Unlonely with Dr. Jody Carrington - The Courage Gap: Fear, Growth & Betting on Yourself - Margie Warrell

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

If fear has ever held you back from stepping into your power, THIS is the conversation you need to hear. 🔥 I sat down with the incredible Margie Warrell—leadership coach, bestselling author, and all-around badass—to unpack the real reason we get stuck.💡 “True transformation doesn’t come from setting goals alone. It comes from uncovering the unconscious ways fear sabotages progress and finding the courage to act.” 🤯We’re talking about:✨ The lies fear tells us (and how to rewrite them)✨ Why playing it safe is actually the biggest risk✨ 5 powerful steps to courageous action 💪✨ And—most importantly—why YOU are worthy of everything you desire.Follow Margie:https://www.facebook.com/@margiewarrellhttps://www.instagram.com/margiewarrell/https://www.linkedin.com/in/margiewarrell/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the beginning of every episode, there will always be time for an acknowledgement. You know, the more we do this, people ask, why do you have to do the acknowledgement in every episode? I got to tell you, I've never been more grateful for being able to raise my babies on the land where so much sacrifice was made. And I think what's really critical in this process is that the ask is just that we don't forget. So the importance of saying these words at the beginning of every episode will always be of utmost importance to me and this team. So

everything that we created here today for you happened on Treaty 7 land, which is now known as the center part of the province of Alberta. It is home of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which is made up of the Siksika, the Kainai, the Pikani, the Tatina First Nation, the Stony Nakoda First Nation, and the Métis Nation Region 3. Our job, our job as humans, is to simply acknowledge each other. That's how we do better, be better, and stay connected to the good. is to simply acknowledge each other. That's how we do better, be better and stay connected to the good. Welcome back, welcome into.

You know what I was gonna say? I was gonna say welcome back, welcome into unlocking us. That's not the name of my podcast. That's Brene Brown's podcast. Oh my God, that was a Freudian slip. Although Brene, if you're listening, I'm available. Where you have found yourself today is the Unlonely podcast, all right? And who you get to meet today is the amazing Dr. Margie Worrell. I came across her work as I'm starting to think

a little bit more these days about writing about boundaries and what gets in the way of us, you know, accessing kindness and I really really love her take on the idea of the courage gap. So listen, she's originally from Australia and now living in the US. She has became one of the most sought after leadership coaches and consulted with Fortune 500 companies, NASA, the US Congress. She really has some incredible insights on leading change, navigating risk, and mostly about cultivating courage in ourselves and others to sort of understand how we can shift this world

of leadership development. So she's a bestselling author, a global speaker. She is, as I said, a leadership coach and a women's leadership advocate. She, you'll notice today in this interview, she kind of bridges the head and the heart to kind of empower people to make better decisions and like take some action.

So we're going to, she has her own podcast, Live Brave, and her sixth book has just come out in the world. It's called The Courage Gap, and we're going to unpack what's in there. So she has five steps to sort of taking action, being courageous in this action taking place. And then these four things that she sort of labels as fear traps that kind of derail you. So we actually had a beautiful opportunity in this podcast to go through all of them. And she just succinctly sort of drives you home about all the things that can just help you be better and do better. And I can't think of a better time to sink into something like that. So I hope you love

it as much as I did. Okay, listen up. Welcome back. Welcome in another episode of Unlonely. And I got to tell you, I, uh you I've taken some time to really think about these last few guests as this season is coming around full circle for us and so many conversations about just what it takes to kind of stay empowered and stay connected in this lonely space. And I came upon the phenomenal Dr. Margie Worrall and just launched a book that I wanted to bring to this community because I think it made me think about things in a whole

other way. Courage and fear. And listen, one of the most powerful places I think I'm always looking to women who have been in at the head of tables and take no shit and unapologetically launch themselves into places where they can be helpful. And Margie is that human. She's a mama for, like Fortune 500 boardrooms. You worked at NASA, US Congress listens to you. You are talking about a speaker as well.

And then, oh, by the way, just climb Mount Kilimanjaro with your four teenage kids. It's fine. You know, just like small things that you've accomplished in your life. Margie, get in here. I am so excited that you're here today. Jodie, I am really happy to be with you, but I just want to say that those things are all true, but I didn't do them all at the same time. And maybe it just speaks to the fact that I'm not 25. You know, that I just, you do enough laps at the same time. And maybe it just speaks to the fact that I'm not 25. You know, that I just, you do enough laps around the sun,

you get to do a lot of cool things if you wanna do a lot of cool things. I agree, I agree. And that's what I love about. Now, I wanna launch right into the book, okay? Because I got a lot of questions about, you know, fear and courage and what's getting in the way because we talk a lot about around here

how noisy this world is, how disconnected we can become, how we spend a lot of time sinking in and away from relationships instead of sinking into them. And one of the things that you say that just stopped me in my tracks was this true transformation doesn't come from setting goals alone. It comes from uncovering the unconscious ways, fear sabotages progress and finding the courage to act. That sentence was like, okay, that's sold. I need to know more. So tell me, you know, goals seems to be the big thing, right? Like set your goals, set your goals.

Like everybody's got a goal. We're all gonna just frolic into the sunset of goals, which I think are so dumb. Tell me why that's a bit dumb and, or if you think it is, and then what gets in the way, generally speaking of us getting there, this thing called fear. Well, let's just start with the premise that we humans, you may, all of us are wired for safety, for certainty, for control, for comfort. And so that is always going to be tugging the other direction like an internal tug of war from our desire for connection, meaningful connection, for achieving goals, for learning, for giving, and making an impact using whatever our talents happen

to be. So we all live, to be human is to live with this internal tug of war. And so often though, we are not conscious of where that deep instinctive, self-protective instinct is pulling the invisible strings in our lives. In the small little ways, in our little interactions over the course of a day, and in the big ways with, you know, the goals that we set for ourselves, our ambitions, what we do, and also what we try and change about our lives as well. change about our lives as well. Um, okay. Wait, I love this.

There's this internal tug of war. All right. So that prevents us from, so we've got sort of two sides of us. If I get this right in my head, you know, you have the risk taker, you want to be great and dream big and I do think I can do it. And I have all these hopes and dreams. Like I think, okay, so I'll just talk about me because it's always about me. But if I think about like, I want a New York Times bestseller, I want to think about, you know, how do I set my company on fire? How do I do better and be better and make a greater impact?

And then there's all of those things that, as you say, you know, keep us from doing those things, right? Like, but then I have to step outside my comfort zone. Do I have to call a meeting with this person? Do I send this person an email? Do I do these things? Do I take those risks? Is that sort of what we're talking about? How does the internal narrative based on where we've come from, our experiences in life, who's raised us, what we've accomplished or hasn't accomplished, what holds us back? What are those tug-of-war things that start to bring us back? Jess Well, yeah, I mean, you just listed one of them, Jodie, which is that internal narrative that is just constantly interpreting and shading and tinting

our view of the world, of ourselves, of what's possible for us. And we all have it. You can't say, oh, I'm not gonna do this thing. I'm not gonna be having a story about things. We all do. I mean, that's just what it is to be human. But what we're often not so good at is stepping back and looking at how we're looking at our lives. Okay.

So just recognizing that all behavior is belief driven and that what you're telling yourself is like the operating software of what you do or you don't do, how you show up, how you connect with someone or don't, whether you walk up to someone, put out your hand, look them in the eye and say, hey, I'm Jodie, great to meet you. Because you're thinking, of course they want to meet me because I'm awesome. Or you know what, I'm not going to because they probably don't want to meet me and I'm not going, like I'll just wait till they come up to me or whatever it is. And so just recognizing that's always going to be going on inside of us. And it's not about silencing the noise,

nor is it about eradicating our fear or banishing all doubt forever? That isn't realistic. What it is is being more committed to what it is you want to create and who you want to be than your fear of what you don't want to happen. And that's where being anchored, taking time to just go, what is it I want for myself? And sometimes we don't know the answer to that, but sometimes what we do know is what I don't want. I do not want more of what I've just had or what I have right now. This is not what I want. Okay. I love that in terms of providing some clarity, right? Because many people say, you know, what do you want out of your life? And I think about this as a psychologist, you know,

I ask people all the time, like, where, what do you want? And we've been really clear around here these days. It just got me thinking. We just had a great big meeting with our team about where are we headed? And I've often said, I remember, you know, in many therapeutic conversations that I've had, you know, when you can see clearly the direction

where you want to be, you don't need the specifics on how to get there. And so I've often said, like, I have a big dream on what I want for, you know, for myself, what I want to feel like as I grow older, you know, the kind of mom, you know, the experience that I want my children to have,

where I want my marriage to be. How I'm gonna get there looks like a fucking disaster, okay? So, but so much of that for me is like, okay, that clarity in where you're going, how important is that? How much time should we particularly as women, I think be investing in a conversation, even a visualization around that end game? Yeah, I think a lot of women would say, I don't know, not 100% sure.

Well, I would say what is it you do know? Like, okay, there's a lot you don't know, but what do you know? Okay. Let's talk about your marriage or your relationship with a significant other. You know, if you could have, if I could wave my magic wand and give you something, you have to choose something. What would it look like? What would it feel like?

And just, just letting your imagination go beyond the bounds that you often let it go to, because often people live in fear. They don't even want to connect with that because as soon as they do, it creates a gap between where they are and where they'd love to be. And so just giving yourself permission to connect with that professionally. If you could have your wildest version of success doing what you love to do with your talents and your time every day with the kind of people you love to do it with, making a kind of impact that was deeply meaningful to you and kind of fed your soul and not just your bank account, what could that be? Just play with that. I think giving ourselves permission just to play with those possibilities of what that would be in itself is an act of courage, but it just helps

us get a little more clarity of the direction we want to head even if we don't know the end point destination. I remember this myself, Jodie. I had two little kids and I was living in Adelaide, Australia. I had paused. I'd gone back to study psychology part-time about 18 months earlier when I lived in actually Papua New Guinea. I'd moved back to Australia. I had first child in Melbourne, moved to Adelaide, had a second child. And I had this window. I'm like, oh, I think I want to go back to study this psychology. I had no idea where it was going to go. And I remember doing a meditation, Jodie. It was Wayne Dyer. I had, you know, the CD-ROM or whatever. And I played it and he said something

that it's about the direction as distinct from the destination at the end of that meditation. I was just clear that spending a few hours a week, part-time, part-time, half part-time studying psychology was gonna move me in a direction I wanted to head in even though I had no idea quite what that was going to look like the other side. I knew I didn't want to stay doing marketing, corporate marketing, which I had done and I just knew that that was something that was

calling my name, that direction. So I think for everyone, you mightn't have specific, you may not be crystal clear about the specifics, but give yourself permission to just go, well, what direction would I be heading that would inspire me and ignite a little spark of life inside me that I'm missing right now. And I really want to focus on that concept of the permission to go there. Because you know what is amazing to me is that we don't do that. And I, Marty and I were just on this training in San Diego where it was like, okay, really let's think about what abundance looks like.

Let's think about, you know, what the universe could bring you and offer you and that the universe, you know, people believe that anyways, in this discussion, it was like, there are so many opportunities if you believe this to be true, right? Are you open to those things? What gets in the way? And I hear you say, you know, Anyways, in this discussion, it was like, there are so many opportunities. If you believe this to be true, right? Are you open to those things? What gets in the way? And I hear you say, you know, like the internal narrative,

you know, in addition to the idea that we just don't allow ourselves to dream that big for fear of like, what if we don't make it? Who do we have the right to? Some of the things getting in the way for me is like, why do I think I deserve that? Like in this position of privilege that we've been so lucky to grow up in, our kids are so, I think I deserve that? Like in this position of privilege that we've been so lucky to

to grow up in, our kids are so I think lucky, and why what gives me the right to think that, you know, I should be more successful or you know, that I have this opportunity. What what else gets in the way? What do you what do you hear people saying? Well, I think you just touched on something about our own worthiness for it. Yeah. Am I worthy of that? Like, am I really worthy? Am I good enough? Don't I need to be smarter or more beautiful or more educated or more connected or more experienced or more fill in the blank. And my experience is as a woman who grew up in a really kind of gendered environment without a lot of strong female role models, in fact, a pretty big vacuum of them. I think it's easy to find ourselves feeling like, well, who am I to want that?

Is that even possible for me? And why me? And I often call on Marianne Williamson's beautiful poem that she wrote, but why not you? Who are you not to be fabulous and amazing and wildly successful and all the things? Why not you? Why someone else? I think just owning our worthiness and we do not have to be perfect and we do not have

to be brilliant. We've all got our own brand of brilliance, but too often we make these negative comparisons and I compare what I'm not great at with what you're great at, Jodie, with where I'm not, with where you are, with what I know is going on for me, which is that I'm peddling furiously underwater and you seem to be doing it with such ease and grace. And so I think we often get sucked into negative comparisons that only fuel that sense of unworthiness and keep us from just even starting out. We reject ourselves before the world has a chance to reject us. It's partly why I wrote my new book because I felt so strongly that there are so many talented, capable, amazing

people who are not living into their potential. It's not because of all the world's external barriers. Absolutely, there are people who are born in places who have immense barriers. The odds are stacked against them. But for so many people, if you're born in Canada or in Australia or in the US, and I get some people are born with more resources than others. It's what are we telling ourselves in our own head and our own relationship with our worthiness.

Oh, I love that. Take me through this book. Take me through, you know, again, I hear why you wrote it. How did you start writing it? How did the pieces come together? How have you shaped it? Oh, where do I start? You've written three books. I felt a call. Let me just say this, and I don't know your listeners very well, but I'm just going to say I had a call on my heart,

and I just had to heed the call. And at the time, I had a full-time role as a senior partner in board and CEO succession with Conferi, a very big consulting company, which was really leaning in on my skills in sort of leadership development, executive development and coaching and top team. And it was just all consuming. But I was missing the work that I'd done before prior to taking on that role that had kind of come my way unbidden. And I was like, I think I'm going to look back one day and regret that I didn't start doing this even though I didn't have a ton of bandwidth. So I knew that I wanted to write a book to help people close the gap between their potential to take actions that would improve their lives and elevate others' lives and what they actually did.

And time and time again, I found myself working with smart, intelligent, capable people who were not doing things and it wasn't because they didn't know what to do, it's because they weren't willing to do what they knew. And so hence the concept, the title for the book, The Courage Gap, it's because fear creates that gap between what we're capable of doing, what we know we need to be doing, if we really get quiet and listen to that deep voice, and then the actions we're taking and the impact we're making. And so it takes courage to close that gap. So I wanted to write a book, but not a theoretical book. There's a lot of theoretical books out there. And yes, I have a PhD and I know all the research.

I wanted to write a book that distilled all of the research and my own experience living around the world, working with people around the world into a really, really practical, like step-by-step framework. When you are on the precipice of your courage gap, when you know there's something you need to do, and you just know you need to and you should, and intellectually you know it's a good idea and yet, ugh, you've got, you feel sick in your belly and you're balking and you're procrastinating and you're

busying yourself with a million other things and convincing yourself by now isn't the right time. your gut, you felt sick in your belly and you're balking and you're procrastinating and you're busying yourself with a million other things and convincing yourself by now isn't the right time. I wanted to write a book that in those moments of do I don't I, it helps you galvanize your courage to just step forward and do it. Jess That's what I love about the book, okay? Because I think in this very noisy world, as you said, I'm stepping into book four, writing that these days. And I'm like, okay, what we need is shorter. What we need is clarity, because our bandwidth to take in massive amounts of information these days

is really becoming more and more compromised, right? Here's what I love. So your five powerful steps to courageous action. Like, can we dive into those five? Because I think that that is such a crux of the book. Obviously, um, you talk about what may derail that. So we'll go there next, but I really want to know, like, what are the five things you're telling people as you've navigate?

I mean, these big people like the U S Congress and NASA. And like, if you were to leadership coach me in this place of building a company, what are these five things that I really need to be aware of when I want to take this courageous action, the why not me space? Yeah, so there's this five step, five part framework that the whole book revolves around. And starting with intention, starting with, you know, what is your highest intention here? Like, for you, Jodie, why do you want to write a book beyond? Well, it's a good marketing tool, or it's, you know, no, like, what is if we keep peeling it back? Why do you want to do that? And focusing in on what it is you most want, and

getting clear about not just what you want to do, but who it is you want to be. Okay. And when you have that clarity and it's anchored in your deepest values, the values that, you know, your eulogy values, not your resume values. That's a deep, my eulogy values. When you are anchored in that place, it's like a star. And it helps you get clear, you know what? I need to reach out to this person

and ask if they'll support me. I need to say no to this thing that I've been doing that's nice and it's great. And maybe I've been doing it for five years and it's good. But you know what? It's not, it's my past. It's not taking me to where I wanna go in the future. I'm not just driven by inertia

but by inspiration towards where I want to go. So step one is all about focusing on what it is you most want and really activating that power of intention in your life. And it could be a short-term thing. Maybe you've got conflict in a relationship at work. Maybe you're feeling a bit stuck in your career and you're feeling passed over. Maybe you're feeling a little disempowered in your body and your physiology and you're like, oh, I'm feeling like I'm a bit overweight, I'm unfit. Maybe it's in your finances, maybe it's in your social life and you're not feeling a sense of connection and you don't have a tribe, but getting clear what is your highest intention and it could be your intention today this week, I'm having a party Saturday night, I want to create a space that everyone

feels at home and welcome and can just be authentic. Jess So I love that, yeah, about this model, right? It's like, it applies if you wanna talk about world domination, and it also applies if you wanna talk about getting through this next conversation or decision that you're making. The same rules apply? Yeah, I mean, it starts with, what is your highest intention here?

What's the highest good you're trying to achieve? Yep. And you know what? We know that a lot of people hold back from having difficult conversations, the most crucial conversations, because they're the least comfortable conversations. And so it's why when, you know, I'm talking to someone about what is it, you know, what's the conversation you know you need to have? It's not, it's that you're not having. And they're like, oh, I know I need to give this feedback. I know I need to end this relationship. I know I need to say no. I know I need to hold this person to account.

I know I need to let this person go. I know I need to tell my partner how I'm really feeling. And I'm like, what is your highest intention here? And your highest intention will always be of service to the world. Even if it might be something the other person wants to hear, even if you know it's something the other person won't want to hear. If you are being true to yourself, that is what you'd be doing. Okay. I love that. And I think that like that, that is, that's the big question. It's always in service of the world. I love that. Okay. Number one, number two, number two is re-scripting what keeps you stuck, makes you stressed or living too safely. And it is about belief. What's your belief systems?

Our beliefs are the operating system of behavior, all behaviors belief driven as you know. And we all walk around with those stories. We were talking about that about that narrative we have. And so often we are not present to where our beliefs are actually holding us hostage inside a cage of limited options for action. And actually there's so many things we can do. Our belief system has us on the ground floor of a skyrise and we're like, our belief system has us on the ground floor of a sky rise and we're like, well, I have to just keep doing this.

That's all I can do. There's nothing else I can do. I'm just a victim or this person's just a, you know, they're the villain or I don't have what it takes. And actually when you change your story, it puts you on the top of the building. And you're able to look out and see, you can, there's like a hundred different things you could do here. You are not stuck in this space.

Actually, there's a, there's a lot of things you can do, but you can't even see them right now because of what you're telling yourself. And so it expands our peripheral vision of what's possible, but it also keeps us from feeling as stressed and anxious as we're feeling because the stress we feel, yes, we know we need a certain amount of eustress, good stress to help us be on our game. But often people are way more anxious than they need to be. Your life isn't on the line here if this goes one way or another, but you would think that it did. And so often we have these iceberg stories dating back to our childhood that have us operating in the world like it's all life and death when it's actually not life

and death, but that becomes our reality. Can you give me some examples of limiting beliefs? Because I think we use that verbiage a lot, right? The limiting beliefs that'll hold us back. What are some common ones that you write about? That I need to be more of something before I can do something. I think this is particularly for women. I need more experience. I need to be more confident.

I need more skill in this area. I need more support. I need more skill in this area. I need more support. I need more money. The list goes on and on and on. I need to lose weight first. I know a woman who is carrying extra weight and she's a friend. Well, I know her socially. She's not a close friend. And I have heard her say, oh, I'm just going to wait until I lose some weight. Well, I heard her say that three years ago. And I'm like, what if you just started doing the very thing that you know you need to be doing? LESLIE KENDRICK Yeah. GIGI Yeah.

LESLIE KENDRICK Versus like, oh. And so people get stuck in these narratives and they become a core self-fulfilling prophecies. I had a client last year and she was telling me how the executive team of her company are so intimidating. I'm like, okay, what do they do? Give me an example. She didn't have an example. There was nothing someone was doing that was trying to intimidate her. She was intimidated by the story she was telling herself about them that positioned her as inferior to them and then superior to her. I'm like, what's another story you could tell? Yes. How could you reframe it so that actually they're just human beings with big jobs that are doing the best they can and you've got value to add and a valued perspective that needs to be heard and actually they want that.

And they're not trying to intimidate you. In fact, I actually also knew the executive team and I knew that actually they really wanted to see her succeed and her to step up and be a stronger leader. So just recognizing how often just the words we apply to ourself or we apply to others can keep us trapped. I love that. And I think for both one and two, intention and then this limiting belief, the rescripting piece is really like there's some work in here because they're not typically obvious.

We can say it's like this, you said we gotta keep peeling back. They're intimidating. And oftentimes then, unless we get to this place where we're like, OK, just a second, why would you say that? And we typically do these things like they always are, they never will, I won't ever make it, I cannot, I'm not good enough to, or it's really, I think, a part of that,

I hear you saying, really sort of wondering, is it always like that? Is that truly what, is the intimidation factor there all the time? What is that? And when you start to even hold space for that a little bit, where you're going and you know, the things that sort of the beliefs that are in there, it takes a little bit of time to pull those apart. Is that true? Yeah, that is true. Okay. And I think recognizing they're pretty deeply etched scripts.

recognizing they're pretty deeply etched scripts. Ooh, yeah, yeah. And we've been telling ourselves that a long time, those talk tracks, they are deeply etched in our psyche. And as you know, the more often we buy into any belief system, then the more resistance there's gonna be, because there's a payoff we get from it, right? The payoff might be that I'm a victim

of something that's outside my control, of terrible parents, an unfair system of oppression, etc., etc. And if you're looking for why you're a victim, you will always find reasons. Everyone will find reasons, including people that are born into what we might consider to be extreme privilege. They will also find reasons. So just recognizing you are always going to be able to find reasons to support what you're telling yourself if you're looking for them. Oh, and I can I'll take you. Sorry. No, no, you go.

I just so you've got to get out of your own way and go, what actually could be some evidence that the opposite is true? Okay, I love that. That actually I have everything it takes, that actually the universe is conspiring for me, that every experience I've had is an invaluable experience for me to grow into who it is I need to be so that I can step up and step forward and speak up and grow into what other people need me to be too. I love that. And mostly because, I mean, I'll just, I'll just tell you, you know, I've, I feel like I've done a lot of this work. I've had a number of therapists in my life

and I, you know, do this every day for many other people. But what I'm shocked at all the time is that every new stage of your life requires some of this work to remind yourself that you are worthy of or to wonder why you've been telling yourself you're not. So it's like, you know, even in this sort of therapy game, people are always like, is there an end game? You know, are you done therapy at any one given point? In my opinion, has always been absolutely not. We, we don what we're gonna feel like in our 40s, our 50s, our 60s, you know, when we have little babies or we have middle-aged kids or we have, you know,

we went through a divorce or we're wondering about whether we, you know, like all of these stages have different stories associated with them based on, for a number of reasons, how our parents walked through them. But there is that constant need for reflection that makes some of us the most healthiest. Would you agree to that or how do you feel about that? Yeah, no, like 500%. 500%. And part of that is, in the book, I talk about re-scripting, but our scripts are never done because life keeps changing. So the stories that have enabled us to get to a certain place may be insufficient for

the next chapter ahead. And one key aspect of this is recognizing when we're living in a story that keeps us living too safely, too comfortably, and selling ourselves short and short changing the future as well. And for people who are born in situations or find themselves in a situation, as I feel like I have in the last few years, my life suddenly got more comfortable in the last few years. And I've been moving all around the world while raising kids. There's always been massive uncertainty. And my husband left his job of 30 years. He's got a job that we never have to move again. Suddenly a lot of the things that created a lot of stress are gone. And I recognized, oh my gosh, this is what it is to live really comfortably. I haven't had that. A lot of people

have had that. I haven't had that. A lot of people have had that. I haven't had that. I'm like, oh, I have financial security for, I feel like the first time in my life that I, and I like, huh, oh man, this is where people get trapped. They just live that life of what I think of immaculate mediocrity. And sort of you get pulled into this perfectionism

of just curating everything. I'm like, I do not want to spend the next, what, 40 years of my life in this. I need to just actively go out and take on things that will stretch me and grow me because I want to live my fullest experience of life and I want to keep growing and I don't want to just sit on the vine because then I'll shrink on the vine. So I would say to anyone who's listening, if your life is wholly comfortable, then I encourage you, get yourself uncomfortable, do something that's a bit uncomfortable and stretch yourself. Take on something that's hard and stretch yourself, take on something that's hard, because that's where the juice of life lives. Oh, I love that.

And often where I think, you know, people, other people maybe have thought that you should be. What are the expectations of you? You know, we've talked about, you know, Marty and I talk a lot about this, you know, even in our one lifetime, the expectations of growing up in small town Canada was like, okay, you've got three choices,

even in our lifetime, right? You can be a teacher, a nurse or a secretary. And nobody would ever predicted that we were running a multimillion dollar company together. You know, this wasn't in the cards, nobody sort of suggested this was an option for you. And so as we look at our daughters, our sons, you know, having these conversations in just one generation, what that means to sort of not live safely because there is so much joy and predictability and comfort and safety. I get it all day long, right? If that's your jam, no problem, right? For me, there's so much out there that is left on the table when we don't take that risk, but God, it's scary. Is that the preventative piece oftentimes

for people, the unknown? Yeah. Yeah. And let's face it, our comfort zone is called a comfort zone for a reason. There's so many cliches and platitudes, and magic happens outside your comfort zone, etc. And I'm kind of loathe to be underscoring them, but there's a deep universal truth in that. And for people who've encountered a lot of adversity and struggles and challenges, they know the metal they're made of, because they've had to dig into that metal. And not everyone has had those adversities. And my kids got moved around a lot as teenagers, and I say moved around, like moved continent, plucked out of one continent, put in a school in a whole different system at another continent

at 16, et cetera. That was hard. And they complained as children and duty bound to do. And yet now, only seven or eight years later, they're like, man, that was such a valuable experience for me as a 16 year old. I'm not saying I liked it. I'm not saying it was fun. I'm not saying I would choose it over, but who I am as a 23 year old is someone who could walk into any room and hold my own and connect with anybody, you know, and be so adaptable. And so, so, you know, I'm not saying, you know, put your children into difficult situations, nor am I saying make life hard for yourself.

But I am saying connect to something that inspires you for yourself even if it stretches you, actually particularly because it stretches you because if it wasn't stretching you, it wouldn't be worthy of you. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Okay. Number three.

Number three. I actually did a podcast, recorded a podcast episode on this this morning myself, on my Live Brave podcast. It is about bringing our bravest self to the moment at hand, which includes transforming the psychology of fear into the physiology of courage. What do I mean by that? Fear, yes, gets fed by fearful thoughts, but our bodies get embedded with fear. It lives in our bodies. We feel it in our shoulders or we feel it in the butterflies in our belly or our tight throat or our sweaty palms, you know, in the blood, leaving our heart and going out to the periphery where we sense a threat. And often, it's not that we don't have the capacity to respond constructively, it's

that our fear is taking over and governing all our decisions. And so part of what it is to be brave with our life is to be able to regulate fear when it shows up for us. Our nervous system is called that for a reason. It's a nervous system. So being able to reset our defensive self at the ground level through our physiology, through how we breathe, through how we stand and sit and talk and walk and hold out eye contact and smile with the people around us. All of those things help us to reset that fear that

can just can leave us paralyzed and frozen. Okay, I like that. Even before you're talking, I was like, fear dysregulates. Absolutely. That's what it does. It we lose access to the best parts of ourselves when we get scared. Right. And intentionally from a neurophysiological perspective, that makes sense because you don't need access to your kindness and your empathy and like how to make chicken soup or what your childhood phone number was when you are scared when you were threatened for

your life or whatever the deal is. Right. So like our bodies work like that. When I think it is taking a risk, it also can sort of start that process and bringing it back becomes, you know, I like this, bringing our bravest self. What are some ways that you, you know, you talk about in this section of the book doing that?

Do you have some specific strategies? Yes, well, just starting with taking a breath. I know it's so simple. No, but it's so true. It's so simple, but just to just, if you're listening right now, just take the deepest breath you've taken all day. Just breathe in courage, breathe out fear. Just literally just something as simple as that. And if you do that five times, 10 times, that itself helps to reset your nervous system, to dislodge your defensive self that's sitting at the driver's seat and to dial up your bravest self, to be able to access your creativity and ingenuity and respond in a more constructive way.

So one is just taking a breath and I share you know just a little meditation a body scan in the book to help do that. Secondly, how we hold ourselves physically and I know Amy Cuddy popularized this with the with the power pose. Amy Cuddy popularized this with the power pose. There is so much research and the Kellogg School of Management out of Northwestern did a study and they found that people who held their postural expansiveness, not only did it shift their own experience of their own agency and power to deal with the challenges that were happening, that they were facing to step up, speak up. But actually, it shifted how they were perceived by others regardless of their rank in an organization or in a workplace, that they were perceived as more powerful even if their position wasn't

that powerful. And so how we hold ourselves is a key. It's a way to us to intervene at that ground level and to reset ourselves and to kind of dislodge the fear and access our courage. Something I love doing, I actually spoke at a big conference last week and I think it was about 3,000 people in the room and I wasn't going to do this but sometimes I just get this intuitive nudge and I have to lean into it. And I just got everyone up to their feet and get stand tall, you know, shoulders back, feet, you know, shoulder width apart, close your eyes, put your hand on your heart and just connect into that bravest part of yourself.

And imagine what that bravest part of yourself, just connect what does it want you to be doing? What does it want you to know? How does it want you to feel? What action does it want you to take next with whatever challenge you're facing? And it gives us access to a part of ourselves that sometimes in the busyness of life and with all of the chit-chat and distractions that we have, we don't connect to.

So there is just a power to just stand tall, close your eyes, put your hand on your heart and just breathe in to that inner brave heart. And it's just a, it sounds like a silly little exercise, but it is extraordinarily powerful for helping people to access that deep wisdom that we all have. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Okay. Number four, stepping into discomfort. Uh, let's face it, there's a point which the rubber hits the road and we have to lean in and do the very thing we don't want to do. It's like, okay, I get it. I should focus on what I want. I should change my story. I should stand tall, body courage. And then there's a

moment the rubber hits the road. We have to actually, whether it's have the conversation, pick up the phone, put our hand up, make that change, exit that relationship or job, step out into the unknown. And that wholly uncomfortable. Sometimes we feel like having a Mack truck parked on our chest or we're going to have a panic attack. But there is immense power that we access when we can embrace discomfort as a cue to move forward versus as a sign that we should retreat. So it is all about how do you shift how you're interpreting the discomfort that comes with doing the very thing that your fearful self would rather you didn't.

So it's not about avoiding it. And I think that's often what we do sometimes, right? Is it like, okay, if there's this intention that it's not comfortable, is that a sign that I shouldn't be moving in this direction? Which makes a lot of sense to us, right? If there's a pain point, how do we navigate or shift away from that? I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding, you know, even in trying

to keep people calm, I talk a lot about emotional regulation in my work and there's been a forever focus in the institution of education and parenting around like, how do we avoid the meltdowns? I think it's a much better question to ask, what do you do when they come? Right? Because I think when we try to keep everybody quiet, we miss our opportunity to figure out how to get people calm. And I love sort of the alignment of this sort of number four is really about you should have discomfort. And it's not about avoiding it. If it's there, ask it why? Try to understand sort of why it's there and stepping into it, embracing it, I think is such good advice.

And when you're feeling it, instead of like, oh, I shouldn't be feeling this. And I'm sure for you, Jodie, before I get onto a stage, I had this last week, I'll have a little moment where I want to go to the bathroom. I have this sudden urge, I have to go to the bathroom, I have to do pee. And I feel nervous and I can't remember one thing that I'm supposed to be saying. Yeah, I'm an idiot. This is the bathroom. I have this sudden urge, I have to go to the bathroom, I have to do pee and I feel nervous and I can't remember one thing that I'm supposed to be saying. Yeah, I'm an idiot. This is the time. I have 3000 people in front of me for one hour and I don't remember anything. Like I can't even, nothing. I have nothing, nothing that's coming up for me. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm here.

And I have learned to go, you know what? I mean, I always actually say a little prayer, like just to help me speak in to what people need to hear. But two, this is me on center stage of my own life. This nervousness, like trust that I'm going to find the words, which I always do. But these nerves are a sign that I am stepping onto center stage of my own purpose, of my own gifts. And I am, I am exactly where I need to be. And that is why I'm nervous, because I care so much, not because I shouldn't be doing it. Yeah, I love that. Right. And that's that narrative piece, right? Like I love how sort of we, we go back even into step number two, as you're navigating these steps, right? It's the re-scripting of what happens even in those things. Okay. And then number five.

what happens even in those things. Okay, and then number five. Number five is about, it's titled, well, it is about learning. How do we learn from all of our experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly? But it's title is Find the Treasure When You Trip. And recognizing that to be human is to fall short of being who we wanna be regularly,

like before dinner tonight. Right. And it is to sometimes try things and fail at getting the outcome we want. Okay. And other times, failing to try. Our inner wimp wins out and we don't lean forward. And I share a story of that in a book where I could see Oprah's best friend, Gail Kelly,

a few steps from me and I had a copy of my book in a bag. This is a prior book. I'm like, I'm four and a half steps from giving it to Gail Kelly who can pass it on to her best friend, Oprah. This is my golden ticket to every author's dream. And yet I stood there frozen, terrified of interrupting her, her rejecting me, her being annoyed by me, her just being like, who are you doing that? And so I didn't move and I stood there as she got her key card from her, she was checking into her hotel and walked past me to the elevator. And I beat up on myself and I beat up on myself. How do you talk to people about courage in that moment when you actually were being presented with a connection to someone? There was nothing to lose and yet I held back. All of us have moments where we need to step

forward when intellectually we know we should and yet we don't. Yet the research shows on self-compassion. Whether you try something and fail or whether you fail to even try as I did in that moment, it is when we can embrace our innate fallibility and forgive ourselves for being the works in progress that we are, that we're able to pick ourselves up quicker, that we're able to learn the lessons more fully and step forward more bravely sooner than we would otherwise versus putting ourselves in a big shame spiral, I'm not good enough, I don't know what it takes. And so if you're listening to this now, I invite you to think about how might forgiving your own fellibility and extending grace to yourself free you up to try and do something that you

have held back from because you were terrified of screwing it up and then having to beat up on yourself and feel terrible. But what if you said, I am going to risk worthy failure every single day because I know that that's what it takes for me to grow into the woman, the man that I really want to be. And I think that extending grace inward always lifts us higher. Extending grace inward always lifts us higher. I love that. And I know there's like lots of, I often think about this, the research around regret to

how, you know, people often say they much, much more at the end of their lives when they reflect back, regret the things they didn't do than the things they did. And that always fuels me, you know, when I think about, you know things they didn't do than things they did. And that always fuels me, you know, when I think about, you know, should we give this a shot? We're probably not ready. We're going to fuck it up. I'm going to not, you know, whatever the deal is. And I'm like, you know what? No, that data reminds me that, you know, whatever. So, I mean, sometimes I don't, but I, but I really, I think that's fantastic. Okay. Now just quickly, because I do want to know these about these fear traps, because

I love this outline. Those stages make so much sense to me. What derails us? You talk about them as there's four, right? Fear traps. Yeah, that's right. Well, firstly, we tend to discount the future. We treat the future more cheaply than we do the present. So we can imagine how we'll feel 10 minutes from now, an hour from now, a day from now if I reach out to someone and invite them out. If I extend an invitation and they say no, oh my God, I'm going to feel like such a loser. It'd be so embarrassing if I go and have a conversation with my manager and it doesn't go well. What we're lousy at doing is stepping into the shoes of us is stepping into the shoes of us six months from now, a year from now, and imagining how we'll feel

if we don't do it. So we have this temporal bias. We also tend to fear cast the future and the more uncertainty there is, the more prone we are to turn our forecasts into fear casts. And so we come up and we catastrophize and we come up with all sorts of worst case scenarios of, oh my God, if this happens and that happens. And in reality, that's very, very unlikely to happen.

In fact, a lot of the time that would never happen. That's just not going to happen. And so just being mindful that we have these cognitive biases that are there to keep us safe. We also are biased to have a fear trap of betraying ourselves to keep false peace with others. We care more about what other people think than what we think. We go along to get along and we don't speak up and we don't make a change or we don't say no. And in the end, we ultimately sell ourselves short and we end up being so cross at ourselves that we didn't do the very thing we knew we needed to do. And so just being mindful that all of us can do that. And I

think just recognizing that all of us have those biases. The last one that we do is we tend to rationalize the status quo. We are really good, like little Einstein's at coming up with a million reasons why not to do the very thing we know we should do. We're just brilliant. We're so creative when it comes to doing that. And so if there's something you know you need to do and you've been procrastinating, procrastination is just a fear tactic to avoid the potential of failure. Procrastination is just a fear tactic to avoid failure. The potential of failure. The potential of failure. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So discounting the future, fear casting worst case scenarios, betraying ourselves to secure a status with others and rationalizing the status quo and our cautiousness. Yeah.

Come on. Come on. That was phenomenal. And I mean, we just packed a whole book. Now you need to read it because all of this is, I think just a bit of a roadmap for what we're gonna need in this very dysregulated world. Because what happens, I think, when we get lonely, when we feel like we're unseen, everything that we talk about are the blocks to sort of doing the things that unlocking our

potential becomes further thwarted. And so I can't imagine a more timely moment for this book to come out into the world than right now. So Margie, thank you for this. Anything else you'd like to leave this community with today? I would just say take a chance on yourself, take more chances on yourself. I think it was Beyonce who said I'm not much one to gamble but if I'm going to make a bet, I'll make a bet on myself. I would say make more bets on yourself. Deal, deal Dr. Whirl. I'm making a bet on myself. I love that. Thank you so much for coming here today. I'm going to put everything in the show notes. How you get the book, how people can find you, you have just such a beautiful pedigree of

leadership coaching and you know this idea of human development right now becomes I think so critical. So thank you for being here. It was it was an honor. Thank you for having me. It was an honor. Thank you for having me. Unlonely podcast is produced by three incredible humans, Brian Siever, Taylor McGilvery, and Jeremy Saunders, all of Snack Lab productions. Our executive producer, my favorite human on this planet is Marty Piller. Soundtracks were created by Donovan Morgan, Unlonely branded artwork created by Elliot Cuss, our big PR shooters are Des Venot and Barry Cohen. Our digital marketing manager is the amazing Shayna Haddon, our 007 secret agent from the Talent Bureau is Jeff Lowness. And emotional

support is provided by Asher Grant, Evan Grant, and Olivia Grant. Go live. I am a registered clinical psychologist in Alberta, Canada. The content created and produced in this show is not intended as specific therapeutic advice. The intention of this podcast is to provide information, resources, education, and the one thing I think we all need the most, a safe place to land in this lonely world. We're all so glad you're here. Thanks for watching!