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Carolyn Carpenter: Exploring Bold Patterns of Possibility · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge Podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Lee Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or douse along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Caroline Carpenter.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is the president of Johns Hopkins National Capital Region and she is a person I've known for 15 plus years.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: We were just talking pre-taping about how long we've known each other and kind of at least for me, you know seeing the evolution of me over the years and also just being part of each other's journey.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: So welcome, Caroline, to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Great Thanks, Lee.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: This is wonderful.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: This is a great opportunity for me to do something I haven't done much before, which is share some personal reflections and thoughts about bold and hopefully have a great dialogue with you today about those journeys that we're both on personally and professionally.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember when I first started out talking about what I was doing and how I was hoping to help people and really kind of get back in alignment because I was out of alignment when I shifted gears is I said I want to help people be bold.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that I remember and I have moments and, knowing you, that I remember the things that you said.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Some of them are quite funny and some of them are like, wow, that was like a straight nut moment, because then was like uh-huh, you know, like let me think about that.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: You said to me everyone may not want to be bold or know how to be bold, and that was a really cool thing because I was like oh, because for me, why wouldn't you be?
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: It's just so natural.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: So I think that's a fun thing to talk about today, especially as we kind of talk about your definition of bold, because not everyone may understand it can be quiet or it can be loud, and so I'd love to hear what your definition of bold is.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: What does it look like for Caroline?
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Sure, well, it was great that you mentioned to me the other day that you were going to ask me this question, and so then the next day and this is a bit of a theme in my life I'm learning to just sit with questions rather than just do so.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: I just sat with it.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: And you know this, I love an acronym.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, I am just, if you can give me some, I'm a love an acronym.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: And what came to mind really quickly was, for me, bold right now is beyond our limiting dimensions, bolt.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: And it's because I think we spend so much time limiting ourselves, like we were just talking a little while ago about this concept of infinite possibilities, the concept of when can you choose to be bold.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: And I firmly believe that we have all these unconscious biases, we have all these patterns that we've been ingrained with from childhood, through our academic lives, through our personal lives, that we continue to limit and limit and limit our opportunities unless we're really conscious about being open and going the other way.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: And to me that's what bold is.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Bold is pushing against those limitations and really internally understanding there are infinite possibilities with what we do with our lives.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very inspiring definition, and what's fun is all of the definitions that I've had in the last year, plus of bold.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Every person has a commonality, but also people have a differentiator, so it truly is the what we have in common, but also what makes us us and authentic and original, so I love that definition.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: What you did that was different than a lot of people was talking about the dimension.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Right, you know the dimensionality of how we live, almost like in 3D.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: We are not a 1D human being.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's so important to think about that we do live simultaneously in multiple dimensions and you know, when you made that comment about what I said about you know, maybe not everybody wants to be bold or maybe doesn't know how, I think that's also a reflection that we live in all those dimensions.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: We've got the personal dimension, we've got the ego dimension, we've got the professional dimension.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: You know, many of us have a spiritual dimension.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: You know we're simultaneously living in all those and in which one of those are we in a place where we can really be bold?
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Right, maybe one place and not the other, and I think most of the time that is the case just by energy management.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: But not limiting those things in our lives is really, I feel, so tracked.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And I look at the young people.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: You know I'm many years into my profession and I look at the young people who are asking what I want, what should I do?
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: What should I want to do?
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: And I said, you know, the good news is you're not tracked like many of us were.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: There are very traditional ways to be successful in different careers and it's blown up and I think that's awesome and I think it should be reflected in how we kind of blow up our thinking about what's possible.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to jump into that excited to talk about it.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: So when was the first time you really lived your definition of bold?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: That comes to mind, and recent or way back.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: You know, the one that came to mind was actually more recent and maybe because you and I've had these conversations lately, and also because it really is that crossroads of what I've been tracked, trained, conditioned to do versus what I did.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: And it's when I started at Hopkins, johns Hopkins, in my administrative role three years ago, and about a year into it I was asked to do something which was to give a talk.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: And the way it works is there's just Johns Hopkins state of medicine, talk, and the Dean gives a piece of it it's kind of the cornerstone and then the head of the health system and then one administrator gets asked.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: And so I was asked but I had never been here before to know what it was like.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: State of medicine sounds like, you know, state of the union, right, like a pretty formal event.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: And now I'm at Hopkins, so I'm also like, oh my gosh you know, then I said, well, what's the topic?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: And they said resilience.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I'm like we've got all sorts of science, we've got all sorts of opinion, we've got all sorts of experts working on this.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: What is well, being global, what am I going to say?
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: And so I really had a hard time thinking about.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Well, what can I say about resilience?
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And I went into the space of what is it that I could say that I'm not so sure was going to come out in all the academic and the research and the intellectual discourse about resilience.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And it was.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I want to talk about what it meant to be a mom and be resilient, and I did, and I gave this talk and I got so much amazing feedback.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: But it was such a different approach for me.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: It wasn't here's the data, here's the insights from the data, here's how we're going to create an action plan and here's how we're going to apply it to improve.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Right, that's, that's how we speak most of the time, or some version of that.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: It was really.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: What is it that I have lived that I would like to share, to see if it would be helpful to you?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And I went down the path of talking about my kids and their health issues and talking about my fear and my control issues and all these things that I had learned and that was really the first time that I can think of that I felt, I really felt that I was pushing against and opening up from that concept of infinite possibilities and what is my gift right now versus, perhaps, what I've been trained or conditioned or, you know, my comfort zone about what to share.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a comfort in the convention of this, what you're calling tracked.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: But I've often talked about you do this to go to that, to go to this, and the corporate world, and we're both in healthcare, so like in the sense of start as a potentially a manager, move to a director and then an AVP, and then a VP, and then the SVP and then a chief or you know whatever.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: But we get into this mode and you're like, if you're hardworking, you're making a difference, you're doing something that's for the good, the larger good.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: But at some point I know I'll speak for myself like I got the point.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I was like I kept getting to the top of everything and then I'm like, okay, what's next?
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess what I realize now is that I was getting to those points incredibly wonderful, thankful, grateful points in my career where I learned so much.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: But I'm not sure it was actually feeding who I really was or wanted to be, and I know that might sound weird, but it was just for me, like I feel.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Even said this to my team this week, I said I feel more like me than I've ever felt before.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: So I think it's really cool in the sense of your bold moment, that moment, that defining moment, which which, just a year ago, right yeah, where you kind of said I'm going to share, but I'm going to share in a different way, and it resonated with many.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So what was that feeling when people started coming up to you or emailing you or reaching out to you and saying, wow, I totally connected with what your message was?
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: It was so reinforcing that the risk made sense and it was what I had hoped.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And what I had hoped was that it would really be helpful.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: I had the opportunity to give the talk a couple of times and I had people coming up to me, particularly moms, crying and saying thank you for sharing that, because so much of what we try and do in life is connect with each other and reinforce the good in each other and the potential and the possibility and the love that's out there, and so many people, particularly as professional moms, feel alone and isolated in a lot of the difficult parts of managing the personal life within the professional context, and every everyone has different stories around those kinds of challenges.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: But the fact that people of all different parts of the organization and parts of my life reached out to me to say that did help me, that did help me feel like I'm not alone, that did help me feel like, okay, if I think about it this way, that can make this a either less painful or more positive or more growth mindset around these challenges, it was fantastic, it was really.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: You know it's.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: I mean it has led to this conversation today lately, because I of course think about examples around me of people who are stepping out, and clearly you're stepping out and clearly it's fun, then to learn from you and to learn how do you think about and maybe not even think, just do what is the best you like?
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: You just said where you feel exactly your most you.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like we are doing this you and I touched on this when we talked was getting to the point where I can actually have my website be my name so leadcoms.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I would have never been able to do that three years ago, certainly not 10 years ago.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: That's kind of cool, because it's not just a website or URL although I do love to collect URLs it's more.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: It's more about just me saying hey, yeah, I want you to know who I am.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I'm open to share the bumps, the bruises, the celebrations, the.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: You know all of it and I think that's part of it and you're doing that.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: And I think when you you know you did your talk and you've done it more than once, you're getting that reinforcement of like it's resonating, it's making a difference.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: People don't feel alone, they feel inspired by you.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: They're like I'm not the only one that did this, and sometimes you might even meet people who, who went through 10x what you did, right.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: And then you're like wow, actually you inspire me, because I think that happens too.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So there's like this cycle of understanding the possibilities and we talked about infinite possibilities One of the things a lot of my listeners they think maybe it's too late to do something like that to share their story, to be bold or to step out and get curious, and all of those things, some of them louder than others, are bold moments.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: So, as you think about infinite possibilities for you, what does that look like right now in your world?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think this concept is it ever too late?
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: It's actually, I think, sometimes the opposite.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: I'm experiencing like when you say, putting your name out, there is something you can do.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Now, a big piece of that is being vulnerable Right, and I feel like as we age, we get the perspective of the importance of vulnerability and how it really leads to a level of learning and connecting that you listen better, you learn better, you create better around you when you're vulnerable right and engage in a trust at different levels with different pieces of work.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: And I really do believe that, quite frankly, as we age, I think we can become more and more comfortable with being vulnerable, because the concept of being judged hopefully changes, you know, in many ways and we all think about or at least I think about learning to be more and more present, learning to be more and more in the moment, learning to be more and more around, creating the environment of creative intelligence, as they like to say.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: well, putting your name out there like it's just saying I am, it's like when you meditate or think it's I am.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: You know, it's the good, it's the bad, it's the awesome, it's the challenging, it's inspirational, it's the depressing, it's, but I am, and that matters so much.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: And I do think the that, as we experience more and more, if we're willing to open up, being bold actually gets easier.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, I love that.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: So, because what I've learned in kind of some of the things, the research that I've done in the book that I'm writing is that it actually feeds it.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: So it feeds boldness in this way.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: So you gain clarity of who you are, what you're about, what you care about, what you don't care about.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: There's another heroism from my career with you.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I remember we had one of those annual reviews and your staff say things about you and I had been criticized for being late to every meeting and you know my schedule.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: It was literally back to back and different buildings, right, right.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And I remember being totally dejected by it because the comment was Lee thinks her time is more important than ours.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: But your response to me was you need to think about what feedback you're going to keep and take and act on, and what feedback you're going to just understand and receive but do nothing with.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And that stuck with me too, because I think as we get older, that probably gets amplified.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I think that's right.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're still being judged by someone.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Someone doesn't like something we're doing, or maybe what we're doing brings something out, and someone else that bothers them right about themselves, not so much us, and I think it's important for us to realize that clarity then leads to confidence, which then you act upon.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: So clarity, confidence, action.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I've used that a couple times over the last several weeks with folks I've been working with and I really truly believe that the more you practice being bold in quiet or out loud, the easier it gets, the more it becomes of like.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: It's my definition of what bold is, and I'm going to do that.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do more talks, I'm going to do a podcast.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: So if someone's trying to figure that out, they're kind of at that point where I'm getting curious, I'm going to try something, I don't know what to do, but they feel a sense of that step out moment, which is a step, and you can't make someone take that step.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: What would be your guidance to someone who's kind of feeling that curiosity in their gut?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: I really do think that trusting in infinite potential means the opportunities there, take it.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: The opportunity is there, take it Now.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Sometimes there are risks that you have to understand, but I really do believe we self limit ourselves way more than we assess the risks correctly.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: I think we are so much more our own enemies in that regard.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: So take it.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Take it, Because I do think you know.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Another interesting thing about getting older in my mind is you start to see more and more of the patterns in your life that are opportunities.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: You start saying, oh, I did that and look what happened.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, I did that.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And then look what happened and you start being able to connect those dots where you can actually say you're taking this as an opportunity is actually going to create the next and the next and the next.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: So take the next one, even if it doesn't go perfectly.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: And probably that's the hardest part right, At least we're.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: You know, the high performing is that it doesn't go perfectly.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: So you know, maybe the flip side of that is learning about acceptance.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: You know, really, at the point in your life where you can say I'm going to be present, I'm going to pause when I need to and I'm going to accept that this is where I am, this is where I need to go, and it may be great and it may be a disaster.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's okay, that's okay.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we come, we become a little bit more, I think, tolerant of our imperfection.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so like I'm not perfect.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: But what was interesting is when I went through some coaching before I launched my business, we were talking about perfectionism and I said I'm not a perfectionist, I'm just not.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: And you know me a little bit after 15 years and, believe it or not, there was a learning for me of like I have some perfectionism in me, I know.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: Your listeners can't see me nodding with a knowing look.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, there's some self-awareness that happened at 48, even you know like it's an ongoing journey for me of self-awareness, but I think you know from the understanding that these opportunity patterns that come, it doesn't mean you're going to knock it out of the park.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: You may just hit a single, you may strike out, but you learn in that process and that's the whole growth mindset piece you talked about, and it doesn't have an age, it doesn't have an expiration date and it doesn't have to be announced on social media or anything like that.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: You can be doing these things without anyone really knowing.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: You can be exploring, yeah, and I think that's important for folks to know too.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I do think you know your recent podcast with Simon Alexander where you talked about curiosity and he particularly talked about it as a foundational element figuring out what you want.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: I think that's really important.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: So many of us struggle with what is it I want?
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: So an opportunity comes.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: You're like do I want that, do I not want all that?
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: It's really much more about learning that connects that you just made between learning and curiosity than it is about achieving and knowing exactly what you want.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, if you learn to like, every idea you have isn't a good one or maybe not the right one for you, or maybe not the right one for right now, yes, and I think that's the other thing.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean it's xed off forever, it just means, wow, I don't think I could do that again, but I might try that again a month from now or a year from now, but I've learned in that process right.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: So I think there's power in the creation of just the step of getting there to be able to do it right, to take it, that action, and then learning from it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you're pointing out patience with ourselves.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really hard.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: So glad you said that At least for me it's not a muscle I have.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: You do really work for me.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like why don't you get it yet?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: aren't you getting it right yeah?
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Why are you up at 3 am when you've known this was coming?
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Like you know there's a bit of that happening.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in that respect, like we realize that there's no one else, we could probably complain about that too, but ourselves, like we're in charge of our own setting of that expectation.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah that, you know, bold, that O is own right.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, the agency we have in our life.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And sometimes I think, you know, when I was younger and not that I'm super old, but I think there's definitely you know there's a lot of power in experience, and so being older you mean to have had some experiences.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: When I was younger I didn't feel like I was in control as much as I do now and that's a really silly word sometimes to use but just feeling like I have more of an ability to steer potentially where I'm going than I did when I was younger.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: So I think that's also the patience and understanding of I fight a lot less against things that don't go right.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I think that word controls are really interesting one, because it's certainly a favorite of mine to try and control things.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: But I do think that as you gain more and more experience, you realize that you don't control things.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: And, as a matter of fact, the more you recognize you don't control things, the more you actually see the opportunities for choice.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: So you know, I'm constantly trying to move from control to choice.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: This is not about control, this is about choice.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: When I do that shift, it's very helpful because then it's a lot more agency, as you just mentioned.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: It's a lot more agency.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: It is a lot more of those infinite possibilities that it makes a lot more sense in a non-tracked, more intentional life versus all that unconscious stuff, that tracking and things that are going on.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: And I think also we choose most of the basic things our attitude, you know, our health, and I'm not saying there's not factors that impact this, but moving from control to choice has been a really important shift for me.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that brings up kind of an interesting topic that comes up a lot Certainly, I think, for moms in the workplace.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Women in the workplace is just boundary setting and a feeling of overwhelm.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And a feeling of overwhelm is usually you've let some boundaries go, either you did it or someone else pushed it and you didn't push back or couldn't push back, because it's not always, I think, when you're in some of the settings you don't get to say declined.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I'm not coming to that meeting, but I think, from the perspective of being able to have choice in that and as a woman in the workplace and even as a mom, what are some of the things that you've experienced that took a level of boldness to set a boundary or to create an expectation?
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you talk about that and talk about being a mom, what I recognize for myself is a lot of it required letting go of fear and anxiety.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: The fear and anxiety of not being there for one of my girls.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: I have two daughters not being there when they need me, not providing what they need, not setting them up for success.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: There's all this negativity in the stress of being Mom guilt.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: It's mom guilt.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I use this example, but this is true like when you actually say it aloud you realize how ridiculous it is.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: But I remember being at a point and being a parent thinking, okay, I'd really like my girls to be exposed to all different after-school activities.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Then you start saying, okay, they should get to go to soccer, they should get to go to swimming.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: By the way, those are two of the worst for moms the sense of timing.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Mom's driving time they can't get to mine.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Because then you say to yourself because if they don't ever get to be part of a team, maybe they'll never understand what it means to be a teammate, or they're not going to be able to do a good job being part of a team and teamwork in school.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Next thing you're going down this rabbit hole.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, so they're not going to do as well as school as they could, and then they're not going to do as well getting into college as they could, and then they're not going to produce academically in a way that's going to get them choices in their career, and then they're going to have a sub-optimized life because they didn't go to soccer.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, come on, I mean like when you say it aloud, you're like I can't believe that I ever had any of these kinds of thoughts.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: But you do.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: And for me it came from fear and anxiety.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It came from not saying to myself.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: You know, like you say, I am Lee Burgess.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Not saying to myself you know what I am Carolyn Carpenter.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: I love these girls in profound ways and I'm enough.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: I'm enough and sometimes I'll miss the meetings, sometimes I'll miss the readathon at school, sometimes I'll miss this, I'll miss that, but I'm enough and they know their love and they know their love.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: There's never a question there.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: So a lot of it came from fear.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: So letting go of the fear made all sorts of choices a lot simpler for me.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: I think also for me a lot of it was around judgment, and so it's different.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: It's not just the fear that I have of not doing a good job, but how I'm perceived by other people in terms of doing a good job, and you got to let that one go early on.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: And this is you are your best parent because you're you are your best parent and just live that life and accept that there are choices that you get to make and prioritize as best you can yeah, and again we go back to it possibly will be imperfect on certain days, or maybe we'll never feel perfect, I don't know.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Like you know, I have good days and I have like, wow, I got to figure that one out.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and it's days, right, yeah, and I love looking back now, like I laugh with my girls now Like, do you remember when I and I'll give them an example Like, do you remember how, every night about 9 30, I started to get really uptight about the fact that this place is a disaster, you know, from a cleanliness?
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: And it's because I, you know the self-awareness of when you get tired, carolyn, you want things to look like they're under control.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: I call it the illusion of control.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: I would like my illusion of control particularly to kick in at 9 30 at night, because somehow, when I'm tired, I want everything in its place and it's place, yeah, and I can laugh with my girls about that.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Now I'm like, and they're like thank God you learned to just shut the door to the playroom.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, somewhere along the lines, and if I don't see, I think even I heard about the playroom you know like, and it was like on the third floor, far away.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: No one could even see it, but you yes exactly.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: First I'm going to shut the door when it was on the first floor, and then that only worked a little bit.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: So then we moved to the third floor.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: I just didn't.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: I didn't cross the threshold, exactly.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: See, that was a strategy right.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So sometimes we can't change ourselves, but we can create strategies that either minimize the impact of whether it's perfectionism or are judging ourselves or thinking that, you know, something's not in the right place.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: We can actually manage ourselves, and I think that's really important.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Learning for folks is to realize it's not always about someone else doing something.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I think a large percentage of the time it's about you doing something I would 100 percent agree, yeah, yeah.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: And gaining the self awareness that it starts with me.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a big learning because I think when I first left the corporate setting I realized that all my life I had been trying to help make force.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know Words that just aren't good words.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: People understand who I am, what I'm about, and instead I realized it was really I needed to understand me and what I was about.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: It wasn't about everybody else, it really was about me, and I don't think I had really taken the time or given myself the permission to do that until the time in my life.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: I think that's really important.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is so important.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that comes up to, I think, for women, mothers in the workplace is that you don't have to go it alone, but sometimes we feel like we do, even though our spouse didn't tell us or family didn't tell us that you know we've got to do everything, so lower be the one.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: So, as you're thinking about the totem pole of responsibilities that we have when we're in the workplace, what are some of the things that you would share with others about where you could learn how to delegate, or learn how to ask for help, or just let the playroom be the playroom and shut the door?
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I tell this story of having to be forced to understand that my husband would tell you sometimes you just have to.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I'm a little bit of a cartoon.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: You have to have the anvil that lands on my head for me to have some self-awareness.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: When my eldest daughter was diagnosed out of the blue with type 1 diabetes and it was truly unexpected I had a GI bug.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: She got started getting sick to her stomach as I was going out of town.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Everything would say that she had caught my GI bug, except for this little part of me that we had noticed she was losing some weight.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: We had reached out to her pediatrician to have an appointment the following week.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: She was just not able to keep any food down for two days and ended up working her way into the emergency department with my husband and saying, well, maybe we should do some labs, that isn't just a GI bug.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And they did and, oh my goodness, severe ketoacidosis ends up in the PICU and we're in a place where no one in our family has diabetes.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: No one in our family has diabetes.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: There's no reason to.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: And she's our good eater.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: She's like the kid who like fruit and vegetables, so it's like what is up with this?
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: The rest of us are like down in the sugar.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: She's super healthy, yeah, yeah.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: We are like the sugar fat.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: The rest of the families are anyway.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: So when she was diagnosed it was such a shock and if you've ever experienced a sudden chronic disease onset like that, it takes a lot of people to get through the initial stages, like it took a whole team of people, as there always is on the inpatient side in the hospital.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: But then there are educators, because it's changing your lifestyle.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: It's changing to change how you eat and how you track, how you eat as a teenager or young teenager within the context of a family.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And I was blown away by the people who reached out and helped.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Like there were parents from the school who I wouldn't know them if I ran over them.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: I mean I didn't know them and they were putting notes in our mailbox saying you know, we've heard your daughter's been diagnosed, our child is type one diabetic.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Here are the things that helped us.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: We had a parent come to the hospital to visit, to share supplies and thoughts and, you know, really just moral support.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: We had teachers, we had other students.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: We had, of course, all the people in my life who you know, I well knew, loved us and loved me.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: But the others, it was like this invisible network of people ready to help that I had not recognized, and it was an incredible lesson that people will help you.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: You don't even always have to ask, you just need to be open to them helping you.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And how important it is to really learn in life to say either I don't know or I need help.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Those were two phrases that were not common to my life that I use a lot now.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot now and in my life is so much richer, more successful, and I've learned so much more.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: After having had that opportunity and as a parent, I think that network is crucial because of all the needs, all the needs that we want to really meet and have met for our children.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's almost like the permission to allow someone to help you Like you're, instead of like you're closed.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, Like the sign open.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Open for help right.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and people being aware of it.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: It does connect back to, I think, vulnerability.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it does connect back to, I think, opportunity to see patterns in our lives when we didn't allow it, you know, and how it helped or how it released or decompressed or just made you feel not alone.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't always fix it.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Yep, it usually doesn't.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Honestly, it doesn't.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Someone can't fix it, although your loved ones and your friends want to, they can't.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: But what they can do is say I'm here, you're not alone, I'll pick that up, this is what I do.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: You know everyone's got advice, so you also have to realize you don't take it all.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, it's good intent, right yeah, it's good energy management in our lives, at least for me, which is also a benefit of maturing is you recognize you need to yeah, 100% yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: People give you energy when they're helping you, even if, to your point, it doesn't solve or it isn't maybe even point, you know spot on with the solution that you need.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: They're giving you energy and if you're open to that, that is a wonderful spicket that all of a sudden is open to allow you to have the energy to live in your own life in a way that has again more possibilities.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so just because everyone wasn't able to hear your talk, just in brief, what are kind of the tenants of the conversation or the talk that you did Kind of?
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: What are the main points or the takeaways for the people that you spoke to?
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Sure, you know the people that I spoke to.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: I use my younger daughter to talk about how I learned to let go of fear and anxiety in my everyday life.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Her scenario, health wise, really challenged me to recognize and have the self awareness of how I was living really with fear on a regular basis in a way that was unhelpful for everyone, versus truly recognizing.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Back to that word control we used before, that I'm not in control and that the things that I was giving up by trying to control what I couldn't were important things like presence, like pausing, like joy, because there's joy in the moments that you have that if you're worrying about what you need to do or what's next or what could happen.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: I've heard somebody define anxiety as the worst use of your imagination.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: I think it's a good definition.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is the worst use of your imagination.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: So, anyway, one of the tenants of the talk is, for me, it was letting go of living in that fear.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: I also talk about being optimistic, and that was a piece of advice that was given to me early on, when my daughter was born, that I summarily ignored for well more than a decade before I recognize what that really means.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Because, back to this concept of infinite possibilities.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Being optimistic is recognizing that.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: It's recognizing that that moving through life is the positivity.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: And you know I've always been an attitude person.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Attitude is a choice, positivity is a choice.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Kindness, all those things are choices, and so to choose positivity and to choose optimism in my parenting was a really important part of my life.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: So to really live without the fear and live with optimism.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: And then, with my older daughters we just talked about the other message was to recognize how important it is to ask for help and to accept help, and also that there's a stress in life.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: That's okay, because stress is about caring and you don't want to not care.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: You know the things that are important to you create tension, they create stress, they create energy, positive and negative.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: So it's not more important to accept that than to struggle against that and to find, you know, your own intercom, your own inner peace, with that acceptance that, because you care, you will be stressed and that's okay and that's okay.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Human, you're human, that's how we live.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: So those are the major messages that I really brought forward in that talk.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: As we close out, I think one of the things that's important for people to realize is that everyone is on their journey and they may be in a different place.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: They may be just beginning to hear some of these things.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: They still may hear it.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: No, they need to do something about it, but they're just not ready.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: So what are some of the things that especially women can do in the professional setting, personal setting, to really think about their next bold move and the infinite opportunities that exist?
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Is there anything kind of in the back of your mind that becomes like a daily I'm going to scan or I'm going to review, or I'm going to sit back and actually be still Like what's your strategy for that?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm learning to be still, and if you want something funny, I'll tell you how I've been learning to meditate for more than a year and I still haven't made it more than four minutes.
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's great.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think I could sit still for four minutes.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Honestly, it works.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: That's like the Olympics.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I would give you like a gold medal.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: You know I started with a very simple goal declutter, because you don't mean how I want everything neat at 930 at like this, right?
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: So my mind was just so cluttered.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: So I do think that a couple of things.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: Number one, finding those moments of pause, because there is.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: I do truly believe now, and I didn't believe this before, that in the stillness, you know, in the pause between thoughts is where that creative intelligence is.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: And I know you're, as a writer, learning that and living that every day.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not a writer, but I know that when my body has sufficient energy and my mind has come which is not my strength either, but my mind has come, and those are in the moments of pause that's when you can actually flow into that creative intelligence.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: And whatever creative intelligence is for you and your life, whether it's, I think, writing is one of the most profound ways, because I think words are magical, but that that can come out.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: But it can also come out in ideas that can come out in action plans that can come out in all different ways.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: So really finding for yourself where you can have that pause and how you can grow that pause, because it does allow for the creative intelligence and all those infinite possibilities.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: I think also what you were talking about earlier to you in terms of your own self.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Evolution, about learning who you are, has allowed you to be more who you are.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: I think, learning who we are today, a lot of times we talk about finding your passion, whatever that is, finding your purpose I do think that's a really worthy effort.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: I think it's really worthy to find out what it is that you love.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: What is it that you lose track of time because you just are in it and you love it?
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: And I think you know.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Back to the concept of being bold, I think when you're in what you love, you are naturally courageous, and when you're naturally courageous, you are being bold and you are making the change that you want to see in the world and you are being your best.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: You.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent, that's great advice.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I love putting together as a formula, you know, energy, your body, feeding your body mentally, physically, emotionally, and having the energy plus a calm mind, a mindset that's open, a mindset that's not judgmental, a mindset that's growth oriented.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: So energy plus calm mind equals creative intelligence, and I think you found your book.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: I'm really I'm going to keep on you about this because I really think you have a message to share that transcends so many levels of who we are as women, moms, professionals, sisters, mothers name all the little titles we have.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: You know big and small.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: So from that perspective, I do think that the creative intelligence formula is something we could all learn from us.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the bold lounge.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: All the information about Carolyn how to contact or follow up, to hear or speak is below.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you being on the bold lounge.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, thanks so much.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: This has been an awesome experience.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the bold lounge podcast.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.