Living Leaders
Living Leaders
Quantum Leadership and Embodying Soul Values | Jennifer Redden | Ep. 28
In this episode, Jennifer Redden, a quantum leadership mentor, shares her holistic approach to leadership. She emphasizes the importance of understanding our unique energetic signature and developing practices that allow us to fully embody our core values. Jennifer discusses the healing journey of leaders, the release of burnout on a cellular level, and the significance of long-term, multi-generational views and legacy building. She also highlights the role of soul values in leadership and the importance of creating a harmonious infrastructure for ourselves as embodied leaders. Jenn believes in the benefits of taking time for contemplation and healing by holding space and allowing ourselves to feel our emotions.
In this episode:
- Leadership is an energetic expression that requires understanding and embodying our unique energetic signature.
- Practices such as breathwork and spaciousness can help release burnout on a cellular level.
- Legacy building and long-term, multi-generational views are essential in creating a regenerative future.
- Soul values are the operating principles that guide our decisions and actions as leaders.
- Leadership is a system that requires curating practices and rituals that align with our soul values. Creating a harmonious infrastructure is essential for personal and professional growth.
- Taking time for contemplation and self-reflection can lead to clarity and alignment.
- Finding anchor points throughout the day for self-check-ins can help maintain balance and well-being..
Chapters
03:49 Defining leadership as an energetic expression
07:10 Discovering and understanding our unique energetic signature
08:39 Tools and practices for discovering our unique gifts and energetic blueprint
15:32 The benefits of energy management and alignment with soul values
21:40 The healing journey of leaders
29:12 Releasing burnout on a cellular level and the importance of spaciousness
36:22 The importance of long-term, multi-generational views and legacy building
49:07 Defining soul values and their role in leadership
54:48 Creating a Harmonious Infrastructure for our Leadership Practices
55:44 Taking Time for Contemplation
56:39 Finding Anchor Points for Self-Check-ins
57:37 Healing by Holding Space for Ourselves and Others
59:02 Creating a Secure Structure
For more amazing content by Jenn, check out her Expanded and Embodied Substack page, where you can also learn more about her Quantum Leadership Mastery program:
https://jennredden.substack.com/?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=27w9f9
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Meet our host, Nicole Bellisle:
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Hey leaders, welcome to the first episode of 2024 on the Living Leaders podcast. I cannot think of a better guest to be kicking off this year with other than Jennifer Redden. Jennifer is a quantum leadership mentor and she is working with executives, founders, leaders to uncover their unique leadership. Jennifer brings an amazing holistic approach to how she thinks about leadership, taking the whole person and their whole well-being into mind. She was a respiratory therapist for 17 years, so she understands embodiment, how to use the breath, how to navigate our nervous system, more than most people.
Nicole Bellisle:Jen and I met on Instagram, of all places, and one of the first pieces of content that I saw of hers was all about creating energetic harmony. I loved that she was talking about energy, because I do think that as leaders, we are energy managers. Jen helps her clients to understand their unique energetic signature as a leader, as well as develop a harmonious infrastructure, that is, the practices, the rituals, the habits that allow a leader to fully embody these core values, these soul level values, so that when things get hard, when trauma comes up or when burnout is knocking on the door, that we have the scaffolding and the self-resourcing to be able to navigate that, to be able to feel our emotions and lead ourselves, show up for ourselves first, before we ever show up for or lead another person. She also has amazing wisdom to share around building coherence within ourselves through having enough spaciousness to really know ourselves in the first place, to know what our soul values are, so that we can make aligned decisions and be leaving a legacy with each action, leaving a living legacy with every step that we take as an embodied, authentic leader. In today's episode, we get into so many amazing topics, from how to embody our soul values, how to make more aligned decisions, how to heal burnout by feeling our emotions and stepping into a new way of doing business, operating from a new set of rules, one that we ourselves create, and not simply a set of rules that we adopt from the existing work culture or a company that we might be working within. This form of honest, transparent, embodied leadership is only becoming more important because people can see through it. When we're not, when our message or when our purpose doesn't align with the actions that we're taking or how we're living our lifestyles, there's a coherence that we get to develop as leaders across our work, our relationships, our lifestyles and beyond. When this isn't coherent, people can feel it. So let's become the type of leaders that we want to be led by. Let's lead ourselves home Again.
Nicole Bellisle:I cannot think of a better place to start off this new season of living leaders. Without further ado, let's dive into the episode. Jen, I'm showing up with so much gratitude to get to speak with you today. You have such a remarkable and healing approach to leadership that I know is going to resonate deeply with our listeners, and I want to get into all of the incredible perspectives that you're holding about what leadership even is, how it can include our whole human well-being, how we can show up in a really unique, embodied version of our leadership. There's so much that you are sharing and bringing to the world through your message that I know we'll get into today, but I wanted to start with at a high level what is leadership to you? How are you defining leadership these days, and why? Because I sense that we're in an evolution and I would love to get your perspective on how you're even defining leadership.
Jenn Redden:I love how you went right for it. You're like here, we're going to jump right in. I love it. Oh I, as I formulate the words I'm going to say, I'm so happy to be here, and Nicole and I have only known each other for a short amount of time physically, but it feels like we've known each other forever, yes, Like truly sharing a fractal line of this is a relationship that holds so much power. So this makes me so happy to be here and to have found you and for us to be connected.
Nicole Bellisle:So like well, good things do happen on Instagram sometimes.
Jenn Redden:Oh, and that goes back to our very first conversation, right, we were like the universe works. It works in its most mysterious, unexplainable ways, and that, I think, is the best way to segue into leadership is you being that emerging part of the universe that operates in your own energetics. And that, to me, is what leadership really is going for in the future, where every single person, every single leader, is operating from their own unique energetic expression, each one of them, as they do that, they understand the importance of the other person operating from their unique energetic expression. So, then, what we build and what we have and what we create is this gorgeous tapestry that is filled with so many different colors, and we all appreciate the value that each one of us brings to the table, and we're able to come together and say, oh, this is not my strong suit. Like I can say, research isn't my strong suit, it's not something that I'm into.
Jenn Redden:My husband loves it and he's really good at it, and so I can reach out to him and say, hey, I need your help in researching this thing, and he can do it in like two seconds. It's something that would have taken me like hours. And that's that same understanding of relationship and what leadership really is. But before we can get to that point, I believe, of understanding someone else's unique energetic expression, we have to understand what ours is and we have to strip away those external circumstances, those external timelines, and really come into our wholeness and who we are. And that's how we create the future, a regenerative future that allows everyone to really live harmoniously and holistically.
Nicole Bellisle:I love that, especially because I don't know that we have many existing models of what regenerative business or what regenerative leadership actually looks like. You know, when I think about business school and the modeling that I witnessed, the embodiment of leadership that I saw growing up or on TV or through business school, it is very different than the leadership style that feels right in my own body. When I think about the moments when I feel most aligned as a leader, as a business owner, you know, wherever I'm showing up as my authentic self and I think, without that external model, there really is this deep inner process of discovery, as you're saying, and I'm wondering, when it comes to identifying those unique gifts and really understanding our unique energetic signature or leadership blueprint there are so many beautiful names we could give this. What have you seen work well on the journey to discovering what are unique gifts and what our energetic blueprint even is? Are there tools out there? Are there practices that you've seen?
Jenn Redden:work. There are so many different tools and so many different practices. It's so interesting. I love the timing of things right, the synchronicity. Just this morning, I was thinking about this of like.
Jenn Redden:I think there for a while, on Instagram especially, we were seeing these people having these like long morning rituals and all of these different ideas of you know what you need to have in your ritual. And I think, in the beginning, this is what I truly believe. In the beginning, yes, you actually do need to have these anchor points and this is very true in my own life, when I first started really understanding my own energetics, I did spend a lot of time with myself, with my journal, with my emotions. What does that look like? What do they feel like? What am I feeling? What did you know what I mean, going through all of those questions. And we need that space in the beginning because we're learning a new skill that we've never been taught. We're learning how to be truly in our own fullness and in our own unique expression, and we've never lived our way like that and we don't have examples of that. Really, I mean, we have a few, but not as many examples of that as we do other things. Right, like we were talking about a rigid strategy of how to get from point A to point B. Right, this whole idea of going to college and all of those things are gonna get you on the path to success. We are seeing examples of that, but there's not as many as there are other, and so we're still learning this skill.
Jenn Redden:And think about, whenever you're learning a new skill, the energy that you have to put into it, the time that you have to put into it. So this is you investing in yourself through time and space, by taking the time with your journal, by taking the time to cultivate a meditation practice, exercising in ways that feel good, that don't strain you. So even a simple walk versus, you know, feeling like you have to go to the gym and lift heavy weights or overextend yourself or really allowing yourself and finding new healing modalities maybe acupuncture, maybe having a regular massage all of these things can help you and they will slowly start to create the evidence for you that you are the leader that you get to be, and then, eventually, you won't need to spend as much time there, right, cause you've developed the skill, you've developed the habit, the ritual of like oh well, this is how I'm feeling today, right? So I'm feeling sad.
Jenn Redden:Is this a sadness of grief? Or is this a sadness where I'm feeling a little off right, like there's something like? This is more like an ego sadness, right, or some sort of other kind of sadness, and maybe some doubts are creeping in and that's what's creating the sadness. Okay, well, if it's grief, I know, with grief for me, sitting with that grief and being with that grief, finding someone I can talk to about that grief, is helpful. If it's where doubts are creeping in, I don't wanna shed those doubts and just go. Hey, those doubts don't matter. I wanna be like okay, well, why are you here?
Jenn Redden:But I'm also not gonna sit with it and sit in the dirty diaper of it, either right, like let me go do the dishes or the laundry, something that gets me moving and gets that energy moving but also doesn't require me to like heavily focus and concentrate on something, or that's gonna dig into that wound a little bit more. And so once you get to that point where you really understand those things, then you don't need as much time. You're not gonna spend as much time with your journal, or maybe you will, but you will know that you'll be able to move through those things faster. So there's a ton of tools out there and a lot of the tools that I use. Emotional Mastery is really understanding, and getting to that point of understanding your emotions and how they show up for you and what each one of them represents for you.
Nicole Bellisle:Amazing. Yeah, emotions can be such a window into our culture in a way, or our programming, our conditioning, and to really start to work with that. There's so many things that I love about what you're saying and I do wanna zoom in on this imagery that I was getting as you were speaking around leadership being an energetic practice, effectively an embodied energetic practice. I don't think enough people are saying that being a leader is knowing how to lead or manage your own energy and being attuned to that, being self-aware of that. We get to lead ourselves before we ever lead another person in a lot of ways, and I was really seeing almost like a guitar or an instrument where these rituals or these practices is almost an art form of getting to tune ourselves to a different sequence, to a different energetic signature of our own leadership and that, as you said, yes, in the beginning, that's gonna take time. We're learning a new instrument, we're learning how to play a new instrument and we're tuning that to a much different vibration and we might be playing a new song and that takes practice too when we learn that for the first time and it's scary when we play it in front of another person or a group of people for the first time. That is a whole process. But if we cut to a year, two years later, whatever the timeline might be, if we have really mastered that energetic signature, it is integrated in our body. We have the muscle memory of how to play that song on a tuned instrument, it becomes second nature.
Nicole Bellisle:We might not be thinking about it as much, we might not need the same warmup routine as kind of as you were saying with the morning ritual and things like this, and I just couldn't agree more.
Nicole Bellisle:Like in the beginning of my own leadership transformation, I had to lean on what I call the morning rhythm for a while, for years, where I had very specific routines and I was cycle syncing at the same time. So I was choosing different routines depending on which season I was in the annual calendar but also which phase of the menstrual cycle I was in, and that helped me attune to my present self and the context that I existed in that moment, whether it was my own physical body or the tasks or the intentions at hand or the larger cycle that I was in on my project cycles or the cycle of my year, and that helped so much to set my energy right and I don't think I realized for a long time that's what I was doing that it was actually an energetic game that I was playing, so I just love that you're bold and audacious enough to use that word in the world of leadership, and I wanna dig into that a bit more and ask more about how you're thinking about this.
Nicole Bellisle:Where are you seeing energy management show up as a strategy that works, and why do you think that this is working so well for leaders to manage their energy, to be attuned to their emotions? Where did the benefits turn up when we do that?
Jenn Redden:I think the biggest example is we can see in the world around us, right, look at the leaders that we have and I mean like the big leaders, look how many of them and you can even see it in social media and people that have like massive followings. We no longer tolerate people who don't walk the walk. If they're only talking the talk and there's nothing behind it, we don't tolerate it anymore. We don't want to be in that energy. We don't want to be around those people and this has been the status of leadership for decades, for centuries. Right. People and especially men that were do as I say, don't do as I do, right, and we were like it's inauthentic, why am I gonna follow somebody that's preaching that I should do something when you're not doing it yourself? And so that's why what I spoke to in the beginning of it becomes a tapestry, because then we're all in our own unique expression and then it becomes a coat of many colors you could say Like it's beautiful, and we all look to the people that ultimately, we all kind of want to fill a hole, right? So there's gonna be something inside of me that I need somebody else to kind of give me that. I need their help, I need their community. And you can think about it as farming, right. Like there's gonna be a farmer that grows cows, there's gonna be a farmer that grows carrots, there's gonna be a farmer that grows wheat, and then they all kind of come together and they help each other. And that's how a system, that's how all systems work, that's how we work as humans. There's gonna be certain things that I need someone else's skill set for. I need their ability to their own art, the master of their own energetic expression. I need that to bring me into my own, to create a new network for myself, right? So we think about that with trees, we see it in nature all the time, right, but they all work together. None of them are competing.
Jenn Redden:That's where this is going. That's the future of leadership. Everyone's standing in their unique energetic expression, everyone giving the world their unique art. And it's not just about living it, it's also being able to articulate it and you knowing it. So you can stand and say, hey, I'm really good at this, or hey, I need some help with this one thing, right, or I wanna bring in my community to help me with this particular thing, or a team. And when we look at leadership from a regenerative perspective. That's it. We follow the cues of nature and we see how the birds and the cows, and the dirt and the grass and the worms, all of it comes together and it's not separate. They all utilize each other. And I don't even know what your question was. I've gone off on a whole thing that I don't even remember where we started. That is perfect.
Nicole Bellisle:I trust it's where we were meant to go.
Jenn Redden:That's how I am, that's the future and that's why we have to create that evidence for ourselves and we do like your work with cycle thinking. That's a beautiful example of coming into a relationship with nature and something that's regenerative, that will continue to grow and build from there, and teaching other people how to do that is a beautiful gift and that's a beautiful example.
Nicole Bellisle:Yeah, the way that you're painting the future. I'm so hopeful for this, to be honest, because moving into patterns that are more nature-based feel incredibly healing to me from a cultural perspective, because I think we've been, and this turns up. We talk about this a lot in our executive education and the graduate level courses that we teach at Harvard on sustainability leadership in particular, we look at biomimicry. We look to nature as a mentor and as a model to learn from, and what we find a lot in those conversations is that our culture is operating on a set of patterns that nature herself does not use right. Nature is not overprivileging hierarchical systems or, as you said, competition. It has much more cooperative, ecosystem-based relationships. So I'm feeling in this conversation I mean we've beautifully touched on this idea of energetics and creating an energetic signature or a unique song that we get to sing and offer into the collective, as well as form new relationships to just about everything, including our own bodies, and we've talked about this in previous seasons on the podcast too this pattern of over-extraction that we have been engaging in as humans in relationship to nature Over-extracting, taking beyond the planetary limits of nature. We have been doing this same thing in our own bodies through overwork, through overextending beyond our own physical, emotional and mental limits in the name of productivity or profit or anything else and a lot of those patterns.
Nicole Bellisle:If we can let go of the patterns that are more harmful or sort of keep us in the culture that we've been operating in and shift into these patterns that are more aligned with nature, there's an incredible healing that I've witnessed in people as they went through not only the realization of, ah, I've been over-extracting from my body. I'm the one who has been leading myself unsustainably. Wow, that means I have a choice, but there's also probably some grief I need to process in that as well, because I feel bad for my body and the way that I've been treating it. So how can I shift into a version of self-leadership where I am leading from love and with reverence for my own being, and I'm leading myself and my projects more cyclically so that I include rest as a form of integration or quote-unquote productivity? That's part of the creative cycle and I've just watched people get out of burnout and work trauma and get into the embodiment of this other way of relating to themselves and relating to work, and I'm fascinated by the healing that's possible in this transformation and in this deeper embodiment of different patterns.
Nicole Bellisle:So I'd love to go there next, if that feels alive, to ask in your work and in working with leaders, executives, what is the healing journey that you've seen most often? Are there patterns or common experiences that you're seeing leaders have as they go through this transformation? And, yeah, if so, what are they? What can we learn from them?
Jenn Redden:It's that same thing of like I've been living a very extracted life, like I've been following rules that are not mine. Yes, and yeah, the thing that I you said so many beautiful things there and so much of it was like yes, those are my words Like the quote-unquote rest is productive. If there is one phrase that I wish we could just scratch from this idea of self-care is that rest is productive. Please stop saying it. That's rest is rest. You deserve rest. It does not have to be productive, it's you'll be, you know, and that right, there is that disentanglement that happens through healing and that I see all the time is that we're disentangling our worth from all of these external things. We're disentangling our worth from this collective trauma which has created so much burnout. And then, one of my favorite things that happens because at this point I don't know a single leader that hasn't operated at some level of burnout I think we've all experienced every human has. It's a collective thing. That's living and that's the thing. Burnout is a living entity, it lives inside of us and there are stages of burnout where you're an active burnout. Then there's recovery, where you think that you've kind of healed it right. Yeah, I think I'm good, I think I can. You know, when you go back into your life, like it doesn't feel as daunting, but you're not fully there yet, you're not like in remission. And then there's the part where it's like it's gone. Most people are living in that recovery stage, right Like, and what that really looks like is you keep living at those external, you keep living at extraction. You think you're not. So you're like let me plan these next goals, let me do this next thing, let me add to my to-do list. Oh, my gosh, I've got all this stuff right and you don't feel completely depleted. You're like no, I'm good, right, like there's this, like I'm okay, I'm okay, but you're still living in burnout. Once you've experienced burnout, it lives inside of you until you clear it out of yourselves, until you fully release it from your cellular structure, from your atomic structures. It's there and you're just. It's so easy. It's like the idea of having your second pregnancy. Once you've done it once, your body's gonna go right back to it the second time and then you have the third one and it's gonna go right back to it because it's programmed in there. Now and as a society, burnout is programmed into our collective network, into our collective cells, into our collective energy, and so it keeps getting easier and easier to live at stages of burnout until now, until we're at this point where we're like we can't do this anymore, we can't do this. I'm so. We're all so hurting and traumatized from the way that we're living. So that's what's happening in my world, with my clients. They're like I, they finally settle things. And I will tell you one of the examples.
Jenn Redden:One of my clients this was eight years before we started working together. Eight years prior, she was in massive burnout. She was actually dealing with some health issues and things like that. It was when she transitioned into management. She felt like she had recovered from that and she felt good and things like that. I was like, okay, yeah, I'm doing well, I'm not in burnout anymore, I feel pretty good, things are all right.
Jenn Redden:Then, after I worked together, she messaged me after one session and she was like I heard my ringtone and I realized that's the ringtone I programmed when I was at my highest state of burnout. I've had that same ringtone for the past eight years. Every time I hear that ringtone it just signals a trauma response in me. I can feel it now. I can actually feel my whole body tense when I hear that ringtone. That is the evidence that it wasn't fully healed, it wasn't fully released from her cellular structures. She was still living in that state. It's really hard to be in your energetic expression when you're still living by someone else's rules and still living in that burnout state, unconsciously.
Nicole Bellisle:That's huge. I'm so glad that you've brought that in. That burnout can almost live dormant within us until we do have that trigger or that environmental exposure. I'm no scientist, I'm no epigeneticist, but I can't help but think of how wise, on some level, our trauma responses are. If we've been inside of a system that has hurt us or over extracted from us the body's wisdom to signal such a strong no to that and put up that boundary on one level is absolutely incredible.
Nicole Bellisle:But on another, to your point, if we are ready to move beyond these systems that are hurting us and we want to start creating new ones that are more regenerative, if those triggers still exist, I can't help but feel kind of like what you said, of it's hard to get in the right energetic signature if we still have this living in ourselves, if that trigger comes up. It's almost like an energetic drain is kind of what I'm hearing you, what you're saying. If there's an energetic leak that could at any moment turn up and put us back in the old programming or back in the old body state that was harmful, where ourselves weren't in a state where they were repairing themselves, it's almost like, epigenetically, we've turned on these genes and this wisdom to help us survive in that context. But if we're no longer in it yeah to your point how do we let that go?
Nicole Bellisle:I was burnt out for probably eight years, was in an active state of recovery on that, and I know that I even with all of my work and all of the supporting other women especially to recover from burnout through practices like cycle syncing or more nature, aligned business, operational design. There's so many strategies that have worked for me and I know that there's still some residual from that time and when those triggers come up it's I almost have to go into a mini moment of recovery just to get myself aligned with the task, work through the fear, work through the trauma that came up and then maybe make a decision of whether I'm going to do that thing or say yes, and how I'm going to do it in a more aligned way. But yeah, I personally experience what you just said of it living dormant, and so I'm curious how do we release that on a cellular level? So that's not owning our time or energy anymore.
Jenn Redden:There's many ways that you can do this. I will speak to the way that I do this with my clients, and I breath, and for me it's the quantum breath, so it is a very deep, meditative space. You're in a complete, relaxed space. So the truth about the breath and this is one of those things that another phrase that I'm not a fan of is breath work. The breath is divine. The breath is divinity itself. It doesn't actually need to be worked, and after my long, extensive career in respiratory, I know what working to breathe actually looks like, and so the idea that we need to work the breath really is just so misaligned in so many ways. The breath, when we come into a deep, relaxed state and we remove the tensions and we come into that space where the tensions in our body and the friction in our body can be released, the breath will go into the places that we don't want to see. It has the ability to go into our unconscious. It has the ability to move into ourselves, and then, through that, what happens is things bubble to the surface. All of that stuff that you're ready, all of that trauma and old behaviors and conditioning, all of that stuff comes to the surface, and so that's part of the work that I do also is, before you can get to that point where you're like, let me see what I have here, there needs to be some sort of sequence, there needs to be something that you can rely on so you know how to face those things when they bubble up. So that goes back to our rituals, that goes back to how do I handle this emotion and what does that look like and what I tell everybody. I say it on podcasts all the time and I say it to my clients all the time. We want that stuff to bubble to the surface. We want it to come out of ourselves, we want it to come out of those dark places, we want it to come out of our energy systems and our energy points, because some of that stuff will just come out and it'll go and you'll never see it again and it's released and you're done.
Jenn Redden:There's going to be some stuff that requires you to spend some time with and, like you mentioned before, grief. So we want that stuff to come to the surface and you'll notice it. You'll notice it when you're driving and you get agitated by somebody or you're in a conversation with somebody and they say something and you feel like that trigger response. You're like, oh well, that was triggering. Once you have that cognitive awareness of what that trigger feels like, you don't necessarily have to deal with it in that moment, but you can be like I've got to come back to that.
Jenn Redden:You can create something new where we want these things in our life, and that's how we become. That's how we cultivate a capacity, hold our energetic expression. It's how we cultivate a capacity and increase our capacity to lead ourselves and lead others, and in my world, capacity is everything because it's what we want. Right. Burnout takes our capacity and it shrinks it, it fills it. It's to the point that you can't move, you can't funk. When we start going through healing burnout like true healing burnout and removing it from ourselves, we need to clean that stuff up. There's no more pushing it aside or pushing it down or letting it be there. We want it to be there and we want to have the courage to face it and see it for what it is.
Nicole Bellisle:It feels so important, because I think you can design even the most robust aligned system for yourself or have the rituals in your back pocket.
Nicole Bellisle:But if we're not actually letting ourselves feel the thing or love it on the way out, I almost think of it as off-gassing or it's sort of kind of like excreting toxicity in a way, like you're really letting that toxicity from the previous culture go, and that is a process. If you think about the culture, the work culture that sort of got us into this mess in the first place. It wasn't a safe space for emotional processing. In fact we were conditioned to leave your personal life at the door and all of your personal relationships sit below this one on a hierarchy, and you deal with that in the very limited time and space that you have left, if you have any at all. There's no room. There's no room, there's no safety to feel any of this in the moment.
Nicole Bellisle:So no wonder it gets stuffed down so deeply that we can't even see it anymore. So I love what you're saying of we want it to surface, we want to give it the time and the space to sort of off-gas or release and witness it on the way out, because I find a lot of these emotions, if I see it, if I acknowledge it, if I forgive it or love it. That's all it wanted the whole time anyway in a lot of the cases. So it takes the time that it takes, but I find that the more I do it and get into these rituals, as you're saying, the easier it becomes. It's never easy.
Jenn Redden:A massive disclaimer. Yes, I'm afraid of it, you're going to find effortless ease, but the reality is, especially in the beginning period, when you're learning to play the guitar, it's like you're exhausted from doing the work. Well, yeah, you're learning something new, right? Right, I think about what you're saying. The only thing that kept coming to my brain is there's a reason why we have a generation that's called the silent generation. And when we think about the work that you are doing, that I am doing, that the leaders that we're working with are doing, we're also not just healing our stuff. We're healing the silent generation stuff and the generation before, and so it can feel daunting when you're like the idea that I rise, you rise is very true and it can feel very daunting to think that you have to take this on for humanity, right, and even as a leader, we sometimes feel that responsibility, right, we feel that responsibility oh my gosh, like I'm a leader, I've got to move through my stuff quickly because I've got to get to the lesson, so then I can share the lesson, or so that I can move these other leaders ahead and be the leader that these people need, right, and it's this weird paradox of like how to move through this and it can feel really daunting in those moments and this is why it's important to come back to yourself and this is why we talk about self-leadership comes first, leave yourself first through it, allow yourself the space.
Jenn Redden:And I tell everyone, one of my soul values is spaciousness. So I always talk about space. I know it's not for everyone, but for me, like, the answer to literally everything for me is like do I need to take some space? Right? Yes, I need to take some space. With this I'm with you. I'm always gonna say, like, give yourself some space, move through it. Don't try to rush through whatever you're going through to find some end result or hit some milestone, or so you can, you know, have the lesson. Part of the lesson is be where you are right now, honor what's coming up for yourself right now and trust that whatever you need will be there when it's ready.
Nicole Bellisle:Yeah, oh, I feel so strongly in that that it kind of goes back to what you were saying about planning doesn't work Right, and how gosh and I've been thinking about this so much lately of how we get to practice leadership across all of these scales of with ourselves, within our families, within our community, our teams, our companies and so on, right, our planet. And it's so beautiful to sort of think about that fractal which is a you know a pattern we see in nature. It's sort of resonates with this idea that we exist in a holographic universe as well, that there are kind of all these holograms, and so when I think about the scale of myself and doing this work on myself and that potentially being too small or insignificant or I should get through that quickly so that I can lead others and get to the work, just like you're saying, it's sort of a it feels like a trap in a way of that's just going back into a lot of the same patterns, but instead, if we can go into the sometimes uncomfortable spaciousness because space, I'm absolutely with you, I think, as an ingredient, as a like a medium that I can sit in spaciousness has also been one of the more healing moves that I've been able to move towards. And yet there can also be incredible discomfort in hearing myself talk, feeling the fear of my own insignificance, right, which is often what's driving me to get through that inner work within myself so that I can get to the thing that's gonna give me the self worth that I'm outsourcing externally. And if we just sit in the stillness and the spaciousness, all of that comes to the surface as well and it might not feel productive. I might not be making money during that time, or at least my logic brain doesn't think I am.
Nicole Bellisle:And yet being in that healing and leading relationship with myself prepares me to be with change, to be with discomfort and difficulty, to be with the emergent quality of anything, because planning doesn't work. It's always emerging and revealing itself. There's always something unexpected. Emotions are going to exist along the journey because we're human. So if I can be with myself in all of that complexity and all of that dynamism that exists just in one person, it's like, of course, that exists in our group dynamics as well and in our teams or our families.
Nicole Bellisle:So I'm really seeing what you're saying as a practice ground as well, to be able to practice the stillness, being with emergence relating to change in a way that is loving, where I don't have to bulldoze it, it's safe to be with it.
Nicole Bellisle:So I'm really cultivating that inner culture of psychological safety to be with what is and again, this isn't something that we're taught in business school and yet I think a lot of the times it can actually be the more efficient path, because on the other side of that stillness and moving through all of this, I typically find more clarity and more like more clarity on the vision, more clarity on the purpose, coherence and alignment within myself, within all of my relations. And, ironically, I actually get there quote, unquote, there, wherever there is. I get there faster by moving through all of this rather than hyper-productively and through this false illusion of control, like trying to get around all of this to the end destination. Yeah, yeah, so I've just, yeah, I'm so resonating with what you're saying of like letting the planning go, being with the emergence. I think this is a new skill set that I wish was taught in business schools and that I wish I knew sooner in this journey. Yeah, so I guess, yeah, just so much resonance in what you're saying.
Jenn Redden:I think these are the principles that we're getting to, that we wanna be teaching our children, yes, just when we get to be young adults, but when we're children and that. So this is where I really get. I get super excited when I start talking about legacy. For so long we've been talking about change makers and we want change makers and the emerging change makers, but here's the reality change is happening. Whether we make it happen or don't make it happen, it's happening. Right, we live within a universe that lives within cycles, so change is always happening. Things are. You can see it. You can see it in the energetic expression that is coming through us. So we don't need change makers, we need those that are willing to build a legacy and we want those that are willing to build a legacy that don't have to see the results of that happen right now, because legacy building is generations down the road it is.
Jenn Redden:You may never see the results of the work that you and I are doing right now. We may never get to that point where we see we don't see big hospital systems. We see small clinics that house an MD and acupuncturists and energy specialists and a therapist. All of these things sound healing. We may never see that in our lifetime. That doesn't mean it's not possible. And this goes back to that idea that it's daunting. Right, it is. It can feel daunting if you think about it in that big spectrum. You can have that vision and then be like I know that I can make the change for that today with how I treat myself, with how I honor myself, with how harmoniously I show up in who I am and the work that I do and ensuring that I'm leading with my soul values and that I'm living my life that way. And that is how we get to that future vision.
Jenn Redden:It is not through strategic planning. That's it's not possible. If we keep doing that, that doesn't mean you don't have plans right or you don't say you're gonna do something. A lot of people get that confusion. You're like you just want me to sit around and do nothing. I'm like no, there's actions that go with that. The rule of thumb is right now we live in a system that we're doing 1,000 things to get one result. We wanna reverse that. So we're doing one thing to get 1,000 results.
Nicole Bellisle:Yeah, really reversing that equation and having that long-term multi-generational view that really struck such a deep chord when you said that. Because I think the way that we've been running business and being so obsessed with quarterly earnings and short-termism and all of the shouldism as well that comes from comparison Like I think a lot of that turns up in a strategic planning process as we map out our goals. It's like if we're just looking on paper and what we should be doing, that the roadmap looks very different, the results of the KPIs we're after look very different than if we were to reverse that and take on this long-term multi-generational view. And I think about how nourishing and healing it could be not only for us as humans, as creators, as workers, but also for our planet, if we were to bake those values back in of multi-generational viewpoints and nature's genius as well, to really bake that into how we're doing things as well as kind of the energetics and the more spiritual aspects that can come with how we lead ourselves and how we align with purpose.
Nicole Bellisle:But I just, yeah, I've never regretted moving from my sole values and I often call them my guiding values and principles or my North Star principles.
Nicole Bellisle:I feel so increasingly devoted to those, because of how good it feels in my body to embody them, because of the mirror effect, if you will, of how others are reflecting back my embodiment and my integrity on those that, like there's so much gratitude and appreciation when a leader is walking the talk and is making moves and decisions and setting boundaries and like doing the things that we say we believe most in. And I just find that, even if some of those feel scary or in the moment, I've never regretted moving from those. That has always led me in a direction where I'm discovering even more alignment or more growth, or finding the people who are most aligned and resonating with the stance that I'm now taking in terms of my own standards and my own values. So I guess I wanna dig into that a bit more and just ask when you say sole values, what do you mean by that and what does that look like in the practice of how you're living your life and how you're running your business?
Jenn Redden:Yeah, so sole values are different than core values to some degree. I think I'm sure anybody who's listening to this in even you, because even myself, at some point you were at a conference or you were at some event or some work thing where they're like here, write out your values, right. And so you were like sure, right, and you were given paper and it had like some like descriptive things on it, right, and you're like circle the ones that resonate with you, right? I think value work is everywhere. Where I think we get it wrong is we do value work from a mental, energetic place. We do not do it from a very grounded, really, an embodiment of oh, this is who I am. So before you can even really get to getting to your sole values, there's a lot of deconditioning work that has to happen. There's a lot of healing that has to happen, and especially the healing around burnout, right, because you've been operating from someone else's rules, from someone else's blueprint, for so long. Of course you're not gonna know what your values are and of course it's gonna come from a very mental place. So there has to be that process to where you get to your sole values and here's how you can kind of tell whether you have a good foundation of your sole values.
Jenn Redden:Your sole values are never going to change. They will never change throughout your entire life. If you want to find them, you can see the evidence, not only going back but also going forward, of how they play out in your life and you can be like, oh yep, that's something I've always valued and it's always been important to me. Right, like you will see it and you can pinpoint it throughout aspects of your whole life. And Then you get to that point where you, you have to come into that place. Really, that is yes, and Own it. Right, and that's that embodiment piece. And that again comes from capacity. And if your value is based on other people, right, we like to think like well, that family is our my value, family is my value. Well, yes, you might have a value of like community and building community. That's never gonna be the why. It's always gonna be about your energetic expression and how you operate.
Jenn Redden:And one of the things that you said is like it's an operating value. It's one of those things. It's like this is how I show up, and it's usually four or five that you always go back to, that you're like Whenever I know that I can lean on this, I Know that I'm gonna be making a right decision. Or if I'm hot, they're almost they are your decision makers and then it's your code of ethics that takes the action from those decision makers, but your soul values will never change. Your goals may change, your priorities may change, your soul values never change and you can feel when you're really Operating from that place, because it's very harmonious and you're able to speak about them openly, like I'm open.
Jenn Redden:If I were to, if you were to see a sheet of Core values of somebody, were to give me that and a thing spaciousness is not gonna be on there, I can guarantee you. No one wrote spaciousness as a value, right? So it's not gonna be these general terms that we think of values. It's going to probably be something that's very unique to you. It is going to be very not probably, it is going to be very unique to you. So, like spaciousness, that is a value of mine and I know whenever I'm going through something or whatever, it is something I always rely on along with harmony and coherence and Individuality and uniqueness and all of these things.
Nicole Bellisle:And so those are the things that are, that are I lead and how I show up in my life it very much feels like leading from the inside out as well, as I receive what you're saying, where, if we're making decisions from those soul values, I just imagine that the creativity that comes from that, the people we meet, the legacy we leave, it's all coming from the inside out in a way, as opposed to Looking out there first to see what's available, what have others done, what are the roles I might be able to play.
Nicole Bellisle:Okay, let me fit myself into that box and take on these rules or these values. It's as you said that that deconditioning or Programming process feels so important to even be able to see what that operating system is Within. And I know that you talk in your content and in your work you talk about leadership almost as a system as well, and so, as we sort of wind down here in our time together, I want to maybe land in Just getting into that a little bit more of if leadership is a system of whole humanness or whole well-being and we, through how we show up, are leading, are leaving and leading, I guess a legacy moment to moment.
Nicole Bellisle:It's like what goes into curating that system. I know you have so many amazing practices, so I want to dig into what that really means to you and also where people can learn more On how to work with you to build their unique system as well.
Jenn Redden:It's so unique to every person, right like it's so nuanced, and that's why I love the work that I do. It's because it's so nuanced and building Building that system. So I don't use the word system, I use the word structure and I'll Build structure. That's what it is, thank you, and this I was like system isn't landing and that's what it's actually a structure, and I talk about an infrastructure and what you, just a second ago, is it's this inside out approach, and so we want to have a regenerative and expanding Capacity and that comes from having a harmonious Infrastructure and that starts with your cells, that starts with your atomic structures and that starts with cleaning those up, doing the deconditioning work, shedding other people's rules and standing in your own expression, right, your energetic expression. And there's so many things that you can start doing and we talk of. They're everywhere, right, their mainstream. But Spend time with your journals, give yourself some space, and that doesn't mean you have to write the whole time.
Jenn Redden:One of the things that I really have come to embrace is the art of contemplation. Richard red talks about this and the gene keys. He actually has a whole book called the art of contemplation. But can you give yourself this time. We're contemplating, you're thinking, not even thinking. It's like the thoughts are clouds and you're just Rolling from one cloud to the other. You're in this open space again. See, space always comes up. Release the idea that it has to look a certain way. Right, like I'm going to journal for five minutes Now. Maybe you do have a time frame on it. You know If you've got kids or you know you've got to go to work or all these other tasks in life, so maybe you need to have a time frame in that essence. But can you offer yourself five minutes, be with you, right? Can you sit in your car before you go into work or go into the grocery store and do a breath check in, which is something I teach my clients? Can you Do that three times in your day and set that sort of structure where you're like? I do this. How can you tune into your body? Can you go to a yoga class? Can you go get a massage and maybe not a massage where we're like, because this is the theory that I used to have.
Jenn Redden:I used to be one of those people that would be like no, I need a deep tissue massage, right? So I'd go to the person, and my husband is six, three, 250 pounds and I will tell you I've gone to massage therapists and I've had him go to you goes. She hurt me so good. But I realized for me I thought I had to like really press on that wound and really work it out. And that's not actually how we heal. We don't feel by pressing on the wound. We heal by holding it in space. And so even how I my massage therapist and my Not my practice but who I see and what's I value as far as my massage work, body work has changed.
Jenn Redden:I'm not looking for those people that are going to dig it out of me but that can hold me as leaders. We need to find places where we can feel safe to be led, because we're so used to being the leader in all aspects of our life. We need to find those places that we feel safe so we can be held, so we can be led, and that also starts with you holding yourself. Take five minutes multiple times a day to check in, do a breath, check in, do some sort of like coherence coming into coherence practice and You'll start to see the benefits of that. It does not have to be complicated. We think it has to be complicated to make impact and, honestly, the smallest things that you can do consistently are going to create the biggest impact.
Jenn Redden:So that's the point of a structure. And I look at structure. We're so used and a lot of people are traumatized by the word structure because the structures that we that exist within us right now, are around us are so traumatic, right? So I've used structure, as I see it, as scaffolding, right? You think about scaffolding on a building. There's a ton of, like, open space, but there's still something that's secure, that is secure and anchors you. So Find anchor points throughout your day, throughout your week, month and year where you can be like, am I checking in with myself? And that's part of the work that I do with my clients, my I'll dive into a little bit about my work and how you can work with me and how you can, you know, be in with my energy.
Jenn Redden:Amazing, I have a year-long program. It's called quantum leadership mastery and it is a year-long and it's for pretty much all of the reasons that I've talked about today. I feel like, right, like there's work that Before we get to that point where you're taking aligned actions with ease, you got to know what alignment feels like to you. So in my work there's five pillars that we work on. It's mastering the art of your own unique energetic expression, embracing your natural genius to amplify your magnetic presence. Embodying your soul mission to create the legacy with effortless ease. And cultivating a deep sense of self-worth and belonging to elevate your self from external, to liberate yourself from external circumstances and to establish that harmonious infrastructure for regenerative and expanded capacity. And that's why it's a year-long. All of those things are very nuanced for my clients they're very deep and I wouldn't be doing it just if I said it was here's 12 weeks and you're gonna get all of this.
Jenn Redden:I feel my job is. If you need to keep coming back to me, then I haven't done my job. So it is. It's. It's expansive in that time frame of a year, which I know feels so big. But as time is speeding up, as our frequency of the earth increases, time is like here we are four by time. You guys are listening to this totally. So that is the work. If you can always reach out to me, you can also join me on my. It's a sub stack. It's called expanded and embodied, and in my sub stack you can have access to my words and my wisdom. I do podcast on there, I do writings, things like that, so there's lots of content that you can dive into in that aspect as well. So amazing.
Nicole Bellisle:Thank you, yeah, thank you, for inviting this community over there To and just all of the work that you're doing in the language that you're using, the frameworks that you are sharing. That in and of itself, feels so healing. And even just interacting With a human who's really embodying what they're saying feels so nourishing. Every time I come across one and you absolutely are I appreciate how, even in your program Design, you're really embracing and embodying this soul value of spaciousness as well, like really Really letting that breathe and having integration occur along that journey. So I'd, yeah, no doubt that the discoveries, the structure, the habits that people would uncover in that would really lead to A different version of self is how I often think about it kind of like leading us To a future self. That that is the living there, is the living leader, if you will, that that we want to be.
Nicole Bellisle:That's one reason we've named the podcast and and the non-profit living leaders, because it is A living journey that we're on and it does take the whole human to be participating. So I just want to, yeah, end with such deep gratitude for the work that you're doing and how you're showing up. I'm so grateful to have crossed paths with you. I know that I'll be coming to hang out In your community as well, and I can't wait. Jen, thank you so much for being on the show today. This has been. Yeah, I'm gonna be thinking about this for days, if not weeks, to come.
Jenn Redden:Hey, you have some time to do that right because you've got some pop right.
Nicole Bellisle:Yes, exactly. Yeah, I'll be integrating in this spaciousness too.
Jenn Redden:I always love our conversations. I really do. It's something that I've like I said we've only met and really this is like our second conversation. Yeah, we've had more than one right like this is like we've been in a couple of lifetimes together, I'm pretty sure.
Nicole Bellisle:Yeah, yeah, definitely feeling that. Yeah, this is certainly just the beginning.
Jenn Redden:Yeah, and I can't wait to have you come over to expanded and embodied, and I think we've got a couple of things coming up for you to share. So yeah a lot of fun amazing.
Nicole Bellisle:Jen, thank you so much, and, listeners, thanks for tuning in to another episode of living leaders. We will see you next episode for more exploration through the many dimensions of leadership and all that we are transitioning to in this new paradigm of work and of business. So, thank you and we'll see you next time. We're
