If you want to help heal the world and create peace on earth - learn to listen!

Meet Ximena. She’s brilliant, articulate, and passionate about helping others develop this powerful skill. We had such a rich conversation about how learning this skill can quite literally change everything for the better.

Ximena Vengoechea is a user researcher, writer, and illustrator whose work on personal and professional development has been published in Inc., The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Huffington Post. She is the author of the new book, Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection (from Portfolio Books/Penguin Random House). She is a contributor at Fast Company and The Muse and writes "Letters from Ximena," a newsletter on tech, culture, career, and creativity. She is best known for her project The Life Audit. An experienced manager, mentor, and researcher in the tech industry, Ximena previously worked at Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

In this episode:

• Learn why listening is the key to intimacy and connection.
• Why listening can be such a gift and such an act of generosity and love.
• Why when people don’t feel heard, they often escalate their behavior and lash out.
• Why listening is a “slow” skill and how to bring more peace into our lives by learning to do it.
• There are layers to listening, and often if we are paying attention, we can hear other important things that get revealed when we truly listen.
• How to protect yourself from being a listening martyr and getting listening fatigue. In other words, how can empaths protect themselves when they are deeply listening to others?
• Learn how to listen with compassion without taking on the emotional energy of someone else.
  
• Why awkward silence is such an important part of the listening skill set.
• Conduct a relationship audit to determine where you have energy leaks.

Links:

• Ximena Vengoechea
• Book - Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection: Vengoechea, Ximena
• Newsletter - Letters from Ximena
• Instagram - Ximena Vengoechea (@xsvengoechea)
• Twitter - Ximena Vengoechea (@xsvengoechea)
• Pinterest - Ximena Vengoechea (xsvengoechea)
• LinkedIn - Ximena Vengoechea

Kathy is a visual storyteller, a photographer and conservationist. After 30 plus years as a trauma therapist, she instinctively sought images that reflected resilience, beauty and wholeness, she's primarily a wildlife photographer, although international travel images and people compose half of her image archives, including the iconic animals of east Africa, particularly elephants who have profoundly impacted her work.

Fueled with spirit she's attracted to the wisdom of indigenous cultures. She loves wandering off the beaten path and her camera allows her to focus on specific gestures, connection, or implied story. When she travels to make pictures, she pushes through her natural shyness seeking more. Differences and barriers melt away and curiosity and wonder reign.

She hopes her images are a reminder that there is goodness and beauty in the world. She believes people and nature are inextricably linked. She's horrified by the degradation of the environment and the threat to our planet. Photography is a way of seeing. Which can teach and inspire people to care. When we care, we're more inclined to protect.

If her stories and images inspire readers to take steps towards making the world a better place.
She believes if we take care of nature, Nature will take care of us. When we save wild places, we save ourselves.

When she’s not traveling, she's at home with her husband in London, Ontario, Canada, or on the shores of the Georgian bay, the sixth great lake. She's grateful for family and friends. They are the wind beneath her wings. Creativity is an essential daily practice and there is much to celebrate in her life.

• We all have a unique perspective to offer the world. When we don’t judge our contribution or compare it, we realize it’s relevant and important, and our own life's work can stand on its own.
• The divine choreography that led Kathy to the front lines of animal wildlife and led her to effortlessly find elephants who were often challenging for others to locate and experience.
• Why photography is her medium for fostering compassion and connection.
• Why animals have so much to teach us about our own humanity and the interconnectedness of life.
• Kathy shares how she gives herself permission to travel and pursue her passion while her husband supports her in doing this from his home base.
• How investing in “funding” your soul work gives you the biggest return on investment.
• Hear about “A room of One’s Own” a metaphor for traveling solo into new territories to be with your own wonder up close and personal.
• How conservation and climate change is a part of Kathy’s ongoing work.
• How she came to meet and love Big Tusker Tim and what elephants have taught her about grief and love and connection.
• Kathy shares about the loss of her own mother and how she came into the realization of her own grief.
• Why the loss of the Matriarch is such a profound event and rite of passage both for humans and elephants.
• Hear about the moment of Revelation that Kathy experiences as the veil between the animal world and the human world lifts and she catches a glimpse of what it means to honor and witness these profound moments of our lives through animal medicine.

Links:

• Kathy Karn Photography
• Kathy Karn Photography (@kathykarnphotography) • Instagram photos and videos
• LinkedIn - Kathy Karn Photography
• Kathy Karn Photography - YouTube