For Immediate Release:
Dateline: San Francisco,
CA
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
“You are not alone. And just because you feel like shit doesn’t mean you are shit.” — Jerry Colonna Jerry Colonna (@jerrycolonna) is the CEO and cofounder of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm dedicated to the notion that better humans make better leaders. Prior to his career as a coach, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners (JPMP), the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase. Prior to that, he cofounded New York City-based Flatiron Partners with Fred Wilson, which became one of the nation’s most successful early-stage investment programs. His first leadership position, at age 25, was Editor-In-Chief of InformationWeek magazine, and now he has returned to the written word with his first book, Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Castbox, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Want to hear an episode with someone else who understands the value of coaching? — Listen to my conversation with Eric Schmidt, in which we discuss the immeasurable impact late coach Bill Campbell had on Silicon Valley’s rise as a veritable modern superpower. (Stream below or right-click here to download.)
QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments. Scroll below for links and show notes… SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODEReboot.io | Twitter - Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up by Jerry Colonna
- J.P. Morgan Partners, Crunchbase
- Flatiron Partners, Crunchbase
- InformationWeek Magazine
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
- What is Ecopsychology? by Robert Greenway
- Argiope Aurantia (Black and Yellow Garden Spider), Spider ID
- Iktomi: Native American Spider-Trickster Spirit Whose Stories Teach Moral Values by Ellen Lloyd, AncientPages.com
- JetBlue Airlines
- Emotional Ups and Downs After 9/11 Traced in Report by Adam Clymer, The New York Times
- Union Square Ventures
- For Those Who ‘Worked The Pile’ At Ground Zero, Horrors Of Sept. 11 Haven’t Faded by Dina Temple-Raston, Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR
- 142 Of The Funniest New Yorker Cartoons Ever by Giedre, Bored Panda
- Canyon Ranch
- Trump Pavilion, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center
- Creedmoor State Hospital, Asylum Projects
- Cabrini Medical Center, Wikipedia
- Being Complicit, And Now This
- The Benefits of Suffering and the Costs of Well Being: Secondary Gains and Losses by Will Joel Friedman, MentalHelp.net
- New York Times Corrects Misquote of Thoreau’s ‘Quiet Desperation’ Line by Craig Silverman, Poynter
- The Bhagavad Gita
- When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times by Pema Chˆdrˆn
- Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience by Sharon Salzberg
- Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer
- The Dharma: The Teachings of the Buddha, Religious Literacy Project
- Internal Family Systems
- Life and Teachings of Jesus, Religious Literacy Project
- Burning Man
- This Man Makes Founders Cry by Jessi Hempel, Wired
- The Reality of Imposter Syndrome by Megan Dalla-Camina, Psychology Today
- What is Karma? The Yogic Encyclopedia
- The Center for Nonviolent Communication
- Seinfeld Saying “Newman!”
- The Living Art of Bonsai, Bonsai Empire
- Who said, “Those Who Mind Don’t Matter, and Those Who Matter Don’t Mind?” Quote Investigator
- Guilt vs. Remorse by Margaret Paul, HuffPost
- How to Cage the Monkey Mind, The Tim Ferriss Show #175
- Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think by Tim Urban, Wait But Why
- The Artist’s Way Morning Pages Journal by Julia Cameron
- The 7 Levels of Consciousness, Tiny Buddha
- Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, University of Toronto Libraries
- Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
- Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
- Market Crashes: The Dotcom Crash, Investopedia
- Know Your Brain: Amygdala, Neuroscientifically Challenged
- Metta Meditation (aka Loving Kindness Meditation), Metta Institute
- Jack Kornfield Wants You to Love Yourself by Tim Ferriss, Outside
- The Klingon Hamlet by The Klingon Language Institute
SHOW NOTES- What’s the story behind Jerry’s spider tattoo? [05:10]
- What happened at an Olympic bid meeting in 2002 that would change Jerry’s life? [11:39]
- Jerry talks candidly about a suicide attempt at age 18 and spending three months in a psychiatric hospital. [18:17]
- What’s the difference between responsible and complicit and, in 2002, how was Jerry complicit in creating the conditions in his life that he would have said he didn’t want? [19:30]
- Three important questions Jerry’s therapist taught him. [23:02]
- An example of something Jerry needed to say during this period of time that he didn’t say or that wasn’t heard. [24:24]
- What did Jerry do to overcome the nagging self-doubt and unanswerable questions that were crushing him at this point? [26:12]
- How did Jerry find his way to coaching, and what three books guided him in that direction? [28:42]
- If he were to hazard a guess, how much of Jerry’s call to coaching was finding relief in taking the focus outside of himself and, in a way, healing his younger self? [35:12]
- How does Jerry get through to fellow high-achievers who don’t think they have the time, patience, or need for self-discovery? [38:30]
- The first question Jerry asks: “How are you really feeling?” [39:41]
- How does Jerry work with the chronically busy? [43:11]
- Jerry takes a look at how I’ve historically dealt with busyness and breaks it down — along with saying “No” and when (and why) this is most difficult for me. [45:54]
- There are three basic risks that we’re all trying to manage all the time: love, safety, and belonging. [59:35]
- Tools, books, and approaches Jerry has found helpful for people who have difficulty saying “No” or establishing boundaries. [01:01:43]
- “All beings own their own karma. Their happiness or unhappiness depend upon their actions, not my wishes for them.” [01:03:50]
- A boundary tool that acknowledges compassion — but from a distance. [01:05:21]
- To Jerry, the challenge isn’t in not having a tool for maximizing the efficiency with which we overcome our struggles. The challenge is in the meaning that gets put into a situation before a tool can even be applied. [01:06:35]
- Like the Jerry of Seinfeld fame, we all have a Newman (or several) vexing our lives in some way. How might we humanely confront, converse with, or even sever ties with these unhealthy relationships? [01:07:21]
- How does Jerry get someone from the point of intellectually agreeing with what he’s saying to actually putting it into practice and changing their behavior? [01:12:38]
- As a 55-year-old who’s been journaling daily since he was 13, how does Jerry prescribe the practice as a way to drive personal results? [01:15:16]
- Guilt vs. remorse. [01:17:30]
- Marie Ponsot, the crow, and the importance of letting the crow speak in the journal. [01:18:14]
- Jerry describes his typical bedtimes and mornings, when he fits in time for journaling, and what his journaling prompts and processes look like. [01:22:31]
- How journaling can help us accept the totality of what’s going on in our lives by allowing our different voices to speak — the “multitudes” we contain per Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. [01:26:13]
- On Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach [01:28:19]
- How Jerry has used Marvel’s Hulk and Thor to reconcile the different parts of himself and understand that they each serve a purpose — recalling Carl Jung’s notion of The Shadow. [01:29:20]
- Jerry walks us through the time he made a difficult decision to say “No” — and focused on something narrowly — that ended up being life-changing in retrospect. [01:34:29]
- Jerry’s advice to anyone who finds themselves in a similar position — or his younger self at this junction. [01:41:58]
- How journaling, meditating, and answering certain questions has helped Jerry cope with rage-fueled anxiety and tame his inner Hulk. [01:44:01]
- Where an aspiring beginner can learn more about loving kindness, aka metta meditation, and what it’s helped me discover about myself. [01:47:48]
- What new behavior or belief has greatly improved Jerry’s quality of life? [01:50:16]
- What would Jerry’s billboard say? [01:52:19]
- Closing thoughts. [01:55:02]
PEOPLE MENTIONEDPosted on: June 11, 2019. Please check out Tribe of Mentors, my newest book, which shares short, tactical life advice from 100+ world-class performers. Many of the world's most famous entrepreneurs, athletes, investors, poker players, and artists are part of the book. The tips and strategies in Tribe of Mentors have already changed my life, and I hope the same for you. Click here for a sample chapter and full details. Roughly 90% of the guests have never appeared on my podcast. Who was interviewed? Here's a very partial list: tech icons (founders of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, Pinterest, Spotify, Salesforce, Dropbox, and more), Jimmy Fallon, Arianna Huffington, Brandon Stanton (Humans of New York), Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ben Stiller, Maurice Ashley (first African-American Grandmaster of chess), Brené Brown (researcher and bestselling author), Rick Rubin (legendary music producer), Temple Grandin (animal behavior expert and autism activist), Franklin Leonard (The Black List), Dara Torres (12-time Olympic medalist in swimming), David Lynch (director), Kelly Slater (surfing legend), Bozoma Saint John (Beats/Apple/Uber), Lewis Cantley (famed cancer researcher), Maria Sharapova, Chris Anderson (curator of TED), Terry Crews, Greg Norman (golf icon), Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum), and nearly 100 more. Check it all out by clicking here.
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