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210: Why Bother? With Jennifer Louden

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Jennifer Louden is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the concept of self-care with her first bestseller, The Woman’s Comfort Book.

Since then, she’s written seven additional books on well-being and whole living, including The Woman’ s Retreat Book and The Life Organizer, with close to a million copies of her books in print in nine languages. She’s been profiled or quoted in two of Brené Brown’s books, Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead; and even appeared on Oprah. 

Jen and I met way back in the day at SXSW 2012 — my first time attending, and have kept in touch from afar ever since. Today we’re talking about her newest and most personal book, Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What’s Next.

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Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/210

More about Jennifer Louden

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Jennifer Louden is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the concept of self-care with her first bestseller, The Woman’s Comfort Book. Since then, she’s written seven additional books on well-being and whole living, including The Woman’ s Retreat Book and The Life Organizer, with close to a million copies of her books in print in nine languages. Jennifer has spoken around the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and has written a national magazine column for a Martha Stewart magazine. She’s been profiled or quoted in dozens of major magazines; two of Brené Brown’s books, Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead; and appeared on hundreds of TV, radio shows and podcasts—even on Oprah.

Her newest and most personal book Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What’s Next will be published on April 21, 2020.

Jennifer has been teaching workshops and retreats since 1992 and creating vibrant online learning experiences since 1999. She writes weekly to her email list of 20,000 and hosts an online community of over 600 members. She lives in Boulder County, Colorado.

Topics Covered

  • We have signature themes in life

  • Hers is to “help people make more of what they want”

  • “Pick me” voice and how it disempowers us

  • Why even getting picked by Oprah wasn’t enough

  • Desire is the flow of life, it’s aliveness, delight, creativity

  • "Classic mistake that I wanted someone else to tell me my work was real, that it counted"

  • Synthesizer, maven

  • Self-doubt: is what I’m doing valid?

  • Sea change in terms of how we work

  • Self-publishing her book

  • Marketing with serendipity and magic

  • "Rilke wrote, “May what I do flow from me like a river / no forcing and no holding back.” Rivers are never done. Even after they flow into the sea, they are still moving, discovering, unfolding.”

  • Grace of inner stillness is always there within us

  • Being scared to be seen

  • "What I can’t help but do"

  • Following delight

  • Excuses we give ourselves about why we don’t bother sharing our work

  • We may spend more time getting the word out about our work than it took to create it

  • What is it about those processes that I can feel desire toward? 

  • When to persevere vs. when to pivot

  • Getting out of our own way through “nano tests” 

  • “We’re afraid of being undefended” 

  • Envious of what someone 

Resources Mentioned

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