Where the Road Bends (WTRB) is a newsletter and podcast by Steve Schlafman offering musings on personal evolution, life transitions, and conscious change. If you were forwarded this email and it resonates, get the next one delivered to your inbox:
Greetings from the heart of Stone Ridge, NY. My better half has been out of town this week, so my amazing mother swooped in to lend a helping hand with our little girls. Watching her care for and play with them is a gift I already treasure. I know that I’ll look back at this week with deep appreciation and gratitude.
You may have noticed that it's been a few weeks since my last issue, and there's a good reason for my silence. My creative energy and inspiration seemed to be dwindling, and I felt the need for a hard reset, especially with a potential book project on the horizon. The act of writing every day and publishing every week began to feel more like a chore than creative expression, prompting me to take a much needed and welcome break.
This decision opened up my mornings, providing the perfect chance to delve into new topics, write purely for my own enjoyment, and contemplate the type of book I want to share with the world. I’ve been exploring the wide intersection of change and self-identity, and have been looking at change through the lens of creative and natural processes. I’ve also used this time to get outside, go for long bike rides and walks, and contemplate these concepts. I feel like I’m back in college, and I can’t get enough of it.
It's been an energizing period of exploration and self-reflection, and I don’t plan to wind down this new mode, especially with summer on the horizon. I have far more questions and confusion than when I started, but several important philosophies and insights have begun to emerge from the spaciousness I’ve created. I don’t want to mess with anything right now, even if it means I halt publishing for a little while. Thankfully, the pressure to publish has dissipated, and I now have the freedom to let the creative process unfold organically.
Related to this, I have a strong sense that everyone, including myself, is overwhelmed with newsletters and podcasts these days. There’s just so much content, and there’s going to be far more on the horizon, especially with the explosion of AI tools. Rather than publishing every week, which is the playbook most creators leverage to grow the biggest audience, I’m feeling called to go deeper, slower and focus on quality rather than quantity. This might not make much business sense, but I don’t write to maximize growth and profits. I write to learn, to teach and to express, and I want to honor that. When you receive something from me I want you to know it was made with love, intention and patience.
Speaking of going deep, the eighth guest on Where the Road Bends is Dr. Susan Campbell, a psychologist and author of more than ten books, including Getting Real: Ten Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life; and From Triggered to Tranquil: How Self-Compassion and Mindful Presence Can Transform Relationship Conflicts and Heal Childhood Wounds. She’s a former professor at the University of Massachusetts who left academia in 1967 to build a new life in California and focus on her private practice, where she specialized in relationship dynamics. Dr. Campbell has been featured in Self, Men’s Health, Psychology Today, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Yoga Journal.
Susan’s body of work has put her at the forefront of Authentic Relating, which is the practice of cultivating genuine connection and deepening understanding of yourself and others through honest and empathetic communication. Her work centers on how to use honest, present-centered communication as a vehicle for personal healing, expanded self-awareness and deeper connections. For more than four decades, she has helped thousands of individuals, couples, leaders and coaches cultivate an empathetic wisdom that greatly enriches relationships with self and others.
We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, including:
Susan’s transition from academia to private practice
How Authentic Relating fosters discovery of our true nature
Navigating emotional pain, and learning to regulate our nervous system
Understanding and adapting personal control patterns
Trigger Work: uncomfortable reactions as a catalyst to whole-making
Using mindful awareness to alter old behavioral patterns
As you will soon discover, Dr. Campbell brings a remarkable depth of knowledge, experience, and wisdom to the table, offering valuable insights to help you become more aware of old patterns and have more compassion for yourself. This conversation is truly a treat.
To follow Susan’s work, you can learn more about her work on her website, follow her on Twitter at @drsusan99, or subscribe to her videos on YouTube.
Listen below or on Apple, Spotify, or Simplecast. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Campbell as much as I do.
🤔 For Contemplation
As I mentioned, I’ve been diving into the topic of identity, including how it forms, emerges and unfolds over time. I can’t think of a topic that’s more core to who we are as human beings. Identity is an intensely personal and complex concept that can mean different things to different people.
I believe identity is our sense of self, including our beliefs, values, and experiences. Even though identity can seem stable and fixed, it’s quite fluid, being continually shaped by a multitude of variables, including our family, profession, culture, interests, life stage, and experiences. In other words, identity formation is a lifelong and dynamic journey.
That’s why it’s important to reflect on who you are–and who you are becoming–from time to time. This week, I invite you to contemplate and explore what identity means to you:
What does identity mean to you?
How has your identity unfolded over the course of your life?
Perhaps write your thoughts in your journal or simply let them simmer in your mind. This exercise is not just about recalling your past selves, but also about gaining insights into who you are today and who you might become in the future.
If you feel called, hit "Reply" and share what insights you gleaned from this introspective journey. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers here. Every journey is different, and every insight valuable.
👥 Community Corner
Here are a few announcements from friends and readers in the WTRB community.
🌲 Depth In Nature Retreat
Brooks Baron, Founder of Starlight Leadership is hosting a “Depth In Nature Retreat” June 27th - 30th at Beyul Retreat, a gorgeous center outside of Aspen, Colorado. It’s for leaders who want to expand their consciousness and embody their soul’s unique creative genius. The retreat includes group coaching, beautiful mountain wilderness, nature-based Soulcraft practice, fire ceremony, and medicine journey work. Bonus: I'll be there as a participant, so we’ll get to spend quality time together if you feel called to join. There are a few spots left. Learn more here.
🧬 Aletheia Integral Unfoldment - Coach Training Level 1
If you’re an active coach or serious aspiring coach, Aletheia Coaching has opened applications for their next cohort. It kicks off on June 21st and applications are due on June 7th. I went through this nine-month program last year—it was phenomenal and transformed how I view the world. In fact, this approach and philosophy resonated so much that I’m now being coached by Steve March, Aletheia’s founder. You can learn more and request an application here.
If you’d like me to feature you in a future issue at no cost, don’t hesitate to reach out and tell me what you have going on. I love helping those in this community as long as it aligns with our focus of helping people navigate change and transition more consciously and compassionately.
🌱 Seeds of Change
Here are some things I’ve been pondering over the last few weeks. If any resonate, feel free to share them with those in your life.
🎭 The History of Shadow
Long-time readers know that I’m a fan boy of Ken Wilber—so much so that I have a variation of his AQAL Map permanently inked on my forearm. In this video, “Ken offers a stunning overview of the psychological shadow, emerging first in the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and then further unpacked by human potential pioneers like Stan Grof and Frtiz Perls. Ken describes several different kinds of shadow—projection, introjection, and retroflection—-and how each of these represents a particular breakdown in the subject/object relationship.” Watch on YouTube (48 minutes)
🧘♂️The Sense of Self
In my exploration of identity, I discovered the work of Galen Strawson, a notable British philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Texas. In this essay, Strawson explores the nature of self and identity, engaging with various theories and arguments related to the sense of self. He delivers a compelling argument that the “episodic self” is more accurate than the “narrative self,” because not everyone constructs narratives about their lives. Strawson also argues that the diachronic self, the idea that we have a continuous identity over time, is an illusion. Read on London Review of Books (20 minutes)
🪞The Self Delusion
I’m currently immersed in this fascinating book by Gregory Berns, a computational neuroscientist and psychiatrist, who deciphers the intricate process through which our brains construct and shape our sense of self-identity. His insights shed light on how our brains process sensory data, construct narratives, and subsequently cultivate our self-perception. According to Berns, “we don't just tell stories; we are the stories. Our self-identities are fleeting phenomena, continually reborn as our conscious minds receive, filter, or act on incoming information from the world and our memories.” Learn more on Goodreads
🌎 We, Me, Everybody
When I asked my pal and neighbor Holly Whitaker of Recovering for thought provoking resources on identity, she shared this excellent four-part series from The RobCast. It’s a deep dive into adult development, levels of consciousness and spiral dynamics. Even though I've studied these concepts over the years, I walked away with a new way to think about them particularly as it relates to self-identity. Listen on Spotify (1 hour, 15 minutes)
💓 Luke Burgis: The Power of Mimetic Desire
I’ve been exploring the work of my new internet friend Luke Burgis, author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life, which is one the best books I’ve read this year. In this interview with Shane Parrish of The Knowledge Project, Burgis “goes deep on how understanding mimetic desire can help you better connect the dots between where you are now, and where you want to go. In this excellent interview, he also “breaks down the theories behind mimetic desire and the teachings of René Girard, why all of our behaviors are imitative, why we desire things we don’t need, and why this all leads to missing out on aspects of life that are far more meaningful and valuable.” Listen on Spotify (2 hours, 13 minutes)
💌 Please Reach Out!
I started WTRB because I live to help high performers discover and manifest their next calling. I can't fulfill this mission alone nor do I want to.
Please don't hesitate to email or send me a DM on Twitter if you’d like to provide feedback, share a reflection, connect about coaching, or just say hi. I’d love to hear from you.
Be well,
Steve
Glad you are feeling like you are back in college again, Steve!
I really enjoy how personal and human your writing is. And this sentence was beautiful and captured it:
“When you receive something from me I want you to know it was made with love, intention and patience.”
Great stuff! Happy riding 🚲
I have such high respect for Susan, thankful that you shared this so more can be touched by her wisdom.