Podcasts about unblocked

Fluent Fiction - Mandarin Chinese: Mystery Unraveled: The Forbidden City Heist Unblocked Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/zh/episode/2026-06-21-22-34-01-zh Story Transcript:Zh: 紫禁城的夜晚是一个神秘的迷宫。En: The night at the Zijin Cheng, the Forbidden City, is a mysterious labyrinth.Zh: 在端午节的前夜，温暖的夏风轻轻摇曳着宫灯，照亮了长长的石板路。En: On the eve of the Duanwu Festival, the warm summer breeze gently swayed the palace lanterns, illuminating the long stone path.Zh: 远处，似乎还能听到古老的建筑在偷偷闲聊。En: In the distance, it seemed as if the ancient buildings were secretly chatting.Zh: 那天晚上，我与同事们忙碌地准备着博物馆的节日活动。En: That night, my colleagues and I were busy preparing for the museum's festive activities.Zh: 我叫梁，是一名艺术史学家，对文化遗产的保护充满热情。En: My name is Liang, and I am an art historian with a passion for the preservation of cultural heritage.Zh: 尽管如此，我心中隐约希望能成为同行眼中的翘楚。En: Nonetheless, I vaguely hoped to become a standout in the eyes of my peers.Zh: 突然，传来一个令人心惊的消息——一件无价之宝不翼而飞。En: Suddenly, an alarming piece of news came—a priceless treasure had disappeared.Zh: 急切之间，我奔向梅，她是今晚的值班保全。En: In a rush, I ran to Mei, who was the security guard on duty that night.Zh: 这是她第一次在紫禁城值夜班，神色间略显紧张。En: It was her first time on a night shift at the Zijin Cheng, and she appeared slightly nervous.Zh: “怎么可能不见了？”她喃喃道，显然不相信自己的耳朵。En: “How could it be missing?” she murmured, clearly unable to believe her ears.Zh: 看到她的态度，我知道必须赢得她的信任。En: Seeing her demeanor, I knew I had to win her trust.Zh: 在博物馆里，一场微妙的政治斗争让我心生警惕。En: Within the museum, a subtle political struggle made me wary.Zh: 我清楚有人心怀不轨，却无法单独解决。En: I was aware that someone harbored ill intentions, but I couldn't handle it alone.Zh: 我决定找程博士合作，他是一位著名的考古学家。En: I decided to collaborate with Dr. Cheng, a renowned archaeologist.Zh: 尽管我对他的某些做法心存疑虑，但他的经验和人脉或许是我最需要的。En: Despite having some doubts about his methods, his experience and connections might be exactly what I needed.Zh: 夜色渐深，我和程博士一同巡视那些矗立了几百年的古老宫殿。En: As the night deepened, Dr. Cheng and I patrolled the ancient palaces that had stood for centuries.Zh: 石墙在月光下隐隐发亮，仿佛也在慢慢揭示它的秘密。En: The stone walls glowed faintly in the moonlight as if slowly revealing their secrets.Zh: 在一处不起眼的墙角，我们发现了被故意隐藏的踪迹。En: In an inconspicuous corner of a wall, we discovered traces deliberately hidden.Zh: 梅虽然对我们起初持怀疑态度，但在紧张局势下表现得异常出色。En: Though Mei was initially skeptical of us, she performed exceptionally well under tense circumstances.Zh: 她引导我们进入一个鲜有人知的过道。En: She led us into a little-known passageway.Zh: 究竟是什么拦住了偷盗者？En: What, exactly, had blocked the thief?Zh: 我们循迹而行，被安保系统意外保存的角落露出那个被遗忘的艺术品。En: Following the trail, a corner unexpectedly preserved by the security system revealed the long-forgotten artwork.Zh: 当我用手轻轻拂去灰尘，看着石雕重新焕发光彩时，内心油然而生的喜悦无与伦比。En: When I gently brushed away the dust and watched the stone sculpture regain its brilliance, an incomparable joy welled up inside me.Zh: 它不仅象征着我的专业成就，也是信任与合作的胜利。En: It symbolized not only my professional achievement but also the triumph of trust and collaboration.Zh: 第二天，博物馆的节日庆祝如期举行，万众瞩目下，那件珍宝重新归位。En: The next day, the museum's festival celebration went on as scheduled, and under the watchful eyes of the crowd, the treasure was restored to its place.Zh: 我沿长廊走过，心中充满自豪。En: Walking along the corridor, I felt a surge of pride.Zh: 梅收到了一份嘉奖，而我也获得了同僚的尊重。En: Mei received a commendation, and I earned the respect of my colleagues.Zh: 通过这次事件，我明白了个人荣誉并非一切。En: Through this incident, I understood that personal honor is not everything.Zh: 信任与团结才是真正的力量。En: Trust and unity are the true strength.Zh: 紫禁城的故事仍在续写，而我会与大家一起，守护着这片中华的瑰宝。En: The story of the Zijin Cheng continues to be written, and I will, alongside everyone else, protect this Chinese treasure. Vocabulary Words:labyrinth: 迷宫breeze: 轻风swayed: 摇曳illuminating: 照亮chatting: 闲聊preservation: 保护harbored: 心怀traces: 踪迹inconspicuous: 不起眼passageway: 过道brushed: 拂去brilliance: 光彩pride: 自豪commendation: 嘉奖surge: 涌现political struggle: 政治斗争skeptical: 怀疑patrolled: 巡视faintly: 隐隐revealing: 揭示excavated: 挖掘centuries: 几百年museum: 博物馆artifact: 艺术品preserve: 保存unexpectedly: 意外ceremony: 庆祝renowned: 著名doubts: 疑虑collaboration: 合作

The skills problem isn't going anywhere — it's just wearing new clothes. In this episode, I unpack how the lessons we learned decades ago (limiting work in progress, the theory of constraints, test-driven development) are coming roaring back as the fundamentals that will carry you through the agentic shift. The bottleneck has moved, and knowing where it went changes how you should work. A lot of what we're learning about building with agentic tooling isn't new at all — it's a re-emphasis on lessons software engineers learned twenty years ago, just arriving in a new form. In today's episode, I walk through why the fundamentals are becoming more important than ever, why so many of us feel scattered despite having the most powerful tooling we've ever had, and where the real bottleneck in software delivery has quietly moved. My goal isn't to convince you that your job is now babysitting AI — it's to show you which parts of the work are still squarely yours, and how older principles can make you faster and more confident right now. Limiting Work in Progress Is Back: Just because you can spin up fifty agents doesn't mean you should split your focus across fifty things. Orchestrated fan-outs are powerful, but a human juggling agents across hiring, on-call, and a project all at once still pays the same old context-switching tax — and the quality drops while the speed never improves. Work Deeper, Not Wider: Instead of spreading yourself shallowly across more tickets, run multiple sessions on the same domain. Write a competing or adversarial version that critiques your assumptions, develop better documentation, or capture what you're learning as a reusable skill. Depth beats breadth. The Scattered-Engineer Epidemic: Engineers are burning out faster, not slower. We have the capacity to push more through the pipeline, so we're getting handed (or choosing) more than we can carry. Reducing parallelism often holds your delivery speed steady while dropping your cycle time and raising quality. The Theory of Constraints, Revisited: Treat your software development lifecycle as a pipeline with a bottleneck — and if you can't find one, you've optimized one part too far. Writing code used to be the choke point, so we spent enormous energy de-risking work before it ever reached an engineer. The Bottleneck Has Moved: When production gets cheap, it's no longer worth heavily de-risking upstream — which is why engineers are picking up more experimental, proof-of-concept, discovery work, and product folks are prototyping with these tools too. The new constraint isn't writing the code; it's verifying the agent didn't ship something broken. Verification Scales With Your Effort: The more an agent produces, the bigger the pile of PRs, MRs, and outputs waiting on human review. That backlog is the new bottleneck — and skepticism is creeping in because we're not even sure our tests are sufficient to verify what the agent built. Why TDD Fits This Moment: The honest question isn't "Can I trust the agent?" — it's "What verification loop do I need to build so I can trust it more?" Clear requirements feed a clear testing loop: write the failing test, let the agent write the code to turn it green, and you bridge the gap between requirements gathered and requirements met. It's not as simple as "go write a test," but it's a strong fit for where we are right now. Episode Homework: Go dig into the fundamentals — limiting WIP, the theory of constraints, test-driven development. Find the old lesson that still applies to your workflow today, bring it to your team's flow, and email me about what you discover.

You submitted your questions. I answered them honestly.This is a full Ask Me Anything episode, and we went there. From how I distinguish fear from intuition, to the mindset trap I still fall into, to the question I think a lot of high-achievers are too afraid to ask out loud: if my life is already good, why do I still want more?If you've ever felt guilty for having big dreams, or wondered if something is wrong with you for not feeling satisfied, this episode is going to hit.Questions answered in this episode:What's something you've changed your mind about in the last five years?How do you know when it's intuition, fear, ego, or just a really convincing thought?What's a mindset trap you still catch yourself falling into?How do you pursue big dreams without becoming obsessed with achievement?If someone feels stuck but can't identify what's actually blocking them, where should they start?What's one belief you had to let go of to create the life you have today?What do you do when you know what you want but you're terrified of what other people will think?If my life is already good, why do I still feel called to want more?If you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.RESOURCES:Order my #1 New Release book In Pursuit Get your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community - join the group and drop your questions from the podWANT MORE SUPPORT?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comSTAY CONNECTED:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

Today's guest is Lara Hogan, an author, public speaker and coach for managers and leaders across the whole tech industry. And she's had a long career as VP of engineering at FLY, Kickstarter, Director Etsy and more. So with Lara we talked about her journey in tech, which started with a philosophy degree. And then, taking from her work as a coach, we talked more about how successful teams are adopting AI and what you can do to make engineers feel safe about it. And finally, we explored the Biceps framework and how you can better understand people's needs at work.(00:00) Episode start(01:25) Introduction(02:59) Why nuanced AI takes matter more than slogans(04:25) Sponsor break(08:54) From philosophy major to engineering director(15:09) Becoming a manager(18:54) Do humanities give you an edge in the AI era?(22:04) Teams thriving with AI vs teams struggling(28:03) Setting clear expectations without creating fear(35:52) The AHA meetings: sharing learnings, not just wins(41:40) The BICEPS framework(47:18) When frustration isn't curiosity(52:58) Reflect back what you hear—Today's episode is brought to you by Unblocked.Unblocked is the context layer for modern engineering teams.Get a free three-week trial at getunblocked.com/refactoring—You can also find this at:•

The skills that survive every industry shakeup aren't the ones you can Google — they're softer, harder to name, and far more durable. In this episode, Jonathan explores principle-oriented thinking: the practice of stripping away the labels we attach to tools, roles, and even ourselves to see what something actually does at its core. It's the difference between handing your coding off to an agent and rethinking your entire workflow around what these new materials are truly capable of. If you've been following along with our recent focus on durable skills, you know we've been hunting for the abilities that translate beyond this month, this year, or whatever AI does to our industry next. Today's skill doesn't have a tidy name you can search for — it's softer than that. Jonathan calls it "principle-oriented thinking": the habit of deconstructing the labels we put on things to understand their core components, properties, and capabilities. It's how NASA engineers turned a sock into a water filter on Apollo 13, and it's how forward-thinking engineers are reframing what AI can actually do rather than jamming it into a predetermined slot. Labels Are Useful Shortcuts — Until They Aren't: Every label, from "software engineer" to "sock," carries baggage, heuristics, and presupposition. That's not a flaw — labels are how we move through the world quickly. But when a label is the only lens you have, it quietly caps how much value you can get out of the thing you're looking at. The Apollo 13 Sock: When the crew needed to fix a life-threatening problem with mismatched parts, the engineers on the ground had to forget what a sock was for and ask what it actually is — a piece of cloth with tensile strength, flexibility, and filtering properties. Strip the assumption that it goes on a foot, and a whole new set of uses opens up. Stop Slotting AI Into Old Roles: The common move is to take one responsibility — coding, debugging, refactoring — hand it to an agent, and keep everything else the same. That works, but it's low-leverage. The more powerful approach starts by asking what the agent is fundamentally capable of, then rebuilding the workflow around those raw materials. See Things as Materials, Not Fixed Functions: When you deconstruct out from under a label, tools and concepts start to look like craftable raw materials. You can then combine them in new, valuable ways they haven't been combined before — alloying old methods with new capabilities to create properties neither had on its own. Reason From Properties, Not Personas: Ask what the actual properties of an LLM are. Non-determinism isn't a bug to apologize for — it's a property you can exploit. The existence of many different models is a property too, which is exactly what makes adversarial review possible. That's principle-oriented thinking applied to agents. Extend the Latticework: Charlie Munger talked about a latticework of mental models that weave together rather than sit in isolation. The durable skill isn't quarantining your concept of "AI" off to the side — it's grafting a new section onto the existing tapestry and letting it reshape everything you already understood. Episode Takeaway: Look at how you spend your time and ask new questions of it. What is the material here? What kind of thinking does the agent actually do? What can a human do that an LLM can't — and the other way around? That's how you avoid believing a sock is only ever good for a foot.

If you've ever said "I don't know why I keep doing this to myself," this one is for you. Most ambitious, self-aware women aren't actually stuck — they're loyal. Loyal to a version of themselves that used to keep them safe, but no longer fits where they're trying to go. In this episode, I unpack the four identities I see women silently loyal to (you'll recognize at least two), share a personal story about a loyalty that cost me more than I want to admit, and give you the one question that changes how you move from here forward.What You'll HearWhy "I don't know why I keep doing this to myself" is the wrong sentence — and what to say insteadStuck vs. loyal — the reframe that gives you your agency back, and why your nervous system picks familiar over free every single timeThe four loyalties — meet the Over-Functioner, the People-Pleaser, the Hyper-Independent Woman, and the Second-Guesser. See which one is sitting in the room with you right now.The loyalty that almost cost me everything — the personal story I've been scared to tell, the retreat that almost didn't happen, and the cost of staying loyal to who I used to beThe question that changes everything — swap "Why am I stuck?" for one better question and watch what shifts in real timeAwareness → Embodiment → Practice — why insight isn't the work, and what actually makes a new identity stickGo withdraw a loyalty — what to do this weekOne Line to Sit With"You're not stuck. You're loyal. And loyalty can be withdrawn."Your Invitation This WeekFor the next seven days, when you catch yourself mid-pattern — over-functioning, people-pleasing, refusing help, second-guessing — pause and ask one question instead of judging yourself: What pattern am I still loyal to? You don't have to fix it. Just name it. That's where the work starts.Clip-Worthy Moments"Most women aren't stuck. They're loyal.""Familiarity feels safer than expansion. Even when familiarity is killing you.""Hyper-independence isn't strength. It's a trauma response with a glow-up.""You weren't being fake. You were being strategic. But strategy has a shelf life.""Awareness without practice is just expensive insight.""Stop being loyal to a woman whose conditions no longer exist."Want to Go Deeper?DM me the word UNBLOCKED on Instagram and I'll send you more on how we do this work inside The Unblocked Method™.Mentioned in This EpisodeThe Unblocked Method™Upcoming Park City retreat details to come soon!If This Hit You in the ChestSave it. Send it to the woman in your life who needs to hear it. And hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.ConnectInstagram: @its.amysandersWebsite: www.amysanders.coEmail the show: support@amysanders.co 

Love is an inner energy that flows naturally when the heart is open, but people block it by holding onto past pain and resisting reality. The external world does not cause the absence of love—our internal reactions and stored past experiences do. By letting go, relaxing through discomfort, and accepting reality as it is, one can live in a continuous state of openness and unconditional love. © Sounds True Inc. Episodes: © 2026 Michael A. Singer. All Rights Reserved.

I have a rule: if somebody's going to be disappointed by my decisions, let it not be me.In this episode, I'm talking about one of the most common reasons smart, capable people hold back — the fear of being disappointed. Aka, a feeling.Protecting yourself from disappointment doesn't actually protect you. It just moves the disappointment earlier. You're already deciding you can't have what you want.In this episode I cover:Why "lowering your goal so you're not disappointed" is still disappointing yourselfThe real questions to ask when you're holding backMy SPACE framework for actually feeling your feelings The thought work pieceWhy "having your back" is one of the most strategic things you can doIf you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.RESOURCES:Order my #1 New Release book In Pursuit (chapter 6 goes in depth on emotional freedom)Click here for the Free the Feelings video and worksheets I mentionedGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community - join the group and drop your questions from the podWANT MORE SUPPORT?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comSTAY CONNECTED:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

Today's guest is James Stanier, CTO at Nordhealth, former director at Shopify, an author of several books about engineering management, remote work, and more.With James, we talked about what senior engineers will look like in the future, taking from a great article he wrote just recently, and then regarding how engineering management is changing, what's expected of managers today, and what you need to thrive.We also talked about AI adoption in his team, in our personal respective lives, and discussed the state of remote work in 2026.(00:00) Episode start(01:25) Introduction(02:05) Senior engineers in 2035(05:11) Sponsor break(06:45) Level of abstraction: from compilers to AI(10:17) Excited engineers and worried engineers(12:44) The bifurcation: vibe coders vs platform engineers(16:51) Engineering managing role changes(23:21) Managing time with expanding roles(28:32) Are hierarchies flattening?(36:25) AI adoption in James' team(41:27) What's hard in the AI era(44:36) AI as a personal assistant(50:05) Remote work in 2026-Today's episode is brought to you by Unblocked.Unblocked is the context layer for modern engineering teams.Get a free three-week trial at getunblocked.com/refactoring-You can also find this at:•

Right now, the questions we have about our careers feel existential. We keep coming back to the same theme: how do you prepare for an industry that's changing this fast, and what mindset actually works in this new reality? One skill keeps surfacing as the answer — your ability to update your own mental models. In today's episode, I want to push on that further and put some of software engineering's most beloved thinking models under scrutiny. Some of these models served you well for years. Some of them now deserve to be challenged, replaced, or thrown out entirely — and learning how to tell the difference is itself the skill that will determine whether you hit a ceiling. Move Past "So What" Questions: The typical engineering objection to agentic coding is that it produces quality issues. But the people deciding to adopt these tools already accept that. Our job is to stop arguing the surface-level point and start asking the real one: so what do we actually do about this new economic reality? The Economics of Acceptable Loss: Abstraction always leaves something to be desired. An agent's code may not match what a staff engineer produces by hand over months — but that gap is usually an acceptable trade against shipping something two, three, or four times faster. Understand the cost-benefit picture instead of pretending the cost doesn't exist. Abstraction Has Always Done This: This isn't new. The calculator dissolved the specialization once required for complex math. Spreadsheets commoditized ledgering and accounting. Agentic coding is the same pattern arriving for our work — making something that required deep specialization suddenly far more accessible. Roles Are Blurring: As these generic tools raise everyone's ability to abstract, the boundaries soften. You're already seeing product managers open pull requests and engineers making product decisions. The neat lines around "what an engineer is" are not as fixed as they used to feel. Why Your Hard-Won Wisdom Is the Target: If you've spent years in this industry, your models were bought with blood, sweat, and failed projects. That experience is real wisdom — and it's exactly what I'm asking you to be willing to challenge, because the thing that always worked for you is the thing most likely to become a ceiling. This Skill Survives Either Way: Even if you think AI is mostly hype and I've been infected by it — fine. The ability to challenge your pre-existing models is a critical skill regardless. It's how you keep growing as you get more senior instead of repeating what used to work. Models Are Approximations: The whole point of a model is to approximate the reality around us. That's their value and their limitation. When the underlying reality shifts this dramatically, holding tightly to an old approximation stops being wisdom and starts being a liability.

In this episode, we're joined by Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup, to discuss insights from his latest book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric shares what inspired him to write the book and why we need to move beyond and redefine what true profit looks like. He shares the history behind businesses transitioning from serving public interests to shareholder primacy and why leaving behind a people-first business approach can actually reduce profitability. Additionally, Eric discusses financial gravity, the “harder is easier” principle, and how these practices connect to AI & current engineering leadership challenges.   ABOUT ERIC RIES Over the last two decades, Eric Ries's ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped company building and management practices. He is the creator of the Lean Startup method, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup; The Leader's Guide; and The Startup Way. As a founder, he has put his own ideas into practice with The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE); Answer.AI, an AI R&D lab; Virgil, a legal services startup; and IMVU. On The Eric Ries Show, he talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, and executives building for the long-term. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: The inspiration behind Eric's new book Incorruptible (5:22) What it means to redefine profit (8:03) Understanding profit considerations like externality, ethics, and inputs (10:44) Why human life / value can never be an input factor of production (12:31) The history behind business practices benefitting the public (15:00) When businesses transitioned to shareholder primacy over public interest (17:16) Navigating the tension between mission vs. fiduciary responsibility (21:01) The role of financial gravity & shareholder primacy in the Silicon Valley bank story (25:04) Using Eric's book to build a mission-driven roadmap (29:12) How committing to a principled way of business can drive profitability (31:15) An example of the principle “harder is easier” (33:40) How this connects to AI & emerging eng leadership challenges (36:53)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great - Drawing on two decades of work with founders, CEOs, and investors, best-selling author Eric Ries reveals the forces that make companies vulnerable to destruction from within and without. Then he offers solutions that safeguard against them for the long-term. Incorruptible is the blueprint for companies that will prosper and endure without losing their soul. Its lessons and tools are designed to help founders, executives, investors, and citizens of all kinds build organizations – and a society – truly aligned with human flourishing. https://news.theleanstartup.com/ - Eric's newsletter with ideas about how and why to build companies focused on human flourishing — and stories of the people who are doing it. The Eric Ries Show - Founder, entrepreneur, and best-selling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries discusses how to build profitable companies for the long-term benefit of society. Ries talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, executives, and others working to create a new ecosystem of trustworthy organizations with limitless potential for growth and a deep commitment to purpose. Together, they uncover the tools and methods to ensure the next generation of companies are designed to maximize human flourishing for generations.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Geddes Munson (SVP of Engineering @ Affirm) joins us to discuss operational / engineering excellence, scaling, and AI-native transformation! We explore Affirm's approach to operational and engineering excellence and how a 2024 outage became a turning point in refining that focus. We deconstruct “AI retooling week”, the internal tools it inspired (including an incident tracing system), how the AI-native transition is impacting operational / engineering excellence, and how to connect these projects to business goals. Plus, we take a look at their early work building in agentic commerce, infrastructure decisions they made years ago setting them up for success now, how they're thinking about designing for agent-first experiences.   ABOUT GEDDES MUNSON Geddes Munson serves as Affirm's SVP, Engineering. Previously, Geddes held several engineering leadership roles at Affirm, including oversight of the merchant engineering group, where he was responsible for the development of Affirm's solutions for key partners including Amazon, Shopify and Walmart. Prior to Affirm, Geddes held various technical leadership roles at rapidly growing startups including Mixpanel, SingleStore and EasyPost. He received his B.A. from Haverford College, where he started the Linux club on campus. Geddes lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: Defining operational excellence & what it looks like @ Affirm (4:36) Understand why your company / product matters to your customers (8:11) Key pivot points around engineering excellence @ Affirm (11:10) Creating a genuine culture change of operational / engineering excellence (14:27) Adopting agentic models @ Affirm (16:30) Navigating the balance between transformation, safety & reliability (18:30) Affirm's AI retooling week & hackathon setup (20:57) How the hackathon helped quickly change the company culture (23:15) Ensuring your practices serve your overall organizational vision & goals (26:11) Insights on scaling & increasing CICD investment @ Affirm (28:28) Approaches to building agentic commerce products (30:11) Strategies for building an agent-first experience (33:33) Bridging the gap between engineering & business goals / outcomes (35:44) Rapid fire questions (38:46)   LINKS AND RESOURCES 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation - New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today's world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - a best-selling 2010 memoir by former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh detailing his entrepreneurial journey and outlines his core philosophy: building a phenomenal corporate culture and focusing on the happiness of employees and customers ultimately drives long-term profits and business success.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I want to say something that might challenge what you have believed about money for a very long time.Money mindset doesn't work.Not because the concept is wrong.Because the location is wrong.So many women are trying to change their financial reality at the thought level while the real pattern is living much deeper. In the nervous system. In identity. In survival.In this episode, I'm breaking down why affirmations, journaling, visualizations, and “thinking positive” often create temporary relief but do not create lasting change.Because your money thoughts are not the cause.They are the symptom.We talk about:✨ The real reason money patterns keep repeating✨ How your nervous system shapes your financial decisions✨ The “money thermostat” that pulls you back to familiar income levels✨ Why survival mode cannot create abundance✨ The Default Identity Loop running underneath your money patterns✨ How childhood experiences quietly shaped your relationship with money✨ Why you cannot think your way out of a body response✨ The difference between money mindset and money identityThis episode goes deep.Because the truth is, most women are not broken.They are simply running old programs in a new season of their lives.And eventually, the old identity becomes the ceiling.I also share the framework behind my free training, The Unblocked Money Reset, where I walk women through identifying and shifting the deeper identity patterns connected to money, self-worth, safety, abundance, and nervous system regulation.If this episode resonates with you, I want you to really sit with it.Notice what happened in your body while you listened.That reaction tells you more than your thoughts ever will.✨ Ready to go deeper?Join The Unblocked Woman Collective™.This is the space where women break patterns, shift identity, regulate their nervous system, and become magnetic from the inside out.You are not broken.You are becoming differently.Connect with me:Instagram: @coachamysandersWebsite: amysanders.coIf this episode spoke to you, send it to a woman who is ready to stop surviving and start becoming her next level.

You're watching someone else do the thing you want to do, and they're doing it better than you. So your brain, being your brain, lands on "well, that must mean I suck."In this episode, I unpack why comparison doesn't have to mean what you think it means and why "they're better than me" doesn't have to end with "so I'm terrible."In this episode you'll hear my personal example plus the client conversation that sparked the whole episode.What you'll take away:Why someone being better at something than you doesn't mean you're not goodHow to use comparison as data instead of a problemThe question to ask yourself before you go looking for what they do betterWhy zero-sum thinking tanks your growthIf comparison tends to put you in a spiral, this one's for you.If you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.RESOURCES:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community WANT MORE SUPPORT?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comSTAY CONNECTED:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

Today's guest is Doug Peete, Chief Product Officer at Atono, with whom over the last few months we have developed a deep industry report about the state of product development.In this chat we'll go through the main findings of the report, match them to our respective experience and explore ideas about how teams can do better with product development and AI(00:00) Episode start(01:38) Introduction(02:39) Sponsor break(05:38) Frailty of planning process(10:58) Product(13:19) What needs to be done(20:38) Design reviews(26:33) How to improve requirements(27:41) Knowledge across teams(35:07) Capturing the history of a product(39:14) Enabling sharing process(47:17) New metrics in AI era(50:47) AI in product requirements and products specs-Today's episode is brought to you by Unblocked.Unblocked is the context layer for modern engineering teams.Get a free three-week trial at getunblocked.com/refactoring-You can also find this at:•

Andrew McNamara, Director of Applied Machine Learning @ Shopify, joins the ELC podcast to share insights on building agentic platforms at scale, like Sidekick, that must keep reliability for its users at the forefront. Andrew describes the building philosophy behind Shopify and what it means to cultivate a culture of prototype-first while prioritizing hiring early-stage talent. We cover Sidekick's development journey and how user feedback impacted its product vision, why evaluation is so important for determining ground truth sets, and the benefit of user-driven use cases. Andrew also dissects how they went about making product design decisions, such as building proactive agents and identifying subagent specializations.   ABOUT ANDREW MCNAMARA Andrew McNamara is Director of Applied Machine Learning at Shopify, where he leads the team behind Shopify Sidekick, an AI co-founder that gives merchants access to the e-commerce expertise they need to run and grow their business. With 16 years of experience building AI assistants, he brings a rare combination of applied research depth and production-scale thinking to some of the hardest problems in AI: getting systems to work reliably for people who depend on them. Andrew's work pushes Shopify to measure AI quality by whether it achieves what the user set out to do, a core standard in building AI that merchants trust. Outside Shopify, he runs Setting North, a small Canadian maple syrup brand built on the same platform he helps make for everyone else.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: How Shopify utilizes reflexive AI & Andrew's building philosophy (2:38) Developing a prototype-first company culture (5:07) Andrew's reflections on building AI-enabled projects like Sidekick at scale (7:25) Translating customer surveys into Sidekick's product vision (9:34) Key inflection points while scaling out Sidekick (11:23) Strategies for evaluation / building a ground truth set (13:26) Analyzing the good & bad within ground truth sets (15:27) Shopify's system openness model to drive user-discovered use cases (17:47) How subagents fit into the Sidekick's model (19:55) Prioritization conversations around subagent specializations (23:06) Designing an agent with high-impact prompt optimization (27:22) Considerations for building highly reliable systems (29:40) Andrew's perspective on latency (31:24) Rapid fire questions (33:49)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Cradle - a New York Times best-selling series from Will Wight following a character's growth as he goes from one of the weakest users of his world's magic to among the strongest. The series features an original magic system inspired by Chinese cultivation and martial arts novels, with a heavy emphasis on anime-style super-powered battles.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

God's intention is that the flow of God's Spirit starts with us, flows to the next generation and also flows to those who are far from God. Today's challenge is that we become unblocked so God's love and power can flow.

Inbal Shani (CPO and Head of R&D @ Twilio) deconstructs the transformation of the R&D org at Twilio! We explore the shift from a GM-led model to a unified platform strategy and “why structure must always follow strategy.” Inbal shares her framework for moving from output-focused metrics to input goals, prioritizing “time-to-value,” and the nuances of measuring AI products. We discuss using "R&D roadshows" as a strategic company transformation tool and why engineering leaders must master product positioning. We also dive into mental models for future-proofing your business, from "working backwards" to solve customer problems, to embedding systems thinking into the DNA of your engineering team, and critical questions to identify and optimize decisions around your company's moat.    ABOUT INBAL SHANI As Chief Product Officer, Inbal leads Twilio's R&D organization, encompassing product, engineering, and R&D operations. She is dedicated to driving platform-wide innovation, empowering customers, and delivering transformative, customer-focused solutions.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: Catalysts for Twilio's R&D transformation and the shift away from organizational silos (2:49) Strategy Drives Structure: The lightbulb moment at a strategy offsite that demanded structural change to execute vision (5:14) Why structure must follow strategy and creating a "change-constant" culture (7:23) Implementing the “working backwards” methodology and the internal power of the PRFAQ (13:52) Tactical ways to filter customer signals and find real unmet problems versus feature requests (16:35) Shifting from output-focused goals to input goals and prioritizing "Time to Value" (18:35) Using weekly product reviews to align metrics with qualitative customer feedback (21:34) Measuring AI Products: Why AI products require behavior-based measurement instead of traditional binary testing (23:24) Building security by design with layered protection for AI-generated code environments (26:09) Mental models for future-proofing your business by acting as a "fortune teller" for needs (28:45) The R&D Roadshow: Enabling the entire company on new ways of working through storytelling (32:28) Why engineering leaders must master product positioning to bridge the gap to market (38:33) Relatable storytelling: Explaining Twilio's value to your parents to sharpen your pitch (41:47) Rapid Fire Questions (43:14)   LINKS AND RESOURCES How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion - In this lively journey through human psychology, bestselling author and creator of the You Are Not So Smart podcast David McRaney investigates how minds change--and how to change minds.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

President Trump is bringing back the Presidential Fitness Test Award. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A few weeks ago, my guest and I were in the same room in Austin for Rachel Hollis's Rise Elevate conference. Today we're unpacking what actually happened including the honest parts that not every would say out loud.This is a real conversation between two women who showed up nervous, got cracked open, and came home with more than they expected. IN THIS EPISODE:What it actually feels like to walk into a room full of strangers and try to be brave...even when you're a confident, high-achieving womanThe writing exercise that created an aha momentWhy Rachel pricing drama is one of the most relatable things she shared from stage and what it means for every woman who's ever undercharged"There are no fairy godmothers," Asia's keynote philosophy and the 2026 goal she called out loudWhat actually keeps the conference magic alive after you go home -- It's less sexy than you think"Something doesn't have to be wrong for it to not be right for you" -- a note on outgrowing rooms, relationships, and containersIf you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.RESOURCES:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community WANT MORE SUPPORT?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comSTAY CONNECTED:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youABOUT ASIA GENTRY Asia Gentry is a speaker and resilience advocate whose keynote, There Are No Fairy Godmothers, is about doing the hard thing without waiting to be rescued. Find her on Instagram: @as.told.by.asiaLet's Get Unblocked!

Why I'm Not "Picking a Fight" on AI: A listener asked if I'm intentionally stoking a flame war by treating agentic coding as a foregone conclusion. The honest answer is that I've used it, the data points one direction, and a show built around pretending otherwise would slowly drift away from reality — and away from being useful to you. Respecting the Misgivings, Without Getting Stuck in Them: Ethical concerns, skill atrophy worries, and questions about long-term effects are all legitimate. But the goal of this show is practical applicability, so we focus on mental models you can use Monday morning rather than litigating every angle of the debate. The "Minecraft" Principle: If I ask you to "build Minecraft," I've handed you several chapters of specification in a single word. That's meaning-rich abstraction — language that points at a huge amount of shared context with very little token cost. Meaning-Rich AND Specific: "Human history" is meaning-rich but uselessly broad. "Block-building game" is specific but loses fidelity. The sweet spot is vocabulary that is both compact and unambiguous — sitting in the top right of the meaning-density / specificity graph. A Real Example — Strategy Pattern: When working on authorization rules, I didn't want a pipeline. Instead of describing base classes, shared interfaces, and parallel execution to the LLM, I used the words "strategy pattern." Three words did the work of three paragraphs, and the output landed where I wanted it. Vocabulary as Leverage: Named patterns, named algorithms (Monte Carlo, etc.), named architectural concepts — these act like compressed pointers. The more of them you genuinely understand, the higher the leverage of every prompt you write and every conversation you have with another engineer. How to Build This Vocabulary: Have conversations with senior engineers. Ask an LLM what patterns are at play in a codebase, which ones you're using incorrectly, and which ones you're tricked into thinking you're using. Learn the abstraction layer that sits one step above your day-to-day implementation work. The Asterisk — Shared Context Required: This only works when both sides know the term. Public, well-documented concepts (patterns, papers, algorithms) translate immediately to LLMs. Private or organization-specific concepts need to be loaded into context — via CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, or skills — before that compression kicks in. Episode Homework: Pick one area of your current codebase. Ask an LLM to name the patterns in play, the patterns you're using incorrectly, and the ones you might be missing. Use that conversation to add at least one new piece of meaning-rich vocabulary to your working set.

Rajat Monga, CVP AI Frameworks @ Microsoft, joins the podcast to discuss his leadership and founder journey, from Google Brain / Tensorflow to inference.io and back to Microsoft. He dissects what it means to refound vs. start from scratch, the value of the open source community, and strategies for discovering what problem to solve when going the startup route. We also cover how to determine your users' hidden incentives and what that means for both product development & marketing, along with navigating the balance between a product's usefulness and consumers' willingness to pay for it. Additionally, Rajat shares about what he's currently up to at Microsoft and the emerging ML / AI technologies he's most excited about.   ABOUT RAJAT MONGA Rajat Monga is responsible for enabling an efficient AI stack at Microsoft from cloud to the edge. Before joining Microsoft, Rajat was founder and CEO of Inference.io, a smart analytics platform powered by AI. During his decade-long tenure at Google, he co-founded and led TensorFlow, and was a founding member of Google Brain. He's built out and led many engineering teams, and designed large scale distributed systems including web scale crawling and eBay's search engine. Rajat is a graduate of IIT Delhi.   Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing. Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have. Your agents can read code, but they don't know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That's why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for. Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops. getunblocked.com/elc   SHOW NOTES: Rajat's journey with Google Brain: Scaling deep learning from single PCs to thousands of machines with Jeff Dean & Andrew Ng (2:57) Moving from Google Brain to TensorFlow: Why new hardware and architectures required a total system rebuild (6:02) The "refounding" question: Choosing between starting from scratch or evolving an existing system (8:33) Why Google open-sourced TensorFlow to set industry standards and avoid supporting external copies (10:16) How open-source enabled global innovation, from Japanese cucumber sorting to African plant health (12:02) Transitioning as a leader: Why Rajat left Google during the height of TensorFlow to found a company (13:57) The discovery phase at inference.io: Navigating the pivot from IoT into solving data analytics gaps (15:31) Lessons on PMF: Moving beyond a "useful" product to one that solves a truly critical customer pain point (16:52) Why habits are harder to change than technology and the challenge of competing with established workflows (21:02) Marketing strategies: Tailoring personas for top-down prestige versus bottom-up personal efficiency (23:19) Deciding when to stop: A founder's framework for re-evaluating bets based on current knowledge (24:57) Rajat's new role at Microsoft: Overseeing Edge infrastructure and large-scale Cloud AI inference (27:46) Dissecting ML edge strategy: Using ONNX Runtime to unify AI performance across Windows, iOS, and Android (30:02) Edge AI trends: Shifting from experimental models to production models optimized for cost and privacy (31:20) The future of Edge: How on-device processing will power AI in robotics, smart glasses, and wearables (33:23) Scaling inference: Treating multi-GPU clusters like a distributed operating system for AI models (34:25) Rapid fire questions (37:45)   LINKS AND RESOURCES Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World - Innovation expert Scott Anthony masterfully weaves together the fascinating stories behind history's most transformative disruptions—from ninth-century China to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. Through eleven pivotal innovations, including the printing press, mass-produced automobiles, the McDonald's revolutionary food system, and the iPhone, Anthony reveals the hidden patterns behind world-changing breakthroughs.   This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

European Union envoys seem set to unblock a $106 billion loan for Kyiv now that Ukraine is once again sending Russian oil to Europe. Also, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney lays out a strategy for the country to move forward without economic or military support from the United States. And, Spain announced last year that it would grant working papers to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who'd entered the country without permission, but it wasn't prepared for the deluge of applications that soon poured in. Plus, some light-hearted music from the German indy-pop quartet Rikas. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Coding-Is-My-Value Trap: For years, we've treated the ability to write code as the flagship skill of software engineering. It's concrete, it's teachable, it's the thing big box stores sell kits for. But conflating "what I enjoy about the job" with "what I'm actually valuable for" is dangerously reductive — and AI is now exposing that gap. The Skills You've Been Discounting: Domain expertise, systems thinking, risk and bottleneck analysis, organizational design, tech-lead-level sequencing of work, relational skills that unblock hard moments in a company's life. These have always been where a lot of your real value lived. You probably just weren't writing them down. The Three-Part Framework — Valuable, Durable, Transferable: A skill worth investing in hits as many of these as possible. Valuable means it meets a clear business need. Durable means it survives industry shifts. Transferable means it applies across domains and scales up as you grow more senior. What "Durable" Actually Means: Ask yourself: what would have to change for this skill to become obsolete? Coding, on its own, has a lower durability answer than it used to. Relationship building, architectural thinking, and the ability to reason about complexity require much bigger shifts before they stop mattering. Transferability Is Vertical, Not Just Lateral: Don't just ask whether a skill moves across industries. Ask whether it keeps paying off as you move into more senior, higher-leverage roles. Soft skills, systems thinking, and mental models like compound interest compound themselves the further up you go. Episode Homework: Make your own list. Which of your skills are valuable, durable, and transferable? Every engineer's list looks different — and the ones you've been quietly discounting are often the ones that matter most going forward.

You submitted the questions. I answered them, including one I had to coach myself through two hours before hitting record.This episode covers four listener questions on the stuff that actually keeps people stuck: the cycle of chasing confidence through goals that never deliver it, people-pleasing that survives every book and podcast and therapy session, how coaches get out of their own heads, and what to do when life feels too good to be true.IN THIS EPISODE:Why saying "I am a people pleaser" is part of what's keeping you stuck Arrival Addiction: why you cannot out-perform or out-achieve a feeling, and what to do insteadThoughts that create people-pleasing behaviors and the thoughts that don'tHow I coached myself through a real spiral today using the thought model I teach What to do when life feels too good to be true If you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.Resources:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community Want more support?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comStay connected:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

You started strong. Then something didn't go the way you hoped and before you made a single conscious decision, you had already pulled back.That moment is where goals go to die, and I don't think we're talking enough about it.In this episode, I'm breaking down the Pursuit Cycle. This is the four-phase framework I use inside my coaching practice, and I'm showing you exactly where most people fall out of it. What You'll Learn:The single most dangerous moment in any pursuit Why your brain treats every setback like a verdict on your worth and how to interrupt itThe Pursuit Cycle: Bold Action → Intentional Belief → Deep Learning → IterationWhy going back to action before you clean up your belief is the mistake that keeps the loop goingHow to shorten the time you spend outside the cycle every time you fall out of itIf you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.Resources:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community Want more support?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comStay connected:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

When Good Thinking Becomes Overthinking: Discover why the pursuit of perfect analysis often undermines good decision-making. Loading every caveat, every exception, and every alternative into your working memory doesn't produce better outcomes — it produces paralysis. Heuristics as a Feature, Not a Bug: Your brain is an efficiency machine that creates shortcuts — cached concepts, stored routines, snap judgments. These heuristics are always incomplete, but they let you move through complex problems quickly. The opportunity is to deliberately choose which heuristics to exploit. "All Models Are Wrong, Some Models Are Useful": Useful illusions don't need to be perfectly true. They need to be true enough that acting on them produces better outcomes than endlessly debating their accuracy. Useful Illusion: Coding by Hand Is Going Away: Whether or not this is literally true in every case, the engineer who acts as if it is will invest in agentic workflows, LLMs, and new tooling — while the engineer who picks the argument apart risks being labeled a skeptic and falling behind. Useful Illusion: Hard Work Pays Off: You can poke holes in this all day — wrong direction, burnout, culture-dependent — but people who follow this heuristic tend to build reputations as reliable and capable. Few of us want to be known for the opposite. Useful Illusion: As Long As I'm Learning, I'm Growing: Learning becomes less directly correlated with career advancement over time, but continuing to act on this belief keeps you flexible, curious, and in a growth mindset. More Useful Illusions for Your List: Clean code is better. Always think about the user's experience. Go with the tool you know. Volume of delivered work correlates with career success — especially during performance review season. The Key Insight: You don't have to believe any of these things literally. You're exploiting your own heuristic system to drive efficient action and avoid wasting time on low-utility debates. The result is a more decisive, action-oriented version of yourself.

The Bottleneck Is Moving: Borrowing from traditional manufacturing theory, the coding step used to define your team's total throughput. AI tooling hasn't incrementally improved that bottleneck — it has drastically shrunk it, which means the constraint is now upstream in product decisions, specifications, and prioritization. Engineers who recognize this shift early will redirect their energy accordingly. Sharing Your Opinion Is Not a Free Action: Every time you weigh in on a decision, you're making a transaction. You're asking others to consider your input, and in return, they will update their beliefs about your judgment based on whether you turn out to be right. This means your credibility is a finite resource that appreciates or depreciates over time. Trap #1 — Arguing About Things You Don't Care About: Engineers often feel an intellectual itch to engage when they hear an argument they disagree with, even when the outcome doesn't matter to them. If the only utility of sharing your opinion is your own self-satisfaction, the risk to your social capital almost never justifies the reward. Pick your battles so that when something does matter to you, people actually listen. The Watchful Waiting Approach: If you predict a decision will lead to a bad outcome, sometimes the most effective move is to wait and let the result speak for itself. You get the learning for free without putting your reputation on the line — especially for decisions outside your core responsibilities. Trap #2 — Arguing on the Wrong Axis: When you do engage, make sure your argument is aligned with what the decision-maker actually cares about. A product manager asking engineers to delay optimization work is not going to be moved by arguments about on-call load. An engineering manager introducing a systems design interview won't be swayed by the fact that you personally dislike them. If your reasoning doesn't connect to their criteria, it lands as noise. Naive Realism and the Alignment Fix: We all default to believing our perspective is the balanced, unbiased one. This tendency causes us to assume anyone who disagrees must be missing information. The fix is to start by understanding what the other person is optimizing for. Once you know their criteria, you can either recognize their decision is perfectly reasonable — or reframe your argument in terms they actually care about. The One Takeaway: Understand what the other person wants, what they care about, and why. Decision-making in a collaborative environment is fundamentally negotiation, and the best negotiators optimize for multiple axes rather than treating every disagreement as zero-sum.

The world spent years telling you what to think. Today, we talk about how to think and why learning this one skill changes everything. I'll walk you through the S.T.E.A.R. framework I use with all my coaching clients. This is a step-by-step tool for understanding how your thoughts are literally creating your results, and how to interrupt the patterns keeping you stuck. If you've ever spiraled, over-analyzed, or talked yourself out of something you really wanted, this episode is for you.What You'll LearnWhy most of us were educated but never taught to think, and what that costs usThe critical difference between a situation and a thought (and why mixing them up is keeping you stuck)How your brain builds evidence for whatever story you already believeThe S.T.E.A.R. framework: a step-by-step coaching tool for changing your mental loopsHow the highest performers manage the space between what happens and what they make it mean If you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.Resources:Jessica's book, In Pursuit. Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community Want more support?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comStay connected:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

You're never stuck. But you could be blocked. And not in the way you think.Welcome to The Unblocked Woman — the podcast for the woman who is doing the work, building the life, and still feels like something isn't fully clicking.In this trailer episode, I'm sharing what this podcast is really about… and why most personal growth advice keeps women in cycles instead of setting them free.Because the truth is:You don't need more strategy.You need to understand the identity driving your results.Inside this podcast, we'll go deeper than surface-level self-development and into the real work that actually creates change:– The hidden patterns running your life– Why you sabotage growth, success, and relationships– How your nervous system keeps you stuck in what's familiar– The identity shifts required for true alignment and abundance– And how to finally stop forcing and start becoming magneticThis is the work of The Unblocked Method™:See It. Shift It. Become Magnetic.If you're ready to understand yourself on a deeper level…and step into the version of you that actually holds the life you want—You're in the right place.Inside The Mirror, my AI-powered coaching experience, you'll uncover your patterns, understand your wiring through Human Design + Enneagram, and get personalized guidance on exactly how to move forward.Grab it

This episode feels different.If you've been listening this year, you know I've been shifting the format of Unblocked. I want these conversations to feel less like interviews and more like real life. Friends around a table. Honest wrestling. Communion over conclusions. And that's exactly what this episode is.I'm joined by Reverend Mary Hahn and Jamie Bell Showmaker for a conversation about faith, spirituality, Christianity, ego, worthiness, and a question that many of us grapple with: How do we know what's actually true?We talk about:Growing up inside rigid religious frameworksQuestioning without abandoning GodThe tension between spiritual texts and inner knowingWhat it means to be “fully human and fully divine”Why worthiness can feel dangerousEgo, humility, and the stories we inherit about ourselvesWhether truth lives in a book or inside usThis is three women talking honestly about their journeys with God and sitting in the discomfort of not having neat answers.If you've ever felt like the “truth” you were taught was incongruent with the truth within, wondered where to go for answers, or wrestled with your own worthiness, this conversation is for you. I don't know where this episode will land for you. But I trust that if you're here, something in it is meant for you.If you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.Resources:Jessica's book, In PursuitOrder my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community Want more support?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comStay connected:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

AI is bringing massive changes to our industry, but it's not just about how fast you can write code or use agentic flows. In this episode, I explore how AI is fundamentally shifting the economic bottleneck of software development, and how you can use your systems-thinking engineering mindset to adapt and thrive in this new era.

We hear it all the time. “You just need to move on.” But what if moving on is not actually what creates healing?In this episode, I explore the difference between moving on and moving forward, and why this distinction matters so much when you have lived through something painful, meaningful, or life-shaping.Moving on often implies erasing, minimizing, or trying to be unaffected by what happened. Moving forward is different. It is integrative. It allows you to carry the wisdom while releasing the weight.I share how unprocessed experiences do not disappear just because time passes, and how real healing comes from allowing an experience to have a place without letting it define your future.You will also learn the three-step process I teach for moving forward in a grounded, practical way:The Extraction Process — identifying what you are taking with youThe Release Process — letting go of what was never yours to carryThe Integration Process — allowing the experience to inform how you live nowWe also explore why forgiveness is often misunderstood, and how it naturally unfolds when integration has occurred rather than being something you force.If you have ever wondered why something from your past still carries emotional charge, or how to move forward without bypassing what mattered, this episode will meet you there.Resources mentioned:My book In Pursuit (available in paperback, hardcover, Kindle, and Audible)Work with me: https://jessicasmarro.comIf this episode resonated, I would love to hear what stayed with you. Tag me on Instagram @jessicasmarro and share your takeaway.If you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.Resources:Jessica's book, In PursuitOrder my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community Want more support?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comStay connected:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youLet's Get Unblocked!

There was a time when I believed success meant pushing harder, fixing more, and constantly trying to outwork the version of me that felt stuck.But what I eventually realized changed everything:You don't create a new life by adding more strategy.You create it by shifting identity.In this episode, Amy shares the story behind The Unblocked Method™ — not as a theory, but as a lived framework that helped her rebuild her life, collapse timelines, and step into alignment faster than traditional personal development allows.This conversation breaks down why awareness alone doesn't create change, how identity loops keep people stuck longer than necessary, and what actually happens when you learn to shift at the level of who you are — not just what you do.If you've felt like you're doing all the right things but still not experiencing the results or ease you know are possible, this episode will help you understand why.And more importantly… what to do instead.Why strategy fails when identity stays the sameWhat “collapsing timelines” actually means (and why it works)The difference between mindset work and identity recalibrationHow The Unblocked Method™ became a lived framework — not just a conceptThe Awareness → Alignment → Abundance shift explained simplyWhy becoming unblocked changes how life responds to you

Why do so many leaders work hard to change — only to end up in the same place months later? What if the problem isn't effort, but the beliefs running in the background? In this episode of The Radical Candor Podcast, Kim Scott and Amy Sandler are joined by Muriel Wilkins — executive coach, C-suite advisor, host of Coaching Real Leaders, and author of Leadership Unblocked. Together, they unpack why high performers default to action, how action bias can backfire when internal beliefs stay the same, and what it takes to create sustainable leadership growth. Muriel introduces seven common “hidden blockers,” including I need it done now, I can't say no, and I don't belong here, and explains how these beliefs drive behavior that feels productive in the short term but creates dissonance over time. The conversation also explores how leaders can build the muscle of noticing what's happening internally, ask better coaching questions without attachment, and reduce unnecessary suffering by changing how they respond to challenges. If you've ever wondered, “Why do I keep ending up here again?” this episode offers a grounded, practical way forward. Connect: ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠ Resources for show notes:  Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential book  The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back Harvard Business Review article Coaching Real Leaders podcast Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence book Muriel Wilkins website Muriel Wilkins on Radical Candor podcast Chapters: (00:00) Introduction + Muriel Returns (01:20) Why Muriel Wrote Leadership Unblocked (01:50) Action Bias: Why Change Doesn't Stick (03:00) Actions vs. Your Internal Operating System (04:04) The Fix-It Reflex in Work and Life (06:01) Discomfort, Control, and the Urge to Solve (09:25) Hidden Blockers: What They Are and Why They're Hidden (10:57) The 7 Hidden Blockers (Overview) (11:48) “I Need It Done Now” and Reframing Time (17:03) Building the Noticing Muscle (39:58) Coaching Yourself Before Coaching Others (53:33) Conclusion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Unblocked Woman, Amy Sanders shares the personal and professional shift behind the podcast's relaunch and what it truly means to become unblocked.If you've been growing, learning, and doing all the right things but still feel misaligned or stuck, this conversation explores why identity — not effort — is often the missing piece.Amy opens up about outgrowing the Thrive Her era, recognizing the fear-based patterns that were quietly shaping her business and voice, and why letting go of old identities creates clarity, alignment, and abundance.This podcast is for women who are ready to stop proving, stop shrinking, and start leading from their true power — without hustle or burnout.

Life does not always fall apart in neat, Instagram-worthy ways.Sometimes it blindsides you. Sometimes it knocks the air out of you. Sometimes it leaves your nervous system spinning and your mind searching for answers.In this episode I break down what coaching actually does for you when life kicks you in the junk — not by avoiding pain, but by helping you stay self-led inside of it.I share how I personally navigated a recent season I did not ask for, and the exact mindset and emotional tools that made it possible to stay grounded, connected, and clear when nothing felt easy.This episode is not about positive thinking or fixing yourself. It is about learning how to work with your thoughts and emotions instead of letting them run your life.In this episode, we talk about:Why painful experiences do not mean you are doing life wrongHow coaching helps you stay self-led during hard seasonsThe difference between facts and the stories your brain tellsWhy “neutral” does not mean harmless or okayHow to observe your thoughts and emotions without being consumed by themWhy mindset work does not mean avoiding hard feelingsHow to feel emotions safely instead of suppressing or fixing themThe difference between respecting a thought and agreeing with itWhy not every thought deserves your obedienceThe powerful question that brings you back to yourself when everything feels confusingKey takeaway:You do not need to eliminate hard thoughts or emotions to move forward. You need the ability to stay with yourself, supervise your mind, and choose how you respond — one situation, one thought, one feeling, one choice at a time.That is what coaching builds.Resources:Free Feelings Video + Worksheet: Click HERE to grab it.Jessica's book, In Pursuit Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitGet your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community Want more support?If this episode resonated with you and you want deeper, personalized support, you can learn more about working with me at jessicasmarro.comStay connected:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @jessicasmarroShare this episode and tag me with what landed for youIf you enjoyed today's conversation, please follow, rate, and review Unblocked. It helps more people find these conversations and keeps this work going.Let's Get Unblocked!

In the 226th BlockTalks we speak with Helen Disney, Founder and CEO of Unblocked, who talks about what it takes to educate the UK community on Blockchain.Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-disney-unblocked/X: https://x.com/unblockedhubStablecoins Unblocked website (UK's first dedicated stablecoin conference): https://stablecoinsunblocked.com/The decryptionary: https://decryptionary.com/https://un-blocked.co.uk/. Redes sociais / comms.. https://blockdropspodcast.xyz/.. https://blockdrops.substack.com .. Instagram.com/blockdropspodcast.. Twitter.com/blockdropspod.. Blockdrops.lens .. https://warpcast.com/mauriciomagaldi.. youtube.com/@BlockDropsPodcast.. Meu conteúdo em inglês twitter.com/0xmauricio.. Newsletter do linkedin  https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7056680685142454272.. blockdropspodcast@gmail.com

It is review season, and you might be finding yourself confused: you received high ratings and "exceeded expectations," yet the promotion you expected didn't happen. In this episode of the Career Growth Accelerator, I break down exactly why high performance doesn't always lead to promotion, helping you identify the structural roadblocks and strategic shifts necessary to move from senior individual contributor to staff, principal, or leadership roles,.• Understand why your performance review is never conducted in a vacuum and why your manager's peers—not just your manager—are the "voters" you need to convince with clear evidence,.• Learn why high ratings often fail to translate into a promotion if you haven't demonstrated specific impact on the company's strategic goals rather than just your own deliverables.• Discover the first major roadblock: Structural limitations where the role you want simply doesn't exist because the business context or organizational pyramid doesn't currently support it,.• Explore the concept of "Outer Layers" of scope—moving from self-focus to team-focus, and finally to business-strategy focus—to unlock the next stage of your career,,.• Identify the "indispensable trap" where performing too well at your current inner-layer responsibilities makes you terminal in your role rather than promotable.

In this episode of The Workplace Podcast, William Corless speaks with Muriel M. Wilkins, executive coach, author of Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential, and host of the Harvard Business Review podcast Coaching Real Leaders. Muriel helps leaders understand why performance challenges so often stem from unexamined beliefs rather than skill gaps. She explains how “hidden blockers” shape leadership behaviour, why high performers resist looking inward, and how resolving conflict with yourself is a prerequisite for leading others effectively. This episode explores: The beliefs that quietly limit leadership potential Why behaviour change starts with assumptions, not actions How leaders can begin coaching themselves more effectively What it really takes to grow beyond control, perfectionism, and over-functioning A practical and reflective conversation for leaders, managers, coaches, and anyone serious about leadership development. Find out more about the work Muriel does here: MURIEL WILKINS | Helping people lead with more ease

Welcome to episode #1019 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation). At a time when leadership is being tested less by strategy and more by inner capacity, clarity of judgment and emotional steadiness, the work of Muriel Wilkins stands out for its insistence that progress begins from the inside out. Muriel is an executive coach, CEO of Paravis Partners, and a trusted advisor to senior leaders navigating complexity at the highest levels of organizations, drawing on more than two decades of experience working with C-suite executives and high-potential leaders. A Harvard Business School graduate with a background in consulting and corporate leadership, she brings uncommon credibility to the often-abstract world of coaching, pairing business fluency with deep insight into human behavior, adult development and decision-making under pressure. Her book, Leadership Unblocked - Break Through The Beliefs That Limit Your Potential, distills years of coaching practice into a clear-eyed examination of the unconscious beliefs that quietly constrain leaders, revealing how assumptions about control, certainty, identity and responsibility shape  (and often limit) how leaders respond to challenge. Rather than offering tactical fixes or performative confidence, Muriel's work focuses on expanding a leader's capacity to hold complexity, see multiple options and respond with intention rather than reflex. She explores how leaders mature over time, why success can actually stall growth, and how unexamined beliefs turn everyday pressure into unnecessary suffering. Her perspective reframes leadership development as adult development, emphasizing that the ability to lead others sustainably depends on a leader's willingness to do their own internal work. In an era defined by uncertainty, generational shifts and accelerating technology, Muriel's thinking argues for a quieter but more demanding form of leadership... one rooted in self-awareness, discernment and the courage to question one's own mental models before attempting to change anyone else's. Enjoy the conversation… Running time: 52:33. Hello from beautiful Montreal. Listen and subscribe over at Apple Podcasts. Listen and subscribe over at Spotify. Please visit and leave comments on the blog - Thinking With Mitch Joel. Feel free to connect to me directly on LinkedIn. Check out ThinkersOne. Here is my conversation with Muriel Wilkins. Leadership Unblocked - Break Through The Beliefs That Limit Your Potential. Paravis Partner. Coaching Real Leaders Podcast. Follow Muriel on Instagram. Follow Muriel on LinkedIn. Chapters: (00:00) - Introduction to Executive Coaching. (02:13) - The Journey to Coaching. (05:26) - Common Themes in Leadership. (07:37) - The Evolution of Executive Coaching. (10:50) - Leadership as Coaching. (11:49) - Generational Shifts in Leadership. (15:08) - Adult Development and Leadership. (17:57) - The Illusion of Status. (20:55) - Authenticity in Leadership. (24:42) - Adult Development Theory in Practice. (26:41) - Understanding Adult Development Theory. (30:04) - The Evolution of Coaching Practices. (32:12) - Shifting Perspectives on Leadership. (34:53) - The Role of AI in Leadership. (39:47) - Discernment and Decision-Making in Leadership. (47:44) - Navigating Current Challenges in Leadership.  

This episode is a personal reflection and reset. I'm looking back on 2025 through the lens of my word of the year, unimaginable, and sharing what surprised me most, what stretched me, and what I'm genuinely proud of. I also pull back the curtain on what's changing as I head into 2026. You'll hear how I'm rethinking the structure and rhythm of the Unblocked podcast.I share my new word of the year for 2026 and what it means for how I want to live, create, and lead moving forward. I talk about holding goals lightly, following the next right step even when the path is unclear, and choosing growth because of who you become along the way. This episode is an invitation to reflect on your own year, notice what you created and how you created it, celebrate yourself more fully, and to step into what's next with curiosity instead of pressure.If you're feeling called to pause, reset, and move forward with more intention, this conversation is for you.Click HERE to watch this episode on YouTube.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend, leave a review, or tag me on IG with your biggest takeaway. Your support helps these conversations reach more people who need them.Links and Resources:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitIf you love what you're hearing on the podcast, you've gotta check out my private coaching offers. Click HERE to learn more about one-on-one coaching with me!Get your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community  Let's Connect:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @JessicaSmarroShare your thoughts and experiences with the hashtag #UnblockedPodcast and tag @jessicasmarro!DM or email your questions or topic requests @jessicasmarro on IG/FB or jessica@jessicasmarro.comLet's Get Unblocked!

In this episode of Unblocked, I sit down with Jena Lorén, also known as The Consciousness Architect, for a powerful conversation about ego, alignment, and identity shifts.Jena shares her personal journey through trauma, survival patterns, and major life transitions, and how those experiences shaped the work she does today. We talk about how ego forms as a protective mechanism, how it quietly runs our decisions, and why so many ambitious women feel successful on the outside but misaligned on the inside.We explore the four Egoic Archetypes, the Realist, Rebel, Martyr, and Illusionist, and how learning to pause, reflect, and respond instead of react can create real freedom. This episode is a reminder that living an unblocked life is not about adding more tools or fixing yourself. It is about removing the blocks to the awareness of who you already are.Click HERE to watch this episode on YouTube.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend, leave a review, or tag me on IG with your biggest takeaway. Your support helps these conversations reach more people who need them.Links and Resources:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitIf you love what you're hearing on the podcast, you've gotta check out my private coaching offers. Click HERE to learn more about one-on-one coaching with me!Get your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community  Let's Connect:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @JessicaSmarroShare your thoughts and experiences with the hashtag #UnblockedPodcast and tag @jessicasmarro!Connect with Jena:Instagram: @iamjenalorenWebsite: www.jenaloren.comFree Egoic Archetype Quiz: http://quiz.bravemasters.comLet's Get Unblocked!

Letting go sounds beautiful in theory…until you're the one standing in the middle of it. Even when we know it's time for change, transitions can be messy, emotional, and full of uncertainty.In this episode of Unblocked, I sit down with Katie Pulsifer, Master Certified Coach and mentor to thousands of coaches, for a real, honest, and deeply human conversation about what it takes to move through change without losing yourself in the process.We talk about:Why transitions are so emotionally charged (even when they're right for us)How to tell the difference between fear and intuitionWhat self-leadership really looks like in everyday lifeHow to stop letting urgency lead the wayAnd the power of living as your Whole, Wise, and Worthy selfKatie's wisdom is equal parts grounded and practical. She doesn't sugarcoat the process. She tells the truth about what it takes to lead yourself with grace, compassion, and courage, even in the in-between.If you've ever felt stuck, uncertain, or scared to let go of something familiar, this episode will remind you that discomfort doesn't mean you're off-path. It means you're evolving.Click HERE to watch this episode on YouTube.If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear this. Links and Resources:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitIf you love what you're hearing on the podcast, you've gotta check out my private coaching offers. Click HERE to learn more about one-on-one coaching with me!Get your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community  Let's Connect:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @JessicaSmarroShare your thoughts and experiences with the hashtag #UnblockedPodcast and tag @jessicasmarro!Connect with Katie:  Website: https://katiepulsifercoaching.com Substack: https://katiepulsifer.substack.com

If you've ever thought, “I'm not a leader, I just have 47 people depending on me and zero time to pee” — this one's for you. In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on what really gets in the way of women leading at work, at home, and in our own lives. Spoiler: it's not your title, your org chart, or your calendar. It's the invisible beliefs, the perfectionism, the “I'll just do it myself,” and the “if I say no everything will fall apart” stories running in the background. Executive coach, author, and Harvard Business Review podcast host Muriel Wilkins joins Nicole to unpack the seven hidden leadership blockers that quietly cap our potential — especially for women who've been praised their whole lives for doing it all, doing it perfectly, and never dropping a ball. Together, they dig into how to actually lead yourself first, rewrite old scripts like “I can't make a mistake” and “I don't belong here,” and create a version of leadership that doesn't require burnout, over-functioning, or pretending to be someone you're not. Because leadership isn't just about managing people. It's about managing you — your beliefs, your boundaries, and your response when things go sideways. We explore: Why leadership isn't a title, it's how you show up in every area of your life The 7 hidden leadership blockers that keep high-achieving women stuck and exhausted How “I need to be involved” and “I can't say no” destroy your capacity and your team's growth The quiet cost of perfectionism and the belief “I can't make a mistake” The difference between being a leader and actually leading (yes, there's a big one) Why real confidence isn't knowing you'll get it right — it's trusting you can handle whatever happens Because at the end of the day, leadership isn't about having all the answers — it's about having the inner steadiness to face whatever comes next without abandoning yourself in the process. Thank you to our sponsors! Get 20% off your first order at curehydration.com/WOMANSWORK with code WOMANSWORK — and if you get a post-purchase survey, mention you heard about Cure here to help support the show!  Sex is a skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Visit https://beducate.me/pd2550-womanswork and use code womanswork for 50% off the annual pass. Connect with Muriel: Website: https://murielwilkins.com/ Book: https://www.murielwilkins.com/books Podcast: https://www.murielwilkins.com/podcast-coaching-real-leaders   Related Podcast Episodes: From Small Business to Big Impact: Leadership, Confidence, & Community at the Goldman Sachs 10K What Good Leaders Can Learn from Bad Bosses with Mita Mallick | 351 How To Build An Emotionally Intelligent Team with Dr. Vanessa Druskat | 328 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

In this episode of Unblocked, I sit down with health and breathwork coach, Dana Head, founder of Alchemize House, a community-based wellness collective redefining what it means to be healthy.Together we explore how true health extends far beyond fitness and nutrition. Dana shares his journey from being physically fit yet feeling disconnected, to realizing that authentic connection - with self and others - is the next frontier of health. We get into: • How discomfort can become a pathway to presence and connection • The neurochemistry behind breathwork and why it can feel transformative • What community-based wellness looks like in practice • How to redefine health through relationships, embodiment, and consistency • Why learning to receive love and connection is just as vital as giving itIf you've ever wondered how to feel more alive, more connected, and more at home in your body, this conversation will help you see that health isn't just what you do, it's how deeply you belong.Click HERE to watch this episode on YouTube.If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear this. Links and Resources:Order my #1 New Release book In PursuitIf you love what you're hearing on the podcast, you've gotta check out my private coaching offers. Click HERE to learn more about one-on-one coaching with me!Get your complimentary copy of The Unblocked Journal to help bring awareness to perfectionist thinking and what it's creating in your life.Join My Do The Thing Community  Let's Connect:Follow me on Facebook & Instagram: @JessicaSmarroShare your thoughts and experiences with the hashtag #UnblockedPodcast and tag @jessicasmarro!Connect with Dana Head:  Website: www.alchemizehouse.com Instagram: @alchemizehouse

How can you identify and reframe your limiting beliefs?Why is awareness not enough to get unblocked?My guest on this episode is with Muriel Wilkins, Founder & CEO of Paravis Partners and author of “Leadership Unblocked.”During our conversation Muriel and I discuss:Why leaders are often their own biggest obstacleHow limiting beliefs quietly undermine our leadership and how to spot themThe hidden blockers successful people carry and how they can stall your progressThe myth of “If I can do it, so can you”—and why true leaders meet people where they areMuriel's practical three-step roadmap: uncover, unpack, and unblock your limiting beliefsConnecting with Muriel: Connect with Muriel Wilkins on LinkedInLearn more about Muriel's firm, Paravis PartnersOrder her newest book, Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential.

Ever feel like the very habits that made you successful are now holding you back? In this episode, I sit down with executive coach Muriel Wilkins, author of Leadership Unblocked: Break Through The Beliefs That Limit Your Potential, to talk about the hidden beliefs that drive overachievers to perfectionism, micromanagement, and control. She breaks down how deeply rooted beliefs about worth, control, and safety shape your behavior at work. Tune in to learn how to rewire your thinking so you can lead with more ease, clarity, and confidence. In this Episode, You Will Learn 00:00 Meet Muriel Wilkins, Executive Coach and Founder & CEO of Paravis Partners. 07:00 How performance-based beliefs shape your sense of worth and leadership identity. 10:30 Ways to “break out of the matrix” and rewrite beliefs that keep you stuck in perfectionism. 13:30 The three most common “blockers” that high-achieving leaders face. 18:15 The belief that traps high-performing leaders in frustration and conflict. 21:15 Coaching exercise that helps leaders see their blind spots. 26:45 How over-caring and over-consensus quietly become leadership paralysis. 30:30 Ways to set limits and “contracts” that help reel in perfectionism. 35:45 How “I need to be involved” thinking keeps leaders stuck in the weeds and blocks growth. Resources + Links Read Muriel's book, Leadership Unblocked Get a copy of my book - The Anxious Achiever Watch the podcast on YouTube  Find more resources on our website morraam.com Follow Follow me: on LinkedIn @morraaronsmele + Instagram @morraam Follow Muriel: on LinkedIn @murielwilkins + Instagram @coachmurielwilkins

On this Live Greatly podcast episode, Kristel Bauer sits down with Muriel M. Wilkins, host of Harvard Business Review's podcast, Coahing Real Leaders and author of LEADERSHIP UNBLOCKED: Break Through the Beliefs that Limit Your Potential. Tune in now!  Key Takeaways From This Episode: Some common pain points and limiting beliefs facing leaders How to navigate micromanaging A look into Muriel's book, LEADERSHIP UNBLOCKED: Break Through the Beliefs that Limit Your Potential ABOUT MURIEL M. WILKINS: Muriel M. Wilkins, founder and CEO of Paravis Partners, is a sought-after C-suite adviser and executive coach with a twenty-year track record of helping senior leaders take their performance to the next level. She is the coauthor of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence. Muriel is the host of the Harvard Business Review podcast Coaching Real Leaders, consistently ranked as a top-ten podcast in Apple's Management category. Connect with Muriel: Order Muriel's book: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Unblocked-Through-Beliefs-Potential/dp/1647827264/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0  Website: https://www.murielwilkins.com/  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murielwilkins/  Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/coachmurielwilkins   About the Host of the Live Greatly podcast, Kristel Bauer: Kristel Bauer is a corporate wellness and performance expert, keynote speaker and TEDx speaker supporting organizations and individuals on their journeys for more happiness and success. She is the author of Work-Life Tango: Finding Happiness, Harmony, and Peak Performance Wherever You Work (John Murray Business November 19, 2024). With Kristel's healthcare background, she provides data driven actionable strategies to leverage happiness and high-power habits to drive growth mindsets, peak performance, profitability, well-being and a culture of excellence. Kristel's keynotes provide insights to “Live Greatly” while promoting leadership development and team building.   Kristel is the creator and host of her global top self-improvement podcast, Live Greatly. She is a contributing writer for Entrepreneur, and she is an influencer in the business and wellness space having been recognized as a Top 10 Social Media Influencer of 2021 in Forbes. As an Integrative Medicine Fellow & Physician Assistant having practiced clinically in Integrative Psychiatry, Kristel has a unique perspective into attaining a mindset for more happiness and success. Kristel has presented to groups from the American Gas Association, Bank of America, bp, Commercial Metals Company, General Mills, Northwestern University, Santander Bank and many more. Kristel has been featured in Forbes, Forest & Bluff Magazine, Authority Magazine & Podcast Magazine and she has appeared on ABC 7 Chicago, WGN Daytime Chicago, Fox 4's WDAF-TV's Great Day KC, and Ticker News. Kristel lives in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida area and she can be booked for speaking engagements worldwide. To Book Kristel as a speaker for your next event, click here. Website: www.livegreatly.co  Follow Kristel Bauer on: Instagram: @livegreatly_co  LinkedIn: Kristel Bauer Twitter: @livegreatly_co Facebook: @livegreatly.co Youtube: Live Greatly, Kristel Bauer To Watch Kristel Bauer's TEDx talk of Redefining Work/Life Balance in a COVID-19 World click here. Click HERE to check out Kristel's corporate wellness and leadership blog Click HERE to check out Kristel's Travel and Wellness Blog Disclaimer: The contents of this podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician for any recommendations specific to you or for any questions regarding your specific health, your sleep patterns changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.  Always consult your physician before starting any supplements or new lifestyle programs. All information, views and statements shared on the Live Greatly podcast are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not medical advice or treatment recommendations.  They have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration.  Opinions of guests are their own and Kristel Bauer & this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests.  Neither Kristel Bauer nor this podcast takes responsibility for possible health consequences of a person or persons following the information in this educational content.  Always consult your physician for recommendations specific to you.