Think Outside the Lines

Shawn Feeney
  • 5.0 (28)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Biweekly

The old scripts for how to live, work, and belong are breaking down. Think Outside the Lines is a podcast for anyone ready to stop checking boxes, step off autopilot, and start living with intention. Host Shawn Feeney spent over a decade leading teams at Apple, Microsoft, and high-pressure tech startups before dedicating his work to helping others live more intentionally. The show explores what happens when we choose to build the life we want rather than accepting the one we were handed.

  1. 5d ago

    Taylor Apolonio: What If Comfort Is the Trap?

    Taylor Apolonio spent years learning how to make workplaces better for the people inside them. A first degree in interior design, then a graduate degree in workplace psychology, all rooted in one simple belief: systems should support humans, not the other way around. Taylor had the training, the tools, and the heart for the work. And then Taylor landed inside a workplace that didn't want any of it. The questions that should have made things better, why are we doing it this way, how could we support people more, turned out to be the wrong questions to ask. The backlash came quietly. A glowing six-month review became a lackluster one a year later, with almost no honest feedback in between. Taylor started to feel pushed out of a place they had come ready to give everything to. So Taylor walked away. Not to another job, and not from a dramatic blowup, but from the most money they had ever made, to bet on themselves instead. Today Taylor is building Habitat Interiors Co, blending interior design and behavioral psychology to help people create homes that actually support their wellbeing. And they are doing it on their own terms, including the choice to build a business almost entirely without social media. This is a conversation about alignment, the cost of not feeling valued, what it means to lower the stakes, and why getting comfortable being uncomfortable might be exactly where the real magic lives. In this episode, we explore: What it costs to have the exact training to fix a broken system, and still not be able to survive inside oneWhy the questions that would make a workplace healthier are so often the ones that get you pushed outHow power dynamics turn emotional, and what it feels like to threaten a status quo that has gone unquestioned for decadesThe gap between a glowing six-month review and a lackluster one a year later, with no honest feedback in betweenWhat dissociating at work actually looks like, especially when you genuinely care about the workWhy feeling valued matters more than the paycheck, and what happens when people stop believing they bring anything to the tableWhat it means to lower the stakes, and how rigid timelines and inherited expectations quietly run our livesThe difference between comfort as safety and comfort as a trapBuilding a business around your own values, including why Taylor is doing it without social mediaWhere design psychology meets everyday life, and how the spaces we live in shape how we feelThe honest role financial freedom plays in being able to walk awayWhat is helping Taylor trust the decision, even this early inResources & Links: Connect with Taylor and learn more about Habitat Interiors Co → https://www.habitatinteriorsco.comWatch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/taylorapolonioReady to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelinesEnjoyed the episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    47 min

  2. Jun 17

    Why Does Change Feel So Hard — Even When You Want It?

    Here's something that doesn't make sense on the surface. You know something needs to change. You can feel it. You've said it out loud — to a friend, to a therapist, to yourself in the car at 7 AM. You're clear about it. You're motivated. You might even be ready. And then nothing happens. Not because you don't care. Not because you're lazy or broken or not trying hard enough. But because every time you get close to actually doing the thing — making the call, having the conversation, taking the step — something pulls you back. And that something feels stronger than your motivation. Stronger than your logic. Stronger than everything you know to be true about what you need. That's resistance. And most of us have a deeply unhealthy relationship with it. We treat it like the enemy. Like if we could just push through — just be disciplined enough, brave enough, focused enough — we'd finally get to the other side. But what if resistance isn't the enemy at all? What if it's trying to protect you? Your nervous system doesn't know the difference between physical danger and emotional risk. It doesn't know the difference between a bear in the woods and a hard conversation with your boss. All it knows is: this feels unsafe. And its only job is to keep you safe. The problem is, the thing that kept you safe at one point in your life can become the thing that keeps you small. The armor that got you through a difficult childhood. The people-pleasing that kept the peace. The overwork that made you feel valuable. Those patterns made sense once. But they're still running in the background — making decisions for you that you didn't consciously choose. So what do you do with that? You don't fight it. You get curious about it. Resources & Links: Ready to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelinesEnjoyed this episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    5 min

  3. Jun 10

    Mariah Sheridan: What Does the Highlight Reel Hide?

    Mariah Sheridan grew up wanting one thing above everything else — normal. A stable home, a loving partner, kids, a life that looked nothing like the one she came from. She built exactly that. A successful real estate career, a marriage people admired, three daughters, a home nestled in the Rockies. From the outside, it looked like arrival. And then, after nearly two decades, she walked away from it. Not because of a crisis. Not because of a dramatic turning point. But because of a quiet knowing she'd been carrying for years — a distance between the life people could see and the one she was actually living inside of. And because she realized she would never want any of her three daughters to stay in a marriage the way she had been staying in hers. Mariah is a real estate agent, a mother of three, and a writer working on a memoir built from journals she's kept since she was ten years old. Her story begins in a complicated childhood and ends, for now, in the messy, honest, hopeful middle of becoming someone new. This is a conversation about perfectionism, the weight of the highlight reel, what it really means to choose yourself, and why keeping going is sometimes the only thing you can do. In this episode, we explore: What it means to grow up carrying a secret — and how that shapes the life you spend decades trying to buildWhy the white picket fence dream was deeply personal, not just cultural, for MariahWhat she knew long before she said it out loud — and what finally made her say itThe experience of telling her daughters the same day she told her husband, and why she couldn't imagine doing it any other wayWhat the four months after her announcement revealed about the relationship she was actually inWhy the people closest to us often can't see the gap between our highlight reel and our real life — and what that isolation costsThe purgatory of divorce proceedings — the holding pattern nobody warns you aboutWhat codependency work taught her about how she showed up in her marriageThe moment her 15-year-old daughter read her memoir pages and forgot, for a few minutes, that the story was about her momThe belief she's had to release most — and why "perfect" was always a two-dimensional imageWhat she wishes her friends had known to do when everything on the outside still looked fineWhat it means to keep going when you can't yet see what's coming nextResources & Links: Connect with Mariah and follow her journey at mariahrealestatefernie.caFollow Mariah on Instagram → @mariah_in_fernieReady to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelinesEnjoyed the episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    50 min

  4. Jun 3

    Where's the Gap Between Looking Good and Feeling True?

    Picture this. You're at dinner with friends. Someone asks how things are going. And you say, "Good. Really good, actually." And you smile. And you mostly mean it. Because things are good. The job is solid. The relationship looks healthy. The routine works. From the outside, your life is something people would look at and say, they've got it together. And that's exactly what makes this so confusing. Because underneath the "really good, actually" — there's something else. A quiet hum you can't quite name. It's not crisis. It's not depression. It's not even unhappiness, exactly. It's more like a distance. Between the life people see and the one you're actually living inside of. That's the gap. And if you've never had a name for it before, this might be the first time someone has given you one. But if you've been carrying it — you already know exactly what I'm talking about. And you know how exhausting it is. Because maintaining the gap takes real energy. The energy of saying yes to things that don't excite you because they're supposed to. Of performing competence and confidence while quietly wondering whether any of this is actually what you want. Here's what I want you to hear: the gap doesn't mean something is wrong with you. It means something is right with you. It means you're aware enough to notice. And closing it doesn't require blowing up your life. It starts with one quiet, honest question — not the kind you post about, not the kind that requires a dramatic conversation. Just the private kind. The kind where you sit with yourself and ask: what am I holding onto because I'm afraid of what it would mean to let it go? Resources & Links: Ready to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelines Enjoyed this episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    5 min

  5. May 27

    Colleen Budde: What If the System Was Never Built for You?

    Colleen Budde holds two mechanical engineering degrees, spent nearly a decade navigating the automotive and defense industries, and walked away from a combined household income of $300,000 — not because of a crisis, not because of a disaster, but because the system she was operating inside of was never going to bend. She and her husband purchased an Office Evolution franchise in January 2020, survived a pandemic with a newborn, found a building that would take a chance on them, and built something real. Today Colleen runs her coworking space alongside Budde Consulting Group, where she works with small business owners navigating the messy, honest, unglamorous middle of building something on their own terms. She also writes and builds community through her Mompreneur Facebook page and Substack — creating space for people at every stage of the journey to find each other and realize they're not doing it alone. This is a conversation about discomfort as information, time as wealth, and what it actually looks like to build a life the system never offered you. Connect with Colleen:  🌐 buddeconsultinggroup.com  📸 Instagram: @colleen_the_  💼 LinkedIn: Colleen Budde In this episode, we explore: How growing up with a father who got fired repeatedly — and kept moving — shaped Colleen's relationship with change and riskWhy changing jobs early in her career wasn't instability, it was strategy — and what the numbers provedWhat it's actually like to be a woman in mechanical engineering, and what the defense industry added to thatThe moment Colleen stopped waiting for the system to change and started building an exitWhy she and her husband bought a franchise in January 2020 — and how they survived what came nextThe childcare situation that crystallized everything — and the meeting that pushed her over the edgeWhat "rage quitting" actually looked like, and how her husband's response said everythingThe difference between the golden handcuffs keeping most people stuck and the financial clarity that made leaving possibleWhy discomfort isn't a personal flaw — it's informationWhat entrepreneurship is actually harder than she expected — and what she didn't anticipate getting backThe medical emergency that reminded her exactly why she built this lifeWhat wealth actually looks like when time is the currency Resources & Links: Connect with Colleen, explore her consulting work, and find her community at buddeconsultinggroup.comFollow Colleen on Instagram → @colleen_the_Connect on LinkedIn → Colleen BuddeReady to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelines Enjoyed the episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    34 min

  6. May 20

    Why Isn't Kindness the Default?

    Here's a question worth sitting with: why isn't kindness the default? Not the performative kind. Not the kindness that gets posted about. The quiet, unglamorous kind that asks something real of you — the kind that requires you to stay open when the easier thing would be to shut down. Because somewhere along the way, we started confusing hardness with strength. And they are not the same thing. This episode starts with a simple question that completely reframed the way I think about how we show up for each other: Do you want notes or do you want compliments? That's it. Just ask. Because not everyone who shares something with you is asking you to evaluate it. Sometimes people just want to be seen. But it goes deeper than that. Most of us were raised inside systems that trained us to manage, evaluate, optimize, find the gap, and fix it. And that conditioning doesn't stay at work. It bleeds into our friendships, our partnerships, our parenting — every moment where someone shows up and says, here's what I've got. And then there's social media. Over a decade of training ourselves to react instead of respond. To form opinions about strangers in seconds. To comment without context. That conditioning doesn't stay online either. It changes the texture of real life — makes us quicker to judge, slower to listen, more comfortable being dismissive, less comfortable being sincere. The world feels heavy right now. And a lot of people are responding to that heaviness by getting sharper, more guarded, more defended. But what if more armor isn't the answer? What if it's just more kindness? Resources & Links: Ready to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelinesEnjoyed this episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    6 min

  7. May 13

    Peter Moore: What Are You Waiting for Permission to Create?

    Peter Moore spent thirty years catching a wave. As a top editor at Playboy and Men's Health, he interviewed presidents, shaped some of the most widely read magazines in the country, and ghostwrote three New York Times bestsellers — none of them under his name. He was very good at speaking in other people's voices. Then the wave carried him to shore, the tide went out, and the silence arrived. What followed wasn't a crisis. It was, eventually, a calling. Today Peter is a writer, cartoonist, NPR commentator, and Substack creator with 16,000 subscribers — blending humor, illustration, and sharp cultural observation into a body of work that is entirely, unmistakably his. He got there by taking an art class in Pennsylvania, putting rabbits and foxes on a landscape painting, and following the laugh. This is a conversation about the seeds you plant before you know what you're cultivating — and what becomes possible when you finally stop asking for permission. Connect with Peter: 🌐 petermoore.substack.com In this episode, we explore: How Peter rode a wave of magazine publishing for thirty years — and what the silence felt like when it finally endedWhy being laid off from Men's Health turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to himThe painting class in Pennsylvania where rabbits and foxes changed everythingWhat it means to spend decades writing in other people's voices — and the moment you realize you're ready to write in your ownHow the old version of your career can quietly fund the new oneWhy imposter syndrome hits hardest right before the breakthroughThe Substack post about Vincent Van Gogh that went from 400 subscribers to 10,000 readers in three daysWhat the disappearance of editorial gatekeepers has cost us — and what it's made possibleHow collaboration on Substack works, and why the rising tide really does lift all boatsWhat to do with the time you're spending on things that aren't moving you forwardWhy you lose a hundred percent of the life initiatives you never startThe difference between comfort and alignment — and why now is exactly the right time to find out which one you've been choosingResources & Links: Connect with Peter and explore his work at petermoore.substack.comReady to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelinesEnjoyed the episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    50 min

  8. May 6

    What If You're Not Stuck — You're Just on Autopilot?

    Have you ever driven somewhere and arrived without remembering a single moment of the drive? You weren't asleep. You just weren't there. Your body was going through the motions while your mind was somewhere else entirely. That's autopilot. And the uncomfortable truth is — you can live your whole life that way. Same routine. Same conversations. Same goals you set three years ago that you haven't stopped to revisit. Not because they're wrong, necessarily. But because you stopped asking whether they still fit. Most people call that feeling stuck. But stuck implies something's broken — that there's a wall in front of you and you're not strong enough, disciplined enough, or clear enough to push through. What if that's not what's happening at all? Because there's a real difference. Stuck means you can't move. Autopilot means you're moving — just not intentionally. You're checking the boxes, going through the motions, doing what's expected. But you're not really choosing any of it. And autopilot is comfortable. Efficient. That's exactly why your brain defaults to it. But comfort and alignment are not the same thing. The good news? Autopilot has an off switch. It's not dramatic. It doesn't require a reinvention. It just requires one honest question — even once a day: Am I choosing this? Or is this just what I've always done? Resources & Links: Ready to step off autopilot? Visit thinkoutsidethelines.com to access free worksheets designed to help you cut through the noise, ask the right questions, and finally hear yourself clearlyExplore 1:1 coaching and other resources at thinkoutsidethelines.comFollow along on all platforms → @thinkoutsidethelinesEnjoyed this episode? Please share it with someone who might need to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.

    3 min
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Trailer

5
out of 5
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About

The old scripts for how to live, work, and belong are breaking down. Think Outside the Lines is a podcast for anyone ready to stop checking boxes, step off autopilot, and start living with intention. Host Shawn Feeney spent over a decade leading teams at Apple, Microsoft, and high-pressure tech startups before dedicating his work to helping others live more intentionally. The show explores what happens when we choose to build the life we want rather than accepting the one we were handed.

Information

  • Creator
    Shawn Feeney
  • Years Active
    2015 - 2026
  • Episodes
    60
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Shawn Feeney
  • Show Website
    Think Outside the Lines

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