What Holds
What Holds is a podcast about the work that holds what founders and leaders are building. Each conversation looks beneath performance, self-sufficiency, and success into what people carry, what it costs, and what becomes possible when they are no longer carrying it alone.
What Holds
The Messy Work of Being Fully Alive with Renee Moorefield, PhD
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What does it mean to thrive when life is painful, uncertain, or more than we know how to carry?
Renee Moorefield has spent decades exploring what allows people to flourish, individually and collectively. In this conversation, we move beyond the usual language of wellness and resilience into a harder question: Can we thrive while we are still struggling?
Renee talks about a home invasion that shattered her sense of safety, the difficult months that followed, and the point at which she decided she would not allow what happened to determine the rest of her life. That experience changed how she understood thriving. Not as happiness, positivity, or some final state we reach, but as our capacity to remain engaged with life, including its difficulty.
We also talk about the cost of carrying a vision as though everything depends on you, and the relief that comes from recognizing that it does not. We explore the people who sometimes enter our lives long enough to give us a sense of possibility, and what it means to let ourselves be held when our own knowledge and resources are not enough.
From there, the conversation moves into awe, wonder, and enchantment. Renee describes how awe can decenter us, reconnecting us to something larger than ourselves in a culture that so often puts the individual at the center. We talk about nature, belonging, mutual care, yoga, music, and the difference between stepping in to fix something and simply being present to it.
At the center of the conversation is a different understanding of thriving. One large enough to include suffering, dependence, uncertainty, growth, and the messiness of being human.
In This Episode
00:00 Thriving while you're struggling
02:00 What allows human beings to flourish?
06:00 Suffering and the stories we tell about it
12:00 The gift and cost of carrying a vision
17:00 Over-responsibility and realizing it does not all depend on you
22:00 Surviving, thriving, and what trauma can change
31:00 Not becoming the story of what happened to you
36:00 Awe, wonder, enchantment, and being decentered
45:00 Beyond personal wellness toward mutual care
47:00 What holds when knowledge is not enough
50:00 Discernment, presence, and what remains difficult
About Renee Moorefield
Renee Moorefield, PhD, is co-founder and CEO of Wisdom Works. She began her career as an exercise physiologist working with people after heart attacks, where she saw that information alone was rarely enough to create lasting change. Her questions about what allows people to change and flourish eventually led her into organizational learning and change leadership at EDS and The Coca-Cola Company.
In 1999, Renee and her husband, David Moorefield, founded Wisdom Works. Their work helps leaders and organizations make human thriving a foundation for effective, sustainable leadership. Wisdom Works is also home to Be Well Lead Well®, a research-based platform focused on expanding the capacity of leaders, teams, and organizations to thrive.
About What Holds
What Holds is a podcast about what holds what founders and leaders are building, and what holds the people carrying it.
If this conversation brought someone to mind, send it to them. That's how a new show like this reaches the people it's for.
Connect with Renee Moorefield
Wisdom Works: https://www.wisdom-works.com/
Email: renee@wisdom-works.com
Connect with Carla Royal
Website: https://www.carlaroyal.com/
Email: carla@carlaroyal.com
Today I really understand thriving not as a state or some sort of a destination or being happy all the time, but the ability to be internally resourced to deal with our complexities, our difficulties, our challenges from a place of engagement and a place of growth.
SpeakerThis is What Holds Conversations with Founders and Leaders About the Weight Peary and what becomes possible when they are no longer alone in it. I'm Carla Royal, your host. My guest today is Dr. Renee Moorefield. Renee began her career as an exercise physiologist working with heart patients after heart attacks. There she saw firsthand that information alone was rarely enough to create lasting change. She became fascinated by deeper questions. What helps people change before they reach a crisis? And what enables that change to endure? Those questions took her into organizational learning and change leadership at EDS and the Coca-Cola Company. In nineteen ninety nine, she and her husband David founded Wisdom Works Group. For more than twenty five years, the Wisdom Works team has helped leaders and organizations make human thriving a standard for effective, sustainable, and wiser leadership. Today, Renee is the founder and CEO of WisdomWorks and leads Be Well Lead Well, a research-based platform helping teams, leaders, and organizations build their capacity to create a positive impact amid complexity, change, and pressure. Renee is also a dear friend, which makes this conversation especially meaningful to me. Renee, welcome to What Holds. It is so nice to be with you, Carla.
Speaker 1I was looking forward to this conversation.
SpeakerI have been looking forward to it so much because we don't get to connect as often as I would love to. Thank you for the invitation. You're welcome. You began your career working with people after heart attacks, which I did not know. From there, your attention moved further upstream toward the health of leaders, organizations, and the systems they shape. When you look back across all those years, what were you trying to understand all along?
Speaker 1That is such a great question. I think I've been essentially asking the same question my entire career. What allows us as human beings to really flourish, to truly thrive individually and collectively, and what gets in our way? As you said, I began very downstream, working with people after heart attacks, doing diet and exercise prescriptions. And in those situations, the consequences were very real, dire in many instances. Over time, I became increasingly interested in what does happen upstream because I could see if we don't change the upstream, we will continue to have this flood in the downstream effects. I started asking, what are the conditions inside us, around us, between us, that support us in relating and acting and making decisions in more life-enhancing ways rather than diminishing us? So how can we become really more fully alive? And how can we use our aliveness in service to something greater than ourselves? So that's been the core all along the way.
SpeakerI absolutely love that. It's interesting that you talk about flourishing because my experience personally is that I, as a psychotherapist for many years before I became a coach, I was seeing that what the work I was doing and the work of a lot of therapists, it wasn't just like you said, understanding a problem doesn't necessarily help you change that problem. Insight and understanding are often not enough. And the question I've been asking is, how do we heal from our traumas? And you're asking a a question that's even fuller and richer, which is how do people flourish? I love that. And I'm curious too if it's part preventative.
Speaker 1For sure, for sure. I mean, that brings you into, well, you and I can talk about this, but when you think of flourishing or when you think of fully thriving, engaging and meeting life's complexities and demands with a sense of growth and a sense of aliveness, then yes, you're talking prevention, but you're also talking about suffering as well. You're talking about how do we engage fully in suffering in a way that supports us in healing. I think it feels vast to me. It feels as much as I know at this point, it feels like a mystery to me as well. There's so much that I don't know that we don't know. And it feels like an edge of a place we can always learn and step into.
SpeakerI love that you say it's still a mystery. After all of these years, it's still a mystery because so many people out there, especially the health gurus, the personal development gurus, the influencers, are saying, Hey, I've got the answer. I know this is this is it, it's black and white. And I hear you saying, No, it's actually a mystery, and there's so much I still don't know. And I respect that so much that you say that, that you believe that, I do too. I think it's wonderful. I want to pull that thread a little bit of how we suffer. The way you put that is very interesting to me. What do you mean by how we suffer?
Speaker 1Think about all the ways that we suffer, whether they are the big ways, and some people call those the big T's, the big traumas that we have in our lives. I know for myself, living overseas and having all of our stuff stored in a one of those big containers, and then moving back to the States, having a 30-day period of storm that was unheard of, and finding out that we had lost everything in that storm. So all of a sudden, everything you thought you had is gone. So a big T. Or when I was in my late 30s, I was held up. I was, I was told I was going to be killed by a criminal that came into my home. So big T. We all have these experiences of big T's in our life, but we also have the smaller moments of suffering when we don't treat ourselves well internally, when we harm ourselves by our negative thinking. Not that negative thoughts aren't helpful, because they actually can be very, they can be teachers, but we when we get stuck in those negative cycles. So I would say suffering is all of that. It's those moments where no one's ever asked me to define suffering, so I'm actually loving this question. Because what just came to me is suffering, often we can feel it, notice it when our energy stops circulating, stops flowing within us and connecting to others. Suffering causes often a sense of disconnection and disengagement and disenchantment with our circumstances and with ourselves and with other people. So that's what I mean by suffering.
SpeakerAnd thank you for asking me that. No one's ever asked me. You're welcome. I want to pull the thread on enchantment in a minute, but not yet. I was reading something this morning, I cannot, for the life of me, remember who it was. It some for some reason I think it might have been C. S. Lewis. It was something that that came up. And he said the thing about suffering is not the suffering so much as it is the dialogue that we have about the suffering. And I think of which I often refer to as the Buddha's second arrow. We get hit with the first arrow, and then we we go on and on about it. Like why did this happen to me? What's wrong with me that this happened, and so forth. I wish I could remember exactly how you said that about how we suffer. That's how you said it. You said how we suffer.
Speaker 1Well, with the Buddha's second arrow, there is this idea that there, of course, is pain in our life. Yes. And there are difficulties in our life. But then the stories we tell about the difficulties is actually the suffering. And as I say that, even though I believe it, I do believe it, I also want to be really caring and mindful with that because it can seem so clean, like this is this and that is that, when our lives are not that way. If you would have told me that when I was assaulted in my home, I might have lashed out at you. Yes. Because I was in such incredible emotional pain. And then after that, a lot of physical pain. So for a period of time, even though I know that dis that distinction and I love the distinction, there's a time when that is super helpful. And then there's a time when it doesn't really capture the messiness of suffering itself.
SpeakerAbsolutely. And thank you for bringing that up because that's something that I harp on all the time. Like you said, it it sounds so simple and clean, and our lives are messy. And when you're in the midst of what you went through in that moment, there is true suffering. That is not the second arrow. That is the first arrow, and there's true suffering. If for years you don't somehow come to resolve it, which is the work that you do and the work that I do is to help people resolve it, then that's where there's maybe some unnecessary suffering. Anne Lamont talks about how we try to help people when really what we're trying to do is feel better ourselves. If I see you in pain, then I want to help you get out of pain because your pain is bothering me.
unknownYeah.
SpeakerAnd that it's actually quite quite selfish when we don't sit with people in their pain and allow them to have their pain. I think about some of the cultures where when someone dies, where they come around, there's one culture, I can't remember who it is, who the whole community comes and circles around the home of the bereaving and chants and sobs and howls and and wails, yes. And just holds that home and the bereaved. And and that's the kind of thing that I think is incredibly healing and powerful.
Speaker 1Yeah. As you say that, I can literally feel it in my chest. Oh, yeah. You can I can kind of feel this fullness of just to have a community of people holding you and your your pain and your suffering in that way and your grief is incredible, would be incredible, would be incredible. I think it's pretty uncommon in our culture.
SpeakerI agree. And it and it's the the reason I'm doing this podcast called What Holds is like what holds us well through the difficulty and messiness of life. And that's that's one example of what holds, but our culture doesn't do that well. So we have to find those ways and create those ways. You founded Wisdom Works around a vision of a world where everyone thrives, no exceptions. You have carried that vision for more than 25 years. What has carrying that vision given you and what has it cost you?
Speaker 1Yeah, another fantastic question, especially the cost kind of question. Yes. So the gift of it, the gift of it, and it's interesting when um I I want to speak to all the people who feel like they got a vision, they don't know where it came from, but they they know that they're supposed to do something about it. So a vision or a purpose. What is given me is a sense of coherence and meaning throughout my life. And even though I created Wisdomworks, uh co-founded Wisdomworks over 25 years ago with this vision, I can I can connect to this vision even when I was a child. So there were experiences I had there that I would see, and I thought, that's not right. That's not right. It's not right that this person, just because of their color or their race or their size or their gender, this is not right. But I was a child, so I didn't know how do you write it, how do you make things right. So I've held the vision for a long time. It's given me a lot of meaning in my life. It's given me a focus. It's allowed me to say yes to some things and no to others. So it's given me kind of a sense of help me make decisions in life. It's given me energy. I know that I have uh I get up in the morning and I I already feel like I'm I my life has purpose. So that's fantastic, and it gives me a lot of energy. The cost has been about caring about something that means so much to me and realizing that I can and and feeling such an incredible weight of responsibility for seeing how the world does not operate so in a way that everyone thrives. So the difference between this vision and our current reality and knowing that that gap is can seem so wide and for many years, and not that I don't still do this, but for many years, carrying that responsibility as a burden and like sort of the weight of it, that's been the cost. It's been heartbreaking. It's been a heartbreak in in many moments. There was a period of my career that I had some health issues and I knew they were directly related to how I was working all the time, frenetically, as if, well, I have to keep going because I'm the only one that can do something about this from a place of ego. And I again I don't say that judgmentally, but looking back, realizing, wow, that was such a limited view. Big vision, but very limited view about what can cause change. So there's been some some big costs as well. Another cost has been in identifying my work so closely to that vision that there were periods of my own life that I think I lost sight of other parts of my life that were so important, that I that I know are critical, vital to thriving, and yet I was being too narrow in my own life. So those have been the gifts and the costs.
SpeakerIt's very hard to see what's going on in the world today and and not feel some of that for people who care and you see so very, very clearly. And I think that there's I r listen, I have to tell you this story. I was in seminary back in my mid-20s for a year. Yeah. And and I remember the president of the college standing up in front of the whole student body and saying that he hadn't, I can't remember exactly how long, that he hadn't sinned, consciously sinned in like 10 years. And I remember in that moment, I remember thinking this so very clearly. Well, how incredibly convenient is that that you haven't sinned consciously in 10 years because we're human, we're messy. Of course, he's quote unquote sinned, whatever you think about that word, but there is a price in being conscious and in paying attention. There is a price. And you, it sounds like I'm I'm hearing you say have paid that price. And it also sounds like you are teaching people, leading people on how to thrive, and you've had to figure that out, to sort that out personally as you've been going along. And I I want to know how that personal struggle has informed what you're doing out there in Wisdomworks and Be Well Lead Well.
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, the first thing that I would say is that at some point I really started to realize that it it will take all of us, and I'm not saying every person on the planet, but will it will take all of us, many of us, to create a world where everyone thrives. I also realize, and there's something about that that all of us or many of us that is so relieving when you are someone who likes to overachieve and feels over responsible. There's something very relieving to go, oh, wait a minute. Like I can lean into the many of us that really care about this. And the moment I opened up to the many of us, there was so many people who had really that share the vision. They may not use the same words, but there are millions of people on this planet doing big things and small things every moment of every day to support a world where everyone thrives. And I feel now at this point in my life so connected to that. So I think opening myself up to others' experiences, other, others' vision of the world, others' stories about that has been very supportive for me. And I would say the way it shaped my work is really encouraging other people to lean into that kind of support as well, to really notice their own sense of over-responsibility and their own ego. And again, I don't the the word ego has so much heaviness around it, but I act I think ego is good. I think it helps us achieve lots of things. And then I think it also gets in the way. So here is how it was doing both for me. So that's uh letting go of control and learning more about how how life flows through us and connects us has been huge learning for me, as well as a big support and relief as well.
SpeakerCan feel that relief. And I think that it's millions of us humans, but also the earth herself. And you live in Colorado and I live in North Carolina, so you live in relatively new mountains, and I live in mountains that are 600 million years old. And sometimes when I think about that and the patience and the acceptance and the groundedness, and it's it's sort of like when I get feeling urgent and like, oh my gosh, I've got to change everything now. I really look out at the mountain range and the 600 million year old mountain range. Well, you're really speaking to me.
Speaker 1This is also my experience as well, it about perspective. I take a hike, you just you uh grow things, I have a little garden, and you like witness life, witness life and realize life has this intelligence, life knows how to thrive, life knows how to deal with constraints, life knows how to innovate, life knows how to resource, life, life already knows this, and we are life. Yes. We are living, breathing, dynamic, and so we are already, already, already, already creative, resourceful, whole, thriving innately. We have that innate capacity. So that it that just turns all of everything on its head because you realize thriving is not something to learn out there somewhere, as you mentioned from the latest wellness go expert or way wellness guru, who can teach us a skill or may actually have a supplement that's useful. So that there's that, and that's great. But they're not gonna teach us how we are innately resourceful and can can resource ourselves. They're not gonna teach us how our body, our physiology already knows how to learn, how to grow, how to evolve. And that to me is something to like that kind of insight, understanding, embodied understanding is something to be able to lean into.
SpeakerI agree. And I agree that we come in with that innate knowing, that innate embodying, we come in with it, and then and then we start to get in trouble. And it can't be, it can't be harmed or taken away from us, it can be covered over. It can be burdened, all kinds of things like that. And the other thing you said, you were talking about life. The other thing that I think is so important for people to understand is decay. Death and decay is what supports life. And it is a part of life. Every day when I walk my mountain, I see it. I see the decay and the richness of it and the compost of it. You have spent decades helping other people understand the difference between surviving and thriving. How do you understand that difference?
Speaker 1Yeah, we talked about we a little bit earlier, and when you asked this question, it makes me again think about the that story. One of the most humbling things about my own life has been not only studying thriving, but experiencing moments that I would say I really was suffering, like dark periods of my life and making some pretty pivotal decisions in those periods. So the one that I mentioned to you earlier, which really I would say there's been many stressful periods in my life, but the one of the darkest was kind of late 30s when someone came into my home and with intent to kill. And so without going into a lot of details, because that part doesn't matter, for a long while after that, I didn't sleep, I couldn't connect with joy, I couldn't play, I had a hard time connecting with people. I was almost robotic in a lot of my what I was doing. I knew that I had certain things to do, I had certain commitments I had made at work, certain commitments I had made in my marriage, certain commitments, and I was just doing those things, but pretty disconnected from being fully engaged in those things. My sense of safety was shattered at that time. And it rightly so. I mean, this is like this, it should have been, because I wasn't safe in that situation. And I knew intellectually a lot about the science of wellness, the science of well-being, and then the science of kind of this larger conversation we're having about thriving. But I was far from it. And there was a moment, and I can't remember if something precipitated this, but I remember having this moment where I was having a conversation with myself, and I decided, okay, I'm not doing well. I am really not doing well. At a very fundamental level, I'm not doing well. So what can I do here? I am going to mine this experience for everything I can get out of it. I'm going to mine it. And I did. I started learning better skills for asking for help. I started learning more about understanding the nervous system under threat. I started learning biofeedback training. I went wide and I really started trying to learn as much as I can about my situation and about how to support myself, how to really resource myself externally when I had gotten to a place where I didn't feel like I could find those resources internally. To this day, so now 20 years later, exactly by the way, only a few months later, then 20 years later. Yeah, because I'll that was 39 and I'm 59 right now, about to be 60 in about a few weeks. Congratulations. Thank you. I've made it. I've made it. It's the best decade so far. Well, so far I'm loving it. Yeah. Because but just moving into it. This year is the 60th year. And so it's really, I've felt it, especially as my husband is a bit older than me. I've been moving with him along this journey. But um 20 years later, I can see that that moment where I made that decision about how I was going to relate to this situation in a different way, this whole experience, changed everything. It changed everything. So I would say now, that moment was the moment I said, I didn't have these words then, by the way, but I am going to thrive while I'm struggling. And that means I am going to fully engage. I'm going to fully engage to learn from it. I'm going to fully engage to help it help me evolve and grow in my, not just my skills, but my capacity, my capacity. And so that's what I would say that today I really understand thriving not as a state or some sort of a destination or being happy all the time, but the ability to be internally resourced to deal with our complexities, our difficulties, our challenges from a place of engagement and a place of growth. And that is really different than some of the movements that are in our world right now about happiness, being happy all the time or being positive all the time. Those just don't resonate for me. I think there's something to learn from them, but they don't resonate for me. They don't feel like they include our whole lives and all the messiness you and I have been talking about.
SpeakerI agree. And I'm so glad you're saying that because I want to reinforce that every time I can because of the hyper-positive psychology movement that I think can be damaging. As you said, there's some good things about it, but I think it's gone too far. How long did it take you to make that decision once that situation happened?
Speaker 1That's a good question. I would say I'm going to guess at this, because I don't remember, Carla, the the length of time, but I'm going to guess it was about nine months to a year. Because not only was I dealing with the trauma, I was also dealing with the criminal was caught. And so I was also dealing with the legal system because I was the witness and the victim. And so I remember it was nine months of going in and out of court, and nine months of the people supporting him and trying to get him off, have him not be in jail, nine months of them questioning me as if I had invited him in, or questioning me as if I didn't know what I was talking about. So it was like every time I went to the courthouse, it was trauma again, trauma again, trauma again, trauma again. And I finally one day, I it's almost like I internally I'd had enough. And I was like, wait a minute. I am not handling this well. I'm not doing well. What's happening to me is I'm shrinking. I'm shrinking. I can literally feel my energy and power in me. I can feel me shrinking. And that's when I found out who I was. I found out that I was fundamentally a fighter, and I don't mean fighter as someone who loves to fight in the way you we use that term, but someone who is like I will not be disrespected. I will not be diminished in this way. I just came out with this, no, I'm mining this for everything I can get out of it. And it was sort of that f fierceness. Maybe that's it. It's not fighter, it's fierceness. I realized that I was fierce. But it took a while. It took a while. But that shifted everything.
SpeakerYeah, and of course, that's who I've known you to be, that fierce, empowered woman. That's who I've known you to be. It's interesting to me how you got there and people don't get there. I'm always so curious about how some people make it through and other people don't. I'm always very, very curious about that. I have certain theories, but I think what's your theory about that?
Speaker 1How why do some people crumble and why do some people kind of rise or these words don't even describe it because it's really not or but what's your theory about that?
SpeakerI'm not sure. I mean, it there there because I've I I've just always wondered why do some people change and other people don't. And why have I made it through so much trauma, but so many in my family haven't. And I think I'm not sure, Renee, but I think there had to be somewhere along the line where I got enough support. I had a certain level or sense of safety or the desperation there I don't know, I haven't answered the question, but I find it such a curious thing. And why is it that some people, against all odds, seem to make it through, and other people who seem like they even have more going for them or more support don't. Trauma can totally take people over, and I don't have any judgment about people who don't find what you were able to find somehow.
Speaker 1When you say that, it does m make me think of this woman came in my life. I can't even remember her name, and she was in my life and out of my life very quickly, and she's not living today. So it was just this brief interaction that we had. But I remember it was right after the trauma happened, and I started having, I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis and a number of disease states, because my my system was shutting down in many ways. I had internalized all the stress and I was having all these issues, which ironically, luckily, fortunately, I do not have today. But I remember telling this story in a circle of women. And she comes to me later and she said, Renee, I want you to know I heard you and you didn't ask for advice, but here is what I feel called to say to you. Don't let yourself, your being, crystallize around any of this story. And so when you say that, how how easy it is for all of us to have a situation, positive or negative, and become very identified with it. Like this is now, it's not just me and the situation, it's me and the situation is me. That's basically what she was saying. And I remember feeling loved and kind of slapped in the face at the same time. Like, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, you tell this story too often, you're gonna become this story. And that was before I had made the decision to like, okay, I'm mining this for everything I can. So I'd also feel very fortunate that for whatever reason she came into my life, and for whatever reason, I was able to make that shift.
SpeakerAnd again, who knows why. And that has been true for me throughout life is there has been a person who has come along and stayed for just long enough, sometimes very long, sometimes just long enough. The most traumatic thing I went through at least as an adult, there was one person there for me that just basically held me, sometimes literally, sometimes emotionally, and and just believed in me. And she would say to me, I will hope for you until you can hope for yourself. And I I held on to that. I remember really, really holding on to that. So I think letting people in is part of it. And the other thing you said about you becoming that story, I do internal family systems work with my clients. We've got these different parts of us. And when a part takes over, in IFS it's called we we're blended with that part. It's all we can feel and all we can see. So if it's a grieving part, if it's a scared part, if it's a sad part, if it's a happy part, whatever part. If it just overwhelms us, we become it. And that's all that there is in our life. It sounds like maybe part of what happened was that woman came in and helped you get a little bit of space between that part that was legitimately frightened and was legitimately in danger. I mean, life danger, life and death danger, and that you were able to have a moment, a glimpse of your innate self, your true what I sometimes call the Buddha nature, just because of that golden Buddha story that I love to tell, how we come into this world whole and innate, with life, you know, life is living us, life is flowing through us. And you got a moment back in touch with that, and then you said, I'm going there, I'm going back to that innate place. No matter what I have to do, I'm gonna get back to that place. You didn't dismiss or get rid of that frightened part. You helped her. You helped her until she could feel safe enough again.
Speaker 1Yeah, because as you're talking, when I told you I felt loved and also slapped in the face, like in the best way, like pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. I think what she exactly what you're I mean, as you're describing it, it's like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And what it gave me was a sense of possibility, like a possibility of a different story, because I could I could see even the way I'm talking about this, relating about this, is going to take me along this particular trajectory of my life and her entering into my life and just saying what she did. And then she was out. I mean, it was really like that. She was out. Somehow I was receptive to it, but it gave me a sense of possibility.
Speaker 2Possibility. Yeah.
Speaker 1So you could almost use them in interchangeably. We call that kind of dimension in that framework and tool you're describing wonder. And awe is part of wonder. We could have called it enchantment as well. The power of awe, the power of enchantment, is that it decenters you. In our world, we talk so much about being centered and coming from a place of center, and what is your center and does your center hold and all of that? And that's wonderful. But when you're in a space of awe, you are decentered. What's important, you're connected to something that is much greater than yourself. So in the mountains that you're describing, in the mountains, in these new mountains that you're describing here in Colorado, I have a sense of I am this small, not diminished, but small part of this greater whole. But I'm integral to it. I'm integral to it. So you don't lose yourself because of that sense of awe, but you're not the center of it. You know, often our days are so busy or structured, or we have have kind of the values in our culture for optimization, optimizing everything, or everything has to be about effectiveness or profit or whatever. And again, all those things are fine, but that can take the opportunities for awe and wonder and enchantment out of our lives. And I agree with you, I think people are just they're really seeking. There's a growing movement of people seeking those kinds of experiences. We can do that through ways that are not healthy. We can do that way through ways that are very healthy. But this deeper desire to feel connected to something greater than ourselves and what it does for our well-being is incredible. What it does for our capacity to thrive is truly incredible.
SpeakerThat decentering, that word is just kind of bowled me over because I think that so much of the suffering in the world today is the centering, the influencer culture, the optimization culture. We are the ones that are centered. It's okay in moments, but all the time, and not having that felt sense, that experience of, you know, you mentioned how when I was talking about something earlier, you said I feel that in my chest about the women around the bereaved. You felt that in your chest. That's the level at which feeling awe and enchantment makes a difference to us.
Speaker 1I think underlying even this conversation is often in our culture, in the way that we're living, in the way that we're working, in the way that we are relating or not with each other, we can feel very separate. We can feel very set, and then separate can turn into alone or lonely. But we can feel very separate rather than what most people deeply want is to belong. What most people deeply want is a sense of connection. What most people deeply want is a sense of love and being loved. What most people deeply want is to know that they matter. These are like such basic human needs that cross culture, they cross gender, they cross this is sort of the deeper. And and yet we continue to reinforce. I mean, I think the conversation that we're having is a conversation that is now being had all over the world. So I think the silver lining to a lot of the division and the disconnection that we are feeling and is experiencing in particularly our culture and Western culture, is that it then creates this counterforce of conversation of more and more and more people that say, wait a minute, this is not what being human is about on this planet, individually or collectively. So there's more a growing conversation about what does it mean to flourish? What does it mean to thrive? What does it mean to be authentic? Now there's a whole domain of science around awe that we didn't have. All these things grow often because they are a counterforce to ways of living and working that are no longer serving us. They really are no longer serving us. And so they spark this energy for learning new patterns of relating and living and working, which it really excites me. I know you have, and I know I have been thinking about and doing this kind of work literally for decades now. And when you started and when I started decades ago, it was lonely to be having this kind of conversation. You couldn't have it like this. You had to constantly use other words to talk about thriving or talk about spirituality or talking about the mystery or talk about enchantment or you weren't using these words. But now it's more common. I don't feel a sense of limitation, like limiters from the outside world. And it could be that they're still there, that I'm paying less attention to them, or it could be that whatever was there, I internalized and limited myself and that and that I don't do that anymore. That is something that has really changed over the last few decades, is just having this less of an internal judge that's saying, No, you can't say that word. No, you can't say that word. Now it's like, wait a minute. And maybe it, maybe there's something about turning 60. I don't know. Maybe it was something about turning 50, because I think this last decade has been about this, where you go, you know, I've been here long enough to have some experiences that would tell me when we are fully flourishing, when we are fully alive. We bring our best selves to the decisions that need to be made on this planet, to the greatest complexities. The greatest complexities need our fullest energy, our fullest creativity, our fullest innovations. And we can only do that if we are showing up well resourced and fully alive. So this is not being well for the sake of being well. This is being well and thriving so that we can bring about more wisdom from ourselves and between ourselves for what we're dealing with on this planet. This last decade has been all about no longer mincing words, just being very true to the work.
SpeakerI love that. And I think that people are desperate for these words, Renee, even if some people are a little bit resistant to say them or hear them. I think underneath that people are desperate for it and for the depth and the richness and not just this superficial stuff that is not serving us. I was listening to a podcast earlier today, and there was a man, I can't remember his name, was talking about the personal development wellness movement, and it's all about personal wellness. And you just touched on something there that I think is super important, which is it's not just my personal wellness. What he talked about was really what we need to be calling it is care. How are we caring about those around us, about the land around us, about the earth? I want to get well so that I can care for, care for myself, care for you, care for those around me, care for my clients, care for this land that I'm fortunate to live on. Whereas so much of the influencer culture, I know I keep talking about that, and it's because I think there's been so much disconnection created through it, and it is about this personal wellness. I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna buff up, I'm gonna get strong, I'm gonna look great. To what end? To what end am I doing this? Now, I believe in taking good care of your body and going to the gym if you don't have a mountain to climb every day. But the bigger question is not personal wellness, but mutual wellness, caring.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. When you get at the heart of what real thriving is, it's interdependent. But it's of course you want to be personally well resourced to deal with all your complexities and demands, but we don't do any of that alone. We don't do any of that alone. We're always leaning into each other. So part of our lives, what gives me the most meaning in life, and I know it does you, is how do we support resourcing each other? How do we support? How do we live and be and act in such a way that we can be a life-enhancing force in others' lives? Yeah.
SpeakerI agree. What has sustained you or held you when your own knowledge was not enough, your own understanding was not enough?
Speaker 1One of the paths that has been the most sustaining for me when I was in my early twenties, I cracked open this book. It was a book about yoga, philosophy and practice of yoga. It did not have a spiral on it. So I had to literally break the binder to press it on the floor and try to do different postures and to learn. I'd never even heard of a yoga studio. I don't even think they were around at the time, but for some reason I felt very drawn to the philosophy and practice of yoga to this day, probably even more the philosophy. The practice to me is about the embodiment of the philosophy. But that has been sustaining for me all the things that I've been able to learn from different teachers along the way about self-regulation, about breath, about how prana and energy flow, about being a part of something greater than yourself, about consciousness and levels of consciousness, about meditation. These are all they were all aspects of a system that for whatever reason was a great fit for me. I encourage everyone to find that system for themselves, whatever that is, and not to adopt a system just because everyone's on that train to get on that train, but to really find. I don't know that I knew at the time that yoga would be so important, but that's been a sustaining force for me. When I talked about customer, one of the darkest periods of my life, I felt myself drawn more to the mat, drawn more and more to the mat and to breath work and meditation. That's ancient wisdom right there. I know. I know. It's also modern science now. Yes. Yes. But it's both. It's both. It's one of those integral practices.
SpeakerYes. I want to tell you one thing that sustained me several years ago when I was going through a hard time, and that was singing with you and David and George. I would say that too. I would say music. Singing with people. Yes.
Speaker 1Yeah.
SpeakerWhat was it about that for you? It was the the music itself, which I think is sacred and healing, just music, period. And the connection with the three of you, and especially with you, because we would just laugh so hard. It was the laughter, it was the connection, it was the joy, it was the creativity and the learning. It did feel like being held and and in the midst of some things that were difficult at that time for me.
Speaker 1Yeah, I totally, totally, totally agree. I can remember us trying to sing and laughing so hard that we could not. Yes. Because if something just tickled us and we would just start cracking up. And I loved that we had a weekly practice. So you knew, uh, okay, on Wednesday night, this thing is going to happen. And I looked forward to it every week. And I also loved that we were creating something that we could not create individually. Yes. And we ultimately shared it with others. Shared it. We shared it.
SpeakerThe Porch Dogs. I think her name was Porch Dogs, wasn't it? That was one fine name. Yes. But that that was something that held me at that time that was so important to me. And I'm grateful to this day. We're running out of time. Do you have a couple more minutes, Renee? I do. I I literally just emailed the person I was supposed to be. Go and said, I'm at a meeting. Okay, I'm almost there, but I do have a couple more questions for you. After all these years of studying and living this work, what remains difficult for you?
Speaker 1Well, there's lots of things I'm learning right now, but the biggest thing, kind of the deeper thing I think would be that I'm getting to learn over and over and over again, let me say it that way, is discernment and discerning it relates to something I said earlier, discerning what is mine to invest my full energy in, and what is mine to step back and hold and witness and listen to, but not need to fix or problem solve or invest fully. I've been able to figure that out from a work standpoint, but I have parents that are aging and my dad passed during COVID, but my stepdad and my mom are still here and they're they're on their own, they're independent, all of that good stuff. But they're also needing some more support, and some things are happening that I found myself last year intervening more, trying to intervene, thinking that I knew better. And I realized this is not going to be a good strategy for me. This is not going to be a good strategy. And so just learning how to be not just in that situation, but in life, just learning how to be loving and engaged, and yet knowing that sometimes engagement means to not step in and step forward. My natural energy is to want to step forward and direct and lead and to be someone who can be a better listener. Hopefully I'm getting to be a better listener. I'm not sure that that's always the case, but listening and witnessing and just holding space, holding space. Presence. And I mean, Carla, it's so interesting because I know when I'm in the role and I step into the role of coach, or I step into the role of facilitator, those are the qualities that make you really good at it. And I'm actually really good at those qualities in those situations. But it's been situations that are really close in, that it's family members, or it's friends that I deeply care about, or it's or work situations that I, you know, you can kind of see, okay, if that person keeps going in that direction, I don't see that that's gonna be a good thing. But what is mine? What is mine to really take care of? And where is it time to just let the situation play out, but still remain a part of it? So that's the trick for me is to not to detach from it. Because it's easy to go, okay, well, if I'm not needed here, I'll just wipe my hands at this and I'll just be gone. And these are situations where no, I need to stay in. I need to stay in, but I need to be in in a very different way.
SpeakerYes. And that way for me, when I think about it, is presence. And that's the the thing I always ask of myself is how can I be pres before I got on this call, how can I be present to this conversation and to and to Renee? And that feels different to me than engage than engage is a good word. I'm just saying it's a different word, it has a different energy. And with real presence, there might be a moment to engage, and there might be a moment to to not engage, like in terms of offering or helping, but to just be present and as you said, hold the space. So that's a beautiful lesson. And what I want our listeners to know is that that after all these years and all of your expertise and all of the incredible things you've done and created, that you still have your moments of messiness and struggle, just like I do, just like everyone does. There's not this moment of arrival. For sure. For sure. And that's a relief.
Speaker 1That is not only a relief, but that's just the truth. And the truth is of all of us is that human beings are messy. I'm messy, you're messy, everyone we work with is messy. And that's the truth of the situation. And that's good. That's good. That's not a dark part of us, that's not a bad part of us. That's a good thing.
SpeakerThis is just the truth of us. The divinity and the compost. Yes, at the same time. Renee, how can people reach you?
Speaker 1The best way is email rene at wisdom hyphenworks.com.
SpeakerI could just go on and on and on and on with you, and we may have to do it again at some point. But this has been so much fun to me, and I appreciate with all my heart you being here. It's just it's just so good to sit with you.
Speaker 1Me too, Carla. You have always been, and you are such a not just a a light, so light's not the right word, a fullness. That's the word I want to say. You are such a a fullness of presence, and you always have been in my life. That is a gift that you bring to to me, to this conversation, and I know to everyone that you touch. So thank you for inviting me to this, and thank you for what you're doing in the world.
SpeakerThank you. I appreciate all of that, and I receive that. If this conversation brought someone to mind, send it to them. That's how a new show like this reaches the people it's for. I'm Carla Royal. I work privately with founders and leaders on the things underneath what they are carrying. You can find me at Carlaroyal.com. This is what holds. I'll see you back here next time.