Finding Presence in Work You Didn't Choose

Finding Presence in Work You Didn't Choose

It's 12:01 in the morning, and Wayne is back at the mic. The new job, the most structured of his life, doesn't leave much room for anything else, so this is the window we get. Two years and real money went into becoming a certified spiritual director. Then the economy had other plans... clients fell away, a financial hole opened, and the path he trained for led somewhere he never pictured. Tactile, repetitive work on a base, a long way from the monk's robe and the well of spirit. So the conversation turns to the question sitting underneath all of it. How do you stay present, mindful, and yourself inside work you didn't choose? Wayne talks flow state found in the mundane, breath matched to the turn of a screw, the teaching that there's no lotus without the mud, and what it takes to keep anxiety from running the board. Bryan and Spencer push on the rest... presence, purpose, and the thin line between mindfulness and avoidance. A conversation about surviving a hard season without losing the thread of who you are. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

You Are Not Your Thoughts: Expression, AI, and the Lost Art of Perception

Everyone's expressing. Everyone's broadcasting. Everyone's a creator now, and AI has made it easier than ever to put content into the world without ever pausing to ask whether it's worth saying. Bryan and Spencer set out to talk about both sides of the equation in this one... expression and perception, the two-way street of how we show up on social media and in real life. But Spencer's instinct as a broadcaster kept pulling the conversation back toward expression, which turned out to be the whole point. We default to the side we know. The harder practice, the one this episode lands on, is perception... noticing what's actually happening before we react, considering the validity of someone else's ground before we flame them, and recognizing that the thoughts running through our heads are not us. A conversation about the AI content explosion, the attention economy, mindfulness as a daily practice, and the two-word instruction Bryan has been giving his kids for years: be thoughtful and considerate. #ChasingJoy ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

What Do You Actually Want? Reinventing After Layoffs with Josh Damigo

What do you actually want? It's the question Josh Damigo asks every coaching client, and a month after being let go from his own job, it's the one he's been asking himself. Josh is back in the studio as our resident expert in something he calls "fun-employment." He walks Spencer and Bryan through what his day looks like... meditation, journaling, two hours of reading, three job applications sent only to roles that fit, two coffee chats, and the gym at noon. It's not aspirational; this is his routine. The kind built when, as Josh puts it, "your full-time job is getting a full-time job." But the routine is the easy part. The harder conversation is the one underneath it. What do you want from the next chapter? What do you definitely not want? Why "it's better to be broke and joyful than miserable because you're chasing a job." And the warning that runs through the whole hour... motion only matters when it's pointed somewhere. A conversation for anyone navigating the in-between, and trying to answer the question honestly before they answer it under pressure. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Cognitive Surrender: When AI Starts Thinking For You

There's a difference between using a calculator and asking ChatGPT to write your essay for you. One is a tool you reach for to handle something you could do yourself but would rather not. The other is something else entirely. On this week's episode of Chasing Joy, Bryan and Spencer work through that distinction in a conversation about cognitive load... what it is, how it's changed since the caveman version of the human nervous system, and where the line falls between healthy offload and what Wharton researchers are now calling "cognitive surrender." Along the way they touch Kahneman's fast-and-slow thinking framework, password managers, dirty dishes as a barometer of mental state, and a recent MIT Media Lab study suggesting that 83% of people who used ChatGPT to write an essay couldn't quote their own work afterward. It's a conversation about tools, not a screed against them. At least one host uses AI daily. The question is what stays yours when you do. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

The Pasta Class That Taught Us About Free Will

On this episode of Chasing Joy, Spencer and Bryan find unexpected wisdom in a pasta-making class in Florence, milestone birthdays, and everyday life. Two summers ago, twelve of us stood around a long wooden table in Florence. Same flour, same eggs, same instructions from a sweet Italian teacher who learned the recipe from her mother and grandmother before her. Twelve completely different doughs. Bryan has been thinking about that class ever since. This week, with Wayne off chasing some new endeavors, Spencer and Bryan sit with the question underneath that pasta class and a few others like it. Where do we actually learn the things that change us? What happens when the obvious teachers (pain, tragedy, a wrecked car, a hard birthday) aren't the only ones in the room? There's a heron rearranging the social order of an estuary. A dog named Daisy who keeps teaching Spencer about faith. And a closing thought on what it means to suspend judgment and stay curious. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.