Join me for this webinar next week đ
Over the past few years, Iâve interviewed more than 300 people on the question: what is a good life? In an upcoming free webinar, Iâll share some of the most revealing insights from these conversations â along with reflections on why they matter for us today.
Iâd love for you to join.
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This Weekâs Podcast
On the 141st episode of What is a Good Life?, Iâm delighted to welcome Professor Megan Reitz. Megan is an Associate Fellow at SaĂŻd Business School, Oxford University, and Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She is a leading thinker on leadership and dialogue, featured in the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers, and the author of Dialogue in Organizations, Mind Time, and, most recently, Speak Out, Listen Up. Her work explores how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work, and her latest research examines how we can foster spaciousness â the capacity to innovate, reflect, and build relationships in workplaces addicted to busyness.
In this conversation, we explore the impact of space, silence, attention, and an outward focus on our relationships and our experience of life.
This episode serves as an invitation to pause, question the busyness weâve become entangled in, and reconsider the status quo of how we relate.
The weekly clip from the podcast (3 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (60 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
2. My Weekly Reflection
I am sure you can recall a moment like this in your life:
You are continuously ruminating on something, placing yourself firmly at the centre of the universe, when you encounter a moment of aweâwhether through a landscape or another humanâand whatever felt like it would never stop simply dissolves away.
For Megan in this interview, she shares such a moment when the Grand Canyon literally took her breath away and created an emotional release.
A moment comes to mind for me in India, in my early 30s on sabbaticalânot having a clue what Iâd be doing next, full of the inevitable overthinking of an early-stage self-inquiryâand for a moment it all dissipates as I look out at the foothills of the Himalayas.
My mum recently told me that a picture she saw of this scene just felt like pure freedom.
Now, before this sounds like I am suggesting that whenever you are feeling a little too tight you should simply go visit the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas, let me be clear: the point is the significance of looking out from ourselves. Sometimes our self-obsession or inquiry may be so intense it requires something dramatic to feel that sense of awe or dissolving.
Yet the more we continue to pay attention to what is between us, outside of us, something shifts in our being over time. This outward shiftâthe act of paying attention to what lies between and beyond usâis also central to Meganâs work.
I sense a fairly typical path that many of us walk when attempting to come into a greater understanding of who we are and a greater sense of belonging in our own bodies and lives: we begin to reflect much moreâmaybe in isolation, maybe with a therapist. Regardless, the spotlight is fixed firmly inward.
This can bring considerable âgainsâ in the short term. How could our relationship with ourselves, no longer avoiding hidden aspects of ourselves, not benefit from finally spending more time with ourselves?
The truth is, that initial self-inquiry is a powerful stage, but not the destination. On its own, it overlooks that you are simply a piece of a much larger puzzle rather than the puzzle itself. It cannot provide the answers you are looking for, because it begins with the assumption that you are separate, an island unto yourself.
What Iâve noticed again and again in these conversations and interviews is that people who seem deeply content have reached a turning point: they become as curious about others, and the world around them, as they are about their own inner life.
This curiosity is not theoretical or analytical, but simply a consequence of where their attention now rests.
The more this outward attention deepens, the more connected we feel to everything. The more we can laugh at ourselves and the often absurd nature of existence, as we see our plight is not simply our own to solve but is shared.
It becomes less personal as our inherent connection becomes obvious. And while the human experience is still fully felt, it now has a very different feel and contextâto be in the world, but not of the world.
When we reach a point on our paths where this continual curiosity and attention become a two-way street, and our awareness is subtle enough, that we are present enough, the Grand Canyon or Himalayas are no longer necessary.
The softening of someoneâs eyes, a window into their grief; a belly-aching laugh with a child, friend, or partner; closer attention to the movements of a tree; an openness to our true state of not knowingâall serve as connectors and reminders of how held we can be in this sometimes painful and wonderful existence.
Perhaps it is not more thinking and lines of self-inquiry that you need, but to turn that wonderful attention you have cultivated outward, to the world around you.
Then you may see you are not an equation to solve, but a never-ending, unknowable becomingâjust as worthy of awe as the Grand Canyon, the Himalayas, or anything else.
If thereâs one thing Iâve learned after 300 conversations, itâs that a good life is not found in endless self-examination, but in discovering that our lives are inseparable from everything and everyone around us.
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Full Episode - The Space To Truly Connect with Professor Megan Reitz - What is a Good Life? #141
4. This Weekâs Questions
How often have you given yourself space to experience life without an agenda or timetable?
Does a particular relationship or setting come to mind where your conversations simply need more pauses and space?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which Iâve now interviewed nearly 300 people. Iâm not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guestsâ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If youâre interested in exploring your own self-inquiry through one-on-one coaching, my 5-week group courses, or fostering greater trust, communication, and connection within your leadership teams, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.