The Mission Driven Mom Podcast

Audrey Rindlisbacher
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  • Self-Improvement
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For moms and women who want to increase their confidence, and discover and develop their unique gifts, while strengthening themselves and their families. *Over 50 5-Star Reviews*

  1. 5d ago

    EP 171 Vision Panel: Mothers of Creation Speakers

    Have you ever had someone you love decide to walk out of your life?  Cadie did. Someone very close to her decided a few years back that they didn't want to be in her life any longer, and there's been no contact since. While Cadie was sharing with us her pain and struggle over this loss, we all had a profound realization: Even though she has no contact with this person, Cadie still has a relationship with them!  Resources from the Episode: Mothers of Creation Conference - Provo, Utah - September 26th The Power of TED - David Emerald's work on the creator orientation and the empowerment dynamic Tracie references The Karpman Drama Triangle - Stephen Karpman's original framework for the victim, rescuer, and persecutor roles Episode 159: The Six Victim Types with Lindsey Wright  Episode 166: Creator Orientation, A Panel Discussion  Episode 169: What Vision Actually Is  AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 171: Vision, A Panel Discussion Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. So happy to have you back with us again today. We have our beautiful panel of upcoming speakers for our Mothers of Creation event this fall. We've got Tracie Hyde, Lindsey Wright, and Cadie Hatch with me. Today we're going to talk about the final key theme of this event, and of this whole process of moving from our problem stories and the places where we feel immensely stuck to really moving forward, having some serious success, and making things different on a long-term basis. AUDREY: We've talked about the victim types, and how understanding them creates a spark and turns us on to the fact that we are being a victim and we need to be different. We've talked about how creator orientation gives us new hope. Cadie talked about how it makes us feel liberated, and Lindsey talked about how it helps her feel relief, like a new beginning, turning toward others, all of these beautiful things. But then how do we maintain it? We get that we're acting like a victim, and that we could be a creator instead, and we want to be that. Vision is at the heart of how we stay there. It's how we get to the end result. So let's start by putting some words around what we mean when we say vision. How would you describe that? What Do We Mean by Vision? TRACIE: Vision is something we hold in our mind that we have done the work to spiritually create before we bring it into the world. It's something we have in the forefront of our mind. In victim mode, we're reacting to problems, and the problems pop up like whack-a-mole and we're just whacking them down. But with vision, we actually have something we carefully and intentionally created in our mind that we are walking toward, working toward. AUDREY: That's a beautiful description. Any other thoughts or descriptions around that? We've talked in previous podcasts about how sometimes our expectations and our ideals can get us into trouble. So what's the difference between an expectation and this idea of vision? Vision Versus Expectation LINDSEY: The culture can say, just envision it. If you want a million dollars and an island in the Bahamas, just imagine it and then it will happen. That's not what we mean. For me, vision is based in reality, meaning it isn't unrealistic. It's based on principles. It's something that, like Tracie said, we've spiritually created. This thing we're holding in the mind, this way we want to show up in the world. But it's realistic. AUDREY: I would add one other little caveat, and I think it's what you're getting at, Lindsey. It's within the realm of our control. One of the things that really trips me up in the expectation realm is two things. One, I have to remind myself that if my expectations are higher than God's, then I'm in the realm of the impossible and the ridiculous. But also that I can't have expectations for other people. I can only have expectations around my responses and my creations. Those are the things I can hold and that I can control. So that would be part of how I would flesh out what we mean by vision. Cadie, you were going to add something. CADIE: That was what I was going to say. I can have a vision of what I want my relationships to look like, but I can't control what the other person in the relationship is going to want or do next. It's unrealistic for me to force that on them. So a question I have been finding helpful is, what kind of person do I need to be to live this vision I'm thinking about? I can't control their response, but I can control mine. Who do I want to be as I get older? What kind of person do I want to be? What would that look like in this relationship? Then it's all my responsibility to be that person. AUDREY: Great point. Another word that's used in some of the sources we're using to prepare this event is outcome. Fear Versus Faith AUDREY: Cadie, Tracie has given the example in past podcasts and past discussions about her family gatherings. Maybe she knows what she doesn't want. One of the words we haven't used yet is fear versus faith. I think that's a very important fundamental difference here. When we're in the victim mentality, we're very fearful. You can see threads of this if you go back and listen to the ways we described problem stories and problem situations. There are a lot of fears about what we're going to do, what other people will think, how we're not going to show up and be enough, all of that. Creator orientation is a place of faith, and faith is a principle of action and power. So we're taking action around a predetermined outcome. The reason Tracie kept talking about this spiritual creation is because we've gone to the work of deciding what it is we want instead. AUDREY: So much of what's happening in victim is that something has happened in life. We've been in an accident, or someone has betrayed us, and it's something we didn't want to have happen to us. In that sense we are kind of a victim of life, but we don't want to be in victim orientation. We want to take that experience, turn it into a challenger, and show up as a creator. But we cannot do that without determining what we want instead, now that these are my new circumstances. When my father passed suddenly when I was sixteen years old, that was my new circumstance. There was no going back. There was no changing it. There was only accepting it and creating new visions and outcomes of who I was going to be, how I was going to show up for the people around me, how I was going to be in my family. Vision is that outcome we predetermine, that we spiritually create, like Tracie kept saying. We hold it in our mind. We cling to it to keep us in that creator orientation. Willing to Do the Work LINDSEY: I love what Cadie said about holding this creation in our mind, this outcome. But we're also willing to do the work. We're willing to act in faith. We're willing to take responsibility. So the vision is based on reality, and it's based on what we can actually control, but we're also willing to do the work. We don't just set the vision and then expect it to happen. We're taking the responsibility to make it happen. [Speaker attribution uncertain in this passage. Voice matches Lindsey’s earlier "based in reality" language, but verify against audio.] AUDREY: That's a good component of vision. And creating the vision is a big part of taking ownership. We can't just decide to stay a creator. If we don't do the work to build out a new vision for ourselves in this new reality we find ourselves in, then we will flip back into [victim] orientation. There's no other way for it to go, because we don't know why we're being a creator. We lose sight of it constantly, and those negative emotions and reactions to a situation we didn't choose, or don't like, are going to overwhelm us if we're not hanging on to a new vision for ourselves, our lives, our way of being. It's indispensable to staying in creator orientation. [The recording says "flip back into creator orientation" here. Corrected to victim, which is clearly what was meant. Confirm before publishing.] Cadie’s Story: A Relationship With No Contact CADIE: If I could share a little experience on this, I would love to. I have a person in my life who I have a very close relationship with. Some years ago this person decided they didn't want to be involved in my life anymore. You might be able to say in some terms that this person abandoned our relationship. When that happened, it was a pretty traumatic experience for me, and I felt like I legitimately was the victim of that circumstance. And I didn't want to be. CADIE: One of the ways I know I am in drama is that I obsess over the same event over and over. It gets replayed over and over. That's a huge part of victim. That's all I thought about. When I didn't have to be thinking of anything else, that was what I was thinking about. So I knew I was stuck, because victims are always stuck. And I wanted to change that. It took me a long time to be able to change it. MDM is such a wonderfully faith based community, and there are some circumstances in which I could not get out of victim by myself. On that one I had to turn to God and ask him to help me. He got me out of victim on that one. CADIE: However, just like Audrey was saying, I can easily flip back into victim if I dwell on that problem. But the thing that keeps me out of it is this idea of a vision of what that relationship could look like someday. I cannot control this other person at all. But like I was saying before, what kind of person do I need to be so that if this person came back to me, we could start a relationship again? I need to be the kind of person who has an open heart and is willing to forgive. I need to be the kind of person who is able to have maybe challenging conversations, but with empathy and love. I can't control the other person, but my vision is of who I want to be. [Unrecoverable

  2. Sep 1

    EP 170 She gave up art school to have a family

    I'm re-sharing an episode from a few years ago, about a mother who really inspired me. When I first told this story, women heard echoes of their own deepest desires in it. I think you might too.  It's about a woman named Jennie Butchart. Resources from the Episode Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th The Butchart Gardens - Brentwood Bay, British Columbia. Jennie's sunken garden, now a National Historic Site of Canada As a Man Thinketh by James Allen - the garden of the mind passage Audrey reads The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale - both quotes on becoming an intentional creator Episode 158: A Husband's Take: What Saved Our Marriage - the conversation with Blaine that Audrey references   AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 170: Mission Driven Story — Jennie Butchart Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom, where we are empowering moms with principles and purpose. In preparation for our upcoming Mothers of Creation event this fall in Utah, I wanted to re-share with you a podcast I did a few years ago about a mother who really inspired me. Many women heard echoes of their own deepest desires in this true story, so I hope that you also catch the vision of how you can create and contribute in meaningful ways and bring your family along on the journey with you. A Gift Set Aside AUDREY: Our story today begins with a little girl named Jennie Kennedy. She was born into a modest middle class family and had a relatively happy childhood, but by the time she was twelve years old both her parents had passed away. She was orphaned and sent to live with her wealthy aunt, sort of a Pollyanna true story. Jennie's aunt was able to send her to a good school, one of the better schools in Canada, and there Jennie really thrived. She was intelligent and she loved to learn. She also proved to be an especially gifted artist. She excelled in her art classes, and her teachers and school administrators noticed her artistic ability. That is why, in her late high school years, she was offered a scholarship to go to Paris and study there. I am not exactly sure how old she was, but she was offered this scholarship. In the meantime, though, she met and fell in love with a man named Robert Butchart. AUDREY: They had fallen in love, and she wanted to marry him and have a family so badly that she actually turned down the Paris scholarship. In 1884 they were married. Cement, Limestone, and a Growing Garden AUDREY: The Butcharts were well off, so there was some money in the family, and they were able to take a trip to England. While they were there, Robert began looking around because he wanted to be in the cement business. I don't know if his family had already been in the cement business, but this was Robert's interest at the time. Incredibly, he was able to obtain a recipe for cement while he was in England that would allow him to be the first person to produce Portland cement in Canada, which was a much higher quality cement than what was available at the time. So when the couple returned to Canada, he set his sights on a plant. He wanted to open his own plant and produce cement. They were in Victoria, on the western side of Canada, and there was a limestone quarry that he needed for cement production. So they bought some land, some acres for themselves, and a quarry so that he could produce this cement. I don't know how much land there was in total, but he began to mine the quarry. He had some success in the business, and he was able to send bags of cement for the first time down to San Francisco and other places in the US and Canada. For a time it was a thriving business, and the Butcharts were having quite a bit of success with it. AUDREY: In the meantime, Jennie was starting her family. Remember how she was really artistic? Now that they lived out in this beautiful area, she decided she wanted to start gardening. She would express her artistic abilities in gardening. She started out planting flowers and shrubbery just around the house, learning about her plants, following her interests, and developing her artistic gifts and expressing them through gardening. She got better and better and better at it. As her abilities and knowledge grew, so did the garden. It got bigger and bigger over the next few years, as did her family. She worked hard to balance her mothering and wife roles with this artistic passion for gardening. It was wonderful not only to have this outlet, but to also garden with her children and teach them along the way. The Pit in the Backyard AUDREY: Well, within a few years, the limestone ran out. And when that happened, Jennie found herself with a huge three acre pit for a backyard. It was tall sheer walls of rock and this big ugly pit with debris all in it from all the tools that were used to pull out the limestone. It was really an eyesore, and Jennie hated it. AUDREY: Then she had an idea. She was going to try to hide it. So she planted Lombardy poplars, Persian plums, and white poplars to grow tall behind the house, on the back part of her yard, to try to hide this huge monstrosity. AUDREY: In the meantime, the garden right around her house was really beautiful. In fact, sometimes her husband would send workers over to move things around for her and help with her gardening, because it had become such a massive passion project. She had gotten better and better at it. By this point they had lived in their home, I think it was five or six years, before the limestone ran out. So she has had this garden going for several years and, like I said, she has gotten really good at it. And she looks out at this big pit in her backyard, at the temporary fix she tried to plant, and she thinks it is not cutting it. The Sunken Garden AUDREY: And so then she thinks, I will create a sunken garden. I will make it beautiful. I will use all the knowledge and expertise and extra money that we have now to find beautiful plants and make this into a gorgeous sunken garden. Now, I don't know that she actually thought much beyond the task at hand. Maybe she had in the back of her mind that someday people would come and see the sunken garden. I don't know for sure. But just know that this dawned on her and became an incredibly fun project where she could really express her talents and could beautify her home and her yard. AUDREY: So she took massive amounts of topsoil and brought it in by horse drawn cart. She had the rubble on the floor of the pit pushed up against the walls of the pit. She put these tall mounds on each side, and then she used those mounds of rubble to plant terraced flower beds. She wanted to beautify the walls of this pit, so she used a bosun's chair. She hung from this bosun's chair on the side of these cliffs, and then she would plant in every crack and crevice that she found. She would plant ivy and other beautiful things to cover the ugliness of the sheer walls around the sides of the pit. AUDREY: Once they had the rubble out of the way, and she had made some of the flower beds and brought in topsoil, it was a matter of deciding where to begin. She decided to start with a Japanese garden. She was able to work with an expert on Japanese landscaping for a little bit of time, who helped her get the details right. This was more than just an opportunity to develop her gifts. It was an exciting passion project. AUDREY: As the gardens grew, more and more people wanted to see them. Not only did she welcome them to the garden, she always offered them a cup of tea. In fact, she often welcomed them to see the gardens and showed them around herself. Sometimes they didn't even recognize her or know that she was the gardener. They thought she was just a worker. She loved serving her community through her gifts in this way. So when they came, she would hand them this cup of tea and show them around. AUDREY: Now, I don't know how many people she hired to come in and help over the years, but eventually there was an Italian garden and other themed gardens. The garden grew, the interest grew, and in the year 1915 alone it was reported that more than 18,000 visitors came. She and her husband named the estate Benvenuto, which in Italian means welcome. Over time, she and her husband traveled and brought back plants and fountains and sculptures from all over the world. She worked tirelessly for twelve years, and she finally pronounced the sunken garden done. A Legacy That Outlived Her AUDREY: The visitors increased and increased and increased. By 1930 she was named Victoria's best citizen for her work in her sunken garden, and its tremendous beauty, and also because there were visitors coming from all over now who brought interest and revenue into the town. AUDREY: When World War II hit, there was a loss of manpower, and it was hard to keep the gardens going and to keep them as beautiful as they once were. In the meantime, Jennie's health declined, and her daughter started trying to keep up with the garden. When they couldn't do it anymore, they gave it to their children, and their grandson brought it back to its original state and then started to beautify it and grow it even more. It has since grown immeasurably from that first garden and Japanese garden to five themed gardens and fifty-five acres, and now it is 122 years old and famous around the world. It is still in the family. A grandson, a great-granddaughter, something like that. They manage it now. I can't remember all the details of how the succession went, but they keep adding to it. They have added other themed areas. There is a children's garden and other gardens. There is a stage where they do performances. They have a lot more walking paths, and they do fireworks shows. So they have really made this an incredible experience for the people who come. AUDREY: It has also been named a National Historic Site in Canada. They employ at least

  3. Aug 25

    EP 169 The dreams you're carrying are the most noble part of you

    Years ago, when I was just beginning my classical education, I sat in a seminar where the presenters kept telling us to use our scholar skills. So I finally raised my hand and asked where I could find these scholar skills. The presenters, including the founder of my college, gave me a blank stare. Nobody had an answer for me. I could have just brushed this problem aside. But I cared about being the best student I could be! I was making a lot of sacrifices in time, effort, and money to be in those classes, and I had a vision of what this education would do for my family. So I went and found the answers myself. Resources from the Episode: Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - Saturday, September 26th The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness by Stephen R. Covey. The source of the four parts model and every Covey quote in this episode The Mission Driven Life by Audrey Rindlisbacher AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 169: Vision Mothers of Creation Invitation AUDREY: Mom, this fall I'm going to be back in the gorgeous library ballroom in Provo, Utah, spending one transformative day with women just like you, connecting, growing, and learning how to be the creators God divinely designed us to be. If you want an opportunity to spend one powerful day with some of the most incredible women around who will inspire and uplift you, and if you want to be guided through a process that will give you the tools and principles to turn your persistent problems into new vision and forward momentum, then I invite you to join us Saturday, September 26th in Utah. Me and my team of mentors have literally been preparing for an entire year, and I want you there. And I can promise you that your life will never be the same. You will walk out of that room, just as hundreds of other women have, with new hope not only for yourself and your family, but for the future of our culture and nation. Because there really are moms out there just like you who want to overcome their challenges and make a positive difference. Tickets are selling fast. Check out the link around this video or go to themissiondrivenmom.com to grab your seat while there are still some available. And I will see you there. Introduction AUDREY: The dreams you carry and nourish in your heart are the most noble part of you. When you don't have a vision, those dreams cannot be a reality. So what is vision? How can we develop it? And how is our perspective here at The Mission Driven Mom different than what you might hear at other places? That's what I'm going to talk to you about for a few minutes today. What Vision Is AUDREY: Beyond just the ability to see with our eyes, vision means the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination, wisdom, and intelligence. In The 8th Habit, Stephen Covey warned: "Vision is seeing with the mind's eye what is possible in people, in projects, in causes, and in enterprises. When people have no vision, when they neglect the development of the mind's capacity to create, they fall prey to the human tendency toward victimism." AUDREY: We've talked a lot about victimism, or our victim mindset, or acting like a victim, on this podcast over the last couple of months. We've explored how this pulls us into drama and steals our power and keeps us stuck. We've even spent a bit of time talking about the victim types and which ones we show up as, and we've gone on and on about how we need to be creators instead. Well, just like many others who have taught about creativity and vision, Covey also affirms that vision is the antidote to drama and the victim mindset. AUDREY: And of course, at our Mothers of Creation event this fall, we'll be spending one transformational day going through all the steps necessary to move from victimism and drama to creation and vision. I hope you plan to be there. But for today, I want to spend a few minutes diving a little deeper into the vision component of this journey. AUDREY: I want to start with a model Covey shares in his book The 8th Habit about how the four key areas of our lives work together and help us to create and cast vision, striving toward what matters most and becoming more than we were. Here's how this model works. There are four aspects to our whole being: the body, the mind, the heart, and the spirit. And each area has a need, an attribute, and what Covey calls a voice, or the expression of this part of us in the world. I'll explain them one by one. The Body: The Need to Live AUDREY: First, the physical body. Our physical body has a need to live. The voice or expression of this need to live is to take action, and it is through our body that we do the things that need to be done. The attribute that enables the body to thrive and to do the things it needs to do is discipline. With little discipline, we accomplish little, and sometimes even put our own health or lives at risk. With great discipline, we can accomplish great things. Covey said about discipline: "Discipline is willpower embodied. Only the disciplined are truly free. The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites, and passions." AUDREY: Horace Mann once said: "In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle." The Heart: The Need to Love AUDREY: The second aspect is your heart. Your heart has a need to love. The expression of that need to love, when properly understood, is taking actions of love toward ourselves and others by meeting real needs. I don't have time to get into this today. We talk about it a lot in the MDM Academy. If you want to understand it a little better, you can go to our website and sign up for my on-demand training. AUDREY: That being said, in order for our hearts to love, it needs the attribute of passion. Covey said about passion: "Passion comes from the heart and is manifested as optimism, excitement, emotional connection, and determination. It fires unrelenting drive." AUDREY: Courage is the essence of passion. So taking action and doing what needs to be done to love properly, regardless of fears, obstacles, objections, or risks. The Spirit: The Need to Leave a Legacy AUDREY: Three, your spirit, which has the need to leave a legacy, and the expression of this need is conscience, working to guide the spirit in the right direction. The attribute that makes this possible is what Covey calls educating the conscience. Again, we don't have time to get into it today, but we all have what he calls a social and a divine conscience. It is the divine conscience within that must be nurtured by truth and goodness so that it can guide us to goals worthy of us. Immanuel Kant said: "I am constantly amazed by two things: the starry heavens above and the moral law within." AUDREY: If you've spent much time around us at The Mission Driven Mom, you know we work to champion the natural moral law and its governing principles. We strive to inspire women to listen to that still, small voice that wants to guide our actions toward what is good, true, and beautiful. The Mind: The Need to Learn AUDREY: Number four, our minds. Our minds have the need to learn. The voice or expression of all we learn and know and are is our talents. And vision is the attribute of the mind that takes the action of the physical body, the passions of the heart, and the conscience of the spirit, and brings them together in an aspiration bigger than all of those parts, bigger than we are, and puts all the parts of us to work toward a future worth creating. Aristotle taught: "When talents and needs of the world cross, therein lies your vocation." How the Four Work Together AUDREY: So to recap what Stephen Covey just taught us: vision is the spiritual creation. This is where it all begins. And discipline is the physical creation, making the decisions and doing the tasks to realize the vision. Passion is the fuel. A constant [image of the] vision generates passion to keep going. And conscience is the guide along the way as we're making decisions. You listen closely as your conscience guides you to an end that blesses everyone, a true win-win. Covey said: "When conscience governs vision, discipline, and passion, leadership endures and changes the world for good." AUDREY: In other words, moral authority makes formal authority work. [As moms,] we need to be the leaders and visionaries of our lives and our families. By virtue of being mom, we have some formal authority, but Covey teaches that formal authority doesn't work without the moral authority underneath it. And that moral authority comes from working intentionally with all four parts of your nature and submitting them all to a vision worthy of you and your family. Where We Differ From Other Voices AUDREY: This is where we at The Mission Driven Mom deviate from other voices you might have heard discussing vision. We don't say follow your heart and live your truth. We don't believe that you can do anything you want to do or be anything you might want to be. Those ways of thinking and believing are unhelpful and unhealthy. We do believe you can become the very best version of yourself. We do believe you are different than others for important reasons. We do believe that you are uniquely designed and called to a work that will bless you and others. And we do believe that recognition and adherence to truth makes all of this possible. Imagination and the Vision of Great Leaders AUDREY: Now, going back to vision: it is the spiritual creation. This is why, as Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Great ideas, great beauty, great art, nature, sacrifice, service, great deeds, courage, and virtue. All of these fuel the imagination. Great leaders have vision. They hold an image of the future they are creating in their minds, and they share it with others. "I have a dream" [cemented] a nation in turmoil. Your mind needs vision, and vision is fueled by ideas and imagination. That's why ongoing lifelong learning from the great

  4. Aug 18

    Episode 168: Donna Zajonc on Victim, Creator, and Who You Want to Be

    I'm a recovering rescuer. For me this shows up as me doing things for others that they should really be doing for themselves (often my kids).   I also sometimes jump in and try to fix a problem that isn't mine, or do something I was never asked to do—like call the doctor or plan the party or give dating advice. Of course, I'd tell myself I just "wanted to help."  But honestly, that probably wasn't my true motivation. I probably thought something was broken that I needed to fix. Resources from the Episode: Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th The Center for the Empowerment Dynamic - Donna's Friday newsletter and essays, published weekly for over twelve years Coaching with the Empowerment Dynamic - Donna's coaching program, the one Audrey went through Who Do You Want to Be on the Way to What You Want? by Donna Zajonc The Power of TED* by David Emerald, a core text in MDM Academy Level One Episode 164 with David Emerald AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 168: Donna Zajonc on Victim, Creator, and Who You Want to Be Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Today I have a special guest, Donna Zajonc. Her credentials are master certified coach, author, and co-founder of the Center for the Empowerment Dynamic. If you saw our David Emerald interview, that is her association here. She helped co-found that organization with David. They worked intimately together for many years until he passed away. And I had the privilege of being one of Donna’s students years ago when I took her coaching program. It gave me lots of tools, some of which we’ll talk about today. Thank you again, Donna, for being here. I’m really looking forward to this. AUDREY: I want to give you a little bit of her credentials, because she’s done some really amazing things in her life and I want all of you to know how incredible she is. She is currently the director of coaching for the Power of TED, the Empowerment Dynamic organization. She is a very gifted teacher and coach, and her coaching program is so worth signing up for. She received the Washington State Excellence in Coaching Award in 2017. She served three terms in the Oregon legislature, and she also owned a multi-store food retail company in Oregon. Then in 2001 she really embraced her passion for coaching. Donna, you’ve been coaching pretty much full time since then? DONNA: Yeah, 25 years now. AUDREY: That’s amazing. And The Power of TED, one of the core books in our Mission Driven Mom Academy, level one, has sold over a quarter of a million copies. DONNA: I’m so glad to hear that. It’s so needed. AUDREY: And then her own book, which I own here and have all marked up, is Who Do You Want to Be on the Way to What You Want? Coaching with the Empowerment Dynamic. It was published a few years ago. I love it. Donna’s Path: Nursing, Public Service, and Coaching AUDREY: There are so many places we could start. I think we know a little bit about you professionally. I’d love to start out with a little bit more about you personally, so our audience can feel like they know you as a woman. Tell us a little bit about yourself. DONNA: Well, there are quite a few different segments to my life, as you alluded to. My early years of being drawn to public service through politics and being in the legislature. And being a mom. DONNA: I was in southern Missouri and went to the University of Missouri, joined VISTA, and married right out of college. We went to Oregon to work with the Klamath Indians, where I was the health coordinator. That was in the early to mid seventies. It was through that experience that I got really interested in public policy and health care policy, and I spent some time in the legislature. I stayed in Oregon, stayed in the Northwest, even though my home base, my brother and sister and family, were sixth generation in small towns in Missouri. But I’ve been a Northwesterner: Portland, Seattle. I live on Bainbridge Island, which is a gorgeous island right off of downtown Seattle. DONNA: That’s the résumé of person, place, and time. We can certainly get into when I met David in 2003, when we started immediately talking about the empowerment dynamic. We named that and had no idea it would become our life’s work and our business. AUDREY: You said professional coaching since 2001, so you were already doing that when you met David. DONNA: That’s correct. I was moving into coaching leaders, especially public leaders, because that had been a big part of many of the years earlier in my life, a real dedication to the nobility of public service. That is not how much of our public leadership is seen today, and I get really sad about that. But that’s exactly what I was doing in 2001 and 2002. We met in 2003 and were immediately drawn to our way of thinking and our desire to create a world that works for all: our desire to serve, to help people be their best, and to create systems where families, companies, and nations can really thrive. AUDREY: Absolutely. So what led you to coaching in the first place? Why were you already in that realm when you met David? DONNA: That’s a great question. My undergraduate degree is in nursing, and I went into public health nursing right out of college, working with the Klamath Indians and then in two different community mental health clinics in Oregon for many years. So I already had a very keen interest in human development and psychology. That’s when I heard about and discovered this idea of coaching, which in 2000 and 2001 was brand new. DONNA: There was a friend here on Bainbridge Island who really guided me into asking, is this a good fit for you? And it felt so good. My psychiatric mental health nursing was more about healing, about addressing wounds and issues. Coaching is all about forward looking, forward thinking. That forward thinking, being at our best, being emotionally sound and secure in our values, being able to take responsibility, all of that really attracted me. So I looked into the coaching school here in Seattle. It was a perfect fit, and I never looked back. AUDREY: They actually had a school established by then? DONNA: They did. There were a handful of really incredible coaching programs in the year 2000, and one of the founders of the International Coach Federation created a school here. I felt that was a bit of guidance, because it was so easy for me to be able to attend school right in Seattle. How the Empowerment Dynamic Was Born AUDREY: That’s wonderful. So tell us a little bit more about how this connection with David organically started to grow into shared work for the two of you. DONNA: What a beautiful question. We met in a business setting, but we very quickly realized that there was a strong love and affinity between us. Over those couple of years after meeting, he shared with me epiphanies he was having about a time in his life where he felt very much like a victim. He found out he couldn’t have children of his own, that he was biologically infertile. His dad, who he was very close to, died suddenly. And his first marriage disintegrated, for lots of reasons, but I think in part because he couldn’t have children and she very much wanted children. DONNA: So he started telling me about his epiphanies around this victim consciousness, and about some guidance he had had to ask, well, what’s the opposite of victim? Out of that meditative reflection, he had a sense. He says, I didn’t hear words, I didn’t hear a voice, but the opposite of being a victim and having life happen to us is to be a creator. So learn to create and take responsibility for our lives. AUDREY: And on first blush that seems like a really simple idea. It is so profound. DONNA: It comes with an extremely profound idea about how we meet the world, how we meet challenges, how we meet ourselves and our family, moving out of “life happens to me and I’m powerless,” which is a quick summary of victim consciousness. And we are all victims at times, to accidents, to health issues. People really do abuse us. What we’re talking about is not victimization. AUDREY: That’s right. Definitely. DONNA: We’re talking about victimhood as an identity, that we see ourselves as not having a choice, that life happens to us. That description alone can really stop people. AUDREY: Yes. There’s a big difference. DONNA: So that became our conversations. We both knew about the drama triangle, me from my days in mental health, and David knew about it through being in therapy regarding the loss of his marriage and not being able to have children. AUDREY: And that’s the main shift, isn’t it? Victim is the heart of that drama triangle. DONNA: Dr. Karpman said that when we’re feeling like a victim, there’s always a persecutor. There’s always a problem that’s caused us to feel like we’re a victim. And the third role Dr. Karpman said is that when those two roles enter, there’s always a third one, the hero, the rescuer. So that’s a very dynamic description of the three primary ways we human beings respond to things we don’t like and don’t want. DONNA: David’s epiphany, as you know, was, oh my gosh, there’s got to be a positive alternative to that. We firmly believe in the goodness of who we are as human beings. So what is the new triangle that rests upon that goodness, that ability to choose, that ability to create, that ability to be loved? That’s what he started sharing with me on walks. And I said, David, this is really original work. We need to write this down. DONNA: That’s what we did for about a year and a half. And we named the new triangle. I was writing a book about my time in coaching, and my editor heard about David’s new triangle and that we had just named it the empowerment dynamic. So now we’ve got the drama triangle on one hand and the empo

  5. Aug 11

    EP 167 You loved your child before they were born

    Years ago I read a book by Robert Fritz that taught me something that has changed my life: that often we think we know what we want, but when we actually ask more questions and get down to our true motivations and intentions, we are really just reacting, not creating!  Resources from the Episode:  Robert Fritz Inc. - Robert's website, books, articles, and program schedule Creating Your Life: the three-month course Robert built, offered through Creator Tools Robert Fritz Creating Channel - Robert's films, songs, and writing on the creative process The Robert Fritz Structural Consulting Channel - full consultations, filmed Books by Robert Fritz: The Path of Least Resistance, Creating, Your Life as Art, The Managerial Moment of Truth, and Identity, co-written with Dr. Wayne Andersen Mothers of Creation ** - Provo, Utah - September 26th** Episode 163: What It Means to Be a Creator AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 167: Robert Fritz on What Creation Actually Is Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. I am so excited for us to spend a few minutes today with Robert Fritz, who I greatly admire and am very honored to have with us. Thanks for being here, Robert. ROBERT: My pleasure, thank you. AUDREY: Let me tell the listeners a little about him. His bio is technically three pages long and thick with worldwide influence. Here is a summary of some of the highlights of his life’s work. He is an acclaimed composer, filmmaker, author, and management consultant, best known for developing the theory of structural dynamics, which explains how underlying structures shape human and organizational behavior. Educated at the Boston Conservatory of Music and in Germany, Robert has spent decades helping corporations, government agencies, educators, and nonprofit organizations create lasting change through his principles of structural thinking and the creative process. His work has influenced leaders such as Peter Senge and has been applied by organizations including IBM, Blue Shield of California, the US Department of Defense, and educational systems worldwide. He is also an award-winning composer and filmmaker whose films have earned more than 250 international awards, and the author of several influential books, including The Path of Least Resistance and The Managerial Moment of Truth. AUDREY: Today we are going to focus most of our attention around my favorite book. This one right here, and this is probably an old copy. Creating. The subtitle is A Practical Guide to the Creative Process and How to Use It to Create Anything, a Work of Art, a Relationship, a Career, or a Better Life. Robert, thank you for being here with us today. ROBERT: Thank you. I am delighted to talk to you. How the Book Came to Be AUDREY: This book has shaped some of my thinking. It has corresponded with other things I have studied and experienced in life and proven itself over and over again. Many of the principles and concepts you teach in it have borne out in the real world and proven to me to be very, very important. So I am just curious personally how this book came to be. ROBERT: I had a two-book contract with Ballantine Books. The first was The Path of Least Resistance, and then there was time for a second book as part of the contract. I thought the major focus should be on creating. Because creating, or the creative process, is the most successful process for accomplishment in history. It created all of the arts, science, commerce. And yet mostly we do not learn how to create. ROBERT: We learn in school how to react or respond to circumstances. The major difference between the creative process and what we learn is that what we learn is to think about the circumstances first, and then what do we do about that. If you are rebellious as a kid, you react. If you are cooperative, you respond. But it is still the circumstances that are the driving force. The creative process is really different. It is your choices. And one of the major choices the creative process always begins with is, what do you create? ROBERT: My background, as you said, is the arts, and particularly composition. I have a bachelor’s and master’s in composition from the Boston Conservatory. What we learn in music in particular is that it is the underlying structure of music that determines how music goes. We have things in music called form and analysis. If you are in a conservatory, you go to these classes and you analyze Beethoven or Chopin, a number of different types of pieces. And it is not a matter of how does it feel and what do you think of when you hear the piece. It is, how did the composer get you to feel that? What are the elements in play that give rise to predictable patterns of behavior? ROBERT: When I was teaching composition at New England Conservatory, I began to wonder if that same principle could apply to everyone, not just composers, but everyone in creating their own lives. And that led me to developing the principles that are in the book you really like. Self-Esteem, Ego, and the Focus of the Creative Process ROBERT: What do you like about it, by the way? AUDREY: If you are out looking for answers, as I was, there are a few different camps. There is the camp that focuses entirely on the self, on self-esteem. What do you want to create in relationship to this ego? What will service you? It is all about you. ROBERT: I wrote a book with Dr. Wayne Andersen called Identity, and the subtitle of the book is that it does not matter what you think about yourself, which is ironic. It seems like the self-esteem people have never read a biography of successful people. They would see none of them had high self-esteem. But the difference was they were not focused on themselves. They were focused on what they were up to, what they were doing, what mattered to them, what they were creating. ROBERT: It is always on how am I doing, and how does it make me look, and do I like myself. Totally irrelevant in the creative process. AUDREY: It is interesting, because we are building an event this fall called Mothers of Creation, and it is all about the creative process and how mothers can engage in it. We start the day by having everyone write out a problem story. What in your life are you feeling upset about or stuck in? In preparation for that, our team was writing out problem stories and picking them apart, trying to figure out why this is a problem for me. There were a few different reasons, but we were trying to find what was in common. Ironically, one of the core components for all of us was that our intentions were wrong and our ego was right in the center of it. That is why we were bumping up against life in that way, unhappy about something happening to us because of what it was going to cost, what pain it was going to cause us, how it was going to make us look, or what other people were going to think. That was so enlightening and clarifying. AUDREY: It is such a great insight to understand the shift of focus from how am I doing and how do I look, to what is this outcome I am trying to create, how close am I to it, and what do I need to do to create it. And is it worth my precious life energy? Because there are a million paths we could choose, and it needs to be worthy of the few minutes we have here. ROBERT: That is a principle called hierarchy. What is more important, what is less important. A lot of people spend their lives on things that are less important to them, because they have not really sorted out that value system of hierarchy. AUDREY: I read The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy a little while ago, and that is the theme of that novella. He spent his life on what was not important, taking direction from everyone around him, being a subject of his environment, thinking that was what he wanted, thinking he was arriving. Ego was so deeply entrenched in everything that was going on, because it was all reflective of that. Is this now servicing the identity I want to have of myself? Obligation and Choice AUDREY: So to answer your question, I would say there is one camp saying get what you want, but the underlying message is to service the ego. And there are other camps I lean more toward that say, no, actually take responsibility, have discipline, show up, fulfill your duty. The conscientious aspects of life. I think there are some powerful, good, solid principles in that camp. ROBERT: I am sure, because what you are describing is obligation. But really, we are not obligated to do any of that. Often what happens is people turn what they want into an obligation. For example, let us say you are caring for an adult, your parents. And you say, well, I really have to do it. Well, no, you actually do not have to do it. You are making a choice that is really quite altruistic, and you do not even have the benefits of knowing the altruism of it, because you are manipulating yourself into obligation rather than seeing, I could do this or not do this. ROBERT: Obligation means you have no choice. You have to do it. Choice means you can do it or not. AUDREY: That is what I was getting at. What you are talking about is the best parts of both of those camps. It is the middle ground that says it should not be all about me, even if for no other reason than that as soon as it is all about you, it will not even service you best anyway. And you choose it fully. But then you commit yourself to it. There is this component of responsibility, but it is responsibility you have chosen. It is a commitment you have made. Why Commitment Works Against You AUDREY: That dovetails into something you say at the start of the book. I cannot remember the exact phrase, but basically that creating is an act of love. I wanted you to speak to that love component of creation, how you would define creation and creating or being creative, and what the connection with love

  6. Aug 4

    EP 166 The thing you dread

    You do hard things every day. You run a home, you carry other people's needs, you handle complicated things most people never see. You have so much more power than you realize. So why can one small, ordinary thing still fill you with dread? Having people over for dinner. A phone call. A visit you keep putting off. Something that should be simple, and somehow just is not. What's fascinating is that the dread is almost never about the thing itself. It is about the story you are telling yourself. Which means you do not have to keep dreading it. Once you can see the story clearly, you can change it, and show up as the you you want to be. Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 166: Creator Orientation, A Panel Discussion Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I am Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Today I am joined in another wonderful discussion with Tracie Hyde, Lindsey Wright, and Cadie Hatch. We are preparing for our upcoming Mothers of Creation celebration, and it has been such a joy to meet, to discuss, and to read more resources together as we look at the kinds of things we will cover that day. We are also preparing the women who will attend in our online community, which is really wonderful. If you are interested in joining us, the link is in the description below. We have been returning to a few themes leading up to this event, and today the theme is creator and creation. We have talked about victim types and victimhood and why understanding them is helpful. But what is the reverse of that? The opposite of being a victim is to be a creator. So let us start simply. Will one of you give us a high level overview of Karpman’s Drama Triangle, who the players are, and what a problem orientation looks and feels like? The Drama Triangle and Its Opposite LINDSEY: I can do that. The victim orientation has three components. First the victim, who needs a persecutor, someone to blame the problem on, someone they believe is causing the problem. And then they need a rescuer, the knight in shining armor who comes to save the princess. Those three components collude together and feed on each other. Often we switch places within it. We start out as the victim and then become the persecutor. It is a fluid circumstance, this drama. On the other side, we have the opposite. The opposite of victim is creator. The opposite of persecutor is challenger. The creator sees the problem not as something to blame, not as the source of the bad feelings they are having, but as a challenge, something that can be overcome and that has something to teach them. And the opposite of the rescuer is the coach. The rescuer just takes away the consequences and smooths out the problem, but the victim does not get to learn anything. The coach does not solve the problem for you. They help the creator solve it themselves. They ask questions, they provide support and resources, but what they want is for the creator to have the experience of solving the problem and reaching the outcome they want. AUDREY: Thank you, Lindsey. That is so helpful. So we have two orientations, two ways of being. We will get into a lot of detail at the event and help you understand the nuances and why they matter. But fundamentally, to talk about being a creator, we have to juxtapose it with who a victim is and who a creator is, and the players in their life. We Choose Our Orientation AUDREY: Most of the time, in most of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we have a choice. But most of the time we organically show up as one or the other. Let me give you a good example. My husband has incredible health. Optimal health. And it is not just good genes and a good constitution, though I am sure he has that too. He has a way of being in the world about his physical body that is creator all the time. If he gets sick, his first thought is, I will probably be better tomorrow, or this is not a very big deal. He is not looking for who got him sick, or why this always happens to him. Even when he gets something small like a blemish, he sees it as a challenger. He tells himself, that is probably going to go away, I am going to figure out how to get rid of that. And then he always does. He is always looking to coaches to understand how to eat better, build stronger muscle, and live longer. He is currently reading three different books on how to be as healthy as he can be. When it comes to his health, he is in a creator orientation almost all the time. I think all of us have at least one area of life where being a creator comes so naturally it is like the air we breathe. Some people are like this with money. It may be hard for a lot of us to believe, but they have always had a positive reference point toward it. They expect it to come, they are comfortable with it, they spend it wisely and grow it, and there is always more than enough. But most of us also have a weak point, an area where we show up as a victim a lot, maybe in several areas. We talked about that in our last group discussion, about victims and victim types, and how we can show up as different types in different areas of our lives. When something happens to us, we determine the orientation we choose. Two different people have cancer. Two different people declare bankruptcy. Two different people get divorced. Two different people lose a child. And we will see radically different responses to the exact same circumstance. Often, when we are uncomfortable with something, we think that surely anybody in our situation would respond the same way. And the answer is almost always no. There is probably at least one person who would choose a creator response, who would look at themselves and their situation differently. So I would love to hear from each of you. Where in your life are you tempted to show up as a victim, and where do you show up as a creator? What are the thoughts and emotions around those two experiences? To go back to my husband, the other end of his spectrum was his pornography addiction. For years he was the victim of it. He could never figure it out and believed he would never overcome it. And then, with the right principles, tools, and orientation, he found sobriety. So we know that with the right tools we can conquer even the hardest circumstances of our lives. Give our listeners some reference points from your own lives. Tracie: The Dinner She Used to Dread TRACIE: This is one I can share. It is not a deep problem in my life, but it is something I have observed, where I can be in drama or choose to be a creator. It is having people over for dinner. It seems like that would be easy to do, but for many years it has been something I dreaded. We have a lot of people over, especially on Sundays. Family, extended family, friends. We can have up to seventeen or twenty people for dinner. My drama side looks at everything as a problem. The meat is not going to be done exactly right. The people coming may not really want to be there. What if someone feels left out, or no one talks to them. All these things that are out of my control, I worry about and see as problems. I dread Sunday as it comes around. And while people are there, I feel anxiety, so I am not able to minister to them or think deeply about what they need. That is the drama side. It has been so helpful to recognize that I have been in drama in this situation. Because if I can flip it into creator mode, then I can ask, why am I having all these people over? It is to create an experience we can have together. My drama type here is the perfectionist, where nothing can reach the goal, because it is just a nebulous idea I have never thought through clearly. It is never enough, and that is why I dread it. But in creator mode, I can have a vision of what I am actually creating. Maybe the food is not perfect. Maybe someone is dreading coming. How people interact is out of my control. But I can feel satisfied that I invited them and provided an experience where they can feel connection, where we can have time together as family and friends. When I focus on what I am creating, it becomes less about me and how I am being perceived. That anxiety leaves, and it becomes fulfilling instead of something I dread. I still lapse into the old pattern every so often, and I have to work through it and exercise that muscle to be a creator. But I can tell I am coming out of this dreaded rut I have been in, and I am finding a lot more joy in it. AUDREY: That is wonderful, Tracie. Those details help us see it. At the event we are going to give women a lot of specific tools to parse this out, and vision is a key component, which we will talk about on another podcast soon. One of the things you said several times was the focus off of yourself and onto others, and instead of reacting, taking ownership of your thinking. In our discussion about victims, one of the key words was responsibility. One of the biggest responsibilities we can take on is responsibility for the way we are thinking, and choosing to think differently can change everything. You are being intentional to recognize a pattern and to use the tools and principles you have been given, and it is turning what could be a bad experience into a really beautiful one. Can anyone else give an example of how this creator orientation is blessing your life and pulling you out of difficult circumstances? Cadie: Strong in One Place, Stuck in Another CADIE: I loved how you said your husband just has areas where creator orientation comes naturally. I do not know that I had ever thought about it that way before. I certainly know where my victim orientation comes naturally, but where does my creator come naturally? For me, one area is education. I do not tend to feel overwhelmed by it. I have educated my children at home all their lives and have helped with a charter scho

  7. Jul 28

    EP 165 A voice gave him a date.

    In Auschwitz, a man told Viktor Frankl about a dream. A voice had said he could ask one question, so he asked the only one that mattered: when would the war be over for him. Not for everyone. For him. The voice gave him a date. He believed it completely. I have not been able to stop thinking about what happened to him on that date. It changed how I understand what we are really doing when we call ourselves creators. Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna - logotherapy and the life of Viktor Frankl The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) - David Emerald The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn   AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 165: Viktor Frankl Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Audrey Rindlisbacher, author of The Mission Driven Life and founder of The Mission Driven Mom. Thank you for joining me today. I'm excited to talk to you about Viktor Frankl, a personal hero of mine. Just imagine that you're a Jew in Vienna during World War II. You've fallen in love with the woman of your dreams and you want to be married, but the law has just changed, and you are the very last Jewish couple in Vienna awarded the privilege of marrying. Not long after, your beautiful wife becomes pregnant, but no Jews are allowed to have children. And so she is forced to abort it. AUDREY: These were some of the things Viktor Frankl went through. I'm not going to go through every detail of his life, but he's worth looking up and learning all about. Today I want to do something really special with him and his experiences. AUDREY: We can see components of the Mission Driven Life in these stories and events and excerpts from his life. He had that love of God. He lived according to principle. He loved truth and talked about it often. He took good care of himself, loved others, loved humanity, made a huge impact in the world, heard the call, adopted meaning in his life, and shared logotherapy with the world. So definitely a mission driven life worth celebrating, and an incredible man who I greatly admire. Narrowing the Focus AUDREY: But for today, I want to focus our conversation a little more narrowly. I'm going to tell you a bit about his life leading up to World War II, and then I'm going to take you into his most famous book, Man's Search for Meaning. If you have not read this book, you really, really need to. The first half is recollections and excerpts from his experiences in the concentration camp. Nothing vulgar or offensive, but very thought provoking. He's trying to look at it from a psychological point of view, through the experiences of the prisoner. The second half is about his logotherapy, which is a fascinating read. AUDREY: The reason we're going into that book is to do something very unique. This fall, as I've mentioned on the podcast before, we're going to gather in the beautiful mountains of Utah and spend a day at our MDM celebration working through our theme for this year, Mothers of Creation. We're going to talk about how we show up as victims in the world, in our own drama, how we sometimes create it for ourselves or react to circumstances outside our control. We build these problem stories. We're going to break those apart. We're going to learn how to disengage. We're going to talk about what creation means and what it means to be a creator. And then we're going to teach you how to reframe it, how to turn it into new purpose and vision for your life, and how to create a creator statement. AUDREY: There's a community in the MDM Academy specifically for this event that women are welcome into as soon as they sign up, and that's been going well. Our brilliant Lindsey Wright has been running trainings in there. We did the first one together, and they're recorded. It's been a beautiful experience to watch women start to learn these ideas and prepare for this day-long event. So with all of that in mind, I want to show you three core concepts we're talking about on the podcast right now, and how they come to life in Viktor Frankl's book. Drama and victimhood and victim roles. Creation and creators. And vision, and why vision matters so much and how it's incorporated into these other aspects of our lives. A Little About Viktor Frankl AUDREY: He was born in 1905 in Vienna, the middle child in a Jewish family. When he was little, World War I hit, and it hit his family hard, like it did so many others. They were in abject poverty. They struggled to survive. And what's fascinating about Viktor is that by the age of three, he knew he wanted to be a doctor. Isn't that something? He went along that vein, thinking and learning in terms of what it means to make people whole, what it means to heal them. By the time he got into high school, he was actively studying psychology and philosophy, some in school and some out of it. So it might not surprise you that at age sixteen, he gave a speech in school entitled On the Meaning of Life. These ideas were already part of his message, his mission to the world. He felt it at a very early age, and that idea of meaning and purpose never left him. It was a central theme in his life. AUDREY: As a teenager, he also wrote to Freud. I don't know that they exchanged many letters, but Freud remembered him and remembered the correspondence when they met a few years later. He later disagreed with Freud and left off following him, but always deeply respected him. He then went on to medical school. During that time, he started to notice a disturbing trend. As exams approached, there was always a percentage of high school students every year who would end up taking their own lives, either leading up to the exams or after they received their scores, because these were so vital. They would literally determine the trajectory of that student's life. And they were young, and didn't always have the foresight to understand that things can change, that life could be different and better. So they became very fatalistic. He noticed this. He was disturbed by it. He decided to do something about it. He started treating these students with therapies and other modalities, and the first year he did this, there were no suicides. It was the first time in a long time that had been the case, and that was very rewarding for him. AUDREY: So he continued on. He finished school, and by the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, in 1933, he was already the head of the Vienna Psychiatric Hospital for female suicide prevention. He had seen the need, he had reached out, and as he did that, he really started to make a difference in this area. He learned a lot in the process. He went on and took other top positions. And by the time World War II was approaching, it hit Vienna earlier than it did the United States. Even as it approached, he could see that as a Jew he was in a lot of trouble. There were already more laws and discriminations put in place. So he applied for a visa to the United States. It was done by lottery, so he just had to wait it out. His number came up, and he was actually awarded a visa to go to the United States. The Stone on the Floor AUDREY: But he knew his family didn't qualify. He would be the only one going, leaving his family behind. He didn't know what he should do. So he decided to leave the decision up to a power higher than himself. He prayed and waited for some kind of sign. One day he was at home and found a little stone on the floor. When he lifted it up, he realized it was a piece of a Ten Commandments tablet that had been shattered when a synagogue was bombed, and his father had brought it home. It was a section of the honor your father and mother commandment. He saw that as divine intervention, and that he needed to stay with his family. So he decided to do that, which is why he was still there when the war reached him. AUDREY: He met his wife, Tilly. They fell in love. She was an incredible woman of compassion and intelligence, and they connected very deeply. As I said earlier, they were the last couple awarded the opportunity to marry, in 1941. In 1942 she became pregnant, and it was a forced abortion, because if a Jewish couple was known to be pregnant, they would be sent immediately to the concentration camps. AUDREY: So she had that forced abortion. Not long after, in 1942 or maybe 1943, the family was transferred to a milder concentration camp. At the beginning they were together. Frankl's father was old and very sick. Frankl was able to smuggle some morphine into the camp and give it to his father just before he passed away, and he was very grateful he could do that. Through a series of complications, he wound up in Auschwitz. His wife was going to follow him there. She ended up at Bergen-Belsen, where she was, I believe, almost immediately killed. He didn't know that at the time. And so he served out his time in Auschwitz until the war ended. Into the Book AUDREY: That brings us to this book. After the war, he dictated it in just nine days. He first published it anonymously, because he didn't feel he should take credit for it. He didn't know it would do any good or make any difference. He just felt it needed to be said. And it had a huge impact. It became his most famous work and has sold more than twelve million copies in print worldwide. So a very, very important work. AUDREY: I'm going to take you on a journey, from victim to creator to having vision, through some different excerpts. He says here: "The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever. This was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one's master, and that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course. The prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him. This escape from commitment was most apparent when a prisoner had to make the decision for or against an

  8. Jul 21

    EP 164 Where "I am a creator" actually came from

    Thirty years ago, a man sat down for his morning quiet time in the middle of the hardest season of his life. His father had died far too young. He and his wife had been trying to start a family, and he had just learned he was infertile. His marriage was ending. And in that prayerful space, he said, "Okay, God, I'm ready to surrender my victim stance in the world. But I need to know: what's the opposite of victim?" The word came immediately. Creator. That man was David Emerald, author of The Power of TED. If you've been through the academy, you know this book. It's one of the core texts we study together, and I've heard story after story from women whose lives changed because of it. Resources from the Episode:  Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) - David Emerald The Karpman Drama Triangle - Dr. Stephen Karpman AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT Episode 164: David Emerald & The Power of TED Introduction AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher. If this podcast is helpful for you, please share it, like it, pass it along, and leave a review, so we can share the message of mission and principles with everyone who needs it. I feel privileged and honored to have David Emerald with us today. This is a long awaited conversation. I’ve talked to people for years about how someday I was going to have a conversation with David Emerald about The Power of TED. This is that day, so I am ecstatic. For those of you who have engaged with the work or been in any of the academies, you know that The Power of TED is a core book that we spend a lot of time in to learn better self-management and self-leadership skills. I’ve heard story after story about its impact. If you listened to Carolyn’s interview that came out recently, one of the most important things that happened to her in the program was learning this book and practicing its principles. Today, David is going to tell us more of the backstory, so I’m excited for that. AUDREY: A little bit about him. His full name, which I didn’t know until recently, is David Emerald Womeldorff. He’s the creator in chief of the Center for the Empowerment Dynamic and founder of the Bainbridge Leadership Center in Washington. His passion and work is in supporting individuals, teams, and organizations in leading and working from an outcome-focused and passion-powered orientation. His principles and frameworks are based on his decades of study, observation, and application in collaboration with a wide range of individuals and organizations. His pen name is David Emerald, and with a last name like Rindlisbacher, I can understand why he did that. He’s the author of the best-selling The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic), a teaching story about self-leadership, and 3 Vital Questions: Transforming Workplace Drama, which is also phenomenal, by the way. I’ve studied that one quite a bit. It’s an organizationally focused teaching story that draws on his more than 30 years of experience in leadership development, change leadership, and employee management. David’s books are sold worldwide. David, where should I send people to find your work? DAVID: If you go to powerofted.com, where you’ll end up is at theempowermentdynamic.com. AUDREY: Perfect. That’s where you’ll find all of his work. And I’ll talk more later about some of the other ways I’ve engaged with David and his wife, Donna. They have some other incredible programs. But to get the conversation started, David, can you give us some of your backstory? What were you doing professionally before all this authorship came up, and what did you learn there? The Backstory DAVID: The backstory is that prior to the epiphany that eventually led to The Power of TED, and I’ll certainly share that whole story, I was living in Dayton, Ohio, working in corporate America, focused on management and organization development. I had a communication background. I was introduced to Robert Fritz’s work and was engaged in a course being run at a hospital based on his creating technologies, and I became friends with a gentleman named Bob Anderson, who’s the founder of The Leadership Circle. A number of things just came together in my life. At the time, my wife and I were trying to start a family, and that wasn’t working. And I’m pausing on that, because a big part of the backstory is that the things the character David faces in the story are autobiographical. DAVID: In about an 18 month period, three things happened in my life that were quite formative. One was that my dad, who I had a very healthy relationship with, passed away at much too young an age. He was in his early 60s. My wife at the time and I were trying to start a family, and I was declared medically infertile. She was quite introverted, and for whatever reasons, she chose not to have us explore any other options. So that marriage failed. As the marriage was coming apart, we were engaged in some couples therapy and doing quite a bit of work, and as things continued she decided to withdraw from that. It was during that period of time that I learned about the Karpman drama triangle and its roles of victim, persecutor, and rescuer. The Epiphany: What Is the Opposite of Victim? DAVID: I had been working on my own with this therapist for about three months. One morning I was sitting at my desk engaged in what I call my morning quiet time, which has always been some combination of prayer, meditation, and journaling. I was in that contemplative, prayerful space. I remember having my eyes closed, and I just remember saying to the God of my understanding, “Okay, God, I’m ready to surrender my victim stance in the world, but I need to know: what’s the opposite of victim?” And I’ve got to tell you, Audrey, immediately the word creator came. It was so stark that my eyes flew open, and I thought, I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect that. I can’t say that I heard a voice, but the experience was such that I could understand someone saying they had an experience like that and heard a voice. I wish I could say, like Paul on the road to Damascus, that my life was forever changed. That was not the case. It was a personal epiphany. And I’m now talking about a good 30 years ago, around 1990 or 1991. AUDREY: Just as an aside, when was the book first published? DAVID: In 2005, actually 2006. AUDREY: So about a 15 year period. Wow. DAVID: There was about a 10 year period where I would think about it from time to time, and then it would fade into the background and life would go on. I continued in the corporate world in executive and leadership development and was involved in The Leadership Circle that I mentioned earlier, a very powerful feedback process, doing a lot of work with The Leadership Circle at the University of Notre Dame in their executive programs. AUDREY: What kind of work did The Leadership Circle do? DAVID: It’s what’s called a 360 degree feedback tool. If you think about an organization chart, it’s 360 degree in the sense of getting feedback from one’s boss, one’s peers, one’s direct reports, perhaps clients, around the perceptions they have of one’s leadership. AUDREY: And you’re facilitating that feedback loop. DAVID: Exactly. It’s a coaching conversation. The Leadership Circle at the time also had a couple of leadership workshops that I facilitated and co-facilitated. And the ways of thinking that are captured in The Power of TED and in 3 Vital Questions, I owe a lot to Bob Anderson and the framing of what I call the victim and creator orientations, or the problem and outcome orientations. So you asked earlier what prepared me for this work. All of those elements were in there, and they came together in the personal epiphany I just shared. AUDREY: Would you say that insight, or revelation, or epiphany changed your behavior at all? Made you see the world differently? Was it having any kind of personal impact before you built a model for others? DAVID: Yes and no. The yes is that because of the other work I was doing, in The Leadership Circle we would talk about a reactive orientation versus a creative orientation. That creative orientation, which evolved in my work into a creator orientation, certainly impacted me. And I have long been mission driven in my own work. From that work I crafted my own mission statement, which has not changed much since the early nineties. I can call it up on my screen. AUDREY: I would love to hear it. And why did you call it a mission statement? DAVID: Because it’s what I’m called to do. It’s certainly purposeful, but it felt more like a mission statement than a purpose statement. Here it is: I am called to support and facilitate individuals, teams, and organizations in consciously shifting to a co-creative, vision focused, and passion motivated orientation for their lives and livelihoods. This is my lifelong ministry of service to humankind. I am a partner in creation with God. As spirit works in and through me, I serve as a channel of God’s abundance, love, wisdom, and power to touch, heal, and transform my own and others’ lives and ways of being in the world. AUDREY: Wow. That is beautiful. DAVID: That’s been on my wall through multiple moves. It really has been my North Star in terms of all the work. And that existed before I had a name for TED, before I had alternatives to the persecutor and the rescuer. Meeting Donna and the Conversation at Notre Dame DAVID: Fast forward about 10 years. I was doing a lot of work with The Leadership Circle and some international work with another consulting company. I was on my own, so I could live anywhere. In 2003, I was attending a workshop as a participant at a place called the Whidbey Institute and met Donna Zajonc. We really connected around a shared interest in leadership. She was coming out of public leadership; she had been an el

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For moms and women who want to increase their confidence, and discover and develop their unique gifts, while strengthening themselves and their families. *Over 50 5-Star Reviews*

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  • Creator
    Audrey Rindlisbacher
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    171
  • Rating
    Clean
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    © 2026 Copyright 2025 The Mission Driven Mom Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Mission Driven Mom Podcast

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