After a very long hiatus, this newsletter is back. I have deeply missed all of you—and the joy of writing to you.

Welcome to Issue #16 of Food for Thought.

This week, I've been reflecting on the quiet forces that shape our lives: mentorship as a bidirectional gift, a holistic view of success, and the felt difference between abundance and scarcity. These themes surfaced in conversations, in my own inner work, and in noticing how our impact shifts when we change our mindset.

As always, here's your 3-2-1:

3 ideas to explore | 2 things to read/watch/listen | 1 question to reflect on

3 Ideas to Explore

The bidirectional gift of mentorship

As a CEO of a fast-moving company, I often try to act quickly in giving feedback and pointing out what could be better—this is not mentorship. Mentorship is more spacious and generous. It sees the light and brilliance in the people you have the privilege of working with, and it calls to them to unleash their potential.

In a world where speed and efficiency trump, it is important to be intentional about mentorship. To see the gifts people have, and to help them unlock their brilliance. To believe in them, to have them feel seen and deeply encouraged. To give them feedback in ways that make them feel enough and encourage them to stretch. In a world where work is remote and AI agents are replacing entry-level work, this mentorship will become even more valuable and sadly scarce.

Giving mentorship is extremely rewarding—it is an act of giving, and when I reflect most on my career, watching and supporting young people thrive may be one of the greatest gifts I have given myself. It is incredibly rewarding to have played a small part in helping people grow. Being on the receiving end of great mentorship can be lifechanging; I am forever grateful to the generous and brilliant people I have been lucky enough to have as mentors. Thank you to all of you who believed in me, especially in the times where I was my own worst enemy. With so much gratitude for the exchange of great mentorship and the cycle of life.

The Circle of Success

When I think about life and what marks my vision of success, I picture a circle—a bubble blown anew each month. It's not always perfectly round. Some days it bulges in one direction; other days, a side caves in a little. But if you averaged its shape over time, it would trend toward wholeness.

My definition of success is well-rounded, a holistic measure. It includes my physical health and well-being, my family, my friendships and community, my mindset and mental health, spirituality, my career and work, my curiosities and passions, my giving back to the causes that matter, and my financial wellness. Every year—sometimes each quarter—I score these out of 10 on a wheel of life. It's a simple check-in, not to judge but to notice. If one spoke dips too low, it gently nudges me to pay attention.

But here's the catch: if one part of the wheel gets stretched too thin for too long—say, over-investing in work while neglecting health—it risks bursting. That's the tension. Success isn't about maxing out each spoke at all times, but about maintaining harmony across the circle. The goal isn't a perfect wheel, but a dynamic one—resilient, balanced, and growing outward over time.

This 360° view of success has kept me grounded. It reminds me that a life well-lived is multidimensional. For me, success is Gestalt—greater than the sum of its parts.

The impact of an abundant mindset in scarce times

It's amazing how subtle—and profound—the shift in mindset from scarcity to abundance can be. I've noticed lately how much of the world feels steeped in trauma, crisis, and scarcity. Some of it is extremely real; it is hard to be in an abundant mindset if you are not able to make ends meet. As an immigrant child, I've long been attuned to the scarcity instinct in survival: being strong, in control, hypervigilant, driven, resilient. These are powerful traits. But when control takes the lead for too long, it can quickly become something else—critical, rigid, harsh, devastating.

I have noticed that when I allow myself to feel more abundant, I can release the grip of fear and control and remember: things flow better when there is spaciousness. Abundance can be just a state of mind—it's the idea you have more than you need. In our society this is barely ever the case; we are taught to never have enough, regardless of how much we already have. This scarcity mindset drives the hustle, but an abundant mindset can drive reflection, growth, and value.

I have witnessed how my impact feels so different when I act from abundance. From abundance and spaciousness, generosity becomes possible. When we are generous, others feel safer. When people feel generosity and safe space, they can bring their full potential to work and their lives. We can be abundant in our spaciousness, kindness and empathy, even when we are managing through hard times—that's the quiet art of leadership. It's a fine dance between pragmatism and survival in hard times and the empathetic leadership and creative possibility that blooms when we lead from abundance.

2 Things to Do

✨ Celebrate Mother’s Day

Whether you are a mom, have a mom, hope to be a mom, or simply cherish the mother figures in your life—today is a beautiful moment to celebrate the energy and impact of motherhood. Take a moment to give thanks to a mother in your life today.

When I reflect on the most meaningful experience of my life, it is, without question, the privilege, purpose, and profound joy of being a mother to my two boys. It has shaped who I am more than anything else.

And when I think about who has had the most lasting influence on me, it is my own mother. Today, I want to honour her. My mother has always chosen to see the good. She taught me early on that what we focus on, expands. She instilled in me the quiet confidence of belief—the kind that fuels possibility. Through her, I’ve learned what resilience really looks like: life may knock us down, but it’s how we rise that defines us.

Most recently, my mom overcame what doctors said was impossible. After being diagnosed with a massive Stage 4 spinal tumour that broke her spine, she was told she would never walk again. Today, she is not only cancer-free—she’s walking with strength and grace, looking more radiant than ever.

She has shown me how to hold myself with grace through adversity. And perhaps most of all, she taught me the power of generosity—in love, in kindness, in presence. Here’s to you, Mom. Thank you for being you.

Go celebrate a mother that inspires you today.

🏛️ Visit The Auschwitz Exhibit At the ROM

This week, I had the profound honor of hearing Holocaust survivor Nate Leipciger speak at the ROM’s Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away exhibit. At 97, Nate carries the weight of history with extraordinary presence and urgency. He reminded us that the unimaginable—six million lives lost—is not just a number, but a warning. His message was clear: this can happen again, and the only way to stop it is by remembering, understanding, and resisting hatred in all its forms.

What moved me most was Nate’s deep commitment to honouring the “Righteous Among the Nations”—those rare souls who refused to be bystanders and chose, instead, to help. His words were piercing, poetic, and resolute. He shares his story so we don’t forget. So we don’t repeat.

If you’re able, I encourage you to visit the exhibit. It’s not easy—but it’s necessary. Not long ago. Not far away. 🔗 Auschwitz at the ROM

1 Question for Reflection

What's something you're quietly wondering about that deserves a moment of reflection?

Wishing you a week of intention, connection, and quiet abundance. With warmth and wonder,

Candice

P.S. I'd love to hear what resonated most with you this week. Just hit reply 💌

Happy Spring, one of my favourite things is the juxtaposition of the new growth of spring against the backdrop of winter.

Here are 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and 1 reflective set of questions:

1. Explore

I. Agency, Power & Questions in the age of AI.

As we all think about the intended and unintended consequences of ChatGPT and generative AI, we are left to wonder what will this shift mean for society? I read a fascinating piece, thanks to a brilliant friend and former colleague Samantha, on the fact that Generative AI does not actually contain “true intelligence” but rather has the agency to appear so. I am so interested to see how we will we adjust to this new reality? Luciano Fortelli reminds us of the prophetic 1984 novel written by George Orwell:

“ Power as the control of questions, because, to para-phase 1984 whoever controls the questions controls the answers and whoever controls the answers controls reality.”

I am curious as to how this AI agency will impact our lives and our pursuit of “truth”. Power and the control of questions and answers is not a new paradigm, we are in many ways living the future, in part. One could argue, our media is already controlled by AI, algorithms and the machine.

Asking the right questions will become an ever more important skill and responsibility. Will we learn to question content and look deeper for sources of truth and attribution? In a strange way, perhaps this will increase the value and perceived need for a reform to education. Will it bring a deeper recognition that learning to ask the right questions is more important than learning rote facts? My highest hope is that the value of critical thinking, creativity and empathy as skills we must invest in will become more urgent in this AI infused future. Often things we take for granted, when taken away, become ever more valued.

II. Informed Optimism

A friend was asking how do I stay optimistic amidst the depressing, scary news cycle and the tremendous challenges our society appears to be facing?

My answer - While often not easy to do, I remind myself that without informed optimism, is there any other way to solve problems? There is nothing worse to me than giving up and prescribing to a dreaded future. People need to believe that a better future is possible to give a damn about trying to make it so.

III. Why We Create

Most creative people are driven by something more, a calling or purpose. I love this quote recently shared from Steve Jobs biography (@Walter Isaacson). It eloquently shares a beautiful notion that creativity is connected to contribution, gratitude, expression of ourselves and the interconnectedness of our species.

2. Things to Read/Listen to this week:

I. Integrity = Energetic Wholeness & Aliveness

A refreshing and thought provoking take on the notion of integrity that led to some game changing conversations with my team, my partner and my kids.

“When you ask most people what integrity means, they'll usually say “doing the right thing,” which has a moral or ethical orientation. We're going back to the word integrity evolved from: integer, defined as "whole" or "complete.," which has no moral or ethical connotations. We thus define—and more importantly, operationalize—integrity as energetic wholeness. Energetic wholeness leads to full aliveness.  When we are "in integrity," we're energetically whole and fully alive.”

- Jim Dethmer 👉 Listen here

II. Living Beautifully (with Uncertainty & Change)

A 45th bday present from a wonderful friend recently (thank you Jodi), this book is a gentle reminder than no matter what the circumstance, we can choose to live beautifully and without suffering.

“We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can't relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.”
― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change

3. A Reflective Set of Questions

What questions do you need to be asking right now?

What is one thing you are EXCITED for as a result of this AI infused future? Where can you be part of the solution?

How can you lean more into your own integrity (aka wholeness/aliveness) this week?

In what area of your life can you live more beautifully, without suffering?

Wishing you a wonderful week!

Candice

p.s thanks for reading, it is a joy to write these.

A long overdue hello to all of you. I have missed writing and reflecting. In 2023, my intention is to write more.

Here are 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and 1 reflective question:

1. Explore

I. Sea Change

A sea change is defined as a profound or notable transformation or a substantial change in perspective, especially one which affects a group or society at large, on a particular issue. Being in tech, this could not ring more true when I reflect on all that happened in 2022.

2022 was a Sea Change - public market valuations for tech stocks at all time lows, interest rates at 2008 levels, inflation at levels not seen since the 1980s, tech layoffs happening in droves and a sobering and likely necessary cooling of the unsustainable focus on growth over fundamentals. Read Howard Mark’s(Founder of Oak Tree Capital) memo for more on the macro-economic climate sea change.

II. Optimism & Re-Orientation

I will preface what I am about to say with the fact that I know this sea change was difficult for many people and I don’t take that lightly. Society is so polarized today and the majority of people who are just surviving have been greatly affected by the macro-economic sea change. For example, I was chatting with my uber driver who explained to me that inflation has made his life unbearable - he works 7 days a week now to get by . Uber did not raise rates yet his living costs have increased by at least 20%. Life is a lot tougher in these times.

Yet during a sea change, we still need to swim forward. If you were able to keep afloat amidst the sea change, it is up to you to re- orient your ship in these new waters you find yourself swimming in.

In a sea change, opportunity still exists for entrepreneurs, it’s just important to understand that you likely aren’t looking in the same places or valuing the same things as you were before the sea change. In this sea change, it appears cash is king, profitability is hot, mindful growth is en vogue.

Optimism and mindset matter even more in sea changes as your environment is often rife with fear.

After some reflection, I am quite excited about this sea change. I believe that in the long run, it will help us build better businesses and make more thoughtful decisions as humans, entrepreneurs and investors. It feels a lot more grounded in reality than the frothy market environment that was untethered to fundamentals. When the tide is out, and the oceans less noisy, it forces our hand to make sound business and life decisions.

III. Connection

Every year I choose a new word to set an intention for the year. After some reflecting on what I was lacking in 2022 and what I wanted to invite more of into my life in 2023, the word connection came to me.

Why connection?

Connection is a reminder for me to feel connected; connected to my heart, to nature, to my body, to my family, my work and its purpose, and to my community. While I made the best of the pandemic; disconnection, isolation and busy-ness slowly seeped in to certain areas of my life. Over the break, I realized just how much connection matters to me and how important it is to design a life that allows for it and celebrates it.

This intention requires me to put practises (like mindfulness, working out, forest-bathing, making time for gatherings etc) into my busy schedule so I can cultivate, grow and maintain deep connections in my life. It is also a reminder to create the spaciousness and practises (like writing, reflection and deeper discussions) that allow me to connect all the dots across disciplines - people, ideas, and opportunities - and create pathways for them to flow into one another.

This year’s intention will hopefully pay great dividends - I think of it as a reminder to nourish the connections to all the things that feed me and make life vibrant and meaningful.

2. Things to Read/Listen to this week:

Generative AI and chatGPT are all the rage as we enter 2023. And in case you wondered, no, ChatGPT didn’t write this newsletter! :)

We often have the tendency to hyper-polarize technological advances - to either look only at all the doomsday scenarios as a result of technological progress or to be overly optimistic and too far-reaching around the opportunities without acknwoledging the consequences.

Generative AI has sea change potential for humanity; it basically calls into question the underlying value of certain kinds of intelligence and economically viable work - if machines can write/draw/think, what role do we play as humans?

Of course, there are already the camps out there that want to ban the use of this technology and other camps who want to unleash it at all costs without being mindful of its consequences.

Here are 3 ideas worth listening to in the hopes of finding a middle ground.

Listen to Sam Altman’s (Founder of OpenAI) talk with Reid Hoffman about the impact generative AI may have on society in the long term.

Read a good case made by the wonderful Seth Godin for why ChatGPT should not be banned in school and the end of the essay.

Last, read one of my favourite vc’s (Albert Wenger’s) philosophical plea for a middle ground as we navigate these polarities.

—

3. A Question:

What one word intention will help you navigate the sea changes in your life as you look out to the horizon for 2023?

Wishing you a wonderful week!

Candice

I know we have a long way to go, but in a world full of doom and gloom, I want to share some optimism, what I have learned that has helped me on my journey and how I think we can support more women in achieving success.

1. Who you surround yourself with and the messages you receive dictate what you believe is possible. We are living in the attention economy, so being mindful of the messages we give women and girls in our media, school and community really matters. So much of my growth has come from re-thinking limiting beliefs around what I can do with my life. I am grateful to be surrounded with a community of friends, colleagues and family who believe women can do anything.

2. Further to this point above, the single biggest shift I had to make was having the willingness to fail. Often girls are taught to be perfectionists rather than to take risks. I know personally I tortured myself on achievement and perfection for many years before I grew into the notion that failure = learnings and is par for the course for anything meaningful or different. Once I was willing to fail, I no longer limited my actions to "safe" bets.

3. Seeing other women succeed with intention. For me, success is the full package - doing meaningful and purposeful work, having financial success, having close relationships with my family and community, and being well physically and emotionally myself. Showing women succeed in this multi-dimensional context is essential. I am so grateful to women who have shared unapologetically their multi-dimensional success.

4. Designing work so that it works for women. One of the great privileges I have as a CEO is designing how I and others work and learn. At Disco, we are a remote first company where work and learning can happen virtually with far less travel than ever before for which I am so grateful.

5. Having men in my life who have advocated and championed my success. I am so grateful to the many incredible men in my life, who have believed in me, invested in me, partnered with me and advocated for me.

6. Having a community of support. One of the greatest gifts I have had on my journey is my mastermind and this community at Gamechanger. This community based learning is a great example of why I am building Disco

On this IWD, we can #breakthebias and each play a role in creating the conditions for women to succeed.

Today my support is going to the Ukranian women who are beyond brave and need as much support as possible, they face life threatening situations.

Join me in supporting 💙💛🇺🇦 👉👉👉 https://lnkd.in/e_F5eAwm & 👉👉👉

https://lnkd.in/eiGHnuk5

Small actions lead to big impacts. If these lessons / ideas resonate with you, feel free to share.

With gratitude always,

Candice

Today’s newsletter is about the benefits of being still, releasing fear/anxiety, setting intentions, and my joyful exuberance that Gamechanger Sessions are back starting this Thursday with Roger Martin.

I. Explore

1. Stillness & Expectations

As I sat in stillness, and my mind quietened, I began to feel the heavy buzz and weight of fear, anxiety, and restriction that I was sitting in. It was hard to sit and be still. Being in my skin and energy was not pleasant. It felt uncomfortable, tense and agitating. The more I sat, the more I could feel just how much weight I was carrying. I knew I was not alone in this feeling.

As we come to terms with the start of this new year 2022, I only recently put my finger on what was exacerbating this tense and uncomfortable feeling. Covid is not new but our culture tells us that new years are times for resetting, intention setting, releasing the old and yet for most of Jan we have found ourselves with the polar opposite external circumstances - More covid, more restrictions, more fears, more of the same, more lockdowns, more time with kids unhappy to without any social contact and at home. The delta between my expectation of the new year and my reality is what made me (and perhaps many of us) so tense. We were back to a fearful surviving/scarcity mindset at the exact moment “culture” typically gives us permission to not be in that mode.

What amazed me was how upon noticing this tenseness and being in stillness, I was able to release this energetic anxiety that was weighing me down. This is the power of stillness, reflection and mindfulness.

2. Releasing Fear & Anxiety

For me, to release fear and anxiety is to unwaveringly accept that there is so much that is not in my control. It’s to let down the resistance without losing my discernment and motivation to do all that IS in my control. It’s to remind myself that we live in a complex and chaotic system where intentions do not always equal impact. It’s to embrace that my energy (not intentionally always) impacts my reality and especially as a leader and mom, the realities of many other people. It’s to accept the reality of circumstances and recognize that taking risk, being in acceptance, and using discernment are able to coexist.

Releasing fear is not (only) an intellectual exercise. It is a reminder that my body and mind are deeply connected. I feel fear and anxiety in my body and finding ways through stillness, yoga, exercise and being in nature allow me to connect to this felt sense, to go through it and then to release it.

3. Setting One Word Intentions

I have written about this practise in previous years, and it doesn’t cease to amaze me just how powerful this tiny practise can be. Setting a 1 word intention is different than writing resolutions, or setting goals. Setting an intention is to invite more of a feeling or emotion that you are lacking/ wanting into your life. It again, requires stillness to get clear on what will serve you most.

My word this year is JOY. Why JOY?

JOY is a choice.

JOY can sound frivolous and unnecessary (which made me less excited about choosing it) until I realized that JOY is actually different than PLEASURE. JOY (for me) is achieved through CONNECTION, GROWTH, PRESENCE, PURPOSE, PASSION, ABUNDANCE, and GRATITUDE. In fact, JOY can be found in the hardest of circumstances and most challenging of times if I choose to learn, grow and embrace that life is not always easy but can still be JOYful.

JOY is a reminder for me to…

1)Be present with the very people and communities I care about and love

2)To seek out experiences and humans that bring me JOY

3)JOY is sometimes an invitation to just BE vs. to DO (hard for alpha like me!)

4)Sometimes a reminder of why I am DOING vs. BEING

5)To be IN the journey, not only expecting / allowing myself to feel joy with the outcome

6)To create a family culture and a work culture that embraces JOY and makes people feel connected to each other, our PURPOSE and to our growth

7)To be in gratitude which is when I feel my most JOYFUL

And last…

8)To sit in stillness, till I understand what is getting in the way of my JOY, and to resolve that which is in my control

II. WATCH / LISTEN

Gamechanger Sessions are Back!

Speaking of JOY, I am delighted to announce that Gamechanger Sessions are back starting this Thursday at noon 12PM EST (2 days from now!)

Our season is starting with an all time favourite mentor and thinker of mine - Roger Martin. Roger L. Martin - strategy icon, the world’s #1 management thinker, renowned author, and former University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management Dean. Roger has chosen disco.co/rogermartin as the platform to build his live learning empire with. 

In our session on Thurday, Roger will be talking about the themes and ideas in his upcoming course he is launching with Disco called “Create a Winning Strategy in 2022?” In this course, Roger is combining his best thinking for a first ever virtual, live and highly interactive learning experience designed for a very select group of CEOs, business leaders, and strategists. Creating Your Winning Strategy for 2022.

Roger taught me how to think. His work transformed my mental models and his books Playing to Win, The Design of Business, Creating Great Choices and More is Not Better are exceptional. I started my career at Monitor Deloitte (where Roger was Co-Head) and am still in awe of the power of his frameworks. 

I have been blown away by the demand and warm reception to the new "Roger Martin School of Business" on Disco. His first course starts Feb 1, 2022 (sadly very few / no spots left) but delighted that due to the overwhelming positive response, we are now opening a second cohort for May.  👉👉 Disco.co/RogerMartin

2. Chatter that Matters

On Dec 31, Tony Chapman, Host of the RBC series, interviewed me. Chatter that Matters is a wonderful series that is highly complementary to our Gamechanger series. Tony is a kindred spirit who is just as passionate about the human condition and lifelong learning as I am.

My interview is an honest and vulnerable chat where I share some of the bigger experiences that have shaped my journey to becoming an entrepreneur. Tony is an exceptional host. My episode is here if you want to take a listen.

III. Reflective Question(s)

I couldn’t just ask one… 😊

1. How Can You Be Still (even for an hour this week?)

2. What Fears/ Anxieties do YOU Need to Release?

3. What Is Your One Word Intention for 2022?

4. What Brings You Joy?

I would ❤️ to hear your answers - leave a comment or tweet them to me @candicedisco on twitter.

Leave a comment

Have a wonderful rest of your week! And hope to see you Thursday!

I am so deeply grateful to all of you. It was just over 21 months ago that I started the gamechanger.co community. It was simple: I had a passion to bring together the brightest minds and warmest hearts, amidst the chaos of the pandemic, to explore how we create the future we want and how we not only survive, but thrive in uncertainty.

This one little courageous act of creating something heartfelt (Gamechanger.co) with no other purpose than its creation itself led to so much more in my life in alignment with its intention.

At the time, in my wildest dreams I could not have imagined that Gamechanger.co would spawn new vehicles for my intention and attention. I could not have imagined that 21 months later, the Gamechanger.co passion project would lead to….

1. Building Disco.co to allow other creators to run their own live learning communities and manifest their own transformative live learning experiences and communities.

2. Having some of my very favourite guests (super aligned with the intention of Gamechanger.co (creating the future we want) design their own experiences for transformation.

It is with deep awe, gratitude and excitement, that I share with this community a new live learning experience that makes my ❤️ swell with a previous Gamechanger guest…

One of my favourite authors, legendary thinkers and cultural icon Margaret Atwood

Known by many as the 👑 of dystopia for her fictional writing, Margaret Atwood is embracing the power of virtual live collaborative learning on Disco and instead asking the question...

👉 What if we came together to Build Practical Utopias, real solutions to the biggest problem we are facing today, climate change being foremost?

👀 Watch the trailer 👇

Applications for this once-in-a-lifetime 200 spot live learning experience open for a chance to learn live with and co-create practical utopias with Margaret Atwood and the world’s most global, creative and diverse classroom.

Learn more

Committed to building a diverse & inclusive learning community, this live learning experience thanks to scholarship patrons GSV Ventures & Penguin Random House has full and partial scholarships available 🎉🎉

If this is up your alley, there are 3 ways to participate:

1. 200 full participant spots to co-create practical utopias alongside Margaret Atwood, special guests, and a global learning community 👉 https://learnlive.disco.co/3lFf72q

2. Observer tickets ($99) to watch live Margaret Atwood’s 7 sessions 👉

   https://atwood.disco.co/p/observer---practical-utopias-an-exploration-of-the-possible/checkout

3. Ask / give this as a gift 👉 https://atwood.disco.co/p/observer---practical-utopias-an-exploration-of-the-possible/checkout/gift

Please put in the application - referral - Gamechanger.co newsletter - and you will get on the fast track for early acceptance deadline (the experience is anticipated to sell out).

It is a dream come true to partner with Margaret Atwood, she was my second guest on our Gamechanger series and re-watching the talk is quite something as it was super early in the pandemic. In many ways it is a great time capsule of what we were experiencing in April 2020 as we were trying to make meaning of the pandemic.

Watch the Gamechanger episode here

On reflection and why I want to share this little story with you is because there is a lot of talk about how startups are really hard (and they are!). Quite frankly anything new or creative is hard. But work like this (that is aligned with your passion + purpose) makes working hard easier. It is an honour to work with people and on ideas you have great reverence for. I feel extremely grateful to help share Margaret Atwood’s brilliance, creativity, intention of stewardship and knowledge with the world. To me, it is work that matters.

A huge thank you to all of you for giving me the courage, confidence and purpose to begin my journey of building with intention. I am sharing this backstory as I hope it gives you permission to trust yourselves to play/experiment and create around your intentions as you never know what lies beyond your first steps...

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” - Lao Tzu

🙏❤️

p.s. I have 2 more guests from Gamechanger.co live learning series that have exceptional new transformative experiences launching on Disco.co this month (all thanks to you!) and I can’t wait to share the stories of how they came to be too with you.

p.p.s. My intention is that in 2022 - a new series will emerge - I plan on dreaming up some exciting new guests/themes over the holidays and I really really miss doing the interviews.

How are all of you? Under the weight of our to-do lists, busy work agendas and return to modern life, this newsletter is intended for you to pause and reflect on:

1) Are you creating the future you actually want? (not the one your mother, partner, brother, boss, kids want!) and 2) How can you thrive, not just survive amidst an ever increasing pace of modern life, uncertainty and “matrix” like world?

Welcome to our 12th Food For Thought newsletter.

GC's 3-2-1 newsletter usually comes with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read/watch/listen to, and 1 question for you. 

EXPLORE 

1. Getting 1% Better Every Day

The very reason I am writing this newsletter is thanks to intentionally finding time for micro-habits, like writing every day. Time and attention is our scarcest resource, and without intentionally allocating time in our calendars to the things we want to get better at, it is impossible to make progress.

“We convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Actually, the inverse is true: Small improvements accumulate into remarkable results. 

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. Making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.

-James Clear, Atomic Habits

Audacious goals, dreams and visions happen in micro habits, tiny steps.

If you get 1% better each day, you’ll end up with results nearly 37x better after 1 year.

Think about that! WOW!

It is not for a lack of motivation or desire that we don’t achieve the things we want to be good at, its because we haven’t designed these habits into our lives and made them as James Clear so eloquently writes about - easy, obvious, attractive and satisfying.

2. F*cking Up

As the co-founder of a startup that is moving at 100 miles an hour, it is inevitable that things don’t always go right. Whether it’s an email that didn’t land right with a potential customer, or an oversight in a program we are launching, or a bug in our software, or a hypothesis that is wrong, there is no shortage of f*ck ups we need to deal with.

I was once told that:

How we deal with things when things go wrong, not right, is the truest sign of our character and exposes our values as a leader, far more than when things go right. 

I have always struggled with making mistakes, part who I am and part society’s conditioning. Especially when I was younger - as a pleasing, achieving alpha woman, f*cking up for me was really traumatic and hard.

Today, it’s still not easy. So many of us are conditioned to go straight to blame, criticism, feelings of shame, guilt and not-enough-ness. I have experienced all these feelings at points in my journey. At 43 though, I realize that harping on these feelings aren’t helpful to ourselves, injured parties, our teams and our families. So here’s three things I have learned lately about f*cking up:

1) When we f*ck up, we learn the most, if we are able to take responsibility for our impact, not our intention. If we can acknowledge that our intention (what we aimed for) did not equal our impact (how it landed), we can create space for learning and receiving with radical candor, authentic feedback that will help us grow, from those we impacted.

Openness to feedback can lead to deep learning and insights. Taking it one step further, it can even create better and more authentic relationships with those who have been impacted if they feel an authenticity in our intention and a responsibility from us in accepting the impact we had. It takes a lot of courage to admit we are wrong but the fruits of putting aside our ego and accepting our impact are bountiful.

2) Most decisions we make are reversible. It is actually amazing how many decisions are reversible. And therefore it’s surprising how easy it is to fix a lot of the mistakes we make, especially if we are willing to take immediate action and be adaptable. We can’t change the past so harping on what has happened and holding resentment, blame, criticism just further inflames a wound, but learning from a mistake, and then quickly determining what to differently moving forward and taking immediate action on fixing our path goes a really long way. In many ways, startups are just a serious of mistakes and experiments that you are constantly fine tuning, fixing and iterating on.

3) When we f*ck up, we become aware of our actions. We aren’t on autopilot any longer, it makes us conscious of the impact we are having. By taking space to reflect on why we f*cked up, we course correct micro-habits and patterns that over time will have an outsized impact as we saw in the idea above.

3. The power of community

“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much” – Helen Keller

At Disco, we are building a product for creators to offer community based learning experiences that deliver transformative experiences. And so it should be no surprise, that our customers love our tech but also want community for themselves to learn.

Why? Community is how people learn best. A curated peer group that learns together, reflects together, gives feedback together and offers support and accountability is the best way to learn and grow.

With this insight, we recently launched the Disco Accelerator, to give 20 thought leaders and experts step-by-step methodology, hands-on projects, marketing support, feedback, community, and accountability to build a live learning empire.

I wanted to share this with our Gamechanger community for three reasons:

1. How are you building community in person and virtually to help you achieve your goals and learning?

2. How can the Gamechanger community learn and grow better together? What type of learning experiences would you like to participate in?

And…

3. I know there are some incredible experts and thought leaders who read this, and this week coming up is the last week to apply as a thought leader to our accelerator. If live learning interests you or you know some exceptional creators, send them to disco.co/accelerator and and in the application where it says referral, put Gamechanger newsletter and I will ensure all these applications have special attention.

READ / WATCH LISTEN

1. Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia

Thanks to a very special friend of mine Kai Sotto, I was gifted this beautiful book, that resonates so deeply with writing this newsletter. A short, wonderful read especially as we savour the last moments of summer.

“According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai—a reason for living. And according to the residents of the Japanese village with the world’s longest-living people, finding it is the key to a happier and longer life. Having a strong sense of ikigai—the place where passion, mission, vocation, and profession intersect—means that each day is infused with meaning. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. It’s also the reason many Japanese never really retire (in fact there’s no word in Japanese that means retire in the sense it does in English): They remain active and work at what they enjoy, because they’ve found a real purpose in life—the happiness of always being busy.”

2. AcadeMEglobal - Purpose + Passion: Pursuit and Potential for Teens

And on the topic of purpose and passion, if you have a teen in your life, you have to check out this new program being led by the exceptional Erica Ehm, AcadeMEglobal - 5 transformative ½ day sessions to set teens up for their future - this year and beyond with passion and purpose at the core.

“When you’re living a life you’re choosing, it all just starts to flow. School makes more sense when you know where you want it to take you. Your community service hours now match your passions. You see clearly who you are and what you offer. You find your people. You start pursuing post-secondary pathways and careers that excite you.” - AcadeMEglobal.

Sign up here and share with parents of teens that you know 👉https://studio.disco.co/academe-bootcamp

It’s for transformative experiences like this one that I feel so privileged to be building Disco!

REFLECT

1. What tiny changes can you make in your daily habits?

2. How can you make f*cking up a less painful and more transformative experience?

3. How can you create more community in your life and work?

Leave a comment

With the deepest of gratitude for subscribing to this newsletter and being patient with me as I find my way in re-establishing tiny habits that bring me joy.

Candice

p.s. If you liked this, feel free to share it with other #gamechangers you know.

Share

Welcome to our 11th Food For Thought newsletter.

GC's 3-2-1 newsletter usually comes with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read/watch/listen to, and 1 question for you. 

To mark IWD day, I wanted to share my deepest gratitude to all the women and men in my life and beyond who support women blazing new trails and bringing leadership, light and empathy to this world.

EXPLORE 

I. SPACE/LESS

My one word intention last year was flow, which allowed me to embrace uncertainty and change in ways I could never have imagined. And the unintended consequence of this flow is that it brought a lot of opportunity and obligation to the point of overflow. In addition, as I am sure you all have experienced, living and working virtually at home with my family all at home, was a new norm of “busy-ness” and interruption. As a result, my one word intention this year is the antidote - SPACE/ LESS.  

This one I think is especially pertinent to IWD - so many women are caught in the middle of wanting and needing to do so much - the lines have completely blurred between home and work and the tasks, asks and expectations can seem never-ending.

I recognized that intentionally trying to do LESS and intentionally taking more SPACE is essential for my leadership and well being. This year, my intention allows me to put choices through a filter of SPACE/LESS to create essentiality / focus and flow. In honouring SPACE or LESS, I learned how to say not no, but rather not now. This in turn ironically allows for more flow.

How can you create more SPACE or do LESS in a world filled with ABUNDANCE, MORE and INTERRUPTION?

II. GRACE in GRATITUDE

There are so many ways to be and to do. It is often not what we do, but how we do it. Recently I found myself getting caught up on all the ways things were not perfect. In my work, I kept focusing on what wasn’t quite there. In my family, I kept highlighting what wasn’t quite right. In myself, I kept focusing on what I hadn’t yet accomplished. In my interactions with others, I spoke of what I didn’t appreciate. There is value in this at times - it can be how you get better - however, it can be quite demoralizing, and challenging for yourself and for others when nothing is ever enough. In taking SPACE (see above), I noticed this pattern recently and realized I needed to shift from a place of perfectionism and never-enough-ness to a place of grace and gratitude.

And so I experimented with radically changing the way I spoke to myself, and to my team and to my family with a deep focus on gratitude for what we do have or the work we have done. It was amazing to see the shift. The shift when people feel valued, seen and enough. The shift when people feel they are in a safe space to create more and do better work through iteration, experimentation and improvement.

With this grace, my relationship with myself and others profoundly change. The best way to create GRACE is through gratitude. I have found I can even be grateful for what ails me - for the obstacles, the learnings, the challenges and the transformative insights that come from not having had GRACE or GRATITUDE.

Who or what can you show more GRATITUDE for that will allow you more GRACE?

III. ACCESS and EXPOSURE

“We can’t be what we can’t see”

When I reflect on my journey in life, I am deeply aware that access and exposure are two ingredients that allow people to succeed and become what they aspire to.

Access: the notion that you actually get a seat at the table to lead.

Exposure: the notion that you get exposed to what opportunities even exist or people who have done what you would like to do.

These are two fundamental principles that I know have helped me in my life achieve what I have been fortunate enough to do.

Whether its access and exposure to STEM, to business, to great role models in parenting, to leadership roles, to capital, to Boards or to creative endeavours, we can’t be what we can’t see.

For women in particular, this is huge as it is only recently that we have begun this massive transformation of the role women have played in society.

I want to thank all the amazing women and men in my life who have granted me access and exposure. Whether its the learning/mentorship I received, the communities I have been invited into, the Board roles I have been asked to join, the capital I have asked to invest, the leadership roles I have asked to be responsible for, or the visions I have asked people to believe in, all of this was because I asked and was granted access and exposure.

On IWD day, my ask for all of you is two fold:

Those who have positions of power - men and women - may you be generous with your access and exposure. It is through sharing access and exposure, that we can create a better world that is more diverse and net positive.

And to those who need ACCESS and EXPOSURE, don’t sit back - take the agency to ask for it and find the mentors and role models who inspire you to learn how they got it.

How can you share your ACCESS and EXPOSURE?

What ACCESS and EXPOSURE do you need to ask for?

READ 

I.Think Again by Adam Grant

I love reading Adam Grant. His work has inspired me and pushed me to reach new heights in my career and life. His latest book continues to do so.

“Adam Grant’s latest book pushes us to reconsider, rethink, reevaluate and reimagine our beliefs, thoughts, and identities and get to the core of why we believe what we do, why it is so important to us, and why we are steadfast to hold on to those ideas and beliefs. . . . It teaches us to stop digging our heels and doubling down and consider other people’s points of view so that we may grow our own. Once again, Adam Grant succeeded in turning our very way of thinking upside down as he pushes us to examine the obvious.”
—Forbes

https://www.amazon.com/Think-Again-Power-Knowing-What/dp/1984878107

II. Dare to Lead by Brene Brown

Such powerful wisdom in how to lead on IWD that I hope more men and women can embrace.

“Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.

When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work.”

https://www.amazon.ca/Dare-Lead-Brave-Conversations-Hearts-ebook/dp/B07CWGFPS7/wwwbrenebrown-20

III. REFLECT

On IWD, how you can create more SPACE/ do LESS , find more GRACE/ live with more GRATITUDE and ask for / grant more ACESS and EXPOSURE?

Share

INVITATION

Join me on ClubHouse this Friday at noon to have an interactive Gamechanger conversation with some exceptional Gamechanger Women & Men from our community reflecting on these themes of SPACE, GRATITUDE, ACCESS and EXPOSURE….

Sign up for Clubhouse event here

Thanks for reading, happy IWD and thanks for being a part of our community.

We will be back later this month with a new schedule of live, learning experiences.

Can’t wait!

Stay tuned.

Best,

Candice and the Gamechanger team.

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger Sessions and see highlights on our website.

Welcome to our 10th Food For Thought newsletter. I was intentionally quiet over the break as I really needed time to restore. I had not realized what a toll 2020 had taken on me and how little time I had given myself to reset and replenish. It was nice to unplug.

Starting back up again feels good! The first thing I want to do is wish all of you a Happy New Year! Thank you for being on my journey in 2020 and can’t wait to grow with you in 2021.

GC's 3-2-1 newsletter usually comes with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read/watch/listen to, and 1 question for you.

To mark our 10th newsletter — I wanted to explore the 10 biggest lessons I learned in 2020, 3 things to read to start the new year, 1 question for you to reflect on … and 1 invitation!

EXPLORE

I. Flow

My one word intention last year was flow.

Here is what I wrote about it last Jan:

“I recognize that I need to be in a *FLOW* zone to do my best work. This intention encourages me to set the initial conditions to create that state of flow - where time suspends and you can go deep into your work. This word also reminds me to trust my intuition when things feel right and they flow and when things feel off and feel stuck.

This little word got me through the year in powerful ways. It allowed me to rise when I needed to, let go when I needed to and also enabled me to do my deepest work.

II. Finding opportunity and beauty in chaos

Last year tested all of us in profoundly deep ways. Life was scary, hard, incredibly inconvenient AND …..

It was also full of opportunity and moments of beauty.

In chaotic times, immense opportunity exists to re-imagine and create new behaviours and ways of living. Chaos is a force function for change.

It was also in the chaos that I was forced to find beauty in simpler, more mundane things - walks with my family, simple home cooked dinners, lots of time in nature, rekindling my relationships with siblings, and harnessing connection and community.

III. Abundance is a state of mind that really changes the way we behave, act and feel.

As an immigrant to this country, and someone who has truly felt what it is like to worry about survival, this one was a big lesson for me this year. I have, for a very long time, been someone who has always strived and worried about having enough. Last year, while hard to do, I tried to find abundance within and constantly reminded myself how deeply grateful I am for what I do have.

I want to stress that in these very difficult times, shifting from a scarcity mindset is extremely hard to do and not easy for many people. It is next to impossible to live from a place of abundance when not having the financial means to live is a reality. I don’t want to underestimate how many people are in this circumstance including some folks who read this.

However, there are many people who are reading this newsletter that even though they have enough*, they still have a scarcity mindset where nothing is ever enough.

This past year also helped me redefine abundance to mean so much more than just money but rather to include freedom, giving, love, health, spaciousness, connection and safety.

IV. Timing really matters - being early to a point of view gives you advantage

I was reminded last year of how timing matters - being in the right place at the right time can be very fruitful if you take action. To do this, I learned that you need to reflect often and early, have hypotheses, and act quickly on placing bets. Ideally you want to create asymmetrical bets where the upside of placing a small bet can far outweigh the downside. Doing this can earn you tremendous advantage.

I think we all got schooled on this with COVID - you just need to look at how some countries were able to stop the spread of COVID much earlier and faster than others.

V. Living in alignment with your values is the single best way to find peace and happiness

When I reflect on the lowest points of my year - it was where I found myself in situations that did not align with my values - in these moments, I was the most restless, agitated and stressed. It was my lack of courage to find my way back to alignment and to have the hard conversations that caused me the most suffering.

VI. Plant lots of seeds, some will grow now and some will resurface much later

After I left Wattpad 5 years ago, I allowed myself to explore passions, curiosities and many different opportunities. I planted a lot of seeds. During this last year many of the early seeds I planted made sense to me in new ways. We are the sum of our experiences and networks and we never know when these seeds will bear fruit — it often is not linear.

VII. Follow your dreams with calculated risks (use the regret minimization framework)

Last year I had a hard decision to make between helping a phenomenal, exceptionally well funded company transform and grow or starting my own company. It was not an easy decision. I loved the experience of leading transformation and growth in a safe and secure environment and yet, my whole life I had wanted to be a tech founder. It pained me to make this choice. The way I resolved the conflict was using this regret minimization framework - what would I regret more? Taking the risk and trying my own shot of being “in the ring” or taking the safer, more certain route? My decision was to follow my dream as regardless if it worked or not, at least I would have tried and the learning and experience will be priceless. Most of my life I have been in the stadium (supporting innovation), but not “in the ring” (being the founder) and this year, I am choosing for good or for bad to be “in the ring”.

VIII. Our biggest growth comes in our darkest moments

Last year tested all of us. It was in my darkest moments that I was forced to be reflective — to call on the ancient wisdom of how to handle tough times that made me grow. While I don’t wish for us to live in these trying times forever, I am truly grateful for the growth I experienced through it.

IX. Nothing is permanent

I really understood last year that nothing we have is permanent. How we feel, the circumstances we are in, the society we live in, our health, our relationships — are all impermanent. And while this may seem scary, it “just is”. It is in how we choose to live with impermanence, that defines the quality of our lives. Choosing to cherish and feel grateful for what I have everyday honours this impermanence and choosing to remind myself that what is not great is also not permanent helps me flow through the hard times a little easier.

X. Generosity and helping others brings a lot of joy and purpose to our lives

And last, my happiest moments in 2020 came from being generous — to myself, to family, to people in need, to my colleagues, and to this community. Generosity is about sharing ourselves, giving people space to be seen and heard, radiating love, offering safety, being kind and offering support. It is hard to be generous to others when you aren’t generous and kind to yourself first.

Thank you all for being so generous with me — for giving me time and attention, for giving me a purpose to reflect so deeply on my life and for allowing me to be so vulnerable with all of you - thank you for bringing me so much joy.

READ

I. What is Going to Happen in 2021 by Fred Wilson

I love reading Fred Wilson’s annual predictions. This one in particular gives me a lot of hope and excitement for this year and also pause for reflection on some hypotheses for what 2021 will hold.

https://avc.com/2021/01/what-is-going-to-happen-in-2021/

II. Endnotes on 2020: Crypto and Beyond by Vitalik

Vitalik shares his very poignant thoughts on what’s to come in the changing world of economics, digital nationalism vs. nations, the rise of of crypto, and the proliferation of big X….

https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/12/28/endnotes.html

“Often, the boundary between multiple intersecting worlds is the most interesting place to be.”   

III. The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

A beautiful book that my friend Nicole Kagan bought me for the holidays.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” asked the mole.

“Kind,” said the boy.

Charlie Mackesy offers inspiration and hope in uncertain times in this beautiful tale of a curious boy, a greedy mole, a wary fox and a wise horse who find themselves together in sometimes difficult terrain, sharing their greatest fears and biggest discoveries about vulnerability, kindness, hope, friendship and love.

Buy it here.

REFLECT

What were your top 10 lessons in 2020? How are you going to elevate your game in 2021?

Share your thoughts with us on twitter @gamechanger_co.

Leave a comment

INVITATION

We are launching our very first GC Mastermind — I invite you to join a group of authentic, conscious leaders in an intimate, immersive experience to elevate your game in 2021!

We are actually sold out for our original quota of spots (we already have 15 people attending) but have decided to open up a few more spots for the community if anyone still wants to join.

This mastermind starts Monday 11th, 2021 at 7.30PM and runs each week for 4 sessions.

In this mastermind, we will …

> Reflect on our learnings from the highs and lows of 2020

> Let go of all that is not serving us

> Set our intentions for 2021

> Re-connect to our highest purpose in life

> Get clear on our 2021 vision

> Design supports and rituals to help us be our highest version of ourselves in 2021

Each session is 1.5 - 2 hours long. All that is required is an internet connection, a quiet spot, a journal and a deep desire to elevate your game in 2021.

You should apply asap if this interests you as we can only accommodate a few more spots.

Price: $499*

*Scholarship available and details in application

Apply Now to the GC Mastermind

Thanks for reading and being a part of our community.

Hope to see you next week — Monday Jan 11th at 12pm — for our session with Vicki Saunders on Leading and Thriving in 2021.

Wishing everyone a great week.

Share

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger Sessions and see highlights on our website.

Can you believe this epic year is days aways from ending? We hope the end of the year has been a joyful, reflective and peaceful time (even if it has been at home, a bit groundhog day-ish and only virtual celebrations!)

We wanted to extend a personal invite to our Gamechanger community to apply for a very special mastermind I will be hosting in the month of January.

We are inviting 15 -20 people from our Gamechanger community to join us in a powerful group learning experience.

Join a group of authentic, conscious leaders in an intimate, immersive experience to elevate your game in 2021!

Start Date:

Sunday Jan 10 or Monday Jan 11, 2021 (4 sessions) - indicate your pref in the application below.

The purpose:

We often get in our own way. It can be pretty lonely braving a path that doesn’t quite fit the mold. We believe deeply that in order to thrive and be the biggest, boldest version of our truest selves, we need to do three things:

1) Surround ourselves with a tribe of #gamechangers that inspire us

2) Create the space for ourselves to manifest our biggest version of ourselves

3) Integrate our minds and hearts to be the most authentic leaders in our work and life

In this mastermind, we will …

> Reflect on our learnings from the highs and lows of 2020

> Let go of all that is not serving us

> Set our intentions for 2021

> Re-connect to our highest purpose in life

> Get clear on our 2021 vision

> Design supports and rituals to help us be our highest version of ourselves in 2021

Each session is 1.5 - 2 hours long. All that is required is an internet connection, quiet spot, a journal and a deep desire to elevate your game in 2021.

Price: $499*

*$99 will go to a charity of your choice. So many, many people need our help this year and this is a great way to pay it forward- both through you doing this work and by you making this donation.

*Scholarships are available. Indicate interest in the application.

Spots are limited.

Apply to Join Elevate Your Game 2021!

We couldn’t think of a better way to start the new year than a mastermind with our community of authentic, conscious leaders elevating our game 2021.

Together we rise!

Sent with gratitude 🙏

Candice & Lindsay

It’s been awhile since our last GC Food for Thought newsletter.

GC's 3-2-1 newsletter comes with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read/watch/listen to, and 1 question for you.

EXPLORE

I. “Letting Go” in Difficult Situations

On Friday Nov the 13th, I had a terrible day. It started with a miscommunication with a leader I deeply respect, our guest Ryan Holiday needing to postpone his interview at the last minute, I found a tick wedged in my puppy’s neck, I heard about a young person 14! committing suicide, I learned of a competitor doing a huge raise and felt like nothing was going my way. On top of it, Friday 13th has always been a symbol of misfortune! My usual inclination is to fight in these situations, to be a survivor, to grip a little tighter, to strive harder, to be a warrior and worrier in the face of adversity.

At peak tension moment, something beautiful happened, I realized the best thing I can actually do is let go. This was the opposite of what I felt I should do. I needed to loosen my grip, I needed to transcend the situation to recognize that much of the circumstances of this day were completely beyond my control. The only thing that was in my control was how I was going to respond to the day’s events.

In the thick of it, I had this beautiful visualization of a lotus flower.

I found this very enlightening quote as I let go and deflated my balloon of anger, fear and despair.

“The lotus leaf blooms most beautifully from the thickest and darkest mud.” - Buddhist Proverb

This proverb reminded me that it is in our hardest moments where we are given the opportunity to rise to our highest place.

It was amazing to me that I could have caused so much harm to myself and others had I not found acceptance and grace in the trauma of the day. Just like a wave, the ripple of our emotions impact all those around us.

II. Courage

This past week I was honoured to have Ryan Holiday join us. I just loved our conversation.

He left us with the notion of courage being at the epicentre of living true to our values and all of Stoic philosophy. I think this is the theme for his next book….

"Courage is vulnerability, courage is action. The Stoics believe courage is the virtue that all the other virtues depend on. Doing the right thing requires courage. Courage is the secret sauce that makes all the other things we are trying to do in life possible. We are looking at a world where we have a deficiency of courage. If we illustrate courage in our own lives, it may be contagious" - Ryan Holiday

His highlight on courage at the end of our talk inspired me to have a few difficult conversations. It is so easy to put off the tough conversations, the ones that you aren’t sure how they will go.

Ryan inspired me to confront these head on and what I found remarkable was 1) how much better I felt after I shared my truth and 2) how so much fear of response was in my head vs. reality.

I highly recommend you watch the livestream with Ryan here. He has a lot of great wisdom to share and such great energy.

III. Giving is the best GIFT

This past week was the start of Hanukkah, 8 nights of light, laughter, latkes and gifts. The gift I am choosing is the gift of giving.

The best gift is to give. Gift your time, your attention, your voice, your support. 

We are living in the most polarizing of times. It is unbelievable how many people are struggling as a result of this pandemic, social isolation, economic impacts, mental health, violence and abuse. This year people need us more than ever.

Each night I am supporting a different charity and would invite you to join or do the same over the holidays. #sharingthelight.

Here are the 3 charities I have donated to this holiday season so far. Think of ones that mean something to you and make it really easy and simple for your community to gift giving too.

The Redwood - a place for women and children fleeing abuse, The Creative.School thanks to our previous guest Jerry Colonna’s suggestion - young kings and queens designing intergenerational community connection, UJA’s Mental Health Donation program supporting those with mental health needs.

WATCH & SEE

I. Death of a Ladies Man

My husband, Corey Marr and writer/director Matt Bisonnette produced an exceptional film “Death of a Ladies Man.” inspired by Leonard Cohen with the brilliant lead actor Gabriel Byrne.

This was a labour of love taking many years to complete. I just watched the film last night as it premieres at The Whistler Film Festival this month.

The movie is tragic, funny, wise and poetic. It asks us to question our own mortality and to think deeply what a life well-lived means to us? How much is illusion and fantasy vs. reality in our desires and pursuits? It brings into focus how our mortality is a forcing function for our truth.

It can be seen in Canada till Dec 31 at Whistler Film Festival here. Gabriel Byrne was given the Maverick Award at the festival, he has an hour long interview about the film and his life here.

II. Meditative Muses

My best friend and acclaimed artist and mindfulness instructor, Nicole Kagan, just launched a magnificent series called Meditative Muses. Six mindful images that encourage you to reflect on themes like interconnectedness, flow, centred, held, wholeness and a beautiful mess. My 2020 word this year was flow so of course the Muse titled Flow (below) is the one I chose to hang on my walls.

This Meditative Muse invites you to pause — to embody flow with grounded momentum.

This symbol invites us to honour the cyclical nature of our life energy. To trust ebb and flow. Just as our blood moves within the body’s contained system, our thoughts, feelings, and actions originate and circulate within.

These make for great holiday gifts.

REFLECT

We have less than 3 weeks till we start afresh - 2021 is around the corner.

What do you need to let go of? 

What requires courage that you need and want to do? 

How can you gift your time, attention and generosity to others this holiday season? 

Share your thoughts with us on twitter @gamechanger_co.

Leave a comment

Thanks for reading and being a part of our community.

Hope to see you tomorrow at 1pm for our session with Jonathan Goodman on Leading and Thriving in 2021.

Wishing everyone a great week.

Share

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger sessions and see highlights on our website.

It’s been a few weeks since our last GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.

GC's 3-2-1 newsletter comes with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read/listen to, and one question for you.

I have genuinely missed you. I have missed the ritual of reflection. I have missed your amazing feedback, questions and comments.

Our kids are back in school, Fall is in full swing and our new series of Gamechanger Sessions launches on Tuesday.

This week we focus on reflection, leading in uncertainty, and more conscious work.

EXPLORE

I. Reflection

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." 

- Viktor Frankl

Fall is a beautiful time. It forces us to witness the change of the season. Literally the leaves, while insisting to hang on to the summer, eventually fall. It is a wonderful time to let go of what was and to reflect. This past week I did something I have never done - I organized a personal retreat for myself which included journaling, yoga, conscious forest walking, reading Reboot: Leadership, the Art of Growing Up written by Jerry Colona ( our first guest on Gamechanger Session’s Future of Learning Series starting Tuesday), eating alone, and spending the entire day reflecting on my journey since COVID began. It is easy to continue in the busyness, it is harder to be still and pause. In the Jewish religion, the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are designed to have us pause. To ask ourselves the deep questions. By creating space, we can consciously choose how we are to respond. We can choose to become the leaders we want to be. We can consciously deal with our circumstances that aren’t serving us.

While a day to ourselves may seem indulgent, jut think about how much more generous, kind, clear and conscious a leader you can be to your teams, your loved ones and your community. Just do it, book a day to yourselves.

II. Leading in Uncertainty

"In a sense, the world of tomorrow will be like the Silicon Valley of today, in a state of contact chaos”

- Reid Hoffman 

This past week I had the pleasure of keynoting the Infinite CPA Conference. I have not done a big keynote talk since COVID hit - of course, it was virtual.

It was otherworldly opening up my previous deck for this talk to see that all the themes I had been discussing around exponential change and uncertainty for the past few years had not referenced the single biggest example and experience of both these concepts - the pandemic.

As I reflected on what’s changed since I designed this talk a year ago, I realized that the content was the same but the acceptance and conscious awareness of these themes were totally different - chaos, change and uncertainty are the new normal.

In my talk, I discussed the 5 mental models that have helped me personally lead (and thrive) in uncertainty.

1) Transcendence - getting above my emotions and out of a scarcity mindset.

2) First Principles -being curious about what are the indisputable truths of our new normal are.

3) The Butterfly Effect - Taking action on the massive new opportunities chaos and uncertainty are creating (like virtual live learning) AND Limiting the downside of the unintended consequences of exponential threats (such as minimizing spread of COVID)

4) Adaptability - Learning to reframe failure, accessing our resilience and creating optionality.

and last,

5) Integrative Thinking - Using integrative thinking to create new models of the future - ones that combines seemingly conflicting choices into new choices that may not seem obvious or available.

For more on this keynote Gamechanger: How to Thrive in an Uncertain Future, email me. I would be happy to share the presentation.

III. Adaptability

I have been thinking a lot about how adaptable humans really are. Our kids especially. Watching our kids go back to school with masks, social distancing, and only outdoor playdates has been interesting and inspiring in many ways. While there is some discomfort my kids mention of the new normal, they have just adapted and for the most part there has been joy and excitement to be back in school, to see their friends and to be learning.

READ & LISTEN

I. Creating A New Normal

Two weeks ago, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing a pre-recorded Gamechanger Session with a beautiful human - Kunal Gupta, CEO of Polar Mobile, Founder of Year Zero Ventures, and Meditation / Yoga Practitioner and Mental Health Advocate.

I think this was one of my most favourite sessions as Kunal’s wisdom hit me hard. It made me realize just how tired I was and how necessary reflective time was to me after six months of running, contributing and creating.

Kunal’s vision for his company and the future of work was so refreshing. Kunal is re-inventing the way his company works - wellness days, “Someday experiments”, and doing less vs more. It made me pause and reflect on how I can create work cultures that are more conscious and well.

Kunal also shared how he views around this time being a radical reset for humanity - with a new approach to capitalism that entertains more balance and spaciousness.

He ended the session with a wonderful intention of

“Learning to dance more with the unknown and lead in uncertainty.”

- Kunal Gupta

Listen to the session here and read his awesome blog here.

II. Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing - Our Guest on Tuesday for the first Future of Learning Series

I am giddy with excitement to start our second series focused on the future of learning with the wisdom of Jerry Colona.

Jerry forces us to radically enquire inward so we can break open our hearts, let go of the reasons we became who we are and courageously choose who we want to become as we step into leadership.

Jerry believes

“Better humans make better leaders”

I do too.

On Tuesday at noon , we will go deep into:

• Why Jerry’s lessons on radical self-inquiry and reflection can help make us better humans and ultimately better leaders

• Jerry’s key insights on how to lead amidst chaos and uncertainty

• What the pandemic has taught Jerry and the leaders he coaches about “rebooting”

• How Reboot, Jerry’s well renowned leadership school, is adapting to virtual and remote learning experiences

• What Jerry believes the future of leadership education and learning will look like in our new normal.

Join us and share with your tribe.

REFLECT

I have been answering a series of questions from this site every year at this time. This year they did a special pandemic one - here are a few of my favourite reflective questions for you to ponder on.

Describe an experience from before the COVID-19 pandemic that may now feel like it belongs to another world entirely. When you think about it, how do you feel?

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, what is one thing that you find yourself reassessing in terms of the future?

As society reopens and you reemerge, how would you like to see society shifting in the coming months? Or would you like it simply to go back to the way it was pre-COVID-19 pandemic?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began what is your greatest fear? What is your greatest hope?

Six months from now, do you think that you'll look back on the time before the COVID-19 pandemic and feel irrevocably changed, or do you think you'll return to the person you were before? Which changes do you hope remain? Which do you wish will disappear?

- Doyou10q.com  

Share your thoughts with us on twitter @gamechanger_co.

Thanks for reading.

See you Tuesday LIVE!

Wishing everyone a great week.

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger sessions and see highlights on our website. 

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Share Gamechanger’s Food for Thought newsletter

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Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.

Every Sunday morning this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.

Labour day is somehow here. We are back to school and back to work (not that it ever stopped). I can’t believe it, but the coolness of the weather this weekend must mean its true.

This is our last weekly newsletter. Enjoy!

EXPLORE

I. Counterbalances to technological advances and societal constraints.

I have always been fascinated by why certain things come en vogue or into the cultural zeitgeist. Marshall McLuhan, famous for "The Medium is the Message" and "The Global Village", left a lasting impression.

He understood that new technologies accentuate paradoxically, he distilled the concept into two sentences back in 1957:

"As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of 'do it yourself'."

- Marshall McLuhan

And so it is interesting to understand our cultural counterbalances to the unintended consequences of the technological advances we are making. Here are four I see:

1. In an attention-starved economy, screen usage averaging 6.5 hours/day with an abundance of content and media, I see…

The counterbalance as the undeniable rise of meditation, yoga and mindfulness practises during this same period of time. According to CDC, in 2012 only 4% of Americans used meditation, in 2017 this jumped to 14%. Yoga usage grew over 50% in a similar time period. And since March (when COVID struck), mindfulness apps like Calm and Headspace, have reported double digit growth in usage and downloads.

2. In a society obsessed with the advances in AI to create instant gratification, automate rote jobs and deliver predictable experiences, I see…

The counterbalance as the dramatic rise of creators, creator tools, the passion economy, craftsmanship, eq and coaching as a career, and entrepreneurship. For more on this, go back to the rise of creative agency in Food for Thought No. 5.

More recently...

3. In a society experiencing the momentous technological shift to enabling remote work and virtual live experiences in business, healthcare, and education (caused by COVID restrictions), I see…

The counterbalance being the exodus of many people who once enjoyed the network effects of cities, especially NY, choosing to move to less inhabited, nature-filled settings. Within a matter of months, real estate in the county-side and in cottage country are at all-time highs with demand reaching unprecedented levels and prices up 15%+.

4. And the fourth"technological advance" is the mass adoption of COVID masks. You may think masks are not a technology, but according to this definition, they indeed are. Coming this fall, mask usage will be taken to a new level as children go back to school and are required to wear them for hours on end.

I have been ruminating on what the counterbalance will be. More below.

II. Breathwork

Let’s go deeper on this fourth one first. I am struck by the the significance of breath (and the lack thereof) this year.

• The very reason we are in this new normal is due to the nature of COVID being exponentially spread by BREATH,

• Anxiety and stress due to the impact of COVID causes our BREATH to constrict,

• COVID itself causes shortness of BREATH.

• Even the systemic racism and racial tension is linked to BREATH. The deeply disturbing and tragic death of George Floyd and his forced constriction of breath. "I CAN’T BREATHE" became a slogan associated with the Black Lives Matter movement,

• And, now as a positive way to suppress the spread of COVID, we are requiring everyone to wear masks, which inadvertently restricts BREATH.

It hit me like a brick.

As a counterbalance to mask technology and COVID spread, I see our focus on the very thing that’s being constricted - our breath.

The world is becoming more aware of how we breath and its impact on our health. Learning how to breathe deeper, how to let breathe guide the body into calmness and peaceful states, how to let breath reduce anxiety and stress.

"Breathing is intimately linked with mental functions. In the millenary eastern tradition, the act of breathing is an essential aspect of most meditative practices, and it is considered a crucial factor for reaching the meditative state of consciousness. The breath is called “Prana,” which means both “breath” and “energy”

- Zaccaro et. al in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience Journal

Focusing on deep, slow breathing - can make a material difference to our physical wellness, emotional states and mindset.

“The greatest indicator of life span wasn’t genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. It was lung capacity.” - James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art"

Research is showing that this slow deep breathing is having a positive impact on all sorts of ailments - asthma, insomnia, pain management, anxiety, blood pressure, and more. Breathwork, taken to the extreme, is even being used to access subconscious states otherwise only induced by drugs for "healing purposes", you can read more here.

Breath is definitely in the cultural zeitgeist, O2 Awakening, Frequency, Kundalini yoga, Wim Hof and experiences like these, (coupled with meditation, yoga and mindfulness already) are going mainstream.

As we enter September, rife with uncertainty, stress, and breath constriction (especially for our kids in school), I invite you to get curious about your breath.

III. Intention vs impact.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

- Jane Goodall

As leaders and parents, we all have great intentions. In truth, often our intentions don't always equal our impact.

While context of why we act the way we do is relevant, it's really our impact on others we should care most about. This involves regulating our "emotional contagion", the emotional toll you have on others.

Especially in times of extreme uncertainty, stress levels are at an all-time high, this awareness of our own impact matters even more.

“We judge ourselves by our intentions, others by their impact.” - Unknown

My advice to folks is to reverse this statement above, have more room for understanding other’s intentions and more accountability for your own impact.

Many people have never learned how to give good feedback and this skill is directly related to owning our impact.

“A good apology is’t about intentions. It’s about impact”

- Adam Grant

It also helps to be calm and not in fight or flight mode to minimize our impact on others. The good news? Being calm under pressure is a skill that can be learned.

The single biggest difference in my personal leadership from my 30s to 40s was not in strategy or IQ but in finding ways to be more calm under pressure, and having the courage and humbleness to let go of my ego and own my impact.

READ

I. Technological advances in media and its effect on society

The impact of the shift to virtual live participatory experiences may be even bigger than the impact of mobile phones or social media. A new medium transition from digital asynchronous communication to synchronous, live participatory communication - with far-reaching effects to our "global village".

You just need to look at Zoom's unbelievable growth over the past 6 months. Zoom's share price soared from $68 in January to a peak of $462 in Sept, with revenues up to $665MM, a 355% increase Y/Y and net income up to 185.99M, a Y/Y increase of3256.6%. Zoom grew its subscriber base from 10MM meeting participants/day to over 300MM/day in May 2020, 30x!

On this topic, it is interesting to read the Laws of Media, which Marshall McLuhan co-authored with his son.

It’s just the beginning - Live, participatory virtual experiences will advance even more to enable deeper human connection, spontaneous collisions, active participation and greater learning and collaboration.

How do these four questions from the Laws of Media apply to virtual, live, participatory experiences: What does it enhance or intensify? What does it render obsolete or displace? What does it retrieve that was previously obsolesced?What does it produce or become when pressed to an extreme?

Side fun fact: I actually had the pleasure of discussing these laws of media on stage with Eric McLuhan a long time ago!

II. Conscious business, parenting and breathwork.

On conscious business:

“Power is the prize of responsibility; accountability is the price”

- Fred Koffman

Fred Kofman's Conscious Business, explains that consciousness is the main source of organizational greatness. A conscious business seeks to promote the intelligent pursuit of happiness in all its stakeholders. It produces sustainable, exceptional performance through the solidarity of its community and the dignity of each member.

On parenting:

“The more we hone this ability to meet life in a neutral state, without attributing “goodness” or “badness” to what we are encountering, but simply accepting its as-is-ness, the less our need to interpret every dynamic as if it were about us. Our children can then have their tantrums without triggering us, and we can correct their behaviour without dumping on them our own residual resentment, guilt, fear, or distrust.”

- Shefali Tsabary

Shefali Tsabary Ph.D’s, The Awakened Family: How to Raise Empowered, Resilient, and Conscious Children shares insights on how to cultivate a relationship with your children so they can thrive; moreover, so you can be transformed to a state of greater calm, compassion and wisdom.

On breath:

“More than sixty years of research on living systems has convinced me that our body is much more nearly perfect than the endless list of ailments suggests,” wrote Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi.Its shortcomings are due less to its inborn imperfections than to our abusing it.
― James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Other books on breath released this year are: Breathe Well, The Power of Breathwork, Exhale, by Richie Bostock, AKA The Breath Guy, and The Wim Hof Method by Wim Hof.

REFLECT

I. Conscious awareness

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”

― Pema Chödrön

We are at the end of summer. What a gift it was. Our new normal of school and work begins in less than 48 hours for most.

How can you choose to be highly aware of your thoughts and actions?

How can you take responsibility for your impact not just your intentions on those you love?

How will you lean into healing counterbalances, especially your breath, to bring your best self to your leadership at work and home this Fall?

Thank you for spending the summer with me - for allowing me this deeply reflective and vulnerable experience of sharing my thoughts weekly.

I sincerely hope you have enjoyed this Food for Thought newsletter series.

Next week, we will announce our new livestream series launching Sept 21st - Mondays at noon. We have some incredible thought leaders joining us so look forward to seeing you in our live participatory format sessions again!

Best,

Candice

Enjoyed this read? Please share it with your network.

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Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.

Every Sunday morning this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.

Hi everyone,

Labour Day is literally around the corner. I hope you were able to savour the present a little bit this week.

I know this week was a particularly intense week in the world on a number of fronts - from fires in California to Hurricane Laura hitting the US, to the deeply upsetting news on Jacob Blake's death, to the intense Republican convention, there are a lot of hard and big problems to solve in the world.

This week we focus on creativity, how to think about solving the big crises affecting us and second-order thinking.

EXPLORE

I. The "trifecta" and living in a complex, adaptive system.

"A trifecta in horse racing is when you accurately predict win place and show. It is when you get three bets correct. We’ve had the opposite happen in 2020. We’ve had three things go wrong at the same time. ...We are witnessing 1918 (pandemic) plus 1929 (economic crisis) plus 1968 (racial crisis) all at the same time. Of course they are related. The economic crisis was brought on by the pandemic. And the racial crisis has been made worse by both."

- Fred Wilson, AVC

I agree with Fred that all these crises are related, and I would add a fourth crisis -our climate crisis - is related too. We should not be surprised that all these crises are happening in relative proximity to each other - the world is tightly interconnected today as we are living in a complex, adaptive ecosystem.

Geoffrey West, a previous Gamechanger guest, and brilliant visionary physicist explains that:

"We have to recognize our world is highly-complex and continuously adaptive. It has a vast number of agents all interacting with each other, and those interactions drive the system’s continuous evolution."

The interconnectedness of our global networks today is much tighter versus the level of connectivity of our networks back in 1918, 1929 and 1968.

Watch Geoffrey’s explanation on complex adaptive systems here and read a deep dive on his insights on scale, cities and exponential growth here.

II. Creativity, divergent thinking and honouring Sir Ken Robinson.

This week one of my favourite thinkers on creativity and education passed away, the wonderful Sir Ken Robinson. His TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity" was one of the most-watched TED talks with 66MM views.

His talk inspired me to create this program Get Curious Now a few years ago, for kids of all ages (including adults) to learn that they can take a curiosity or passion and manifest it into creativity in 6 weeks. I experienced profound joy seeing so many people transforming their mindset and expectations of their own creativity, with much thanks to Sir Ken’s inspiration.

Sir Ken Robinson argued that schools focus most of their time on rote memorization and knowledge-mastery. He provided compelling evidence that not only do schools do a poor job of promoting creativity, they actually kill it through a system designed to produce students in a factory-style output. Sir Ken stressed schools don't promote divergent thinking, a more unstructured approach that generates a number of potential solutions to a problem rather than convergent thinking, applying a fixed set of rules to arrive at a single answer to a problem.

Based on the trifecta crises above, we need this type of creative, divergent thinking more than ever.

"Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely, and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way -- we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it."

- Sir Ken Robinson

Watch his famous TED talk here

III. Second-order thinking and the rise of the Toronto tech ecosystem.

The rise of Toronto’s tech ecosystem feels like a lesson in second-order thinking.

Second-order thinking means taking into account unintended and long-term consequences that may stem from our original action. It's asking the question of 'and then what' to trace down the implications of the immediate impacts and implications of a decision. Think in terms of a complex-adaptive ecosystem and network effects - each action, such as a business or policy decision, often plays out in totally unexpected ways.

The contrast between the US and Canada has become increasingly stark. A great example of this is our immigration policy relating to tech workers. Another great example is our focus on having a greater social safety net in our education and health systems, creating more liv-able (and love-able) cities in Canada, especially Toronto.

While far from perfect, Canada certainly feels more tolerant and we are benefiting globally from this.

As an immigrant myself to this country, one who comes from a highly polarized, volatile society, South Africa, I see the second order effects first hand. I am extremely grateful to live in a country that is multi-cultural, treats people on the whole with more dignity, has a social safety net and is welcoming to skilled workers from abroad.

Read more on how the US immigration policy is causing more top talent to move north in this Wired article, Tech Workers Are Living the American Dream—in Canada

And with all that said, we too have a long way to go on combatting one of the biggest crises we mentioned earlier - systemic racism.

Listen to my talk with Jen Holness, award winning tv producer and President, Hungry Eyes on how we can help do more on being anti-racist in our own backyard, Canada.

READ

I. Solving crises in a complex adaptive system.

• I really enjoyed this week’s newsletter from Nikhil Basu Trivedi on climate crisis and decarbonization

• Another interesting read this week on the “ interconnected of crises” is an article in NYT on how racism and climate are connected in certain cities. How Decades of Racist Housing Left Neighbourhoods Sweltering in the New York Times.

• Thanks to David, a brilliant Gamechanger reader, for recommending a great thinker on disruption and complex adaptive systems, Tony Seba. His latest book Rethinking Humanity, causes us to rethink how fundamental the changes are that we are facing. Read more about his take on this shift we are facing here.

• Of course, I would be remiss to not add Geoffrey West’s book Scale as a must read on this topic.

II. Creativity and Divergent Thinking in School and Management

• Since back to school is less than a week away, Sir Ken Robinson’s book, You, Your, Child and School feels like an appropriate read this week. This topic is certainly top of mind.

• Peter Diamandis has a compelling take on Why school needs to radically change for an exponential future.

• And a last read thanks to Roger Martin on divergent thinking, takes us back to Aristotle who of course believes wholeheartedly in the scientific method but recognizes its not for everything. He too sees the role on invention and persuasion in the realm of possibilities. Read the HBR article on Why Management is More than a Science in Harvard Business Review and read Aristotle’s lesser known book on invention and persuasion.

  ---

REFLECT

"Most of the things about which we make decisions, and into which we therefore inquire, present us with alternative possibilities....All our actions have a contingent character; hardly any of them are determined by necessity,”

- Aristotle

How can you bring more divergent thinking, as opposed to convergent thinking, to your problem-solving?

How would an abundant, non linear mindset vs. a scarce, linear mindset shift the way you think about the future and solving crises?

Share your thoughts with us on twitter @gamechanger_co.

Thanks for tuning in.

Wishing everyone a great last week of summer - soak it up, be present and enjoy these last days before Labour day weekend. See you next Sunday!

See you next weekend.

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger sessions and see highlights on our website. We'll land in your inbox 1x a week. No spam, we promise.

Enjoyed this read? Please share it with your network.

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Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.

Every Sunday morning this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.

There are only fifteen days ‘till Labour Day.

That's it!

This week we focus on how to savour these last days of summer, the creative agency of doing more with less and the power of contrast to shape our decisions and actions.

EXPLORE

I. Savouring moments, presence and flow

When I know something is finite, I have learned to focus on savouring it rather than worrying it will end. I become aware of its temporariness.

“The most precious gift we can offer (ourselves) and others is presence"

- Thich Nhat Hahn

For these next 15 days ‘till Labour day, how can you savour all the time with loved ones, seasonal delights, pleasures, joys, experiences and luxuries this weather and time affords? Related to savouring moments, comes our ability to be present. We can only savour things when we are present. This ability to be present to the moment gets harder in an attention scarce economy.

From presence, comes our ability to enter a state of flow. Steven Kotler, our past Gamechanger guest, defines flow as:

“"An optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best. In order to access this state of flow, we need to be deeply present to the moment. Flow refers to those moments where everything else disappears. Flow follows focus. It only shows up when our attention is right here, right now."


Flow allows us to enter a state of near-perfect decision making. Some triggers to help us access a state of flow include uninterrupted time, novel experiences, unpredictable experiences, taking some risk, and being in nature - all amazing things to focus our attention on as we savour the last moments of summer.

- For more on flow, listen to the rest of Steven Kotler's Gamechanger Session. For more on presence, see our Read section below.

II. Creative agency

In a world where access to "creator" tools is democratized, "creative agency" is a skill on the rise. In social science, agency is defined as "the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices."

Add in the word "creative" and it means the ability to express your creative view and share your creative outputs independently. Digital tools and platforms are allowing people with the right mindset, creative agency and effort to thrive.

As I write this, I realize I am one of those people - I did not wait to get a traditional publisher contract to be able to share my creativity with all of you. Instead, I took advantage of the rising set of tools for the creative class, in this case, Substack, to deliver my point of view. I see this moment in history as just the beginning of the rise of the creator class. As AI takes over work that is rote and automated, humans are left to focus on offering the skills of creativity, judgement and empathy.

It appears that the atomic unit of creativity gets smaller and smaller these days enabling more people to risk their time, attention and ego in developing creative outputs. Rolling funds, which launched recently, allow creators (micro VCs or solo VCs) to deploy their agency, creativity and judgement on a smaller atomic unit of time invested and commitment required from LPs. Learning pods are emerging as a response by parents and teachers to use their creativity to allow small groups of kids to learn together online or virtually. Livestreams, like the one we started at Gamechanger this spring, allow creators to deliver content and creativity to an audience in a series or an even smaller atomic unit, a live session.

At Gamechanger, we're very interested in helping organizations and leaders develop their creative agency and we are working on a new tech platform for creators to manifest their creative agency.

- More on the rise of the creator economy and the tools to support the creative class from a16z.

If you are a creator in this community, we want to talk to you about your experience creating! Drop us a line here.

III. Contrast

To see things clearly, and appreciate things fully, it helps to have contrast. Happiness is relative for most people and awareness is relative too - we are all products of our access and exposure.

This week, I was struck by contrast. I was away for two weeks without good internet, and so only this week do I appreciate the full value of high-speed internet I have access to. My dear mom fractured and bruised both her wrists this week, and only in these moments are we awakened to the contrast of full mobility and health.

With the election in the US being 71 days away, and watching the DNC convention this past week, I am struck by the contrast and hopeful (but not certain) that it will be a force for change.

- More on contrast in the upcoming US election from the Economist.

EXPLORE

I. Roger Martin on the need for democratic capitalism

One of my favourite guests this past series at Gamechanger was Roger Martin, a brilliant thinker who makes an impassioned and rational plea for a system that favours resilience over efficiency.

As we head into the US election and we begin to think about how we as leaders, consumers and citizens can act to create change, Roger's new book is more relevant than ever. He offers practical solutions to create a system that is more resilient, than efficient and offers an eloquent overview of what it means to live in a complex adaptive system.

- Pre-order his book here, read this article he wrote 2 days ago here, watch his Gamechanger talk here and sign up for his next live session here.

II. How to Sit, Eat, Love, Walk, Relax, Fight, See and Connect

World-renowned Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, teaches us the art of being present.

Read this delightful Mindfulness Essentials collection on how to be more present in all aspects of life.

These little books offer practical and thoughtful guidance on meditation and the art of living consciously in an attention-starved world and are the perfect short reads to wake us up to live consciously for the next 15 days of summer.

REFLECT

I. Presence and reflection

“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”

- Thich Nhat Hanh

How can you be more present in your life these next few weeks? Can you focus your attention on creating the conditions that allow you to trigger your flow state? What rituals of presence, mindfulness and savouring experiences can you put in place to make the most of these last 15 days of summer?

Share your thoughts with us on twitter @gamechanger_co.

Tweetable Takeaways

I.

"The most precious gift we can offer (ourselves) and others is presence" - Thich Nhat Hahn. When you know something is finite, savour it, rather than worrying it will end.

Being present is an art."

(Share this on Twitter)

II.

“The atomic unit of creativity is getting smaller access to 'creator' tools are democratized. Creative agency is a skill on the rise as these tools enable more people to risk their time & attention in developing creative outputs.

Think substack, live-streams, rolling funds & learning pods.”

(Share this on Twitter)

III.

"Contrast helps us see things clearly and appreciate them fully. We are all products of our access and exposure. Happiness and awareness are both relative."

(Share this on Twitter)

Thanks for tuning in.

See you next weekend.

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger sessions and see highlights on our website. We'll land in your inbox 1x a week. No spam, we promise.

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Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.

Every Sunday morning this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.

Just back from two weeks deep in the woods basking in the gloriousness of summer.

The freedom of the outdoors, the escape from home-schooling, the joy of seeing people in person. With Fall around the corner, these summer days are beginning to feel scarce, and we are collectively facing more uncertainty than we are used to.

Will COVID return with a vengeance? Will the consequences of back to school outweigh the positives? What will happen with the US election and what impact will that have on the free world? What will happen to the economy if the subsidies end?

How we think about uncertainty matters a lot.

This week we share some ideas that may be helpful to you as a leader in your businesses, your community and within your family.

EXPLORE

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I. Anti-fragility, Optionality and Agility

As an entrepreneur, immigrant and early stage angel investor, Nassim Taleb's ideas on anti-fragility have made a lasting impact on my approach to uncertainty. Ultimately his mental model favours uncertain scenarios.

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. The antifragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which also means — crucially— a love of errors, a certain class of errors. Antifragility has a singular property of allowing us to deal with the unknown, to do things without understanding them — and do them well. Let me be more aggressive: we are largely better at doing than we are at thinking, thanks to antifragility. I’d rather be dumb and antifragile than extremely smart and fragile, any time.”

- Nassim Taleb, Anti-Fragile: Things that Gain from Disorder

The COVID pandemic exposed the fragility and lack of resilience of many systems.

- Nassim Taleb, The Pandemic Isn’t a Black Swan but a Portent of a More Fragile Global System.

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This fall, how can you go beyond being more prepared for uncertainty (i.e planning better for work from home, quarantine scenarios, homeschooling scenarios, PPE sufficiency, etc.) to becoming anti-fragile towards it? How can you benefit from this disorder and uncertainty?

For example, never before has there been a better time for virtual platforms in the areas of remote education, e-commerce, creator platforms, virtual healthcare, and remote work solutions. Why? More people than ever before need new tools and old pre-COVID habits have been permanently broken.

You may also want to prioritize the concept of optionality (where the total value of all options created by your decisions is greater than not having made that decision) and agility (your ability to move and adapt quickly if the future was not as you predicted).

- Farnam Street on Preserving Optionality. Forbes on the OODA loop and agility.

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II. Meditation to Deal with Fear of the Unknown

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

- Seneca

Emotional mastery is the superpower we all need in the 21st century. Our imagination coincides with our expectations. But, when these expectations are not realized, and there is uncertainty, we become frightened. This becomes a negative feedback loop when we mistake that fear for pain and suffering.

One of our previous guests on Gamechanger Sessions, Ariel Garten, neuroscientist and creator of Muse, meditation headband, helps us understand that we are not our thoughts.

Often when fear is present, our amygdala response is getting in our way and meditation can help us calm that response.

• Watch this 5 min clip of Ariel teaching us how to Use Meditation to Overcome Fear, and watch her amazing Gamechanger Session.

• Join the 4MM+ users and listen to Ariel's podcast Untangle on learning about the brain, how to optimize it, and how to manage the crazy that sometimes floods all of our minds.

III. Circle of Control

In uncertainty, we often try and control things that we have no influence over: other people's beliefs and thoughts, other people's responses to COVID, the weather, the traffic, or even time.

This futile attempt can heighten anxiety and prevent us from focussing our energy on things that can have an impact. The result? An unhealthy mindset, stuck in autopilot mode rife with anxiety and often escalating to mental health issues.

Instead, focus your attention on the things you can control — your beliefs, values, perspective, and actions.

As Epictetus said:

“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”

Determine what is outside your circle of control and see it for what it is, accept it, and move onto what you can control.

Determine what is inside your circle of control and focus your time and energy on taking action and moving forward in those areas.

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I. Radical Uncertainty

We often view the risks we are taking as quantifiable and knowable. Certainly, much economic advice has led us to believe that.

John Kay and Mervyn King suggest:

“The limits of certainty demonstrate the power of human judgment over artificial intelligence. In most critical decisions there can be no forecasts or probability distributions on which we might sensibly rely. Instead of inventing numbers to fill the gaps in our knowledge, we should adopt business, political, and personal strategies that will be robust to alternative futures and resilient to unpredictable events. Within the security of such a robust and resilient reference narrative, uncertainty can be embraced, because it is the source of creativity, excitement, and profit.”

- John Kay and Meryvn King on Radical Uncertainty.

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II. Stoicism

Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman offer a daily habit of using Stoic meditation to remind us of helpful ancient mental models that allow us to live more peacefully in uncertainty.

- Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman’s The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living.

REFLECT

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I. Responding to Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a mental state, and mental states can be changed. We can actively transform ourselves when we feel overwhelming uncertainty through conscious reflection and mental models.

Whether it's being anti-fragile, using meditation, designing optionality, choosing asymmetrical risk opportunities, being agile - all of these mental models and actions are in our circle of control.

How do you respond to uncertainty? In what ways are you embracing anti-fragility this Fall? What practises do you have to share that help you with uncertainty?

Share your thoughts on Twitter with us @gamechanger_co.

Thanks for tuning in.

See you next weekend.

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger Sessions and see highlights on our website. We'll land in your inbox 1x a week. No spam, we promise.

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We are always looking for ways to improve our newsletter and welcome your feedback. Hit reply and say hi or leave us a comment!

Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world experiencing uncertainty and exponential change.

Every Sunday morning this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.

Gamechanger Sessions #3

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Julie Hanna, Executive Chair of the Board at Kiva.org and Venture Partner at Obvious Ventures shares her insights with GC.

Julie shares how blending Eastern philosophy and Western business can help us thrive in these uncertain times, COVID as a mirror and how profit and purpose can be harmonious.

Watch the full session

Or, if you're on a time crunch, watch the key session theme clips or read GC's deep dive insights.

EXPLORE

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I. Temporariness.

In Eastern traditions, there is a beautiful concept of temporariness.

“Nothing is permanent and everything is constantly moving — especially our emotions. We have this great capacity for range of emotions — from happiness, to anger, or sadness — we must be weary to not get caught in any one state.”

- Julie Hanna

Temporariness teaches us to let go, be patient, and not be fixated on our current feedback loops no matter if they are positive or negative.

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II. Fair access to the four pillars of dignity.

Julie believes there are four pillars to a dignified life:

• Education

• Health

• Access to capital

• Access to information

If we get fair access to all four pillars, we can build a foundation for a dignified life.

COVID has exposed much of the illusions around fair access that have existed even in resource-rich countries like the US. It has shown us where there are market failures and government failures. It has brought clarity to where the current capitalistic system is vulnerable and where it is resilient.

“Systemic problems are often symptomatic of unequal access and technology. While talent is universal, opportunity isn’t.”

- Julie Hanna

Julie believes that technology can be a great enabler for the pillars of dignity --it has the untapped potential to effect change, en masse, at an exponential rate. 

This doesn’t mean it always will drive positive change but it is an amplifier of its intention and has the ability to democratize access. Julie’s work at Kiva.org, Obvious Ventures and GoogleX all support her thesis of profit and purpose and the unprecedented power of technology.

- Julie Hanna's TED Talk on Bringing humanity to business, and business to humanity.

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III. COVID as a mirror to society’s gifts and shortcomings.

The global pandemic has been a wake-up call. We are all part of a highly interdependent ecosystem, wherein singular actions can have an exponential effect on a global scale, for better or for worse.

An act of self-preservation and an act of compassion are one in the same. Sheltering in place isn’t just about our own survival. It’s about contributing to the survival of others. 

Our singular effects can have an exponential effect for better and for worse — one person that’s infected can infect 2.3 people and so on. In the same way, acts of change and kindness also multiply exponentially.

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I. Julie’s recommended reading list for thriving in uncertainty.

• Viktor Frankl’s Search for Meaning. Frankl shows us that the greatest freedom lies within and our ability to choose our mindset.

• When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. Chodron unpacks her own journey of discovering the hidden gifts in the very moments when things fall apart.

• Happiness by Matthieu Ricard. Ricard is a Buddhist monk and he observes happiness from a Western scientific perspective and an Eastern philosophical perspective. He shows us the tangible crossroads between our left (analytical) and right brains (spiritual).

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II. Ideas on creating the future we want.

• How the team at Obvious Ventures (where Julie is a Venture Partner) thinks about creating net positive companies and a World Positive Term Sheet.

• The latest developments on the inspiring projects at GoogleX using radical technologies to solve the world’s hardest problems.

REFLECT

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I.

“Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, and hate... We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

- Sonya Renee Taylor

What is your hope for a new future that allows us to live harmoniously with nature and humanity? What role can you play in shaping it?

Thanks for tuning in. Stay safe!

See you next weekend.

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger sessions and see highlights on our website. We'll land in your inbox 1x a week. No spam, we promise.

Enjoyed this read? Please share it with your network:

Share

Hit reply and say hi or leave us a comment! Let us know how we can offer more value to you in these newsletters and our content.

We’d love your feedback.

Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.

Every Sunday morning this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.

Gamechanger Sessions No. 3

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Albert Wenger, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures, shared profound insights with us. 

Albert discusses that we're currently experiencing a seismic shift from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Age: the rise of digital technologies driving the shift from scarcity of capital to scarcity of attention. He rightly points out that it is paramount that we get this transition right to avoid massive turmoil and upheaval that has been present in previous shifts of this magnitude. 

So, why does our attention deficit matter?

In Albert's words, "attention is our most basic need, the existential need to make sense of the world as an individual by finding a purpose that makes our life meaningful."

We are bombarded, daily, with an endless stream of information - much of which is just transient noise. Our attention deficit is preventing us from tackling species-level threats to humans such as climate change, and pandemics like this one. 

Watch the full session

Or, if you're on a time crunch, watch the key session theme clips or read GC’s deep dive insights.

Albert has written an exceptional book on the transition from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Age. World After Capital is a must read, available for free and well worth your attention. 

EXPLORE

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I. Market-based attention allocation failures. 

What should we be paying attention to that the market doesn’t reward? 

1. Personally - we often over-allocate attention to our professional lives and under-allocate to things like finding our purpose in life

2. Collectively - the market teaches us to allocate using price signals, yet price signals don't exist for more important things or are incredibly delayed (ie, there is no price for having enough PPE or working on a vaccine not yet needed)

We've become overly reliant on the market for attention allocation. Instead, we should take time to pause, reflect, and reset. Some things don't have, and will never have price signals. 

Also, the allocation of attention cannot and therefore should not take place on the basis of near term measurement. Markets are good for the multi-year measurement problem of capital but terrible for the much longer timescale one of attention. 

- Albert on resetting our priorities, individually and as a society and on the need for multi-year measurement of our attention.

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II. Normalcy bias - a cognitive bias that things will stay the same. It blinded our foresight for COVID19.

“The tendency to see the current state of the world as the normal that will not change is sometimes called “normalcy bias.” This is fundamentally about the difference between a static and a dynamic conception of the world. Entrepreneurs and startups investors have that dynamic conception that change is possible and even more that they can bring about that change.”

Many people have referred to this pandemic as a 'black swan' event (term coined by Nassim Taleb meaning that is was not predictable). However, it's apparent now that this should have been no surprise. In fact Nassim Taleb argues that this is more of a 'white swan' event we should have seen coming.

- Albert on normalcy bias and our dynamic world.

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III. First Principles - Learning to ignore generic advice and focusing on incontrovertible truths. 

In a world where everyone is shouting generic advice loudly, be wary of its application to your business and life. Rather, look at the world from a first principles perspective - incontrovertible “truths” that are hard to dispute. 

- Albert on how to use first principles in business.

“A first principle is a foundational proposition or assumption that stands alone. We cannot deduce first principles from any other proposition or assumption.”

- Farnam Street on First Principles.

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I. On transitioning to the knowledge loop and getting un-stuck from the job loop.

It's so easy to get wrapped up in work - Albert puts it as the perpetual job loop, where individuals sell labour to buy more stuff (the product of other's labour).

The problem is that humans are not made purely for labour - we should be spending more time in the knowledge loop, central to our survival as a species.

The knowledge loop allows individuals to learn, create, and share at zero marginal cost. However, if individuals lack economic, informational, or psychological freedom, it becomes difficult to access, contribute to, or share in the knowledge loop.

- Albert on the knowledge loop in his book: World After Capital.

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II. Three freedoms to focus on for a peaceful transition from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Age.

1. Economic freedom. We must let everyone meet their basic needs without being forced into the Job Loop. 

2. Informational freedom. We must remove barriers from the Digital Knowledge Loop that artificially limit learning from existing knowledge, creating new knowledge based on what we learn and sharing this new knowledge. 

3. Psychological freedom. We must free ourselves from scarcity thinking and its associated fears and other emotional reactions that impede our participation in the Digital Knowledge Loop. 

- Albert on Enhancing Freedoms to peacefully transition to the Knowledge Age in his book: World After Capital.

REFLECT

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We live in a state of information overload. We are inundated with information constantly. Our attention is scarce. The categorical mistake that we must avoid is to equate information and “busy-ness” with knowledge and wisdom. 

In a world starved of attention, yet overwhelmed by information, where are you prioritizing your attention? 

Thanks for reading. Happy August!

See you next weekend.

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger sessions and see highlights on our website. We'll land in your inbox 1x a week. No spam, we promise. 

Enjoyed this read? Please share it with your network:

Share

Hit reply and say hi or leave us a comment! Let us know how we can offer more value to you in these newsletters and our content.

We’d love your feedback.

Here is your weekly GC Food for Thought newsletter - curated insights to help you thrive in a world grappling with uncertainty and exponential change.

Every Sunday this summer, you'll receive GC's 3-2-1 newsletter with 3 ideas to explore, 2 things to read, and one question for you.

Happy long weekend to all.

Gamechanger Sessions No. 1

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Our very first guest was Adam Grant, NY Times Best-selling Author and UPenn Wharton Professor, who shared great insights on our new remote work/life norm.

After many months of virtual work/life, we all recognize just how much harder it is to foster new connections virtually. Adam shared 3 great ways to build rapid high-quality connections with others — especially with people we don’t know yet.

• Self-disclosure: share something about yourself that is personal or unusual. 

• Show curiosity in others: ask questions that encourage the person you’re interacting with to open up.

• Find uncommon commonalities: identify things that you share that are rare — like if you met somebody who happened to be from your hometown.

Adam’s work is more relevant than ever - He shared great insights on topics like encouraging 'pronoia' - a giving culture, setting boundaries to avoid burnout, how to be more productive with our attention, and how to maintain trust in a virtual world...

Watch the full session. Or, if you're on a time crunch, watch the key session theme clips or read GC's deep dive insights from Adam’s session.

EXPLORE

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I. The antidote to paranoia in the workplace.

There is a paranoia that causes unnecessary stress which compromises the culture of giving. The antidote to this? Encouraging “pronoia”: the delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being. Pronoia means suspecting others are going behind your back and saying extremely nice things about you."

- Adam Grant on GC's gamechanging insights #1.

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II. The upskilling model of work and learning.

"The world of work is changing faster than ever before. The way we train folks for that future is changing: from long-term learning loops (degrees) to shorter programs focused on skills. This is the upskilling model of work and learning."

- Alberto Arenaza on the upskilling marketplace.

III. How science can fix remote work.

"If you're working from home, the pandemic has extended the average work day by 2-3 hours. Now is the ideal time to reverse that trend by testing out 6-hour work days or 4-day work weeks. By freeing up attention and energy, less time can mean more quality.”

- Adam Grant on how science can fix remote work.

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I. On resilience gained through crises:

“No matter how horrific the disaster, no matter how damaged our psyches, we wounded humans always bounce back.”

- The Atlantic on post traumatic stress growth vs disorder.

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II. What we gain and lose in working from home:

(1) Work days are 10-20% longer (2) Best predictor of adaptation isn't introversion, but being agreeable and emotionally stable. (3) Communication went up 40% with strong ties but down 10% with weak ties.

- HBR on the implications of working without an office.

REFLECT

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“If you define success solely in terms of gaining wealth, achievement, or influence, what you often lose is freedom. One of the greatest accomplishments in life is earning the freedom to choose how you spend your time. No currency is more valuable—or more scarce—than autonomy.” - Adam Grant

How do you define success?

Thanks for reading. See you next weekend.

Best,

Candice

—

P.S. You can watch all previous Gamechanger sessions and see highlights on our website. We'll land in your inbox 1x a week. No spam, we promise.

Enjoyed this read? Please share it with your network:

Share

Hit reply and say hi or leave us a comment! Let us know how we can offer more value to you in these newsletters and our content.

We’d love your feedback.