Jennifer Louden is a coach, speaker, and best-selling author of Why Bother: Discover the Desire for What’s Next. Jennifer is a pioneer in personal growth and development who helped launch the concept of self-care with her first bestseller, The Woman’s Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life. For over 26 years, Jennifer has helped millions of creative women create extraordinary lives through her books, communities, and writing retreats. She has appeared on several television, radio, and podcast shows, and has been cited in Brene Brown’s books, Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead.

Jennifer joins me today to explore our fear of being undefended and explain what an emotional immune system is. She shares her experience with depression and loss and the lessons she learned from them. She explains what “why bothers” are, how they work, how we can use them, and the role that desire plays in it. She defines the difference between signature themes and life purpose and explains how the latter can harm us. She also shares her ideas and processes on writing and explores how a teacher’s highest calling is to live her lessons.

“Life wants to carry you down the river with no forcing or holding back. You need to open yourself up to it.” – Jennifer Louden

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• The experience of being alive and what is life about for Jennifer
• Why it took 12 years to write Why Bother and for whom Jennifer wrote it
• What our emotional immune system is and how we can expand it
• How we impart meanings to our circumstances and our “why bother” periods
• Desire as the flow of life and how it plays into our “why bothers”
• What a signature theme is and how it’s different from a life purpose
• How the idea of a life purpose can stop and hurt people
• Shadow comforts, time monsters, and how we close off ourselves to the feeling of aliveness
• Jennifer’s definition of self-improvement and how they may not help us find what we want most out of life
• The Four Conditions of Enoughness and learning to stop in the gaps of life
• Why Jennifer chose to work with the publisher, Page Two
• The most significant influences on Jennifer’s writing
• Writing in the morning with a latte in hand and other writing routines
• How to avoid procrastinating as a writer
• The importance of planning a writing project and how Jennifer organizes ideas for her books
• How Jennifer deals with self-doubt when writing
• Why we’re all great writers and how we can develop great sentences

Resources Mentioned:

• Why Bother: Discover the Desire for What’s Next by Jennifer Louden
• The Woman’s Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life by Jennifer Louden
• The Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year by Jennifer Louden
• The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer
• The Book of Longings: A Novel by Sue Monk Kidd
• The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier
• The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life by Priscilla Long
• Daring Greatly: How the Courage Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
• Dare to Live: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brene Brown
• Scrivener

Connect with Jennifer Louden:

• Website
• Jennifer Louden on Twitter
• Jennifer Louden on Facebook
• Jennifer Louden on YouTube
• Jennifer Louden on Instagram
• Jennifer Louden on Pinterest
• Jennifer Louden on LinkedIn

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