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Like you do this hardcore, but I want to know, yeah literally.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: So what kind of mindful practices have guided you through this transition?
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Other transitions in your life have guided you through this transition other transitions in your life and how do you gain that clarity that we're all looking?
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: For to know what direction we need to lean into next.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: What a beautiful question.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: The things we do every day matter more than the things we do every once, and for two decades I have felt a pull in a direction of inner exploration and learning my heart and my mind outside of the context of all of the external inputs in our lives my younger self.
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: For having followed that pull and found some way of embedding mindful practice into my life fairly continuously, in a way that the benefits compound over time.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: I think it always feels like God.
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: I wish I'd started sooner, but you will never regret starting now.
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: And I remember in 2022, as I was navigating the beginning of that really disorienting and very deeply painful transition, my husband said something helpful about how I had spent the prior 42 years of my life preparing for that transition.
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: In some sense, that everything I had practiced my meditation practice, my annual Vipassana, which is a silent meditation retreat.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: My yoga practice, which began in childhood and I have to thank my mom, who was a yogi in the 60s and grew us up on good, nourishing stuff like that, that those practices had created a well of resource in me.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: That certainly didn't make anything easier or less painful, but it gave me some reliable thread to follow when everything else was in flux and when I realized, oh, the ground has disappeared from beneath me.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: Gandhi has a quote about something that you know I won't have time to meditate for an hour today, so I'll meditate for two, and none of us have time to meditate for an hour or two hours, but the idea that the practice, whatever it is, that brings us back to calm and clarity and quiet and inner knowing, whether it's music or movement or mindfulness and meditation, that the reliability of that, that the importance of making it part of our daily lives, no matter what, even if it's just one minute on a cushion.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: That was actually the trick that got me into a regular meditation practice was lowering the bar.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: I heard someone wise 15 years ago say that he had really struggled to sit in the morning consistently until he made a pact with himself that he would sit in meditation for at least one minute every day and that one minute was such a low bar that he couldn't possibly think himself out of it.
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: And then what happens is, when you set the bar that low you do, you sit down for one minute and then one minute becomes five and maybe 10 or even 20.
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: And that was an entry point to me.
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: So continuity of practice, relationship with ourselves, which is the relationship that will last the longest in our lives, has helped me find what's steady and clear, even in the swirls.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: For listeners of the podcast.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: We've just partnered with Lindsay Fuller who's right near your neighborhood too, my friend, and out in the Bay through Gather at the Well this idea of how do we build up a repertoire of how we can sustain ourselves through this work and take care of ourselves in this work, and I think we're leaning into how do we be proactive, because we know that change is going to come at us.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: We know that things are going to be difficult in the future, but we have to start kind of embedding these things now.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: So we do have a reservoir to go back to and I just love that you've been living this for such a long time.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: So I'm curious, abby, because today we're going to talk about starting again and in so many ways it just feels like the next chapter of the story you've been writing for many decades flight school and so I would love to think about what challenges did you have in starting again really officially, for someone that is contemplating that next chapter Could you walk us through what it looked like to overcome some of those challenges that you faced.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: Oh, so many challenges.
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: I think because the ending of the old chapter felt so abrupt and unexpected.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: There was a real process of integration of what I'd learned, of healing.
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: I had the incredible fortune of spending a school year learning in the wild with my husband, joel, and our young boys, and it created space and perspective in a way that helped me come back to myself and come back to clarity about the mission that I'm on, which, as you're saying, john, is essentially the same mission I've been on all along Since I finished high school.
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: I was 18 and I felt like I was teetering at the edge of something, and all the influences in my life were encouraging me to just kind of keep sprinting heads down like an excellent sheep.
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: You know, you got into college, just go straight, don't pause, don't look up, you know, don't step off the path.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: And every cell in me even then knew what I craved the learning that mattered more than what I was going to encounter in the classroom had nothing to do with my formal education, and that I so deeply wanted to step off that treadmill.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: But I just didn't know where to start or how to do it, and that inclination in me at that age planted a seed.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: That is exactly what I've been nurturing all along, which was the seed at the heart of Global Citizen Year and now the seed at the heart of the flight school, which is that young people on the cusp of adulthood need and deserve a rebellious rite of passage that encourages them to step off the path, to recognize there is no path they get to forge their own, to look up and around, to ask bigger, brighter, better questions about who they are, what the world needs and what their role can be at the intersection of those two things.
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: And so the coming back to this mission is such a gift to have that clarity, and I'm really aware it's a privilege to have been on a mission that has been quite consistent and clear.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: But the challenges have been really being sensitive to not, as one friend and mentor said, don't fall into the old record groove just because it's comfortable.
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: I think there was a real risk for me of just repeating what I'd done before, because it was what was familiar and because I had this sense that the mission continued and the work was not done.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: It could have been easy to recreate the same model and structures and fall into old habits, and so I think the greatest challenge for me has been creating space to deliberately make choices about how to build again, and that nothing needs to be predetermined.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: We don't need an org chart and employee manual and hierarchy in an old fashion that I'm building this time with a co-founder who is just a genius at leading with heart and she is as smart as she is wise and it all comes together in a way that is helping us find and intuit a really new course.
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: I remember sharing with you last time the sticky note that was on my computer for a very long time was a quote by Joseph Campbell.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: It says if the path is clear, you're on someone else's, and I think that encapsulates the journey so far is recognizing that it's easy to take the well-trodden, familiar path.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: The challenge- is stepping off of it to forge your own, and so I would say that's the greatest challenge that I've faced in this process.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: And it has been the subject of memes and graphics and quotes, because it is profound.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Have we thought about getting out of the status quo, getting out of the rut, getting out of the grind?
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: The last impact up we had was all about pause.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: And how do we create this pause in our routine and these cycles?
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: How do we find these new rhythms?
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: And, Abby, I feel like you're sort of on the other side of that and I'm kind of empathizing with those listeners who are on the back end who are still feeling stuck.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: They're contemplating the significant change in their life.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: What advice would you give to someone like that about getting out of that vinyl groove?
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly what you were saying on the record player, but how do we get out of that hamster wheel and start to get on our own path?
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: It starts with tuning our intuition and our discernment, which are two of the kind of guiding learning values at the flight school.
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: I think everything in our lives is designed to distract us from ourselves and from the truer, wiser, deeper sense of knowing.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: I think about how uncomfortable we are with discomfort, how impatient we are with everything actually, and how all the pings and notifications and social media feeds are rewiring our nervous systems and providing us with this.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: There's no friction in sort of the moment your body senses some discomfort, you can just opt out.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: You can open your phone and scroll through a feed, and it's never been easier to sort of leave ourselves in that sense, and I think the most important thing we as humans in 2025 need to remember to practice is coming back to finding comfort with ambiguity, uncertainty and tuning into the deeper inner knowing that says this is no longer serving me, this container is too small.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: These people make me feel constricted.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: What would expansion feel like?
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: What would freedom feel like?
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: And my experience is the quieter we can get and the more attuned to that inner knowing, the more likely we are to be able to hear what it's telling us.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: Okay, my friend, to be able to hear what it's telling us.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Okay, my friend, this is why you and your light is so profound in this world, you know.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: And to not only give permission where we didn't necessarily need the permission, but you are giving us the language and that mirror to see and say, hey, that could be part of my journey and my experience.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: We were just grateful you know, thank you for not giving up when it would have been really easy to.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Uh, thank you for continuing to evolve the way that you're solving for this, and I remember the day you announced flight school.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Maybe we were on the preview list at some point, but I Maybe we were on the preview list at some point but the fanfare that erupted in our text thread.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: What is?
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: happening next of your journey?
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: I'm just like yes, and I remember messaging you and saying whatever we are, for good, can do.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: I don't even know what this is, but I can assure you, if you're behind it, we want to be a champion and a proponent for it, and that's just how I feel to this moment.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Is you share a little bit about?
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: What is this vision?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: What is this vision for this next step?
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: Given your experience that you've had, and given your travels and your journeys and all the conversations that have come together to this moment, what is the next chapter?
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: Looking like at Blank.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: School.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: So I referenced that I've been on this path.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: This path I'm forging for a long time now and I'm obsessed with thresholds, with the liminal space between one experience and the next, with the power that comes in that pause, and it could be as slight as between one breath and the next, one action and a reaction, light as between one breath and the next, one action and a reaction, but also one life stage and the next.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: And I have continued to be totally obsessed with the transition between childhood and adulthood, between high school and whatever comes next, in that new, unknown territory, that blank canvas of who you're becoming in your own independence.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: The flight school exists to create a global movement that's transforming how the next generation learns and leads in a world that has never changed this fast but will never change this slowly again.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: And it's anchored in the belief that the way we're doing school keeping kids focused on checking boxes and answering exam questions that AI can already answer for them in seconds the way we're doing school is constraining possibility and potential.
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: It is actually often reinforcing exactly the wrong set of behaviors.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: It says conform excel.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: On this one scorecard, we're going to compare you using standardized metrics.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: None of those things are actually the skills that make us human, the abilities that will enable us to navigate such turbulent times.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: And so we are inviting a generation, as they finish high school, in communities not just in the US but around the world, to look up and leap to recognize that they get to craft their own lives, they get to define success on their own terms.
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: They can leave home and develop a compass so that the maps that everybody was giving them are no longer relevant.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: They're not the guides for their lives.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: So the flight school is creating a context that provides immersive experiences.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: A context that provides immersive experiences, wise accompaniment, a global peer community that helps emerging adults turn inner wisdom into the outer impact that the world needs now.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: I'm so sad.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: I'm Gen X.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine, john, being Gen Z and being able to take advantage of that Because you're speaking and as a parent, I'm like the Endicott girls would like to sign up for that.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Like, let's get them in there.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: They're in, I can't wait to meet them.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like take them on.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: But I can tell you.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Little Becky Krause had no idea who she was when she had to pick her public relations and marketing major.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: She had no clue.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: She was looking at it, thinking, well, I don't have to take a lot of math classes, so that sounds pretty down with me, but you shouldn't make life decisions based on how you don't have to take math, and so I just think what you have built here is so aspirationally beautiful and the fact that you went and lived with your family like you took Rio and Luca and your husband and you went and lived this.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: And I know this is not on our sheet of what we're going to ask today, of our questions, but I want to know what you saw looking through your children's eyes and how that sort of awakened something else within you.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: I can't imagine not having created that space for my own processing and transition, to really practice what I'd been preaching about creating space between an ending and a new beginning.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: So thank goodness I listened to that wiser voice.
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: It would have been much easier not to do that.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of momentum for all of us, keeping us in place and at home, and I couldn't possibly, you know and it's just so inspiring, john, to see what you're doing with your family right now as well but watching through my boy's eyes, the experience of seeing how many ways there are to live a life, how many modes of learning exist, right, we pulled them out of public school and put them into school in six different countries so that they had the opportunity to connect with kids their age and, of course, it was not about what they were going to actually learn in the classroom.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: It was about the experience of being uncomfortable, foreign, disoriented and finding the entry points to connection with other humans.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: And my boys, I worked with them.
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: We sort of had a project together where they were integrating what they were observing and they did some journaling and writing and they actually came up with a little book that we worked on together and one of the themes was about the different ways that we can think about happiness and where it comes from, wealth and poverty and what is rich and what is poor.
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: But we had this way of seeing the world through the lens of what is this community or context rich in?
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: In Argentina there was this sense of richness in open spaces and clear, clean air and richness in adults' attention.
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: We were living on a farm where the adults were all so oriented around their home life Nobody was distracted by any other pull, Nobody wanted to be anywhere other than where they were and to watch how my boys responded to the full attention of the adults around them.
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: In Nepal there was this richness in family and in love, Even in the context of a lot of material poverty, of a lot of material poverty.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: I think they felt pangs of appreciation and even envy for the kids who became their friends.
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: We were living at a home a friend of mine has built for kids who had lost both of their parents, but they live in this crew of 50 in a big house just teeming with activity and love and nurturing.
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: So that's what I saw through their eyes was this fresh way of seeing how many experiences exist simultaneously and that they are in an extraordinarily privileged position to get to choose what kind of life they hope to build.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: Wow, gosh, I mean thank you for sharing, and I'll say from our experience that there's so much truth in that that I think, when we can realize that there's not one way, and no matter how small of a bubble you came from, it's so healthy to break down some of those walls and have open conversations to realize that there's other paths, there's other ways, there's other ways to think about this.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: It really does shift everything, and the earlier we can do that, I think, the better.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: So I think kudos to you, my friend.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: I think about it as this sense that as soon as we know there is more than one way to live, to organize your life, more than one word for something, more than one language, as soon as you know there is more than one, you know there could be infinite, but as long as you only know the one, everything else is terrifying.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: So true Wow.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: So powerful.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: I mean, okay, clearly this could be a multi-day podcast with you, but I want to get to some of the brass tacks of what you're doing with Flight School, because we were fangirling, fanboying a little bit over the launch of this new YouTube series that you're doing with John Legend and others that are coming into classrooms and really just rethinking about the conversations that we have in the classroom.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Would you talk about some of the projects you're pouring into and give us like a preview of what you're working on at flight schools?
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've recognized that I'm on a mission to shape how we learn, launch and lead, and that there are many vehicles for this mission.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: Over time, the flight school itself is an opportunity for high school graduates to step into the unknown, with supports and encouragement and resources that allow them to craft what we're calling a launch year, as opposed to a gap year, which is a terrible metaphor.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: It's a gaping hole that you might fall into and build a movement around, throwing your kids off the edge into the hole we are launching.
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: And so the flight school is this experiential global community.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: But one of the things we recognize also will move the needle on how culturally we approach transitions and how we're preparing the next generation for the world is changing narratives and shaping perspectives.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: So a strong element of the work I'm doing now is about how do we use mainstream media to change how we think about the transition into adulthood, how we think about success and achievement and happiness.
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: So the show it's called had I Known is inviting inspired leaders from all walks of life and all sort of categories of success to return to high schools and share with current high school seniors what they wish they'd known sooner, how their definition of success has changed over time how failure has shaped their path as much as the success has had, and the idea is to help this generation feel accompanied and more courageous in making decisions.
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: That might feel terrifying, because they may feel less normative, but they actually are exactly what's needed.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: So that's how these two things come together.
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: I think of it as the air game, in a sense of how do we shift perspectives and narratives.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: And then the ground game, though that's the bad metaphor if we are the flight school, but how do we actually transform individual lives through direct programming?
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I just have to say it is the Cadillac no Cadillac that I'm showing Gen X again.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: It is like the nicest Bentley of what could be created in media, because when I watched that video and I think all three of us on our team watched that video I saw a side of John Legend I have never, ever seen before.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: It was so human, it was so connected back to your word, and we had a trend last year called media scales impact and I want to commend you for the way that you're diversifying, the way that you are connecting, the way that you are amplifying, because I think it's going to draw interest and be a magnet to people who also want to think differently, who want to experience something differently.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: And I can tell you I had many feelings going through me and I'm not even your target audience, I'm not a student.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: So we're definitely going to drop the link to that media in the show notes because we want people to check out what you were doing, how you are flexing this to get your message out, to get more awareness to think differently.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: And so, abby, you know how much we value story and the lived experience on this podcast and we're hoping you could take us back to a moment of generosity, philanthropy, human kindness that has stayed with you in your life, and share that story with us.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: The most touching example of generosity to me is something I've experienced in my Buddhist studies and practices, and it is a tradition that has spanned more than 2,000 years, where teachers don't charge for their teaching, where teachers offer what they've learned and practice and the wisdom that they've accumulated, freely, always, and they then ask that, if something has touched you or moved you or impacted you, that you respond from a place of generosity which makes the teaching in itself its own generous cycle.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: But the concept is called Donna and it really is so foundational to what I think the world needs more of.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: It's a foundational pillar.
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: At the flight school, we don't charge tuition to students who enroll with us.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: We are creating experiences out of a spirit of generosity that's enabled by the generosity of a whole network of donor partners who are supporting us, and we are imbuing this sense of gratitude, appreciation and generosity that perpetuates, so that over time they're paying it backwards and forwards rather than just defaulting to a fee-for-service tuition model, which I think can often really cheapen things.
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I would just say this notion of a spirit of generosity that is contagious, that I watch happening in the sort of flowing from the philanthropic impulse through to the beneficiaries who can then be touched and moved and shaped by others' generosity directly and become the kinds of people who are generous in turn.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: And B hearing you talk and this whole conversation, abby, I mean.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Earlier you said this isn't, for our age, demographic, and I think I'm going to challenge the notion because I'm like this posture of showing up to all of our work at this moment in time.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: It necessitates all of us to put down the things that we think are the fences and the walls and the ways that maybe got us here, and just be this new learner, and so I appreciate the way that you all, so generously, are out there challenging us all to think differently and not go on with life down a path that we have led us here, but be open to what the possibilities are.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: So every time we're in your presence, I'm just like my mind and heart is expanded, and I got to kick it to you for a one good thing, abby.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: You know we wrap up our show asking for what's a piece of advice or maybe a mantra, what's something that stirred up for you in this conversation today that you'd want to leave our listeners with today?
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: May I read a poem Please?
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: Please.
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: This is what's coming up as we have this conversation, which feels so much about transitions and courage and new beginnings, and we're recording this at the very beginning of the new year, so it feels ripe.
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: The poem is For a New Beginning, by John O'Donohue.
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: In out-of-the-way places of the heart, where your thoughts never think to wander, this beginning has been quietly forming, waiting until you were ready to emerge.
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: For a long time it's watched your desire feeling the emptiness growing inside you, noticing how you willed yourself on, still unable to leave what you'd already outgrown.
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: It watched you play with the seduction of safety and the gray promise that sameness whispered, heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, wondered would you always live like this?
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: Then the delight when your courage kindled and out you stepped onto new ground, your eyes young again, and the energy and the dream, a path of plentitude opening before you.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: Though your destination is not yet clear, you can trust the promise of this opening.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: Though your destination is not yet clear, you can trust the promise of this opening.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: Though your destination is not yet clear, you can trust the promise of this opening.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning that is at one with your life's desire.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: Awaken your spirit to adventure.
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: Hold nothing back.
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: Learn to find ease in risk.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: Soon you will be at home in a new rhythm, for your soul senses the world that awaits you.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: Our souls sense the world that awaits us.
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: It's our job to tune in and trust it and listen and always be willing to begin again.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: I got nothing.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: I got nothing.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: Poetry, david White says poetry, is the language against which we have no defense.
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: It just cuts right in, and it's not an exaggeration to say that this one has saved me.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: So I'm really grateful to get to share it with you as well.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Thank you, my friend.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: I just think that you teach on so many levels when you come in.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: There's so much here that I hope people feel courageous enough to grasp.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: People feel courageous enough to grasp Because can you imagine the ripple effect if we do, if we would leave, if we could take that path, less traveled and with the again to your point, the inner knowing guiding us of where we're supposed to be?
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: I believe every person who's listening to this podcast believes in something bigger than themselves, because they care about other people, they care about community, they care about philanthropy and generosity, and so let's make 2025 the year to leap.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: I'm leaping, friends.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: I hope you'll leap with me too and our friend, abby Abby, tell people how they can connect with Flight School.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: I'm so obsessed with this mission.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I want you to tell people how they can donate to it or how they can be an amplifier to it.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: To tell other people, because we want other people to know about this incredible mission.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Tell us where you hang out on socials and give us all the details.
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: So check out the flight schoolorg for more information about what we're building and, to the purpose and heart of this conversation, that so much of what we're doing at the flight school is not specific just to one age cohort.
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: I am very excited to share with you that today, literally, I am launching a sub stack which is a community for the rest of us who want to join the flight school but might be a little older than 18.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: And it just stems from the knowing that the practices, the insights, the community are so much bigger than just the organization will build, and so I invite you all to check me out, abby Falick at Substack.
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: I write on LinkedIn and, yeah, I would just be delighted, if any of this is resonant, to hear from you directly.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: Subscribed Got it Hasn't even launched yet.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, I've got a subscriber.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: That's my next specialist.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: Literally like my to-dos today were this interview and then get the Substack out the door.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: So here we go.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: Here we go, take a flight.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: And those listening.
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: Find Abby on Substack, find her on LinkedIn, because it'll be this breath of fresh air and really challenging and beautiful words that you share, photos from your journeys, all the things Like.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: Definitely you need this in your feed my friends.
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: So, abby, grateful to know you, always your cheerleader and champion.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: Thanks for being here today.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: What a gift you are to this world.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: Adore you, thank you, thank you, thank you, friends, see you soon.