Ep 180: Tommy Thompson ~ Finding Clarity Amidst Life's Busyness

Tommy is an Executive Coach, Life Coach, Author of ‘Space to Breathe Again: Hope for the Overloaded and Overwhelmed’ and host of the ‘Space for Life’ podcast - with 30 years of multi-industry entrepreneurship, and a Master of Divinity degree, under his belt.

We explore the profound impact of listening on personal and professional growth. Tommy's insights reveal how truly tuning in can transform your life's purpose and career, offering a fresh perspective on the art of listening. If you've ever wondered how listening can be the cornerstone of meaningful communication and relationships in today's opinionated world, this episode promises to enlighten and inspire.

Tommy shares his personal journey of self-discovery, emphasising the importance of listening to one's inner voice to uncover true purpose. Amidst the hustle of running multiple businesses and raising a family, he experienced a profound realisation that something meaningful was missing from his life. Discover how he transcended outward success to embrace his passion for teaching life in its broadest sense, and how overcoming the cultural tendency to mask introspection with busyness can lead to clarity and fulfillment.

We also delve into the concept of finding "Hidden Sanctuaries" for quiet reflection, highlighting the power of deep listening and the courage it takes to engage fully with others. Tommy opens up about the adventure of working with diverse individuals and situations as a podcast host and coach, underscoring the thrill of embracing the unknown. As we wrap up, we pose a powerful reflection question to our listeners: "What deeply matters to me?" encouraging introspection and deeper engagement with what truly matters in our own lives.

Where to find Tommy:
www.tommythompson.org

Chapters

• 0:02 The Importance of Being a Listener
• 8:06 Discovering Purpose Through Listening
• 21:23 Creating Space for Listening and Growth
• 28:27 The Power of Deep Listening
• 43:23 Exploring Life's Deep Questions

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence, brought to you by being Space with Katherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, Episode 180, with special guest Tommy Thompson. Now, if you haven't come across Tommy, he's an executive coach and life coach, the author of Space to Breathe Again Hope for the Overloaded and Overwhelmed no idea what he's talking about there obviously and a host of the Space for Life podcast, and he has 30 years of multi-industry entrepreneurship and the Master of Divinity degree under his belt. So a man of many parts. And you can find Tommy at TommyThompsonorg, and that's T-O-M-M-Y, T-H-O-M-P-S-O-Norg, so that's where you can find him, and we'll give you that information again at the end. So, Tommy, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Well, thank you, Catherine. I've been looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Excellent. We had a lot of fun in the prequel, didn't we? Absolutely, and what we're going to talk about today which I actually think everyone talks about this, but does anyone ever do it which is about being a listener. And I can actually remember back in the 1980s I think it was where someone hit on the idea that if you actually listen to people, it might be helpful. And this was an absolute mind-blowing idea for a lot of people, because everyone thought communication was about communicating to somebody else and that you know, if you got really really good at that, then everything would work.

Speaker 1: 1:59

And someone realized well, no, if you don't listen, you don't know what message you need to be giving anyway, and also you become a real pain in the ass, if you don't mind me using that term. So being a listener is really important, and I think still today, decades later, and particularly at the moment in our world. At the moment, I think we're in one of the most opinionated times of my lifetime, where so many people have opinions about things and are very happy to expound about those opinions, but aren't necessarily willing to listen to other people's points of view. So, culturally and socially, I think this is a particularly relevant topic at the moment. So, tommy, you were telling me that being a listener is like a really core theme for you. Would you like to tell us a little bit more about kind of the origins of that? How did this happen? How did this happen that you really connected into being a listener?

Speaker 2: 2:59

uh, well, well thanks. I couldn't agree with you more that I think, as our culture is continuing to evolve or at times it feels like devolve it feels like a big element of that is our inability to listen at all, both to each other but even to ourselves. And that's a big part of listening as I think about it. Where this really kind of came about for me was probably now about close to 35 years ago, when I sat down kind of in the middle of my entrepreneurial life and I felt like something was just missing, that I was doing some good things but that I just wasn't right exactly where I wanted to be. And I sat down to go through a kind of a self-directed process of trying to discern what I felt like was my calling in life, what my mission, my purpose, my kind of unique thing, began to sit down and think about that over some long chunks of time. What I didn't realize in a sense, was that was very much of a listening exercise that I was going through and kind of spent time trying to think what do I feel like I'm really best at, what brings me joy, where can I have impact in my life? And as I went through that process. I really believed that at the core, that I was called to teach, and virtually every venue of life, not just within the church, which I did, not just as an entrepreneur, but as a father, as a husband, as someone who loves sports, just wherever that. What really brought me joy was teaching, and as I mulled on that more and more, I realized that there are these underlying things that are beneath teaching. They are what I consider like in order to be a teacher. Statements and the two that stood out to me as I mulled on this more and more was if I'm going to be a teacher, then I have to be a learner at the core, I have to be someone that's just a voracious learner. I take in more and more, and then I realized that, even beyond that, because there's so much to learn, where do you go? How do you put any kind of parameters or boundaries around this learning? I realized that at the core.

Speaker 2: 6:02

For me, the first piece of this is that I needed to be a listener, and being a listener involved for me at the core listening to God, who is at the center, I hope, of who I am and what I do. So I needed to learn to be a listener to God, and a part of that is, of course, learning to listen to yourself. And so I realized that it's only out of that listening posture that I could know where I should exert the energy to be a learner, and out of that, learn to teach. And then from there I learn from that process and I listen.

Speaker 2: 6:59

So my shorter version of my mission statement was listen, learn, teach, learn, listen. And so I realized that, at the core of my being the best who I believe God called me to be, the best person I can be, both as a husband, a father, as an entrepreneur as it's now evolved to a life coach, that I hope defines me as a husband and as a father. I just hope it defines me as a friend. So I've realized that so much of life works when we start by listening.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Beautiful. I'm curious. You know you were saying you went through that process of realizing that you wanted to get closer to clarity about what you were here to do, and you went through a process of examining that and you said that that in itself was a listening process. You said that sort of as an aside. I thought I'm coming back to that and I would love could you kind of share with us a little bit about what that felt like going through that process.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Yes, definitely. It was a very defined season in my life. Probably I guess I was around 30 or 31 at the time. Is that right? Yeah, I think yeah right about that time, and I had gone through a process in my life of going to college and then choosing from college to go to seminary where I got a Master's of Divinity degree. I had worked at the end of that process of getting my Master's of Divinity degree as a teacher and coach in a private school here in Richmond Virginia. I had decided after a couple of years of that that I felt drawn to join my brother in entrepreneurial ventures, and so we had a series, at that particular time when I was going through this process, of four different companies that we were running all at once a very, very full life and it was also right, at the beginning, of having a family.

Speaker 2: 9:45

So I'd been married for, I guess, about 10 years at the time and life was full and it was good. The businesses were going fine. I felt that I was competent at what I was doing in terms of running these businesses, running the finances of things, but there was this sense in me that something that was missing. I was doing good things, I was reasonably successful, but my heart and my passion weren't engaged. And I knew that I'd come from this world of teaching that I thought was kind of maybe a piece of it, but that hadn't quite worked.

Speaker 2: 10:36

Yeah, that hadn't quite grabbed you fully, it hadn't quite grabbed me. And the entrepreneurial world, even though it was working okay, still didn't quite grasp me. So I had this sense that something was missing and that's what led me to the process of saying, oh, I need to take some time, I need to step back and to think about it. And you know, I guess it's kind of now obvious, looking at it in the rear view mirror, that I was listening way back then. I was listening to be able to identify that this small thing was missing, that something was not quite right.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Yeah, it sounds like it.

Speaker 2: 11:18

So I think that was maybe a part of who I was a reflective person. Of who I was a reflective person, I think it was a part of my spiritual sense that I believed God was involved in my life and that there was a purpose for me being here, and so all of that led to this sense of. I want to delve further. I don't know if I'm going to come to an answer with this. I didn't know anybody else who was asking these questions, to be honest, so it was kind of unusual for me to be doing this. So I just sat in a room I can remember a variety of Saturday mornings in a row for a couple of hours and I would just start to write questions. I would start to reflect on things that brought me joy up to that point in life, what people spoke about.

Speaker 2: 12:18

That I did well and just started to put together all of this information, and the key turning point for me was realizing that I loved teaching, but not just teaching one thing. I loved being a teacher in the broadest sense of it. I called it in my mission statement that God has called me to be a teacher of life. Even back then, way before the life coaching way in the midst of an entrepreneurial world. I had this aha moment that God had called me to be a teacher of life in the breadth of it, in every place, in every place, and it was like this weight off my shoulders.

Speaker 1: 13:10

I felt like I knew who I was at that moment. Amazing, I love that. Yeah, that feeling when you said the weight off your shoulders. There is that sense isn't there. I know this is it. How do I know this is it. Well, I just know this is it.

Speaker 2: 13:20

That sort of thing, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 13:22

it absolutely it freed me up, yeah yeah, well, you certainly seem very you know. When you came on the before we started recording, I said you look really kind of fresh and awake and you said, of course, of course I am. You know, it's that sort of but there is that sense isn't there of um, I love the way you described that. You know, recognizing there was something missing, and you did not choose to just cover it up, which is what some of us do some of the time to just cover it up and try and pretend it's not there. You actually listened to yourself and kept asking questions. I think that's so important as well. You're keeping asking questions and you're listening to the answers that you're getting.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Sure, and it goes back to what you said at the beginning about our culture, because I think that we do cover up our innate need to listen, and we cover it up in my mind, which is what a lot of my book and my podcast is about. We cover it up in busyness and distraction. So we are so afraid of silence, we are so afraid to step back and listen because we don't know what we're going to hear. In fact, we're afraid to do that often because we think we'll hear nothing. And what happens if we hear nothing? And so I think we've become, as a culture, addicted to busyness and distraction, because that relieves us of the obligation to listen and if we just scream at the other person loud enough, then we don't have a problem, and so that's become what our culture is like across the world. So there are answers beyond my personal life that come if we could become listeners to one another, in our marriages, as parents, in our work, in our societies, in our governmental situations. So much would be solved if we could begin by listening.

Speaker 1: 15:38

Yeah, there was something that really struck me in what you were saying there about the fear that if we listen, there'll be nothing there, no message for us. Yes, so we're listening, for what's our mission, what's our purpose, and the answer is I got nothing. That's really depressing, and I think you're right. I think we, probably unconsciously, are trying to avoid facing that moment of do I actually have a purpose?

Speaker 2: 16:11

Exactly because if there's nothing there, then that kind of somewhat implies that we don't have the worth. Don't have the worth, and so I've talked to a lot of people about this and tried to encourage a lot of people. And number one, it's very hard. We have not developed listening muscles to one another, but certainly to our own life, but there is somewhat of a fear, and so people think, okay, well, I sat down for five minutes and I listened and I think, well, okay, that's good, that's a start, but there's so much more to be had than that, and it's something that I think all of us need to do to learn to listen to ourselves and learn to listen to the person that's right in front of us. That's a great place to start.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Yeah, because they're right there looking at us, and if we do listen to them, we will notice an effect of that, won't we?

Speaker 2: 17:19

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 17:20

Difference in the quality of connection. Yeah, yeah, amazing, no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 17:34

I hope so. I hope so. You know, what I really encourage for so many people is to develop listening practices. You know, listening, I don't think, necessarily comes naturally unless we create listening spaces in our life, listening spaces in our life. So a couple of the practices that are core for me, that I think are transformational for people, is to create a listening time every morning, and so every morning I have a fairly luxurious time that I allow for myself to sit and listen, and in that listening I journal.

Speaker 2: 18:20

In that listening I pray. In that listening I read the Bible and look to listen to God. In that listening sometimes I'm just quiet and I create that listening time and that listening time centers me for the day. Hopefully, I create a weekly listening time, what I call a weekly review time, and I create a Sabbath in my life which is one day where I stop working and in that rest I'm listening. And so I feel like, if I can and I can encourage other people to create those spaces where listening can happen, then we can begin to develop the listening muscles which then can translate to when I'm sitting across a breakfast table from someone and I'm quiet, calm, I'm engaged, I'm ready, I'm able to listen and it's in that listening that also learn kind of the, the, the toxic piece of over busyness and distraction, and how easy it is to get there and how it's not the way I want to live my life. So I've tried to encourage people along those lines.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Right, okay, that makes perfect sense. And let's say I came to see you as a client, right, and you were saying okay, catherine, your life's full of stuff you're doing and busyness, so build in these listening practices. If I came back to you the next week and said I can't do it, that's just impossible, I just can't do it, how do you respond to people like that who do try to do it and just find themselves that they just cannot bring themselves to do it?

Speaker 2: 20:15

Sure, I mean, I think we go back to square one, you know, in terms of saying what do you mean when you say you can't? Is it uncomfortable to you? Are you finding that you don't lack the discipline for it? Are there blocks or things? But let's say, someone says I just simply can't do it. So I say, well, okay, could you do it for five minutes? Well, I probably could do it for five minutes. Okay, so let's just start with five minutes and let's just do one thing. Let's just have for five minutes, let's just have you sit and all I want you to do is I just want you to reflect on the day before and, just in that sense, listen to it.

Speaker 2: 21:07

So I try to pare it down, because the degree of obstacles in people's lives for doing this are very much varied in terms of it, or we might look at a different way of practicing it. And so, for instance, in the book I wrote, I talk about a little chapter called the Hidden Sanctuary, and the Hidden Sanctuary is a place where we can find some respite and some quiet. That is an unexpected place, and what I talk about is the hidden sanctuary in almost all of our lives is our car. So what would happen if, in our cars, we turned off the podcast, we turned off the music, we turned off everything and just sat quietly in silence in our car as we drove from location A to location B, hopefully at the speed limit so that we could slow ourselves? You know what would happen if we turned our car into a sanctuary? Well, you certainly could turn off the radio, you know, in your car. Well, that's a place of quiet.

Speaker 2: 22:22

So I find that word can't that you used is rarely true. It's rarely true for me. I choose not to, but I rarely am unable to. So I want to unpack a little bit underneath that and say what are the obstacles? Why is it that you feel like you cannot do this?

Speaker 1: 22:46

Yeah, lovely. Well, I think that was very kind, that response you demonstrated there. Because I think sometimes with these things, even if someone gets the idea and they think it's a great idea, they might be thinking that's a fantastic idea, you know what, what I'll just get through to Easter, or I'll just get through to such and such, and then I'll get you know, and they just think I just can't do it. But I think the way you're talking about it, it sounds like you're not just saying to people right, this is a good idea and just do it. And if they say they can't do it, you're just saying well, just do it.

Speaker 2: 23:36

You're kind of gentling them into it exactly, and, and you know, I've just found in my own life that I have to be creative about it. So, you know, I talk about this idea and I I embrace myself of creating powerful pauses in my life. And that's, you know, just that, that small little nuance of if I could build five minutes in before I'm sitting down to have this conversation with you, which I did I had some time beforehand to just settle and just be quiet. That's a listening, that's a quieting that, I think, enables a conversation to rise to a whole another level. And we're not talking about turning our lives upside down to do that. We're just talking about making a small little tweak to say I'm just going to leave a few minutes earlier so I'm not rushed and so I can sit, so I can give just a few minutes thought to what this meeting ahead of me is about, or this lunch, or this conversation, and so that I can be ready, prepared for that.

Speaker 2: 25:06

And those small five-minute pauses, I think, can literally double or triple the effectiveness of the times that we're spending in busyness. Yeah, imagine five minutes changing the quality of something at that level. And so I very much believe that this creating space and becoming listening, these practices are what enables a life of the greatest purpose and meaning. It's not just about having life easier and being calmer and being more at peace. It's actually also about being purposeful and having the greatest quality relationships. So I believe that, in essence, this creating space, this listening, is where the best of life and the most growth and the most effectiveness comes. It comes out of that rich topsoil of space.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Yeah, thank you. Well, I was just tracking how my experience of being in the conversation with you, as you were describing that, and I would certainly say that the way you were coming into the conversation and then your presence in the conversation definitely is supporting me in being able to relax into the conversation with you, and I think it also supports that kind of space that you mentioned and then the sort of attentiveness you were able to bring with you from having given yourself that powerful pause, as you mentioned. I feel like we're able to sort of drop down the layers in the topic we're talking about more readily than we could do if we were being really determined and trying to probe it in a sort of….

Speaker 2: 27:01

Driven way.

Speaker 1: 27:02

Driven way. That's the word, yes. So rather than being driven and trying to get to the bottom of the topic, instead we can just kind of ease our way down the layers of what we're talking about through… and I would say I need to do this because my default is that, driven nature, I'm a very competitive, driven, entrepreneurial type of person.

Speaker 2: 27:29

So I've learned this not because it becomes naturally, but because it does not become. It is not natural for me. And I would really say the same thing back at you. I think back to our pre-conversation before today of sitting down and talking with you and you come with that same sense of presence and calm into a conversation, into a conversation and, as you know, both of our times are precious. We don't want to waste any of the time. So it's that sense of you are a person worth talking to that I sensed in our very first conversation. It's this commonality of a real listening demeanor that I think drew me to what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 28:24

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I'd like to share with you something that happened for me years ago.

Speaker 1: 28:30

At the time I was doing executive coaching, which meant spending a lot of time sitting in a room with one other person, and often I'd be in a room with somebody for a whole day when we'd break for lunch and stuff, and I remember kind of teetering on the edge and really surrendering to listening really fully. I remember noticing there was a fear that if I fully, fully fully listened, I would disappear. I would be swallowed up in that person's reality and I wouldn't be able to get out. Wow, Interesting, and it was an interesting thing I noticed and I thought, well, I'm just going to give it a go. Right, I don't think that's going to happen. I'm not in a sci-fi movie or something where you disappear.

Speaker 1: 29:11

And what I discovered was that when I fully surrendered, it was almost like that person took me by the hand and took me on a magical journey around their experience of life, which had all sorts of color in it that I hadn't noticed and all sorts of perspectives I hadn't noticed. It was almost like it was a gift and I never went back. As a result. After that I just recognize every single person is like potentially a doorway into a miraculous new world that I would never have experienced or conceived of by myself if I opened to receiving what they're communicating process also works the other direction, because if we can truly listen to someone, that is such a gift and honoring to that person it is so rare for that person to experience.

Speaker 2: 30:09

So it's this two-way thing. I love what you shared. It's this two-way thing that we completely become absorbed in the gift that that person is to us and at the same time, that person feels valued in a way that perhaps they rarely ever feel, even in their own homes, when we listen to them homes when we listen to them. So I think something very spiritual happens when we become listeners like this. Something, as you say, on a different plane happens. So that's great. I love what you're sharing there.

Speaker 2: 30:55

And it is a risk I know that there are times when I am with someone in that type of one-on-one conversation that the fear that will arise is that if I listen fully, then I'm not going to be prepared to respond to them. I have to be thinking about what I need to be saying. Next, I need to be preparing, and in that very preparing I'm not listening. I'm thinking about what I'm going to say, and so it's maybe overstating it, but it takes some courage to say I'm just going to be quiet and I'm just going to listen and trust that on the other end of it, if there's something to say, I'll be ready to say it.

Speaker 1: 31:49

Yeah, I totally recognize that one as a podcast host. That's definitely one I've encountered because I can get fascinated in what someone's saying. That's definitely one I've encountered because I can get fascinated in what someone's saying. And there's that thing of, yeah, sometimes when someone's finished speaking I'm so blown away by what they've said I feel like I want to go.

Speaker 1: 32:07

But can we just press pause for I don't know 20 minutes it's just so it's very interesting, but of when we're in a conversation with somebody, we are in a conversation, aren't we? We're not just listening to a podcast or something. So there's that being present and able and ready and willing to respond whilst also fully listening. That's a real kind of dynamic interchange, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 32:34

Yes, definitely, and I've had many people talk about you know, since I podcast also that it so intimidates them. They're just, you know. How do you know you're not going to just, you know, get to a place and not know what to say next or keep the conversation going or take it in a good direction? And for me it's been. One of the very exciting things about listening is that it does involve some trust. It involves, for me, trust that God is going to show up in the midst of my listening and that he's not going to leave me hanging.

Speaker 2: 33:12

There's something that's exciting when I sit next to someone on a podcast or on a Zoom, about the uncertainty, the unpredictability of where it will go, and it puts me in a position as a podcast host which I'm sure you can resonate with of I have to trust, I have to trust the process, I have to trust, I have to trust the process and I have to trust that, in some fashion, God's going to show up and he's going to give me the words and he's going to give me a sense of direction of where to take the conversation. And that makes life exciting. You know, listening makes life an adventure.

Speaker 1: 33:53

It really does and, as you say, it takes you into the unknown, which, of course, a lot of us are programmed to try to stay in control at all costs.

Speaker 2: 34:04

Exactly exactly.

Speaker 1: 34:06

I think the work you're doing is absolutely wonderful and you're now you're an executive coach and a life coach. Does that mean that you work with all kinds of people? Does that mean?

Speaker 2: 34:16

that you work with all kinds of people. I do, and that's something that it's part of that field called to be a teacher of life. I really enjoy the breadth of people I work with. So I work with people in their 20s up to their 60s or 70s and I teach, sometimes as a business consultant, sometimes helping people kind of figure out balance in life. Sometimes I'm even helping people, you know, in their marriages because I've, you know, worked with that.

Speaker 2: 34:52

I spent a couple hours with a friend out on a golf course teaching, you know, teaching the golf swing, because I love that golf course, teaching the golf swing, because I love that. So I particularly love the breadth of situations of helping someone figure out a career direction or just how to grow in their life. So personally I enjoy the breadth of all kinds of people ages, men, women, kind of entering in wherever they are, and it in a sense feels somewhat presumptuous to be able to feel like I can speak into that, the path that God has taken me over my life of running multiple businesses across multiple industries, of having the Master's of Divinity degree, of having been a coach, of having taught in the church for 20-some years, so taught on issues like that, that this is just kind of the place that God's given me, so I just go with it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:57

Well, it sounds like all the things you've done are probably feeding into what you're doing now one way or another, aren't they?

Speaker 2: 36:04

Absolutely, absolutely, and it took me a long time to get to this place.

Speaker 2: 36:08

I was an entrepreneur, completely consumed in running businesses for 30 years.

Speaker 2: 36:14

For 30 years, and it was actually as I don't know that whether we even talked about this, but it was my daughter's diagnosis with stage four cancer that turned our life upside down in 2010, caused me to need to step back in a significant way from business.

Speaker 2: 36:42

About 75% of my work I stepped back from to be able to care for our family, and after a six and a half year battle with the cancer, she died in 2016. And then, all of a sudden, I had this space that had been occupied in caring for her and family, and I said at that point, I was 58 years old. I said I have a season ahead of me. I don't know how long it is. I want for it to be defined by the very best, what I am most passionate about. And so I made a complete pivot in my life from running companies to saying I want to just invest in having as much impact for good and for God as I can possibly have in people's lives and reoriented my life I guess now about seven or eight years ago in this direction.

Speaker 1: 37:37

Yeah, yeah, thank you for sharing that, and I'm so sorry for your loss.

Speaker 2: 37:42

Thank you, it was difficult. It was a hard, hard struggle beyond words.

Speaker 1: 37:50

Yeah, I can't imagine so. Wow, well, that's one of those moments where you could just go right, that's it, we're done now. But I think I do appreciate you sharing that and I do respect and honor that you use that as like a lead into pivoting rather than a lead into despair, which is the other option, and, if anything, you have increased your desire to contribute and increased your intention to contribute. So, whereas that's not the way everybody always goes, after those really really hard experiences, Well, that's true, and a lot of that is by grace.

Speaker 2: 38:39

A lot of that is we experience God's presence in such powerful, palpable, undeniable ways that it encouraged me to know that God can be present in the worst, in the hardest of life. So it increased my passion for this and I realized that if we could survive that hardest of hard things and if we could understand God's presence in that, then my friends all around me really good people who were, as the title of my book says, overloaded and overwhelmed and stressed out without a storm of life in their life that's where I went. I want to help, I want to help equip people. I want to teach them the baby steps of moving and creating a spacious life that is rich and abundant, but it's also prepared to handle the worst storms of life. So that's what that's all about.

Speaker 1: 40:11

Yeah, yeah, fantastic, very, very creative way of responding, and I mean creative in the sense of following the life principle of being in the life and responding to what life's giving you, and responding from your heart. So total, deep respect for that. Amazing Thanks, amazing, thanks, amazing. So I think one thing I take from your entire story is that you are being a leader in your own life. You're not being pushed about by your life. You're responding to your life and you're standing up and saying I want to help other people and you're doing your best to help other people. And I think it's fair to say that a lot of the people who listen to this podcast are also trying to help people in the world at the moment, and some of them are officially leaders and some of them are just trying to be leaders in their own lives. And some of them are listening to us right now, and I just wonder if there's something in particular you'd like to say to those people who've just been listening to this whole conversation. Is there something you'd like to say to them?

Speaker 2: 41:31

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I would want to encourage that. You know, I believe life is a joy to have, it's an opportunity, it's an adventure. So if you feel that nudge, if you feel that leaning, that urge to make more of your life, like I did 30 years ago, even in the midst of a very good life, I want to encourage people to jump at that, to move forward with that. And then I would really want to encourage them, if they don't know where to start, to just start with some baby steps. And that's why I love and was such an important part of creating change in my life by creating that time, however long it is in the morning, to center yourself and to listen to yourself, to God, to your life and the circumstances, and just at least do something. Don't just think about it, don't just be inspired, but take that and at least make one step, even if it's a very small step, one step in that direction.

Speaker 1: 42:57

Wonderful, beautiful. I love the kind of shades of gray thing that you do, that you know, thing of sort of well, just try, do what you can, just, you know, just take a step and just kind of. It's a very kind of kind way of doing it, I think. And if people would like to come and work with you, I'll just say again the web address they can find you, which is tommythompsonorg. Yes, and do you see people in person or on Zoom or both, or how do you do that?

Speaker 2: 43:31

Well, I do both and really probably primarily where I'm putting my time now is into some writing. So I have a blog that I write, called Reflections, that people can find on Substack. That is where I kind of share the deeper things that I'm hopefully wrestling with in life with in life and have some podcasts that I think are very meaningful about things that I'm learning and that people that I'm connected with are learning. So those are great venues. I'm not necessarily trying to build a huge coaching business, to be honest, now, but for those people that I feel like there's just a real opportunity to make a difference in their life, I love talking with them, so I always welcome having conversations to begin with, and then we can always figure out if there's a place to go from there.

Speaker 1: 44:38

Yes, beautiful, I really appreciate that because there are so many people at the moment who are trying to scale their coaching business or their group facilitation business or whatever, and I think for a lot of us, particularly when we are a little bit older, we're thinking do I really want to do that? Is that really what I'm here to do?

Speaker 2: 44:57

Exactly yeah, you can use up a lot of space real quickly.

Speaker 1: 45:02

You really can. Then you wonder what on earth, why have I done that? And then you're right back at the beginning, exactly Fantastic. So everyone you can contact Tommy for a conversation, check out his podcast, check out his blog. Now we've talked about quite a lot today. Actually, many layers has there been. For you, has there been a favorite part of our conversation today?

Speaker 2: 45:30

Gosh, a favorite part we don't script these things, do we?

Speaker 2: 45:36

No, don't script these things do we, which is really, I think, so much fun. I hadn't thought, honestly, about the degree to how listening was already embedded in my life before I started that process of life mission, and our conversation kind of helped highlight that and I also, I think, personally realized, I guess, the truth of how we are often afraid of silence. We're afraid of listening because it might expose things, and so that was a reminder, even though I said it was a reminder to me that, yeah, it is a little bit scary to consider some of the things that we're talking about. It's scary for people, so honor that.

Speaker 1: 46:33

Yeah, wonderful Thank you. And I'm now going to ask you one final request, which is is there some sort of reflection question that you would like to give to our listeners for them to reflect on across the coming week? That would help them to engage more deeply with some of what we've been talking about today engage more deeply with some of what we've been talking about today.

Speaker 2: 47:01

Well, that's a good question. I think what I would encourage people to ask that reflection question, is what deeply matters to me. I feel like life is too short to not invest who we are, in our time, in our energy, into what matters to us. But I feel like too many people are caught up in the speed of life and just the executing of life to where they don't really ask that core, fundamental question of what really deeply matters to me. And I think as we define that and as we name that, just in the naming process, we can begin to lean towards that. So that would be perhaps the question I'd encourage people to ask.

Speaker 1: 47:59

What a fantastic question. Thank you, what matters to me, tommy, this has been such a joy and a real pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show and thank you for everything you're doing.

Speaker 2: 48:12

Well, thank you. I knew from our first conversation that this was going to be a joy to do together, that it would be an easy conversation with you. It would also be something that would be a little bit more than on the surface, and so I've thoroughly enjoyed that, and I just think what you're doing is fantastic.

Speaker 1: 48:36

Thank you so much. What you're doing is fantastic. Thank you so much. You can find out about Transformational Coaching, Pellewa and the Freedom of Spirit Workshop on beingspaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.