169 What I Learned From My Guests This Year | Barb Patterson

Show Notes

As the year comes to a close, I've found myself reflecting on the conversations I’ve had on the podcast and what has become clear as I listened to each of my guests.

This isn’t a recap of interviews or a list of best moments. It’s a reflection on the themes that kept showing up, regardless of background, industry, or life story.

In this solo episode, I share six truths that emerged again and again through conversation, about letting go, identity, presence, readiness, trust, and the human experience itself. Not as advice, but as invitations. Things to notice. Places to soften. Questions to sit with as we move toward a new year.

My hope is that something here resonates, opens, or settles, and supports you in trusting what’s already alive and unfolding in your own life.

Thank you for listening and for being part of this journey.

SHOW NOTES:

[00:00] - Welcome to The Inerverse of Business and Life Podcast

[00:56] - Reflecting on the Year and Podcast Journey

[02:56] - The Power of Letting Go

[05:46] - Releasing Old Identities

[11:15] - The Importance of Presence

[14:38] - Movement Before Readiness

[18:05] - Embracing the Human Experience

[21:38] - Thank you for listening!

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What is The Innerverse of Business & Life?

This podcast is a space to explore the profound connection between our inner world and our work in the world. We dive deep into the heart of what it means to live and work from a felt knowing of our essential selves – aligned, alive, and fully expressed. We’ll play at the intersection of business, spirituality, consciousness, and growth.

Through intimate conversations with thought leaders, change-makers, authors, and humans just like you and me, you’ll hear real stories of transformation and the internal shifts, “aha” moments, and wake-up calls that have helped them to access new dimensions of creativity, higher levels of intelligence, unlock dormant potentials and experience greater joy and fulfillment.

Barbara Patterson (00:56)
Hi, welcome back. This is Barb Patterson. I'm really glad you're here. It's the end of the year and like many others, I've been reflecting on the podcast. You may or may not know that I had a podcast a few years ago and decided to take a break from it and relaunched as the Interverse of Business and Life earlier this year in January.

And I always love the end of the year podcast recaps and where they share highlights and all of that. And as I was thinking about this year in particular, first and foremost was just how much I've loved being back in the podcast world. I really, really love being in conversation with people. I love having this as an avenue to be of service.

my hope with all these conversations, whether it's a solo episode with me or one of my guests, that they resonate, that they expand your mind, perhaps open your heart and create an internal shift that allows you to move through the world in a way that's meaningful for you. And so the guests have come from a variety of...

backgrounds in business. I've had guests sharing more about their personal stories, some about their business journeys. All of it really focused on how the internal shifts have made way or made room for them to feel more connected within themselves, more aligned in their work, have helped them reach new levels of expression or results in their business.

And so when I was thinking about what to do towards the end of the year, what kept coming up for me were these themes that, regardless of background or story, were pretty consistent in most of them. And so I thought what I'd do today is share those themes with you.

The first theme is letting go is not passive, it is an act of trust.

Now, what do I mean by that? There were a lot of stories in the guest interviews around needing to let go, whether it was to let go of a job, to let go of an identity, to let go of the past, or to let go of a preconceived idea that they had about what success would look like or what they would look like with that success.

And really over and over again, the thing that stood out for me was how often the letting go is ultimately an act of trust. Trust in the deeper intelligence being nudged, trust that life will right side you again, trust in the ebbs and flow of productivity, of cash flow, the ebbs of flow of business and life, trust.

that regardless of circumstances, we could go within and find our bearings and get centered and find our center of gravity to help us You know, that piece around letting go, we can hear it at a conceptual level. But what I loved in these interviews was hearing how

It was real. Their lives, their work, we're asking them in particular to let go of something.

You know, often that letting go was letting go of a preconceived idea of what they thought they should do, what they thought it would look like, or letting go of the resistance to just meeting what life was offering them at this time. So that process of learning to...

be with and accept what is often includes a letting go of what was or what we'd hoped was. And I think this idea for all of us as we come towards the end of year is of especially poignant one that, for many of us we get reflective. There's all the talk in the new year about, you know, what we're going to do. And if you're like me, maybe you've given up New Year's resolutions many years ago. But I...

always do appreciate or this time of year does cause me to be reflective and think about, do I consciously want to let go of as I step into the new year? And so I invite you as you are considering where you are in life, what life has in front of you

the potential that you'd like to experiment with and play with into the next year. What would it require that you let go of internally?

Now building on from that first one is around identities. Many of the guest talked about needing to release, old identities, whether it was an identity of what professionalism was and could they be more authentically themselves or for many people, work.

and the way they work with others, way they build their business, evolves over time. And at some point in that evolution, they've had to meet the part of them that was hanging on to an old way or an old identity of who they were. And yet to step into new expression, new levels of leadership, new levels of impact, required a release.

of those old identities and the old ways in which they knew themselves or others knew them. And in that, for some, it was an opportunity to really get to know, well, who am I now? What matters to me now? And I think this is just such a relevant one for all of us. Like growth, evolving is a natural part of life. And yet in business in particular,

our minds hold this identity of what we think is needed, what's needed to be the good partner, what's needed to be a good leader, what's needed to be a successful coach, And yet often where we're being nudged internally is to step beyond that, to step into something new. We feel the call, we feel the nudge, we feel the inspiration, but

we come up against some level of resistance because we have this belief and maybe it's an unconscious idea that what got us here is also needed to keep us moving forward. Yet often that's the exact opposite. And you've heard it said, you know, what got you there won't get you where you want to go.

it looks like a good idea because we've associated it with the reason why we're successful. Or we're concerned that by letting that identity go, this next chapter will be harder or people won't follow us because they know us one way.

or we're concerned that we won't be as respectable. You know, I can share for myself that as my work continues to evolve, there's always that moment where I want to try something new, something different. And, this moment of, will the people that have been with me still come? Will they still want to learn from me?

We start to get precious about identity or those places in us that we've associated with why we're successful, or we get fearful that by releasing them, we'll somehow struggle more. But in these stories I've heard throughout the years, and even in my own experience, what you find is the letting go of those identities leads to

inner freedom and a liberation and more alignment. People are able to hear what's really present for them and step into that chapter, that new thing with more aliveness, with more creativity. that resistance that we can feel is often there because we're resisting the movement, we're resisting the evolution. We're putting

a stop to it some way, Via overthinking, getting nervous, worried about the future. And so I think if you can look at and think about, some of those old ideas that you have about yourself that just no longer feel interesting or true, like maybe you're bored with them or...

you just feel this real desire to kind of shake things up in some way or to step into work that feels more meaningful to you or aligned. That's the point at which some idea of yourself is asking to be released. And all that's happening internally, if you're feeling like a struggle around that is

you've likely have that identity, that thought about yourself, that thought about the behavior linked to success, reputation, respectability, any of those things. And what I want to offer in this moment is none of that is ultimately true. And by

Betting on yourself and backing what's alive and present, what I've seen over and over again is that when we do that, it creates a beautiful momentum, it creates a path. We can't predict the future, But what happens is when we engage with what feels alive and aligned we naturally bring more.

enthusiasm to it. We naturally take the steps and then in the steps we learn more, we get more information. You know, the truth is it's never linear anyway. The truth is we're going to have challenges anyway. The truth is we're going to have good days, bad days anyway. So if you were to consider

What's present? What's asking for a little bit more room or airtime, asking you to maybe dare to follow, to listen and just take a few steps in that direction? What does it require you release or let go of? And what freedom might be possible if you were to do that?

Now the third piece is something I think we probably all know, but we all also struggle with it at times. And that is that the most powerful moments in our lives and in our work ultimately come from presence, not from technique, not from method, not from getting your words right, not from the perfect plan.

those moments that are most impactful, that fill us up and create really powerful connections or creative aha moments, that comes via presence.

You know, it can be really easy to put all our eggs in the basket of the behavior and following, strategy. And I'm not saying those things aren't helpful, but what I am saying is that presence allows us to be agile, to hear the wisdom that's needed in the moment, to have the kind of rapport

core and connections that allow us to build strong partnerships or to overcome conflict, to create a meeting of the minds or collaborations presence amplifies our ability to access the resourcefulness needed for the moment.

whether that's in a negotiation, a difficult conversation, or when we want to enjoy life presence is a powerful vehicle for shifts of consciousness, for transmuting confusion and declarity,

our ability to drop from the mind and be less distracted by the mind and step into the conversation and listen more deeply can alter outcomes phenomenally. It can create powerful connection with another human being.

the idea that we're going to think our way through something and see it differently is a limited one. Because often the mind is full of noise that's contaminated by the past, contaminated by fears, worries, concerns, judgments, But when we get really present and we drop out of our minds and get present to the person or the situation or the moment we get

information. We're able to hear and get to the heart of the matter. And so over this season, my greatest hope for all of us is that we're able to

drop out of our minds, drop out of the doing mind, have more and more moments where we just drop into presence to receive, to give, to connect, to witness, to offer

presence to ourselves and to the people around us. in the moment of presence we get touched by life. In the moment of presence we're able to really be with another human being. Presence is where the power is, not in the plan, not in the thinking, not in the technique.

Now the next one, is this idea that movement happens regardless of being ready or not. I know that you hear a lot about this out there, move before you're ready, stop waiting to be ready. Ready is an illusion, ready is a decision, it's not a feeling.

And those are all out there because they're true. And what's fascinating is working with leaders and founders and solopreneurs, and being one myself, I know the grip of feeling like I'm just not quite ready, more information is required, more confidence, more certainty, more resources.

There are lot of justifiable reasons why we don't think we're ready. But what if that gap is an illusion of the mind? What if not being ready is a trick of the mind? And that by stepping into action, just by stepping into the next thing, we get more information.

There's an analogy that I just love and it's this idea that when you're walking on a dark path, you have a lantern above your head. Now the lantern creates this like nice circle of light right around you, but no further. You don't know what's beyond that light. The only way to know is to take a step and then as you step, that light reveals the next part of the path.

And I think it's just such a great analogy, one that was really meaningful to me when I was starting my business now about 15 years ago. Could I get comfortable just in the next step without knowing what's going to happen after that? Could I get comfortable taking action without having all the info? Except for this inner nudge, not a guarantee.

But could I just trust the nudges? Could I trust the creative idea? Could I step into something and let it show me more? You know, I shared in one of my own solo episodes earlier this year one of the studies that they've done around successful entrepreneurship and leadership is the idea that you make decisions fast. Now, not reckless, right? That doesn't mean reckless. That doesn't mean careless,

but you're willing to step before you have all the information or you're willing to step even though you're not certain it will work out, or you don't feel completely confident in yourself. And what they found is that these entrepreneurs and leaders that are willing to do this understand that no matter what decision you make, you're going to have challenges.

And no matter what decision you make, there are no guarantees and there's going to be things that are going to be unexpected. But You put your certainty in that you can handle the ups and downs of finding your way.

You step into action and you are able to start to feel the momentum of something. And then as you get information, you adjust. What if readiness is just a choice?

What is really at stake if you step into action? Again, not careless, reckless, thoughtless, but not waiting. confidence is not a requirement to step into action.

Knowing all the what if potential scenarios of the future is not a requirement. Guarantee certain outcomes is not a requirement. So as we step into this holiday season and into the new year, I want to invite you, is there a place you've been waiting to feel more ready? And what action would you take if you let go of the need for readiness?

Now, as I consider all these conversations, maybe the last point to make or the last...

reflection that I'm sitting with myself is we can trust the human experience and we can trust that we have it within to rise to the occasion. And the more willing we are to meet what is with our full presence, to feel it all, to feel the wider range of the human experience, the less we resist that experience.

The more we see the fluid nature of it all, the more we allow what's no longer serves to fall away, we wake up to the innate reservoir within that we have for creativity, for resilience, we're able to find our center of gravity within for all the moves that life and business require of us. And in these stories throughout the year to hear

the ways in which every guest met their own version of what life was offering them. And for some,

it was the loss of identities, old identities, that gave wave to a deeper connection to what matters to them, a deeper connection to themselves, to what brings them meaning, a deeper connection to what's alive.

often we unintentionally or innocently we're trying to manage ourselves, manage the experience, trying to contain ourselves so that we can keep it all together, We grip, we hold.

And yet in all those stories throughout what you hear is the surrender, the release, the acknowledgement, the being with what is in a very human way gave them what they needed to step into what was next. that inner freedom, that inner liberation, the inner awakening is what began to fund and fuel this next chapter for all of them

and from that place step into their work with others in a new way or into their families in a new way. So as we go through the end of the year and step into the next, I invite all of us to just reflect on the idea that we have everything we need within to handle the human experience.

And if I weren't trying to contain it, control it, manufacture it, and I could trust that I'm OK no matter what, I could trust that we'll find our way, I could trust the creative potential of my mind to help me figure things out. If we understand we have all that going for us, where would we love to lean into in this coming year?

Where would we come more alive if we trusted life, trusted ourselves, and didn't worry about trying to control or guarantee a certain outcome? Where would we dance more? Where would we allow our expression more? I look forward to being with you in the new year. I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for joining me along this path. Thank you for

sharing your stories with me. And thank you to all the guests I've had on for being so generous in their sharing. I look forward to our paths crossing in 2026. And I wish you all a beautiful, connected, present, loving, joyful end of the year. Thank you.