What Happens When the Life You Built No Longer Fits
Johanna Danaher
(YouTube Transcript)
Aneta (00:01.708): Johanna, welcome to Live the Width of Your Life podcast. I'm so excited you're here.
Johanna (00:06.901): And I'm thrilled to be here with you today to have this conversation about us as women.
Aneta (00:12.268): Yeah, you know, as I was reading your bio and when you first reached out, I thought, wow, I have so much in common with this woman. And I'm so excited to have a conversation because you, like me, started in a different space in a corporate career. And you've made it your mission to do this very meaningful work. So tell us a little bit about how you moved from being an executive and working at places like Pfizer, and then deciding that you were going to move into the coaching space.
Johanna 00:45.911): Yeah, so my background, as you said, was 25 years actually in corporate HR at Pfizer. And during my time there, I spent all my time in the talent space within HR. So it was all about people. And I built global programs for organizational culture. right? So how do we show up as an organization, and how do we create the environment for our people to thrive and to perform?
I also worked on career growth, helping individuals understand that they can grow in a variety of different ways. And part of that was to embed coaching as a part of our culture, leaders coaching their direct reports, but also creating space for anyone to have opportunities to peer coach one another or to gain access to thought leaders around coaching. So that was a passion area for me in the work environment.
But my role was eliminated about a year and a half ago. And that, for me, forced a real pause in my 50s. And I was sort of thinking about what I really want the next chapter of my life to look like? How do I want to continue to make an impact in the world around me? And how can I continue doing the things that I loved in the work that I had been doing at Pfizer in a way that was more meaningful for me? And that's where the foundation of my company, Anchor To Aspire, came from, was at that moment recognizing that all of the things that I did at Pfizer were about helping others. It was about serving others. It was about inspiring others to really step into themselves and unlock their potential. And I wanted to continue to do that. And I wanted to continue to do that for women like me
who were at their midpoint in their careers, who are facing a pivot point, and who really just didn't know where to go and didn't know how to take that next step forward.
Aneta (02:44.194): Your story is so common. There have been so many other women like you and men, too, who are in organizations, have put in the time, who are loyal, who've done all the right things. All the things we were told that we should be doing, and find themselves in a position to then ask themselves those questions. I'm curious, would you have stayed at Pfizer until retirement? Was that the plan?
Johanna (03:09.069): So it was, I was thinking about that, and it was about two and a half to three years away from me, and I was starting to think about what I want that next chapter to look like. I was doing really great work, and I was really, really inspired by it. But I also knew that it was time for me to step into something different. to.
And I always used to say this: if I did my job really, really well, they wouldn't need my job, right? I was creating career growth and career pathways. I was establishing a new way of doing talent management. And if you do that really, really well, it becomes part of the culture. So it was time for me to find something different and to find a different space for me to bring my magic to life. But I probably would have stayed. I probably wouldn't have taken that step on my own without the sort of push out of the nest, so to speak.
And so it really did become that pivot moment where I had been waiting for permission to take this step, and I didn't recognize that I actually was the one who needed to permit myself to do it. It wasn't something that I needed to rely on outside endorsement for. And that was a moment for me to recognize that I actually had been holding myself back from this next step. And it wasn't the safety of staying at the company that was holding me there. It was the fear of failure that was holding me there.
Aneta (04:37.323): Yeah, Absolutely. How long would you say before your position was eliminated? Like, how long did you have those thoughts for?
Johanna (04:47.601): Gosh, it was probably about a year and a half to two years at least that I had been sort of going, now, I'm ready for something different. But it was the 3 a.m. conversation that you had, right? It wasn't one that I was being honest about. I wasn't bringing it forward. Mean, my husband and I talked about it, but it was all of like three, five, six years in the future. It wasn't right now. So I just, I wish I had listened to my 3 a.m. musing self sooner.
Aneta (05:25.119): It's that's so interesting. Because for me too, like I knew so long deep in my bones, like there, like, this, it was waking up in the middle of the night, having those questions, you know, the morning dreads, the Sunday afternoons, like, you know, and, it, I chose to hire a coach to help me figure out, because I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I knew I wanted to make a change, but I wasn't sure what that was. So when you received the news that you were going to be leaving. Did you hire someone to help you, or how did you figure out what you wanted to do next?
Johanna (06:03.671): So, great question. And I would say, you know, even a coach always needs a coach. right? I think, you know, a coach, a mindset coach, a life coach, that trusted partner that you can speak to and in a lot of ways unburden yourself to, right? Because it's so important to have someone in your corner. So I did two things. The first was as I talked to individuals, you know, at Pfizer, who were my mentors. So it was really trying to understand from them what they had done. So different from coaching, but really talking to the mentor and asking about how they approach a change that was pretty significant for them. And then the second was that I talked to people who had already left and whose role had been eliminated prior to mine, to understand what the one thing was that they wished they had told their younger selves before the change. And then I hired a series of coaches. I was actually in a coach training program
So I was working with several different peers, and we talked a lot about energy, and we talked a lot about mindset, and we talked a lot about values, and helping me to understand what my values were at this moment in time, and how those were influencing what I wanted to focus on.
Aneta (07:26.231): The values piece is so important because otherwise we'll just continue to be out of alignment. I mean, there are many things you can do. It doesn't mean that that's what we should do. So once you did this work, and you decided to start your coaching business, did you know you wanted to work with high achievers, like high-achieving women?
Johanna (07:46.689): Yeah, think that yes. And that is because high achievers, right? Sometimes you think about high achievers, and for those in the business world, we may equate that with high potential. right? For me, it's a little bit different. right? High achievers are, for me, it's women who are the go-to person. They're the solver, they're the fixer, they're the ones who always have the answer. They're the ones who oftentimes overwork because they were rewarded for that. So that is the type of person I do want to work with because it's me. It is exactly who I am. right? I lived that life. I do it all the time. And I used to get really, I would tie my value to the fact that I was needed, right? And I loved it. I had a boss say to me at one point, Give it to Johanna and get out of her way.
Right? She'll get it done. She'll figure out how to, you know, make this weird thing happen. We don't know if it's ever going to be successful, but give it to her and just get out of her way and let her get it done. So that was like something that I carried like a torch. Like, yes, that's me. It was draining, and it was exhausting, and I was always overdoing. And that's what, when I say high-achieving women, it's, it's that person who is overdoing everything, glorifying busyness, and forgetting to focus on self-care.
Aneta (09:15.883): Yeah, it's so interesting. I did a post on LinkedIn probably a couple of months ago, and I wrote that it was about boundaries, but I said being needed is not the same thing as being valued. And that struck a chord with a lot of people, a lot of women especially, because in our mind, we were rewarded in corporate for doing, for solving, for being the one that will work through lunch, stay later, do all the work.
And you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're valued for all of that. And it doesn't mean that that's going to guarantee a promotion or that that's going to get you whatever it is that you're looking for. So when you are working with women who are high achievers and in this space who maybe have struggled with this, and now they're at a pivot point in their career, they're looking to do something different, either starting their own business or maybe moving into a new area.
What is some of the work that you do to help them sort of unravel or undo some of these behaviors that we've just adopted over time that really are not serving them?
Johanna (10:24.555): Yeah, yeah, well, that's the first thing is we have to get very honest about what those stories were and those rules that we're living by. right? Recognizing them as either, you know, an assumption that we've made about how we are performing and how that's going to drive success. It's actually also starting with really deeply asking what your success blueprint is.
Right? What does success look like for you? And for most of the time, the conversations with my clients and even with myself, it's always an outward definition of success. It's always based on what someone else, society, the environment, or the social cues have told us success is.
And when we take the time to actually say, this is what success looks like for me. All of a sudden, it feels less like a burden and less like something you have to achieve. And it feels more like you're living your success every day. And that's magic. right? When somebody can say, my success blueprint is, know, whatever it is, is being a good, a great mother, it is being a partner, it is.
finding joy in the everyday, whatever, whatever your success blueprint is, it's unique to you and it's for you. It's not for anyone else. So we start there. What does that success blueprint look like? And then how do you start to move your life and the way you're living closer to that. And that's the hard part, right? it's easy to define what our success blueprint is. It's harder to recognize and admit when we're not living in alignment with it.
Aneta (12:24.589): Yeah, I find that it's interesting when I remember first starting in corporate, we used to have the Franklin Covey planners, and the planner was actually a planner for your life. So you had all your appointments in there, the kids’ appointments, your doctor's appointments, things that you were going to do, plus the calendar. And it was all in one place. And then we moved to electronic calendars.
I think this is where my theory is. This is where we started to actually move further away from alignment, because suddenly the calendar, which everyone has access to, right? Because everyone can see your calendar now becomes a free-for-all for other people's priorities. And if we don't have really solid boundaries and we can't enforce them, then we just say yes to everything. And then you are left with scraps. Usually, by the end of the day is very little energy.
And so if you've not intentionally planned for the relationships, for time, for yourself, for the self-care, for the hobbies, for the things that we used to actually put in our calendar. Now they're missing. And so there is no integration. You have this laundry list of to-dos. You have a calendar full, so there's nothing left to do. And then you're working after hours to try to get things on your to-do list done, which never seems to have ourselves included. I think that's where the mishap is.
And so what I've noticed is that it's really doing that work to create the alignment requires that people actually start to make really big changes when it comes to their calendar and prioritization. And it's going back to things we used to do before digital. We have all these tools and technologies now. We think that it's going to save time for us. But actually, I'm not sure that that's actually true. I think that it's gotten us more and more out of alignment. Has that been your experience, or what have you noticed?
Johanna (14:23.137): I 100 % agree. And it's gotten to the point where we literally on our calendars can schedule things in for the five minutes between this meeting and that meeting. And so we literally overbook our lives and overscript our lives. We don't have the time for a pause. We don't have the time for that. That's where the creative work happens. That's where the connections that we make with others happen. It's in those spontaneous moments that we have over-orchestrated. right? That we have almost eliminated from our day-to-day. The Energy Project is a company that we worked with at Pfizer, where I did a lot of work, and it was talking a lot about how our energy comes from not only our physical energy, right?, and whether we get enough sleep. Are we eating the right things? Are we focusing in on our movement? It comes from our social environment. It comes from emotions. It comes from our ability to have mental focus.
And when we over-orchestrate our calendars, we eliminate all of the things that actually give us energy. So we perform, we expend energy, but we don't refuel and refill our energy tanks intentionally. And then we get to the point where all of a sudden, at the end of the day, we're exhausted, or we're burnt out.
And then we start to respond in ways that are not aligned with who we want to be. right? We react, or we withdraw. So we end up creating this negative energy around us. And then we bring that everywhere we go. So it's also so important, as you were saying, to protect our calendars, to learn how to do boundary setting sustainably.
And I think about it in a couple of different ways. Like a parent, my daughter is now 20, but when she was in preschool and kindergarten and early in her education, they had things like recess, right? where kids would go outside and play. And it was like every 90 minutes you took a break. right? Even in college, you don't have classes that are more than 90 minutes because we know our brains need to have a break. We need to refuel ourselves.
Business people don't do that. We have meetings booked from seven in the morning till seven at night, and many times, even though you work at home, you probably didn't eat lunch.
Aneta (16:57.089): Yeah, it's so true, people will say things like, " We're not machines. And I'm like, but actually, we know that our computers, our phones, we have to plug those in. We have to charge them up. We run out of memory, and you have to start over, or you have to start deleting files.” If we actually had the same hygiene with ourselves that we do with our devices.
Plug it in, don't let it get to zero. Put it, not disturb it, whatever those things are. If we actually did some of those things for ourselves and knew that our brains needed it much more often, 52 minutes on, 17 minutes off is the ideal; it's kind of the way the brain works. If we actually honored that, we would be better off, and we wouldn't be reactive, like you said, we wouldn't be dysregulated from a nervous system.
We'd have more energy, we'd do better work, we'd be more creative. And so it's interesting to me that we know these things, and yet people feel like they have to leave their careers sometimes in order to do the things that they need to do for themselves. So it's interesting to think about what needs to happen within
business within the corporate space, how things need to evolve based on all this information, where we say, what we're doing does not work. And we cannot continue to burn people out, to drive disengagement, because the illusion of productivity is not there. We know that we are not as productive as we think that we are. Just because people are working longer, they're not actually, and they're making more mistakes.
So I'm curious for you, like, what do you think needs to happen? Because the answer cannot be that these amazing women need to leave or these very talented men need to leave organizations because they can't fit into the culture any longer.
Johanna (19:04.545): Yeah, I think fundamentally the culture needs to change. We talk a lot about, and this is very much talked about in the market right now, human-centered work environments. At Pfizer, for example, they even changed human resources to people experience. So it's really focusing on what the experience is that we want our people to have. But it's not just what the organizational culture is sort of declaring.
Aneta (19:20.833): Yeah.
Johanna (19:31.155): It is the behavior every single day of every person. So if you're emailing your team at eight o'clock at night, you're sending a signal that says, I'm on. You should be on. If you're checking in when you're on vacation, you're sending a signal. And I did that. And I actually had a really interesting experience. I also talked about this on LinkedIn not too long ago.
It was earlier in my career, and I wasn't a people manager yet, but I was leading a large-scale program. We were implementing a new recruitment brand for our talent acquisition team, building a whole new careers website. And I was going out on vacation. It was a long vacation, three weeks. I was traveling with my young daughter to Europe as she was singing with a choral group. So I knew I wouldn't be on points, you know? And I knew it was, I was going to be away.
And I had an amazing team ready to sort of take this work on and to drive it. And the work was really important; it was very, very visible. So I checked in once a week, sent an email, how's it going? Anything that you need, here for you, just let me know what you need. I thought, and I think subconsciously I was, I believed the story I was telling myself that I was checking in to support them, that I knew it was such a big project.
I wanted to be available. I thought it was being a good leader. I came back from that vacation, and they had shone. They had done an amazing job, but they handed off the work back to me, and they weren't engaged in it. They didn't demonstrate ownership. There was no excitement there. And that was very strange to me. We had a very good rapport before this, and it dramatically changed.
So I asked, and they felt comfortable enough to tell me the truth that what I had done by checking in actually told them I didn't trust them. And it modeled for them that I couldn't leave. So not only did I have the issue where I eroded trust, but I also signaled to them, "You can't step away. So I was leaving this shadow behind me, right? thinking I was just checking in to be supportive, when actually, not only did I tell them I didn't trust them. I also told them you can't take a vacation either. So that was like the biggest learning moment for me was that, oh man, and I then did some deep thinking. I talked to my, you know, I had a coach at the time, and I uncovered that it was my need for control. It was my need to manage the outcome that caused me to check in. It wasn't my intention to support them. It was my need to serve myself. And I didn't know where that had come from.
And I didn't know how to change it, but the next time I went on vacation, I didn't check in. The same team, completely different outcome. I made sure I said, I permitted them to contact me if something was falling apart and they dramatically needed me, but it was up to them to take that initiative if they needed to. And they didn't, and I knew that, and they were amazing again. And this time it was completely different.
Aneta (22:48.917): Yeah, it's what's interesting is that it sounds like the first time you were maybe promoting accountability through your need to control, but not ownership. And the second time, you were permitting them to really respond like owners, and they did. And that always drives more engagement because you do feel like you've built the trust. You've said, I'm here, but
I know you've got it under control, and I trust you to do a good job, and I know that you will. It's empowering them to do that. But I mean, the nice thing is you asked the question, and they told you. So that's, you already have that trust built with them, which is amazing. And, but a lot of leaders don't do that, and they don't have the awareness, the self-awareness to say, what is my emailing at midnight doing or on a Sunday morning to the team? And even if they tell them, you don't have to respond; it's just, this is convenient for me. You can deliver that at a different time. You can set it to go at 8 a.m. the next morning or Monday morning. It doesn't have to happen then.
But I think that it's become so acceptable to work. I think even after COVID, I heard some alarming stats in terms of how communication has increased significantly after hours. And it's something we didn't have to deal with before. We didn't have this. I know when I started working, there were no cell phones yet. When we first started, there was barely email and nobody was, you didn't have a laptop to bring home. So it was very different.
And so when we talk about generational changes, a lot of times, Gen Xers or even others will say, well, I don't understand why do gen Z's or, millennials, why do they struggle with some of the challenges that they have or the mental health challenges? I'm like, but it's not the same. It's not the same as it was when we first started. And so we have to recognize that because something worked in a certain way, the circumstances weren't the same. And even for people who've worked for a long time, right? Like, because it's different than when I was there.
When I was in my 40s, when I chose to leave, it was not the same as when I started in my 20s. And so it wasn't the same culture, it wasn't the same environment. And so, therefore, I wasn't; I was different as well. And so going back to like your clients and the fact that they find themselves sometimes they're driving this decision to leave. Sometimes they find themselves in a situation where they weren't the one who made that decision. What are some of the highlights, like some wonderful stories that
Maybe you could share if there's someone who's on the fence and they're thinking about, could I ever do this? What are some of the things that you've helped your clients work through? And then maybe some success stories that can inspire others to take that action.
Johanna (25:52.413): Yeah, so one that comes to mind right away is a gentleman that I was working with not too long ago who was, you know, ready to retire in terms of knowing that they needed to. right? They had been in their career for several years, over 35 years in the public sector, but they were not ready for retirement from an emotional perspective. They knew that they were ready financially. They knew that it was the right
time to build a team; they had a great succession plan in place, but they had no idea what they wanted this next chapter to be and who they really were without their title. So that was an interesting conversation. And I spent time with them. I have a sort of framework that works through, who are you, and what are the abilities that serve you, and the values that ground you, and the energy that you bring.
And the success that you want. So it sort of walks through all of those areas. One of the first things that we did was to do a wheel of retirement, to map what was the satisfaction in various different areas that were important to this person as they were approaching retirement, and to see the gap between the ideal and the current state. And what happened was this client recognized that the gap was not that significant. So they were ready, more ready than they actually thought they were, except for one area. And that one area was around wellbeing, and that was a significant gap. And then they realized, though, that by retiring, they were going to have the capacity to focus on their wellbeing. The worry was,
however, that they would then get into overworking in terms of their volunteerism, in terms of their community engagement, in terms of leading their family, that it would still be a deficit. So we talked a lot about boundary setting at that point and understanding what boundaries needed to be put into place because they often were the ones to say yes to everything, right? because it was something that was interesting to them. They wanted to have fun. They wanted to go on the trip. They wanted to do all of these things in their community, but they needed to learn how to say no and to figure out what to say no to. And that was the other eye-opening aspect of the work that we did, which was that the things that this person wanted to say yes to were very different in the retirement lens.
than they were when they were working. And so that opens up a whole new set of possibilities, so much so that this person had been putting off setting a retirement date for about a year, and after our second session, they went in and set their retirement date.
Aneta (28:58.445): Good for him. I love doing that work, which is really looking at the different areas of life and redefining success from an internal lens, from a value alignment, not just things that we inherited from someone else, our parents or leaders, or what we were told the trajectory was. It's so meaningful. And I think once you see it, you can't unsee it. As you understand, wow, this is really, and I love it when people can see that
It's like a little bit of additional focus or energy on something could make such a tremendous value. And that it doesn't have to feel like you have to just turn everything upside down in your life. You actually can just make these small incremental changes in a couple of areas, and the payoff is huge.
Johanna (29:49.899): It's absolutely huge. And oftentimes it is, it's the small little things that become habits over time, right? But we have to permit ourselves in a lot of ways. You know, another client that I worked with hadn't done a values assessment ever in their life. They had done strengths assessments, they had done skills, they had done you know, sort of Enneagram to understand personality, but they had never done a values assessment. And it was really very interesting because the perception that this client came into the conversation with was, well, values are for like, you know, organizations. Companies always tell us your five values are these things. I'm like, well, actually, no, the values are what actually guide every decision that we are making, whether we know it or not. So let's understand what the top priority values are for you.
And are you making decisions that are in alignment with those, or are you making decisions that aren't? Because when we make a decision that doesn't align with a core value that we carry, that's where it becomes challenging and exhausting and difficult. right? We're not doing something that aligns with who we truly are. And it's hard sometimes to see that without actually having someone else to ask us questions about what we do, what really matters to me.
Aneta (31:17.985): Yeah, my working definition of balance is when our daily choices align with our values, we will feel in balance. And when they do not align, we will be out of balance. We can't quite put our finger on why, but if your family is important and you say that that's a top value and you're never home for dinner, you miss all your kids' events, you don't prioritize your partner, you will feel out of balance, and others around you will let you know that what you're doing does not make them feel valued. So I love that we're talking about energy too, especially, and I know that you have something in your business that you call energy leadership. Tell me more about what that is.
Johanna (32:00.769): Yeah, so that's part of the coach training program that I was a part of. It's called IPAC, and really, energy leadership is all about truly understanding that we're always bringing energy into a room. right? So we're always bringing that level of how we're behaving. right? So it's not enough to do something; it's how we do it. And that is energy. right? So energy is...
There are seven levels of energy, and they start from level one. Level two energy is like victim or anger. They tend to be more tearing down, more destructive. And then there are higher levels of energy, joy, creation, collaboration, and connection. And those tend to be more empowering, more building up energy levels. And when we are under stress, something happens, it's a trigger, we default often to a lower level energy state. And that leaves us where we are not at choice. right? Because we're reacting to a stimulus versus choosing our response. And being aware of our energy and how we default under those pressure moments allows us to be more conscious about how we respond.
And it's interesting. I work with clients, and we do an energy leadership index. And it does look across a lot of different dimensions of life to help us understand where our typical energy is on a good day and then what happens when we're stressed or when we're triggered. And many of us live under stress quite a bit. So we can see ourselves pretty naturally. But what's great about this is it also helps us to identify what specific trigger is actually causing that stress response.
And once we understand that, then we can work to mitigate that trigger. right? So either we eliminate the situation where that trigger may actually come to us, or we say and catch that in the moment to say, okay, I know, I'm being triggered, this is causing me to feel this way, what's a better response? How do I want to show up in this room in this moment at this time? It's not about being positive and toxic positivity all the time by any means, right? because we know that that's not possible. And then we know it's completely possible to hold two emotions equally important at the same time. But it's about awareness, and it's about really operating that, as I said, from I choose to versus I have to, or I'm forced to. So it just helps us really be more in control.
For me, it helps me to eliminate the people pleaser tendency in me. It helps me to shut down that inner critic that shows up with overthinking. It helps me manage imposter syndrome by really challenging the thoughts that I'm putting out there. And it helps me choose how I want to respond to situations that really challenge or or opposite of my value system.
Aneta Ardelian Kuzma (35:27.725): Yeah, I love that they use the word choice, and then we get to choose. I think too often, many of us feel like we are at at the mercy where we're slaves to our emotions. And that our emotions are something that happened to us. And I think the more work that we do around awareness, and then the management. of those emotions and learn how to regulate ourselves, learn how to really identify when we're dysregulated, and then create a little bit of control around our response. The better off we are in all areas of life, the more incredible it is. And we learned these things in school.
We learned all these things when we were small. Why did you put kids in a time-out and turn them around to face the wall and tell them to breathe or use their words? right? Like, there were simple tools that we used to do either for our own kids or with ourselves. And I think if we learned how to do that for ourselves, take a pause, take a breather, do the things that work for us through some of the tools, so many available tools, we will be able to control the emotions and make better choices. And then who doesn't want more of that? right?
Johanna (36:45.545): Exactly. And you know, it's, and it's a protection cycle. right? So this comes to us because we learned something. There was a painful experience we had at some point in time, and our body remembers that pain. right? So it's acting in a way, and our minds, as we know, are constantly scanning for danger, right? I mean, that is the, you know, the...
Aneta (36:56.245): Right. Remember. Yep.
Johanna (37:08.899): sort of reptilian brain. right? It's always looking for what's out there to harm me, and how do I have to protect myself? But the protection cycle doesn't actually protect us. It just prevents us from doing what we need to do. And so, how to break free from that is creating that pause moment for us to then make that conscious choice. But it's so easy not to. Be there. right? Because again, our brain is reacting, and it's creating the conditions, and it's telling us a story. It's all about how we interrupt that cycle in a way that's, you know, that's not harmful. And that one allows us again this, this choice. Now there are reasons, and there are times when any energy level will serve us, right? Grief is a time when we're grieving the loss of something or someone. We absolutely will be more withdrawn or apathetic to what's happening around us. But how long we stay there is also important to recognize. And that's individual for many of us, but just that choice and being aware is 90 % of the battle.
Aneta (38:29.809): Absolutely. Johanna, I could talk to you forever. And I want to allow you to share if someone is listening, and maybe they're like, wow, I resonate with so much of what you guys are talking about today. How can they find you?
Johanna (38:47.223): Yeah, absolutely. So there are a couple of ways. The first is on LinkedIn. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I love to share content. I'm out highlighting a lot of these different ideas on my LinkedIn profile. So connect with me. Definitely there. But then also visit my website. It's called anchortoaspire.com. And there you can actually just book a complimentary call. I love opportunities to connect, to talk, to explore, to share, and to highlight, sort of, what I've been through because many of us have been through the same things, and just having someone to talk to, to see you, is important. So feel free to reach out again, find me on LinkedIn, and connect with me at anchortoaspire.com and book a complimentary call.
Aneta (39:35.885): That's wonderful. We'll include all those links in the show notes. And then the final question that I ask everyone is tied to the title of the podcast, which is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
Johanna (39:48.429): So this is great. I love this question. It's such a great question. I've been thinking about it. So for me, it really means collecting experiences. right? And not just accomplishments. accomplishments. And for me, that's what success is about. right? Success is about the fact that I've had so many different experiences in my life because experiences teach us more than anything.
Experiential learning, so to speak, or traveling to a new destination. When you go someplace new, you notice different rhythms, you notice different priorities. There's more than one right way to do life. right? So I think that those experiences ask us to pay attention, they ask us to be present, they ask us to see ourselves in a new way. So you I would just say, experience life. That is so...
So powerful. And the other thing that comes to me is that it's not just enough to experience life. And there's a quote by Picasso that was, "The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away.” So have those experiences. right? Experiences help you find your gift because they show you what you care about. They show you what interests you. They show you what you're passionate about. And then you come home, and you live it. right? You share it, and you give it away.
Aneta (41:16.731): It's so beautiful. Thank you so much for the great work you're doing in this world. And thank you for joining me today. I loved our conversation.
Johanna (41:25.641): Absolutely, this was a fantastic discussion. Thank you so much for leading this kind of conversation for so many people to really say that, you know, it's not enough to just live the length of your life. It's more important to live the full width. So thank you so much for creating that space.
Aneta (41:43.918): Thank you.