This is a special Mother’s Day show, and it comes along with one of the most important frameworks we’ll talk about: Masculine vs. Feminine energy.
Most of us have been conditioned into constant “go mode.” Push. Achieve. Figure it out.
But successful ReInvention doesn’t come from more force. It comes from learning how to balance action with awareness. We talk about:
- What masculine vs. feminine energy actually means (and why everyone has both)
- Why so many high performers are burned out and misaligned
- The power of “allow and reflect” as a real strategy, not just a nice idea
- How creating space leads to better, more aligned decisions
This one also gets personal – family, loss, parenting, and how these dynamics shape who we become. If this conversation resonates with you, visit ReInvention.biz to explore our guided workbook, learn more about us, and start creating what’s next!
https://ReInvention.biz **Subscribe to the ReInvention Podcast to stay plugged into fresh ideas, frameworks, and real-world tools for navigating the future of your work and life.
Episode Transcript
Chris Thide: As a father contributing to like raising kids all the work I’ve done and the growth I’ve had to be able to integrate the duality and this energy. It’s been, so beneficial for the others in my family. The way I’m able to be there for them is so much more supportive than I think if I was just clinging to this antiquated, programmed notion of who I was and what I was supposed to do.
All right, my man. Todd, what are we talking about for our reinventors on this special Mother’s Day episode?
Todd Jason: That’s right. This is a special episode, isn’t it, that we’re doing on reinvention and, well, Chris, let’s start out by sharing that as always, our mission here is to help our listeners navigate the murky waters of career transitions and life changes that are up for so many of us, including us. Right? And if you’ve been listening to us for a while, you know that We don’t offer any magic pills on this show for how to ensure your success and fulfillment 100% of the time. Okay? But what we do offer are constant reminders to the critical questions you need to be asking yourself along with powerful frameworks you can use to make smart decisions about your future.
And on this special Mother’s Day episode, Chris and I are not only here to yap about how much we love our mamas because we do. We’re here to share one of the most powerful frameworks for growth we’ve ever come across. And it’s all about finding the elusive middle ground between the masculine and feminine forces that drive us. That make up our belief systems and ultimately that have a lot to do with our current life situations. Yes. Even regarding our careers. And so before you roll your eyes because of how woo we’re becoming, or even worse, cancel us because we’re talking about men and women divisively. Hold your horses. Okay.
This conversation has nothing to do with the division or woo’ness only growth. Your growth and this framework can help you get clarity about what you want and help you open up new pathways for how to get there faster. Okay? So tune in today. This is an important episode. Take notes because ideas are gonna pop. And Chris, with that, there’s a lot there and would love to hear how you’d like to begin this one.
Chris Thide: Yeah well, first of all, I have two very, very special mothers. Very, very close in my life. My mother and my wife. And they’re both wonderful mothers, and they’re strong leaders of the family, right? And so you talk about masculine and feminine energy, and we can get into that. And, you know, I’m like, oh, it’s woo Todd.
Uh oh, it’s woo. But that’s, that’s a good thing. But I’m surrounded by a lot of females and feminine energy in both my family of origin, where it’s my mom and my two sisters and my current family. Where’s my wife and my two daughters. And it affects me in a way that it brings me into a place of, I think intuition,
and being attuned to the environment that I’m in. I think it really helps me as a coach to be very honest. And if you think about the traditional sort of, masculine-coded provider type roles that I sort of came up in through my corporate career. Having this balance, having this other mindset and this other emotionality and feeling and having it among women who are career women and leaders, right,
that dynamic has really, as I’ve grown, has helped me like open up how I show up and who I am. And that to me has been a very beautiful growth phase for me in my midlife as I’m reinventing my career and my life to be able to like tap into what we would consider maybe a more feminine energy and to extricate from this sort of toxic masculine provider mentality syndrome that I was coming up through.
So, so yeah, I mean I guess a lot of stuff just came pouring outta me right there, Todd, because I think it’s a really important dynamic, I think for Reinventors to be aware of, is that energy dynamic that you’re living in that maybe was handed down onto you and then how can you like evolve into your, you know, your more evolved, integrated self, as you’re going through this process.
Todd Jason: Yeah. man. I mean there’s so much here and this is such a juicy conversation and I think we are also gonna do a Father’s Day episode. Okay. I think this is that important to talk about, this way of looking at your life and I also wanna start out, you know, by honoring your family and the feminine energy and women that you’ve been around and you know, these “ReInvention bros”. I’m the same way. Chris, like, I’ve also been very supported by and had a lot of feminine energy in women supporting me. I was very close with my mom. Who as you know, passed away Right. during COVID, like literally the day the world shut down. Okay. Like, she died. And she died in my dad’s arms on March 19th of that day.
And I’m in California and she’s in New York. And she was my best friend my mom. Like, we just got along, like my personality and the way that I am like comes from her, right. And like, she was like amazing. And she also had her faux pas. Right. But she, she and I just got along and it was that moment where I wasn’t sure if I was able to fly to New York to go to her funeral and be there with my family because this was the day that everything was shutting down. It was like the craziest moment.
Chris Thide: Oh my God, dude.
Todd Jason: and we were up the whole night. My wife and I like deciding what I should do and you know, at the time my child was only what, like four years old then I’m leaving my family during this chaotic moment. I ended up not going. I didn’t go to New York and I, you know, witnessed her funeral like on zoom
Chris Thide: Yeah.
Todd Jason: Remember this
COVID
was crazy, right? And so I had a very deep experience of that with her. And and my sister, who I mentioned, you know, I’m very close with her. Like my best friend is my sister and my wife is like such a rock to me. And I have a daughter, right? So I’m also like, you surrounded
Chris Thide: Yeah.
Todd Jason: just by a lot of feminine energy. I get along with the women in my life. I always have. And it’s really, Affected me in a bunch of ways because I think that I tend to be by nature, maybe very masculine in the way that I operate. And when we want to talk about how we define these things, the way that I look at it, and again, this isn’t just our fast rules, but like masculine energy is very direct. it just kind of goes, it like keeps going. It is uncompromising in some ways. You know, it’s pushing boundaries. And we all have masculine and feminine energy. That’s why I want to make that distinction between men and women. It’s not just that men are that way and women are another way. It’s just that, you know, the masculine energy tends to be very direct and pushing forward and purposeful in that way, where the feminine energy tends to be more nurturing and more relaxed and more patient, you know, and more allowing and reflecting, for things to come through even more healing.
Right? And so we do have these polarities within us. And because I’ve been maybe wired to be more of a masculine energy, but also have had a lot of feminine forces in my life, that’s really affected me. I’ve really tried to dance between the balance and access both. Right, and I think you have too. I think that’s why you and I get along so well is that. We can kind of be the reinvention bros. And bro it out. And yo, yo dude, what’s up brother
Chris Thide: Right.
Todd Jason: You know, do all that. But like, we’re also really heart centered guys that, that are coaches and we want to help lot of people is why we’re doing this, right? We’re here to help a lot of people. And I just wanted to start there
just by saying like, I think that’s part of the reason why we found each other here is that we resonated, at this level. And as you’re thinking about like why you’re listening to this episode when you’re in a career transition, I think it’s really important because reinvention is a wake up call for a lot of people out there to, to stop for a moment because the world is changing so fast and think like, what am I gonna do in the future?
What role is right for me? Like what type of work, what type of role? Because maybe what you did in the past, wasn’t really aligned and didn’t fire you up. I mean, that’s why for a lot of people, reinvention is like an opportunity to actually be like all right, what do I wanna do? And I think that examining your inner masculine and your inner feminine qualities and like really understanding like who you are when you’re at your best is a great beginning point because that might lead the way better in the future.
bigger and Absolutely. I mean,
Chris Thide: That’s so well said, my man. And, and like it is one of those things too where you’re right. I am totally like an undercover, there’s people who meet me and think I’m like a bro or whatever it is. All my defense mechanisms are kind of rooted in that sort of maybe, more traditional male gender role, you know, busting chops type of way of approaching things. Some self-deprecating sarcasm and all that stuff, but it’s like who I really am under that is much more integrated. Right. And really has both the energies in it, and the capability to tap into them.
Also I think something we wanna talk about that’s maybe a little bit more what people think of as traditional gender roles as opposed to energy is another axis to think about in reinvention. Because we see a lot of people we talk to, and I’ve experienced this and I, I think this is your experience, but you can tell me, like as a father I spend more time with my children than any father of two generations ago ever did. The way we run our domestic household, I mean, the business of the household that my wife and I co-run the division of labor is much different than the division of labor in what I saw growing up.
Right? part of that’s, ’cause I live in New York City, so there’s no lawn for me to mow even if I wanted to, but, I live such a more integrated family life, right? And again, this is more of, this is about gender roles more than energy, but I think it does then require me to bring different energy and nurturing energy and warm energy.
And so in the context of like thinking about career reinvention, If you’re an investment banker, it might be really hard to shift between that direct rocket ship sort of mentality and then helping your kid with their homework and all that stuff back and forth, right? And so it’s like, how can we, integrate our full humanness and the more our work is aligned with our full humanness and what we do, to me it’s like there’s no code switching going on or anything like that. Like I am just bringing more of myself into my work. And so the integration of work and life is so much smoother than it was when I felt like I had to be one way here and one way there.
Todd Jason: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more and, it’s interesting when you look at the global culture of work, like the way that industry and business and money all runs, like there is an argument to be made that a lot of it is driven by like the masculine energy, it’s a very masculine culture that we live in.
I mean, look, we both coach a lot of people. People are burned out. There’s a lot of people I should say that aren’t that happy with the way that their work is going. There’s a lot of pressure. Like sometimes I just wake up, I’m like, how do we all get into this system? It doesn’t feel like it’s fully aligned, and I don’t want to put it all on the masculine energy, but I do think what we’re seeing now is much more interest in a reintegration of the more feminine ways of being in the world.
Right. That I think you’re embodying as a father in the way that you run your house, even in the work that you do in the world, which is very heart centered. You know, being a coach and helping people. Me too, right? Like the same thing, like I think there’s a lot more integration, which is why I think this conversation is so interesting.
‘Cause as you’re listening to this, like really feel into how much of your time and energy and thoughts and work and everything that you do is spent kind of in that masculine mode versus that very feminine mode. And I think we need to bring more of honoring the Mother’s Day energy of this call. More of that allow and reflect that we talk about on this podcast, more of the patience, more of the reflection, more of the healing work our lives as this world is continuing to spin outta control.
And I wanna share a little personally about my wife and I, like I said initially, I tend to be probably by my DNA, more of a masculine energy person. And my wife to be very feminine, at her core. But there’s parts of us that are the complete opposite, where in our marriage I can be very feminine and she can be very masculine. For example, her career, she works in aerospace, she works in a very corporate setting. It’s funny that I do this work, right?
Talking about people transitioning from corporate. My wife has had a 24 year career working for basically one massive group that produces all the airline parts, right? Like a huge company, you know, and has grown in that role and like has a great career and all that, but very corporate. And I can see how a lot of her energy when it comes to work is like so hyper masculine and then she’s gotta come back. And then she takes care of our family and we do a lot of things together. And then she toggles back into that very deep feminine. And so it’s like very interesting to watch the roles shift. And I love what you said around allowing it all to be there. Like it’s not bad that she’s accessing her masculine when she’s working and it’s not, any worse than her accessing more of a deeply feminine part of her nature when she’s kind of with us in the family. It’s just interesting to look at ourselves because I think the more awareness that we have over how we’re acting versus what our true nature is, gives us the ability to grow into our best self.
Right. And I think that’s what this conversation is like. Even as we’re talking, I’m thinking. Yeah, like where do I stand on the spectrum? Like how can I be more in balance you know, what do I need to do to really express myself more authentically?
Chris Thide: Yeah, I think it definitely starts with an awareness of the possibility or the breadth of your personality and being an identity. For most of us, I think, I think I’m confident saying that most of us learn this as we grow or as we get older is there’s more to us, then maybe we’ve felt allowed to explore or allowed to express. Or you know, and I’m describing this very sort of consciously, but I think that these are things that are happening on a very sort of subconscious level that are ingrained in us, you know, and again, I think about my own mother and my own family of origin and, it was a different time obviously.
Right. So in terms of like the gender roles, it was a little bit, quite different than it is now. And I always think about my mom’s career sometimes, like were there moments in her career where she was less assertive or less direct or less strong than she had a right to be because she was very good at what she did.
Right. But she was not really like fighting and scratching and clawing to get up that ladder. I mean a lot of that is ’cause she raised the family. So there’s that element where. I actually think it’s always been and still is much harder for women to balance those two things, even as gender roles are evolving.
But I wonder if there was an element of like the way she had been sort of programmed as a child that if she had been a son rather than a daughter, she might have been more, like alpha, you know, climbing that ladder because she’s so smart and she’s so capable. And one of the things I kind of see in myself sometimes that I see in my mother is, is undermining her own capability is like not trusting and believing in her own capability in certain things.
And, I appreciate you sharing, and obviously I know you, your mother passed away a few years ago and, and my father passed away like actually about 20 years ago at this point. And I noticed with my mother that there was this element of like, there were all these things that had been sort of outsourced to him and that were sort of the man things and the, the way the house was divided.
And a lot of those things she sort of saw as, maybe she didn’t feel comfortable taking them on or she didn’t really know how to do them. And so, you know, I often would sort of take on some of those things and the, the little sort of rub of it for me was, it’s like these are all things that she was very capable of doing and taking on.
‘Cause she’s so smart and, you know, I’m not asking her to lift the 80 pound sack of Quikrete in the garage, but I’m talking about, you know, there were things that she could figure out about, the way she ran her house in her life that she just didn’t give herself credit for. And I’m like, oh, as a coach, I’m like, that’s like a limiting belief.
That’s not an actual lack of capability or capacity. And so again, I’m getting more into gender roles maybe around this. I know it’s blended together, Todd. But like, it’s something that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve thought about where it’s like, man, that is a really challenging dynamic.
You know, that she came up in the fifties and sixties and just the way people thought about things was quite different. Yeah, just I reflect on that sometimes, and especially in the context of reinvention. I think it’s a beautiful thing that we’re in this world now that has evolved. It ain’t perfect, but more people have opportunities to follow their true soul as opposed to their, programmed channel from childhood.
Todd Jason: Yeah, I love it. I also love the, the role tangent you went on. I think it’s so relevant right now. Like what is my role? Who am I when I’m at my best? And when you’re sharing that about your mom, I’m thinking about my sister. Okay. Who’s man I’m just going all in
Chris Thide: Yeah.
Todd Jason: Talking about my sister today, talking about my wife. Come under the hood in Todd’s world and I’ll tell you what’s going on. But my sister lost her husband over a year ago, to cancer. He died at 57 years old and it’s terrible. Now with Jeff who passed, he also had gotten like a terminal diagnosis when he was 27, so he was basically given 30 extra years on this planet. Where he had his two kids, my niece and my nephew, who were all very close. So, while his passing is tragic, it was also a miracle that he lived for that long. But my sister is now going through, a big reinvention obviously, you know, with being with somebody for that long, they were together for 37 years.
They met when they were 22 years old. She’s a little older than me, she’s 59. So like her whole life is now being reinvented. And it’s interesting that a lot of the things that Jeff took on, whether they’re a masculine or feminine role, it doesn’t matter. But there were just things that he does that now she has to do.
And it wasn’t that she’s not capable to do these things, it’s just that she just never did, you know, for a bunch of reasons. And now she’s learning and growing. In fact, my sister got a tattoo on her arm. She never had a one in my family ever had a tattoo
Chris Thide: Love this.
Todd Jason: She got a little caterpillar on her arm it represents like just being brand new and she wants to turn into a butterfly,
Chris Thide: Beautiful.
Todd Jason: So, it’s very very beautiful. And I think the role thing is really important because for Reinventors people listening to this, it is really important to take stock of yourself. What are your strengths, right? Like one of the things that I look at are, what are my strengths on the masculine side, you know, and then what are my strengths on the feminine side?
And as a coach, I can tell you, I would, I’m curious about your opinion on this, but when I am talking to people or groups. The need that most people have, especially when it comes to the work, is more integration of the feminine qualities, right? Because there’s, the whole culture is pushed to go, go, go and push so much. That a lot of what I talk about with people is retraining them to sit with their thoughts, sit with their feelings, and allow, we call it, allow and reflect on the show, to start carving out some space to allow yourself to experience yourself. And that could be just in meditation, listening to music, going on walks. Instead of constantly moving and pushing you’re driven by mostly anxiety, and even some fear, you learn to stop and you learn to reflect, and you learn to just take inventory of what’s going on inside. And I would argue that that is a very feminine quality. Allow and reflect that can then lead to more attuned and aligned masculine action. You know, which, when you’re ready to go and do stuff, and I think that is really what’s out of balance for people right now is a real melding and integrating of both things, right? Isn’t just all go, go.
Chris Thide: Yeah.
Todd Jason: That’s why millions of people are burned out. We’ve all gotta start, especially in this day and age, Chris of AI coming on and AI is doing all this stuff. I mean, there is a lot of energy in the work career transition space of AI, AI, like everything’s AI right now.
Chris Thide: Yeah.
Todd Jason: I get it. Like a lot of movement everyone’s trying to capitalize on. We’re trying to figure it out. A lot of that. Think, and maybe I’m just crazy, but this is the best opportunity to take self inventory. To stop and reflect. Things are changing. Almost none of it is under your control, okay? You can’t control the way that the world is going.
You can’t. There’s very little that you can actually control. So learn to honor yourself and take inventory, and from there, I promise you that once you start integrating these practices. And you start tapping into that more quiet, feminine energy reflection, even if it’s hard at first, right? Even if it feels difficult and you’re journaling and it just like stuff’s coming out that you don’t like, that’s fine. Let it out. I promise you that the dividends of that are huge, and say that right now it’s more important than ever. People need to be integrating this, more, going out into nature, connecting with themselves. It might feel for some of you, that you can’t do that. You don’t have time. You need to figure out money, need to figure out all these things.
The pressure is immense, but the answers come in space. And I think the feminine understands space more than the masculine does. And that’s kind of one of reasons why I wanted to have this episode with you is to tear that apart a little bit because I think we need both. It’s not just one or the other. We need more integration, we need more alignment.
Chris Thide: Yeah. That’s beautiful, man. I think that’s, that’s spot on. And I feel like this idea of not having time, right? And I think the AI, stuff that’s going on really, really just leans into that where it’s like people are like, you know, you should be going to bed exhausted and sleeping for half an hour.
‘Cause like, if you’re not learning all the things, you’re, you’re losing ground. You’re losing ground. Then I’m like, uh, I can see that. But at the same time, what are we, what life are we trying to live here? Right? So I know that I have, and this might not be strictly masculine or feminine, but I have this corporate framework coded into me of where it’s 9:30 AM on a Tuesday, I don’t feel like I am allowed to be, you know, taking a nice walk in the woods or writing or like I should be like, typing away at the computer and, but you said it so well my man. It’s like just this idea of the growth and the learning and the solving actually comes in space when you’re able to give it space.
And I think that there’s a lot of people, and I’ve certainly been guilty of this much of my life. Who just wanna like, logic their way through the problem, like think their way, cognition just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And it really does a disservice to our intuition, you know, to our, our nervous systems, our body brains, which I think are actually way smarter than we give them credit for.
They know the answer. And then this is just sort of the computer that then can like execute the code to go do the thing. And so not strictly masculine feminine, but certainly it’s more thinking about that integration of our dual nature. Right. And I think that is something that, t o the original question you kind of posed Todd. I think we both find a lot of times that when we’re coaching people, I’d say a general factor we almost always encounter, is like a lack of awareness of the duality of their own nature or a lack of integration of the duality of their own nature.
And once you can get people to sort of be more whole, now they have this whole other sort of like toolkit that they can tap into to grow and to, you know, I won’t say solve their life’s problems ’cause that’s not really what it is, but it’s just like take on so much more and be so much more and like really kind of come into who they want to be.
Todd Jason: Right. I mean, people are talking about this AI revolution. I look at it differently, Chris, I think we’re actually at the cusp of the biggest human revolution that’s ever happened. Because AI is gonna come in and do a lot of things. We know that. I mean, things are gonna change and it is an opportunity for us to understand and tap into who we are as individuals.
Like it actually can help us wake up as people. Okay. And we are not computers. And so when you said, oh, like tapping into the logical cognitive part, the analytical part of our brain, which in our culture, most people just think that’s their only identity is just with that. Right?
Chris Thide: Yeah.
Todd Jason: W e also have emotions, we have intuition, we have physical bodies, like there’s other things, there’s other types of intelligence that we have. And we wanna be able to integrate this beautiful machinery that we have of thinking and cognition and analyzing things, but also putting it in its place. In a sense and saying, all right, this is something that we have access to, but it’s just a tool and just part of the whole of who I am. And realize that we’re not AI, like we are different than AI. Like it’s a different thing, and we are different. And let AI do what it does. It’s a computer program it’s gonna run and it’s gonna have rules and it’s gonna evolve in its own way that we’re also playing with it, of course.
But I think that the real revolution here is for human beings to really recapture that essence of who they are. Like we talk a lot about getting clarity on this show because getting clarity is really important. This is the time when we talk about allow and reflect. What I invite you to allow and reflect on is what do I really want to do?
I have this short life. It’s a blip in the freaking matrix. Okay? I only have X number of years left. You know, and yes, even for you longevity freaks out there that think we’re gonna put chips in and live forever, maybe, you know? But right now we don’t think that’s gonna happen. We have x amount of time left.
Okay. Me, I’m about halfway through. If I’m halfway through, I’m happy. I’m 53. That means I live to 106. That’s a pretty long life. But,
Chris Thide: We’ll take it.
Todd Jason: Maybe I’m more than halfway through. Okay. But that’s a finite time. And so, is short, and I know that it’s gonna go by faster and faster as I get older.
So I need to wake myself up every single day and get aligned to the things that are really important to me, and also align with the energy of excitement that there’s a lot that I can do. There’s infinite opportunities in front of me. If I would just use these practices of allow and reflect, tap into full capacity that I have as a human in my mind, not just the cognitive analytical, let me make money and profit from things. But also like asking these deeper questions, and I think that’s where the value of this process is, and this framework is. The opportunity is big for you because you actually could do a lot of different things right now if you would just use the full gamut of tools in front of you, which I believe this is.
Chris Thide: Absolutely, man. Well said. I will go maybe even a little bit further and say, I think in five years it’s gonna be more profitable to be a poet than a coder. Right. And I think that that’s, if we think about this traditional masculine, traditional feminine, you know, if we play our cards right as a society here, and there’s no guarantee of that, but if we do it right.
How many people who otherwise felt shunted into something that was what they were supposed to do or strictures of gender norms or society told them they, how many of those people are gonna be free to actually actualize the beautiful thing deep in their soul that they otherwise might have been scared of?
You know, if we kind of liberate ourselves from all the dutiful logical, tap, tap, tap computing stuff, and then now we can just be a fleet of poets out there or whatever it is that lights us up in our different ways. You know, I think somebody might listen to that and say, oh my god, this guy’s office rocker. That’s like so idealistic. And I’m like, well, we get to choose. We get to choose as a society. So like why would we not try to lean our way into that direction, or at least for ourselves individually, create that life. You know, and, and I’m going through this thing where I’m like, I’m in my midlife and I am tapping every day more into my creative expressive one could argue more feminine self.
And I don’t know. I’m freaking loving it. You know what I mean? Like, it’s incredible. this is such a great time in my life. I feel like so much more, myself. It’s like a wall is down, that was up in my twenties and thirties and it’s not really there anymore. So I just really want more people to have this experience.
I mean, in some way, Todd, this is like the whole point of this conversation and the work we do and the coaching and all the things we do. We want people to have this fuller experience of their life, whether it’s their career or whether it’s literally their whole life. I mean, I just love that I get such a charge outta even helping anybody even start to see the dimmest little light of possibility there.
Todd Jason: You just said, this is why we’re doing this. ’cause if you’re listening to this, and you’ve heard us before and you’re listening to this moment in the conversation, it’s because there’s something more for you. And you know it and you wanna know it, but there’s still doubt. And let’s go back and I wanna talk about the doubt because I want to apart what you just said oh, five years from now, it’s gonna be more profitable to be a poet than a coder. I mean, yes. Like even me, who believes it ooh, like how is that gonna work? You know? And I wanna break it down a minute because the question is always gonna come around to this. This is what people are thinking when they hear something like that. Like, oh, okay, that’s very pie in the sky.
And how is everyone gonna make money being a poet? Right? the way that money flows in this society and the way that economies work, it doesn’t make any sense that on the current trajectory, that that even seems like a possibility. Okay. And I’ve asked a lot of people this question. Right. We had Bill Gurley on the show, like a billionaire, like we were asking him these questions. I asked Bill Burnett this question from Designing Your Life, you know, at Stanford, like literally one of the top thinkers, he wrote a bestselling book, New York Times on Designing Your Life.
And you know, all these people, all these experts that we bring on this show say the same thing that, yeah, there’s probably some truth to what you’re saying and it doesn’t make sense to us right now because we can’t understand how economies and money and like culture is gonna shift to allow that to be. But what I believe Chris, is that things are just gonna change. Economies are gonna change. The nature of money is gonna change. Like this is how big of a shift we’re in right now. It is like a mind blowing shift and it’s okay because no one really knows where it’s going the answers and why we’re doing reinvention is because, we want you to look at yourself and ask yourself the questions, and focus your time and energy and efforts on understanding who you are and what you need to do. And focus on the things that you can’t control, which again is yourself and not all these things outside, like I get a smile, man, when I hear you saying, I’m waking up and I’m creative and I’m playing my guitar, and I’m doing my thing, and I’m more creative and I’m writing, and I’m speaking. Like you’re becoming a creator more and more every day. You know, I believe that the people who embrace that now will end up being the big winners later.
And I don’t know, we don’t know how that’s gonna play out or why it’s gonna play out, but that’s the seed here. That’s the energy. Push yourself to be creative. I just gotta say one thing that you did on a call our community yesterday when you said, there was somebody talking about how they wanna do these videos and they have this crazy sense of humor and they wanna go out and they want to film some stuff, and he immediately went to it, but I could never make money doing that. And you were interesting. Like, no, it’s not about making money on it, it’s about freeing yourself to express yourself creatively, which is a part of reinvention.
It isn’t everything, right? Because some people need to get a job and they need to make money. And we don’t want to just be completely pie in the sky. Like everything needs to be done with the rational mind as well. But this is a time to be exploring creatively. This is a time to be getting out there and you never know what’s gonna happen Chris.
You never know how it’s going to change.
Chris Thide: Oh. I think you’re, you know, you’re a thousand percent right on that, Todd, right? Where it’s like, I’m not necessarily saying if you’re gonna be creating more that that’s the way you’re going to make money, or that’s the way that you’re going to go from your desk job to playing guitar or whatever it might be.
But I am saying, and I’m saying this from like very direct experience that I’m living through, is that when you allow yourself to do those things, to express yourself in those ways, it opens up the doors all throughout your life, right? Because, I think we’re walking around so many of us maybe not even aware of how much we’re suppressing ourselves and like that’s a hell of a lot of effort.
That’s exhausting effort. It’s sort of squelching your essential being and when you can just like really get into that, again, tapping into the masculine and the feminine and all of it, and integrating the duality of your existence as a person and letting it all flow. You just get so much more energy to pursue, you know, it still can be accounting. You don’t have to be a guitarist, just like let that flow and be a fuller human and see what happens. I’m gonna tell you, even if you think, how is that gonna turn into better business results, think about what it’s all for. Your life is gonna be better, whether it turns into better business results or not, because you’re just not gonna be carrying that anchor.
And Todd, to bring it back to sort of the, the theme we talked about Mother’s Day, and we, and we talked about the feminine, energy we’re surrounded by and our respective families. I mean, I also think about as a father contributing to like raising kids and being a part of this, this family, all the work I’ve done and the growth I’ve had to like, be able to integrate the duality and this energy. It’s been, I think so beneficial for the others in my family, you know, for my daughters and my wife, and my mother and my sisters. And like the way I’m able to be there for them is so much more supportive than I think if I was just clinging to this antiquated, programmed notion of who I was and what I was supposed to do.
You know, on the Father’s Day episode, we’ll talk about maybe more of the role of the man and masculinity and all that stuff. But I really think the role of the man, for me, the way I see it, has evolved very greatly in the past five or 10 years to be much more supportive and warmth and, and holding as opposed to pushing and,
Todd Jason: And allowing
Chris Thide: Yeah, maybe, maybe the very definition of masculine and feminine, certainly gender roles, but energies, maybe even those definitions are becoming blended and antiquated. I think that’s a beautiful thing. And I think the more we just let it flow and the less we try to force it to be in these strict definitions and channels, that I think the better we’re gonna be just as a species.
Todd Jason: Yeah, man. I mean, and I just gotta hop on that, talked about my sister, I talked about my wife, and I’m gonna talk about my daughter. I’m gonna tell you a little story here. I’m getting a little personal today, but, but this goes to what you just said because, when you start becoming more of a whole person and you allow yourself to express your creativity and you know, to express all parts of yourself, the masculine, the feminine, and you’re just in it and you’re really trying to become a better person, it affects the other people in your life. Okay. And as a dad as well. My kid, my child, my daughter is eight years old and I picked her up from school yesterday and I could tell something was a little bit off. You know, she’s in the back, she’s looking funny. And then. Finally I asked her and, and she looked at me and she was really upset about something that happened in school, right?
Something that to her was like the most devastating thing like ever. And she started crying. And at first I was like making light of it. But then we came home and it continued and we went into the bedroom and I just said, I said, babe, like, tell me what’s going on. Tell me what happened. And I, I just allowed her, just to fully express and she was literally convulsing and hyperventilating, and I was rubbing her. It’s totally okay. It’s like totally okay. I just had such empathy for her because bringing a kid into the planet, you realize that being human is hard at times. We’re gonna go through it, and like watching, someone that you love unconditionally is this little person who doesn’t have a larger framework, like I do, like really go through her own pain. There’s nothing that you can do, but just allow that, you know, and tell her that it’s okay and just tell her that I got you. And like, no matter what, like, I’m here for you.
You know? And, that to me, it was such a beautiful moment between us, you know, that, this morning we got up and she had to go tell her teacher something and I went with her into the class, you know, and I actually missed an appointment ’cause this is more important, right? For me to go support her so that way she could tell her teacher what she needed to, to heal something. That is so much more important than how much money I’m making this month, to be honest.
Chris Thide: Yeah, yeah, of course.
Todd Jason: It’s a human thing, I’m helping shape her mind in a way that is more integrated, so that way she’ll be better than I was at that age. ‘Cause I wasn’t getting that type of support, not no knocking on my parents, but maybe just times have changed and were more you know, evolved at this point, but it’s like this is how we play it forward. So I think the reason why I’m sharing that is yes, like you wanna be growing and becoming a better person for yourself and you wanna achieve things and your life is short, but also do it for others.
Like you’re playing a game that impacts other people in ways that you probably aren’t even aware of. And so like love that part of it. Like you’re having an impact, you’re having an impact in everyone around you. Be the best version of yourself for those that you love, those that you touch, let go of your judgment. Let go of your attachment to who you think they need to be. There is so much pain in that and no one likes to feel that they’re being wrong or doing wrong, and we do that all the time. I do it to my wife, I do it to my daughter. I’m not sitting here enlightened. I do this. Let it go. And realize that all these people in your life are equally struggling, you know, like you are. And they don’t really know exactly what to do, just like you don’t. And let go of that and just start to have more deep empathy for their journey. And I think that starts to change your orientation as well. So it’s not just us, Chris, it’s how we interact with the world. That’s the big change. And I wanted to bring that in at the end of this episode
Chris Thide: I love that.
Todd Jason: I think that’s a very beautiful global feminine energy and message that we want to be able to get out there.
Chris Thide: Yeah. That’s beautiful man. I love that whole story yeah, you said it so well. Like what are we doing this whole thing for all this work that we’re doing, we’re doing it so we can be there for our eight year olds in those moments. Not so we can like be like, oh, I was gonna book a prospect if I had that appointment. And it’s like, what A mis-prioritization. Could you imagine if somebody tuned into this podcast and they were like, I just need help with my resume. And then they hear this episode and they’re like, what is going on? The authentic Trojan horse. I love that phrase. Let’s leave that as an Easter egg here for people who might wanna know what that is.
You know what’s awesome though? I made a joke about like, oh, what if you’re coming here and you’re expecting work on your resume, but. Yeah, this is it. All the stuff we’re talking about here, like this episode might be most to the core of what we actually are thinking about and working on because reinvention is not a career pivot.
Reinvention is not a lateral move to a different job. This is about, bringing out the best in your own life and being the person that you kind of always knew and maybe have been hiding from, that you always knew you could become. And so it’s way bigger than just, I don’t like my boss and I want a new job, or whatever it is. And we’re really getting into it. Season two, we are really digging into the bigger picture stuff.
Todd Jason: No man, I mean I love doing this with you. I mean, I excited for the Father’s Day episode that we’re going to record, because we’ll go more into that being dads and like what the responsibility is men in this world are. I mean, if you like what we’re talking about here, I mean we go deep as you see.
It’s not just, gotta redo my LinkedIn profile and I gotta like, you know, send those dms in a better way. Can you guys help me that, yeah we do some of that on here
Chris Thide: Yeah. Yeah.
Todd Jason: But our shared objective here is to help humans flourish, a lot of that is understanding who they are at the core and talking about tools and ideas that can help you just navigate this crazy life that we’re in. So that way you have the best shot of being happy and fulfilled and aligned with who you really are. And I think that’s why this conversation resonates for us because even as we’re talking I feel like I’m becoming a better person and I hope you’re along for the journey.
So definitely subscribe to our podcast here. Like follow us along. Like if you love this, share it with some friends. ‘Cause we love doing it and we just wanna do more of it. So with that, man, I feel complete. Thank you Chris, brother. It’s always a pleasure to be here man, and can’t wait for next time.
Chris Thide: Yeah and, hi mom. I love you. And uh, and hi. All the women in our life. We love you.
Todd Jason: Yeah. I love you mom up there. You know, I know you’re looking down, big love. Thanks guys.
