Fulfillment in the Face of Transition, Loss, and Grief with Dr Sherry Walling
In times of great change and challenge, it can be difficult to find fulfillment. This interview with Sherry explores how to find fulfillment in the face of grief, loss, and transition.
In my conversation with Dr. Sherry Walling we discuss…
- A psychological perspective on fulfillment and it’s cost
- Dealing with loss and the complexity of grief in transformation
- Practical tools and ways to navigate transitions
- Sherry’s new book, Touching Two Worlds and her how she has navigated loss and purpose together.
About Our Guest
Dr. Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist, speaker, podcaster, author, and mental health advocate. Her company, ZenFounder, helps entrepreneurs and leaders navigate transition, rapid growth, loss, conflict, or any manner of complex human experience.
She hosts the ZenFounder podcast, which has been called a “must listen” by both Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine and has been downloaded more than 1,000,000 times. She is also the host of Mind Curious, a podcast exploring innovations in mental health care via psychedelics.
Her best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together, combines the insight and warmth of a therapist with the truth-telling mirth of someone who has been there. Her soon-to-be-released new book, Touching Two Worlds, explores new strategies for finding wholeness in the aftermath of loss.
Sherry and her husband, Rob, reside in Minneapolis where they spend their time driving their children to music lessons. She has also been known to occasionally perform as a circus aerialist.
Resources Mentioned on the Show
Transcript
Dr. Sherry Walling What the pandemic has brought about for many of us is a lot of loss. Loss of human life in many cases, but also losses related to the plans that we made or the weddings that we would have attended or the events that we would have watched our children do. Like all of the disruption has created a lot of loss that I think we’re not really sure where to put, especially in the context of a company or a business where, you know, we maybe check in about the weekend but we’re not talking a lot about our feelings.
So I think this is an interesting time for leaders to become really savvy in grief and in how grief shows up in the workplace and in helping people create spaces for grief in a way to really bolster their mental health for the hard things.
James Laws Welcome to another episode of the Leading to Fulfillment podcast, where everything we talk about is meant to encourage people first leaders empower individuals to achieve fulfillment and help your organizations become places people love to work.
I’m your host, James Laws, and I have a great show in store for you. My guest for this episode is Dr. Sherry Walling.
Sherry Walling is a clinical psychologist, speaker, podcaster, bestselling author, yoga teacher, and mental health advocate. Her company, Zen founder, helps leaders and entrepreneurs navigate transition, loss, conflict, or any manner of complex human experience. She hosts the Zen Founder Podcast as well as the Mind Curious podcast.
She is the author of The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together. And as a new book coming out soon entitled Touching Two Worlds. *
In my conversation with Sherry, we discuss…
- a psychological perspective on fulfillment and its cost
- dealing with loss and the complexity of grief and transformation
- practical tools and ways to navigate transitions
- Sherry’s new book, Touching Two Worlds, and how she has navigated loss and purpose together
Before we dive into my conversation with Sherry, I would like to invite you to subscribe to the leading the fulfillment podcast in your favorite podcast tool.
We’re on Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, as well as most every other place and YouTube. You can also head on over to Ciircles.com that ciircles with two i’s and subscribe to our newsletter where we’ll let you know of each new episode as it becomes available, as well as send you original and curated content and leadership managing teams and finding fulfillment.
Now on to my conversation with Dr. Sherry Walling.
Sherry, welcome to the Leading to Fulfillment podcast. Thank you so much for agreeing to be my guest.
Dr. Sherry Walling It is such a delight to have a conversation with you, James. Thanks for inviting me.
James Laws It has its been a journey, and I realize that as far as like the leading to Fulfillment podcast, it’s going to take us several, several, several episodes, if not dozens of episodes for us to find our voice, to find our personality, to find our niche, and how we kind of fit into it.
So I realize like these first few episodes, I don’t actually know what leading the fulfillment podcast is going to be. You probably better than anyone can can speak to that. You just celebrated a big landmark for your own podcast. If I if I remember correctly. 300 episodes for Zen founder. Could you let everyone know a little bit about your show, what it’s about, and your journey?
Dr. Sherry Walling So Zen Founder is a podcast that is dedicated to conversations about mental health among entrepreneurs, and we have a pretty broad conceptualization of what mental health means, which means we talk about relationships, we talk about productivity and focus, and then we talk about some of those more traditional mental health topics like depression burnout, substance use. We also talk a lot about relationships because that’s a huge driver of mental health.
So 300 episodes in. We still have a lot to talk about.
James Laws That is awesome. It’s a great it’s a great podcast for any of my listeners who have not heard of it. We will link to it, of course, and you should definitely check it out is a lot of good stuff. I remember, you know, it’s funny, a few years ago you did actually a conference, a seminar for couples, for entrepreneurial couples that I was able to be a part of.
It was an awesome experience. I still always remember this one, awkward… like we did…There was a part of the session. Speaking of mental health and exploring new territory and all of these things. There was this particular… we had this one session of Couples Yoga.
Dr. Sherry Walling And it was a Surprise. Like nobody came to the event to do yoga.
James Laws Yeah, I totally forgot my yoga pants. They were not in my suitcase. I remember you saying like, so what was the experience like? How did you feel? And I went, I felt gross. I just felt so uncomfortable. I don’t think that would be any different today. But I did appreciate the experience and experiencing something new.
Dr. Sherry Walling This is not the endorsement I want from my next event. How did you feel, James, coming to this event with your wife? I felt gross.
James Laws No. All right. So that 30 minutes, I felt a little gross. The rest of it was amazing. We had such a good time, such great conversation. And I will say, while yoga… my body is not currently built for yoga, although I am working on it, I am working on my health and trying to get back into shape and in better shape than I am in now.
It was a cool experience. It was it was definitely some it was interesting. And I can say ultimately, looking back upon it, it was fun. To do something outside of my comfort zone and share an experience with my wife and many other entrepreneurs in the moment. So it was fun.
Dr. Sherry Walling Sometimes we say that nothing brings couples together like an awkward experience or like someone to hate. I was like, Okay, well, we’re creating memories. Surprise.
James Laws A common foe. I like it. It was. It was it was a fun experience and it was a lot of fun. And in that process, I think going through that, I started to realize in conversations that I had, and I think that’s probably even one of the beginning parts of my own journey toward saying, you know, really what is what am I looking for in my journey with my spouse, with my family, and what am I looking for in my journey as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a leader?
What does fulfillment ultimately look like for me? And I wonder, I’m I am not a psychologist. I am I am not a… I am a person who’s built a small business, who has some ideas and fulfillment I’m curious what when you think of fulfillment and as you talk to so many different people, both on your podcast and in other professional context, how do you define fulfillment and how do you think about fulfillment in your life?
Dr. Sherry Walling Well, I think my discipline as a clinical psychologist would would have a lot to say about it. And probably the lowest hanging fruit is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And this the sense of being at the top of the hierarchy, having basic needs met that allows people to then dive into more existential experiences of meaning and of being able to contribute And I think for me, as a psychologist, that really focuses on entrepreneurs, the people that I work with who seem to really be in a groove where they find a lot of satisfaction and meaning in their lives are those who have both an internal sense of satisfaction of what they are creating.
And there’s a lot of alignment between their gifting and their joy and how they spend their time. And then they’re also able to do things out of that joy and gifting that help to move the world forward or make life better for the folks around them.
James Laws That’s really cool. I, you know, I have here you have recently, actually. Not recently now. Actually, you have a new book coming. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But you did recently write a book a little while ago. I have I have it here. Keeping Your Sht Together. The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your Sht Together, which is of course, an awesome title. And later, by the way, as we release that, I have three other copies here that I’d love to give away to some listeners.
So I will give instructions at the end of this episode and how you can get a copy of this book and where you can buy it if you don’t get a free copy and just filled with great stuff about that kind of entrepreneur journey. And you talk about, you know, this, this fulfilling, this, this wanting to change the world better, but also doing it from a place of joy. And but you have a passage, and I just want to quote this one sentence and see if you can unpack this a little bit for me. You say, “goal setting begins with the pain you’ll pick in exchange for the success you want.” And that sounds, of course, to anybody listening, that sounds maybe awful…
Dr. Sherry Walling and somewhat masochistic.
James Laws a little masochistic. But I, I, I resemble the sentence. And I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit in context of this, wanting to find joy, wanting to find fulfillment, wanting to make a difference in the world, and yet knowing in order to be successful, there is this trade off of what pain are you willing to endure or inflict on yourself in order to achieve fulfillment and change in the world and joy all at the same time.
Dr. Sherry Walling Yeah, I think and this is not my unique idea, but I think when we are asking these questions around fulfillment and around what we want out of our lives, we have to ask what we’re willing to sacrifice because because in a way, everything is hard. It’s hard to start a business. It’s hard to be excellent at something. It’s hard to get an advanced degree but it’s a different hard to not.
Right. It’s a different hard to not live up to your potential. It’s a different hard to spend six or 7 hours the evening watching TV and maybe overloading your body with food you don’t totally need like that maybe isn’t hard in the moment, but that’s a hard path down the line. A really, you know, a path in which maybe you’re under stimulated intellectually and maybe not caring for your body.
So I think there’s a lot of hard in the world and choosing your hard, you know, choosing to stay in a marriage that’s challenging, choosing to show up for kids that are rock in your world with their challenges and needs and demands. Some days, you know, there’s lots of hard it’s just the sort of question of which hard you want or which hard will lead you to the outcome that’s most fulfilling that.
James Laws You know, that reminds me of… I can’t remember where I heard this quote last, but it’s to me, it’s it’s a powerful reminder.
And I believe the quote is… discipline is choosing is giving up what you want now for what you want most. And there is you know, some of this is what you said there kind of resonates with that idea that’s, you know. Yeah. In the moment to feel better. I may want all of this unhealthy food and it’s comforting to me in the moment. But what I want most is to live a long life, to be around for my family and to be able to be active with my kid and and to be around for a very long time. And what and what I want now sometimes is in direct contradiction to what I actually want most and there is some pain in making that choice of I want to be comforted now.
I want to have that in the moment. But, man, what I want most as I have to say no to that thing and endure through this period of time that I’m in. As as you focus more on mental health for entrepreneurs, what are what are some tips you would give to entrepreneurs who want to take care of themselves, and especially in what is really a crazy time right now with the pandemic? The great resignation, employees are looking for new opportunities. Leaders are trying to figure out how do I keep my team engaged and fulfilled and happy in their current roles? Like what would be some advice you would give to help them focus on their own mental health and perhaps even can they give that to their teams as well?
Dr. Sherry Walling Yeah, I think this is such an unprecedented time, and I’m glad you sort of referenced the great resignation because I’ve been thinking a lot about it and I’ve been thinking about it a lot in relationship to how we as individuals, but then as communities of people and I would say a company as a community, it’s a grouping of people how we interact with grief because I think for a lot of us, grief is this sort of unknown and practiced very emotional experience that we associate with death, which is of course correct, but also has all of these other implications. So what the pandemic has brought about for many of us is a lot of loss. Loss of human life in many cases, but also losses related to the plans that we made or the the weddings that we would have attended or the events that we would have watched our children do.
Like all of the disruption has created a lot of loss that I think we’re not really sure where to put, especially in the context of a company or a business where, you know, we maybe check in about the weekend, but we’re not talking a lot about our feelings. So I think this is an interesting time for leaders to become really savvy in grief and in how grief shows up in the workplace and in helping people create spaces for grief in a way to really bolster their mental health for the hard things
James Laws Yeah, I, I think I remember we were in a, we did a mastermind for a while. We were on a call together. And we it was during a period of time when I was going through my brother had just had a stroke not long after my father passed away. And I was dealing with a lot of that. And I kind of confessed that I don’t I don’t know that I let my emotions come to the surface all that much.
I let emotions come to the surface, which is weird. I, I will weep at a TV show. I will, I will shed a tear at a, at a, at a commercial. My, my son just finished his, his basketball season for second grade. And the coach was giving the parents and the team kind of a pep talk and he started to cry which means I started to cry and like, I have that moment.
But when it comes to my own, like, feelings, they tend to I never tend to not apparently my body does not let them surface. And I like it all happens inside me physically. And I go through that and it makes me kind of think about one of the things that I think about as I as I think about something that you said about this idea of grief and loss is that right now the season we’re in is a season of really of change and disruption, and we don’t know what’s going on.
And one of the things I heard once is that people don’t fear change. What they they struggle with is transition, because all transition comes with loss. I have lost something. And yes, something new may be on the horizon. But I need to have time to grieve that which I’ve lost in order to properly transition and accept change and to move on to that next phase.
What are your thoughts on that idea of that transition and how we manage that?
Dr. Sherry Walling Oh, I love it. I mean, I think that’s exactly what we’re talking about, is transformation right? Things are changing in culture. Things are changing in the nature of work. Things are changing. And what is needed for leaders to lead, whether that’s in distributed teams or just in this sort of post great resignation work economy.
But the thing about transformation and change is it takes time right? There’s that like Caterpillar goes into the cocoon and then comes out the other side. And for most of us, and I’ll just speak to maybe you and I, we’re kind of like high performers, like, what’s next? What am I doing? What what’s you know, we’re movers and shakers in the downside of that for mental health is there’s not the pause there’s not this space, there’s not that cocoon moment where we are able to say, I was this way and now I am in transition.
I’m grieving, I’m shifting, I’m moving, and I’m coming out the other side. Something else, some new or a different version of a grown me and without the incubation period, we’re just sort of like mutating without really being intentional.
James Laws I, I love the caterpillar analogy because when like when you think even like the, the science behind the metamorphosis is right, it, it defies logic that we understand, like the idea that caterpillar gets into this cocoon and basically liquefies everything that it was and then transforms into something completely new and different and how often does that happen in stages of our lives that we’re the happens unintentionally?
And I think that’s something that you’re talking about, right, is like how do we have intentional transitions? How do we give ourselves space to intentionally grieve what was lost and intentionally embrace what is new and actually make it through that transition?
Dr. Sherry Walling And I think that happens a lot more in our lives than we recognize right. I think adult development is something that we should probably all be talking more about.
The version of you when you’re 25 is way different and then the version of you when you’re 45 or 65. And we give a lot of attention to how children development or develop wonderfully. But I don’t know that we’re always as aware in ourselves as adults, maybe because our bodies don’t change quite as much, although I don’t know about you, but mine, mine does and is as I age.
But we tend to think we’ve arrived when it’s like, Okay, I’ve chosen a vocation, this is my job now. I’ve chosen a partner, this is my partner, this is my spouse. I have these children and the variables feel set. But what I learn and as I work with entrepreneurs is like the variables are not set. The variables change all the time, but we don’t necessarily give ourselves that the cocoon time to change inside along with what’s changing outside.
James Laws So what are some practical ways and tips that when you do recognize I am I am entering into a state of transition or I missed the entrance, but I know I am fully in it right now and I better do some things to help myself. Through this process. What are some practical ways we can apply to help us through these transitions?
Dr. Sherry Walling I think one of the greatest tools is developing practices that create your increase your capacity for introspection. So a good old fashioned journaling practice. I mean, in terms of psychological benefit, there are few others that are more accessible cheaper and easier to do than just having a brief journaling practice each day.
The capacity to look inside a gratitude journal is right alongside that. That has a lot of benefit and also increases introspection being in some kind of introspective or thoughtful community sometimes that’s a church group, sometimes it’s a mastermind, sometimes it’s a group of guys that you get together with a couple of times a year. But people who are asking you thoughtful questions and are inviting thoughtful questions from you, that’s incredibly powerful and then I think leveling up from there, it’s important to be in therapy or have a coach, have someone who is appointed in that role.
Of, Hey, help me grow, be my mentor in my own growth and help me see what is not automatically obvious to me.
James Laws I before the pandemic, I was regularly seeing a therapist and it was an awesome experience. So I highly recommend that. Yes, if you if you are listening and you are on the fence of whether or not well, like, why should I go?
Well, listen, I went and it’s funny because I filled out their questionnaire to kind of preparation. They want to know like what you what why you want to see them and what what’s your reasoning? And and when I got there, they were like, so you don’t have anything specific that you want to talk about? I’m like, no, I just feel like I go to a doctor and get a checkup from my physical body to make sure everything’s working the way it’s supposed to be working.
I don’t see why my mental health would be any different. And I think let’s just have some conversations and see where they go. And I have you know, it’s funny because not one moment that I go leave one of those sessions thinking, oh, that person unlocked some, you know, gave me some great deal of wisdom. What I end up I always happened is as a good therapist, they ask the right questions that I walked out going, Oh, I gave myself a big piece of wisdom that I didn’t even know was in me until the right questions were asked.
And I talked it out and I expressed what I was feeling and I got it out there. I’m like, there it is. Like the wisdom actually came within me the whole time. I just needed somebody, like you said, to ask thoughtful questions about how I see the world and why I navigate those things the way that I do.
And I discovered some things about myself. So yes, I 100% encourage that.
Dr. Sherry Walling And that’s why I categorize that kind of relationship as introspection. Right? It’s not a course. It’s not a book you’re reading. It’s not you receiving information. It’s you kind of inside out right? You’re, you’re connecting or help. Someone’s helping you make connections with things that are already inside of you and you have a new way to interact with them.
James Laws And they come out in the conversation. And I love this idea of introspection too. I, I’ve written a blog post over on the website where the podcast lives ciircles.com and I write about adding boredom into our schedule. And I use the term boredom because, you know, you can call what you why you call it margin you can call it the pause, you can call it an intermission or whatever you want to call it.
I use the term boredom because like when my son will come to me all the time and be like, I’m bored I’m bored, I don’t, I don’t know what to do. I don’t have anything to do. And I’m like, You have no idea how lucky you are, because as you become an adult, you’re never bored unless you schedule boredom into your schedule and protect it and give yourself time for that.
Boredom is not something that comes natural introspection and times of pause is not something that comes naturally to us as adults, because especially high achievers who are always on the go got to get do the next thing you got to build the next thing and so building time for for boredom and time to not have an agenda of thought and just let it process and you may call that meditation, right?
Like just spending that time of just letting those that that freeform thought come through and noticing it. And, you know, letting it pass through and take on the next thought. And if you want to chase the thought and that’s okay until the thought runs away from you and it’s out of your grasp, then go to the next thought. And having that time and scheduling it. I love that introspection is something I add have added over the years to my own life. And but I do I have to schedule it because life is busy and everyone’s trying to take my time.
Dr. Sherry Walling So I love that introspection, schedule it in, schedule it in that. And that’s the thing. Right?
James Laws Put it right. Put it on the calendar.
Dr. Sherry Walling Yeah, but nod to where time I think is so important and worth just reiterating. Like in, in the book that you mentioned, the entrepreneurs, guys keeping your shit together, one of the things that I really learned is I interviewed a lot of successful entrepreneurs is that they were folks who as children and in their early lives had a lot of time to tinker like to explore their own thoughts, to create worlds in their mind.
And I think that’s a huge driver of creativity. And it might be surprising but also of productivity because you are honing your ability to solve problems and think in novel ways when you are allowing unstructured AI. You could call it play, you could call boredom, but not outcome oriented thinking time.
James Laws Yeah, I think you’re right. I think we I can’t remember the exact quote. I but it’s basically like if I know I have an important job that’s going to take me 2 hours, I spend four, you know, I spend three quarters of that time planning. Like I just spent the time thinking about it and spending time in the thought process because it does make you more productive. You are actually about to release a new book called Touching Two Worlds can tell us a little bit about that?
Dr. Sherry Walling Yeah. So Touching Two Worlds is, oh, it’s like a project from my heart, but it’s part memoir and part of my functioning as a psychologist around topics of grief and loss. So the memoir component is, you know, we both share the similar experience of having lost fathers relatively recently and then I also lost my brother six months after I lost my father.
And so these double losses really pushed me to kind of I guess maybe put my money where my mouth is, is not the right analogy here, but pushed me to really dig down deep and think how do people keep going as productive leaders who have something they want to do in the world when they’re also carrying so much painful loss.
And so that’s that’s the touching two worlds component of the book is how to live in both joy and beauty and creativity. And ambition, and then also be faithful to the heaviness of grief and of loss and the heartache of losing people that I love very, very much. So how to how to bridge the gap, the emotional whiplash between those two pieces.
So the book contains some stories some of them are funny, some of them are silly, some of them are very sad. And then it contains each chapter has what we’re calling a take a moment section that invites someone into a practice, a journaling activity. There’s a couple of yoga exercises in there for you, James.
James Laws I can’t wait.
Dr. Sherry Walling But just do something to to help people move forward through their own experiences of loss and grief.
James Laws Now, before the show, you are telling me a little bit about some of the preparation that goes into this. This book is coming out in July, I believe in July. Yeah. Which feels like an eternity for me. But I will be posting a link if you if you’re interested in the book, you can sign up to get updates.
And for prerelease when it gets ready to come out. But in July, you’re getting we were talking a little bit about it and some of the work that you’re doing around the promotion of the book and the release of the book. Can you tell me a little about it? Because it’s actually not something I have heard before for a book release. And I love it.
Dr. Sherry Walling I think I have not heard of this either. So if someone else has had a circus around your book, let me know. So I in my play time, in my spare time, I train in circus arts. I started doing this around the time that these losses happening there started happening. So I started when I was about 40.
And so I’ve been an aerialist both on the flying trapeze and then in the aerial fabrics for about four years. And it was extraordinarily helpful to me to have this physical practice as I was going through so much heartache. I also have a coach, one of my dear friends and coaches, her name is Lynn, who lost her brother to suicide right around the same time that I lost my brother to suicide.
So we got together and started thinking, Okay, I’ve written this book about grief. What are some ways that we can integrate the circus arts into a story about mental health and grief and loss? And so we came up with this whole, I think, very unique and very beautiful circus arts show in which we will walk through the experience of mental health and connection to disconnection, loss, grief, depression, addiction and sort of the implosion.
And then we’re going to walk back into health again. And we are producing this in Minneapolis in May, and that will be in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. And we’re also doing it in partnership with NAMI, which is the National Alliance for Mental Illness. And so it will be a fundraiser for them. So it’s quite an extraordinary thing.
I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’m it’s feels just like the this work of love to be able to do this show with people that I really care about and respect.
James Laws It sounds amazing. I, I really, it’s, it’s, and it’s what’s interesting about it too, is like when I think about the concept of the book that you’ve written, you know, touching two worlds, I don’t immediately think to pair it with a circus act an aerial circus act.
But then again, you know, I’ve been to plenty of very moving and heart wrenching Cirque du Soleil type performances so I do get the connection, but I guess I’ve just never known anyone to go to put that together. And I think that’s it’s going to be a beautiful thing. I’m looking forward to hearing more about that as we get closer.
That’s that’s it’s really cool. But I have to ask you, you mentioned that you started this, which I think is an amazing statement on its own, right? That you this isn’t something you’ve done that you picked back up from your childhood. This is something you started at 40.
Dr. Sherry Walling Yeah.
James Laws There’s not that’s not that’s not a lot of 40 year olds have a moment in my life like you know how I’m going to I’m going to do trapeze and aerial silks and and stuff like that like how did that how did that become the thing in this journey.
Dr. Sherry Walling Yeah. So I moved from California to Minneapolis when my husband Rob sold his company. So we decided to move and I needed an indoor activity because it may surprise you to learn, but it’s no fly here. And I was not that excited about running in Subzero weather. I’m just not that hardcore. So anyway, I needed some kind of physical outlet, and I had I had always been I’d been a yoga practitioner and had been teaching yoga.
So I ended up in an aerial yoga class, which is using a fabric to sort of help support you in different yoga positions. And I thought that was cool and fun. And I realized that Minneapolis, where I now live in Saint Paul, the Twin Cities, have a long tradition of circus. So there’s a circus training school here which trains Cirque du Soleil athletes.
And so there’s a lot of circus around. So it just ended up being a thing that I got a little obsessed with. And although I don’t have a background in dance or gymnastics, I have a background as a runner and I’m just naturally pretty strong. And so it really worked for my body. And it has been a really fun outlet because it’s both athletic and artistic.
And I think I needed the combination of the two during the season of my life. So I just got lucky that it was available to me when I most needed it. I will say I’m not the only person I know that started sort of later in life. So for those of you who are thinking, you know, my days as an as a circus athlete or a martial arts athlete are done, I might challenge you to rethink those.
I did recently do a flying trapeze class with my friend who is we’re celebrating her 78th birthday, 78. And she was fabulous. On the flying trapeze.
James Laws Well I will say I do find it extremely challenging and encouraging to to see you take on something that I would never in a million years dream of first first of all I’m afraid of heights so but to see you kind of take on and not just dabble with it but really dove into it and embrace it as a part of who you are.
I find that I mean granted as far as as long as I have known you, you have always been in better shape than me. But still, I think it’s really cool and encouraging to see. All right. I think to anybody who’s on that kind of mid-life transition of their life can look at that and go, you know, my best days don’t have to be behind me.
They can still be the best days are still ahead. And that’s, I think, a super encouraging thing. And I would want my little kind of my last question as we kind of wrap up is how has that been thinking of your professional life? And this is more of your personal goal and private endeavor. And I guess not private. It’s all it’s anybody can see it, but a personal part of your life. How does that grab…
Dr. Sherry Walling Instagram they can see it all.
James Laws How has that been on your journey towards fulfillment? How has that played a piece this this new fairly important part of your life and played a part in your kind of seeking out fulfillment for yourself?
Dr. Sherry Walling It’s it’s pretty deeply integrated. And in in the process of getting ready for this book launch, I recently was interviewing PR firms, and I didn’t choose one. But anyway, I was I was going down this road, and so they would look at my social media and online presence, and almost all of them were like, okay, if you’re going to be taken seriously as an author and as a professional, you need to get rid of all of this circus crap in your Instagram And I was like, I can’t. I can’t. Because if you understand my message in the world, it’s that we are able to cope with really painful and hard things. And also hold on to joy and delight and play. And it has to be both, right? I can be a super serious author. I’m a really good psychologist, but I also have to be able to demonstrate that I know how to play and laugh and spin around and laugh at myself.
And I think circus is that discipline for me. I’m not good at it seems like, you know, I fall down a lot like you. I post pictures of my bruises and my face plants and that’s all really important to not taking any of the rest of it too seriously.
James Laws If the listeners take away anything that lasts that lasts a little bit, I hope they take that to heart just to be authentically who you are and find joy and delight even in the seriousness of your endeavors of wanting to change the world, that both do not have to be in opposition of the other.
And to that any PR firm that would say that they find a different business course, it’s a that’s not the right.
Sherry, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show with me. I want to give you the last word. Is there anything that you’d like our listeners to know how to find you or anything like that?
Dr. Sherry Walling Oh, you can you can find me on the Internet. Yeah. So the new book is called Touching Two Worlds, and that will come out in July, but we’ll start kind of our pre-launch campaign and making some noise about it probably at the end of March. So by the time this episode comes out, hopefully touching two worlds dot com will be alive and well, and you can learn about all the things that we’re doing around that book.
And then for my other endeavors, my life as an entrepreneurial psychologist, you can find me at Sherry Walling or at Zen Founder, which is also the name of the podcast. So thank you so much, James. It’s so delightful. To be with you. And I’m so glad that you are hosting these conversations because I think people can spend their lives being really busy and not really asking these questions about what it means to be fulfilled.
And I think these are these are the real questions. So I’m glad you’re engaging a community around asking them. Thank you.
James Laws I appreciate you being on the show. And we will, of course, try to have you on again in the future. But thank you for being on the show.
Yeah, I always come away from a conversation with Sherry, like I’ve just had a great therapy session and this episode was no different. I want to thank her again for being my guest on this episode, and I hope you got something from it.
Everything we mentioned, including the fullscreen transcript of the show, is available over on our website, and you can access it anytime by visiting leadingtofulfillment.com/007.
There is no question that the past couple of years have been filled with change, transition and loss And in my conversation with Sherry, she gave us some ideas and tools to start the journey of processing some of that.
One of her suggestions, I think, is one that I personally think we need to normalize, and that’s the idea of a regular session with a trained therapist. Therapy isn’t only for when you’re dealing with a mental health crisis. We get checkups at the doctor for our physical health, regular checkups at the dentist and eye doctor to make sure that everything in works and looks like it’s supposed to.
We even take our cars to get regular maintenance to make sure that they will run well for as long as possible. Why in the world would we do any less for our mental well-being, our mental emotional states are complex and just as prone to going haywire as anything else. There is so much deep within you yearning to be discovered and nurtured the right therapist can help you do that.
I know that being able to see a therapist is a privilege that not everyone has. It’s usually not free, and it can be hard to get out of the work during office hours. That being said, the benefits are staggering, and if you’re privileged enough to be able to see a therapist, I highly recommend it.
Thanks for listening and I hope you’ll join me on the next episode of Leading to Fulfillment.