Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

Asheesh Advani isn’t just the CEO of Junior Achievement Worldwide—he was also a participant. The program changed his life when he experienced it in middle school, and as CEO, he has guided the global NGO into more than 115 countries, involving more than 3,500 employees and 500,000 volunteers worldwide. Incredibly, JA annually serves more than 15 million young people.

JA’s disruptive ripple of entrepreneurs...

Imposter syndrome is something to which most of us can relate. The idea of doubting our own skills and abilities, even in the face of myriad accomplishments. It’s a common human experience. It’s easier to have faith in others than buy into ourselves.

When Tina Vatanka Murphy was called into a meeting with her company’s CEO and HR director to talk about filling the role of president for Global Healthcare Ex...

It’s often fascinating to pinpoint when someone received the first inkling of what their eventual career would be. For many, of course—thinking of all the kids who grew up wanting to be professional athletes, movie stars, astronauts, or firemen—their idealized career path often follows a long and winding road of self-discovery, full of detours and roadblocks that transport them to an eventual destination that was not o...

There’s a reason we call it a mental rut – this deep groove in the mud.  It’s a pattern of behavior that we’ve dug into our brains, and when we go down this road, it’s where our mental wheels get stuck.

When have you been stuck in a rut? Maybe it’s coming back day after day to a job you hate. Maybe it’s something small, like knowing you should eat lunch at home but finding yourself in line at the Sweetgree...

The power of manifesting something into reality might seem… well, a bit silly at times. It’s all over social media, for better or for worse. It can seem silly because we all know it’s not as simple as saying it out loud, or creating a Pinterest board. Getting what you want, reaching mastery on a curve, it’s hard, hard work.

And yet it does start with saying it loud. If we want to turn our dreams into reali...

Do you know that feeling, when you’ve been on a roadtrip for however many hours – or even, days – and you just can’t bring yourself to eat another bite of fast food? The food all looks the same, the landscape outside your window starts blending together, and you just crave something… different? 

There’s a part of us deep inside that searches out for the “different.” We want to leave our small town for the ...

What does it mean to turn a dream into a business plan? How do you take your vision of a better future, whatever that looks like, and translate that into a company? It’s a difficult leap! This grand vision has to be broken down into steps, arranged on a timeline. Then your dream becomes tied to the bottom line profits, to your employees and your board. 

We’ve had guests before that have made that leap, whe...

In 2022, 46 percent of American teens said they were online almost constantly. Around 80 percent of high school seniors said they use social media nearly every day, but only 30 percent say they meet up with friends every day.

Since 2010 – roughly the year touch-screen smartphones and social media apps blew up – the number of girls between 12 and 17 that reported a major depressive episode more than doubled...

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We all have an idea of what we want our future to look like. Maybe it’s very grounded, and concrete – or maybe it’s just a vague idea of how we want to feel when we get there. But what happens when we’re forced to adapt that vision? Something out of your control gets between you and your dream. How do we must...

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In your day-to-day, who counts on you? We’re all interconnected in these webs of care, everyone leaning on someone else for support. Even Henry David Thoreau, who chose to live the hermit life at Walden Pond – asked his mother to help with laundry. We long to be cared for, and to care in return.

...

Ask any comedian what the hardest part of their job is, and they’ll probably tell you it’s being the second act in a show where the person before you just brought the house down. Suddenly you’re backstage, doubting your material, listening to this thunderous applause and wondering if you can even get close to that.

It’s not just a comedian’s dilemma – we all experience this follow-on problem at one point...

Risk is all around us. It’s baked into everything we do, into every day of our lives, a feeling that danger – and loss – lurks around every corner. It’s even baked into our brains, back when we were scanning every branch and every bush for something that wanted to eat us. So now that our world is much more than just the forest floor, how are we managing modern-day risk?

This July 4th weekend, we’re celebra...

In just about a month, on the 26th of July, 10 thousand athletes from all over the world will gather in Paris for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics. 

Being an Olympian has a way of consuming a person’s image. Olympians dedicate their body and their mind to the perfect backstroke, or the perfect arrow release, or this year – even the perfect breakdancing routine. 

So when an Olym...

How many times have you looked back across your whole life, looked at all those S Curves you’ve taken on and thought – wow. “I guess things do come together in the end,” even though, in the moment, those S Curves seemed so treacherous, and we felt so lost and afraid climbing them.

There’s an element of faith in that statement, sure, but just as strongly, there’s an undercurrent of grit, determination, stick-to-it-ness...

Is there a particular conversation you’ve had with someone, that keeps resurfacing as you grow and get older? In difficult moments, you find yourself traveling back to that day at the cafe or whatever it was, sitting down for a conversation you didn’t know would shape you as much as it has.  For me, it’s my talk with Brené Brown, all the way back in 2019. 

In case new listeners need an introduction, she ho...

It’s not a pretty truth of life, but we all argue with family, eventually. In fact, those arguments can be some of the most explosive moments of our lives. But why? Is it just that the folks closest to us know how to push our buttons? If so, how can we overcome that to grow? And grow alongside our family?

Our guest today has a couple ideas. Cathy Carroll is the president and founder of Legacy Onward, a lea...

Think of a relationship in your life that you’d describe as a true partnership. Why did that person come to mind? There are words and phrases that come easily when you’re describing a partnership that works:  feeling supported, encouraged, the sense that when I have my back turned, you’ve still got my back.

So where do those feelings come from, and how do we solidify them? How can we grow a new relationshi...

Back in July, we tried something a little new for this show – episode 329 was all about hearing from the listeners of Disrupt Yourself. What was important to you while you were listening, what insights you wanted to bring back from older episodes and refresh.

It was a lovely experiment, so today we’re bringing you another roundtable. This time, we’ve got three coaches instead, all of whom are Smart Growth ...

Self-fulfilling prophecies – and falling into their trap – are part and parcel of being human. From ancient Greek tragedies to television like Breaking Bad, they’ve popped up time and time again. We just can’t escape our flaw of telling ourselves stories about the future, and then making them reality.

But what if it… wasn’t a flaw? What if there was a real power, a real gift in being about to tell yourself...