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If you're old enough to remember when phones had cords and the only thing that went viral was a cold,  then you're in the right place.  Welcome to the Big Six-O with Kaylee Harris and Guy Rowlison.  Because who better to discuss life's second act than two people who still think mature is a type of cheese?

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Welcome to another edition of the Big Six. So and if you're new to the podcast, thank you for having a listen and to our regulars. Thank you for coming back. We hope that each episode makes you either laugh or cry or gives you something to think about. I'm Kayleigh Harris and on this journey with me is my primary school buddy, Guy Rawlison. Good day, Guy. How are you, Kayleigh? Good, good. Now navigating our age in 2025 can be challenging. So many things have changed.

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in our lives.  We've lived through the invention of computers and digital technology  with both playing such a large part in everyone's lives these days.  But I feel at 60 we will,  for me, speaking for myself, we'll never master technology the way our kids have because

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it evolves so quickly. So just when you get your head around your new iPhone, they bring out another one and you're too scared to get it because you think, oh my God, that means I've got to master that as well.  But our kids were born into a world with personal technology.  And I feel sometimes like our generation will only ever be playing catch up, which brings me to this week's topic and guest.  Now there's a common misconception that older adults can't learn new things, but it certainly doesn't diminish our curiosity. I don't think.

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William Degene has been working in education and learning in that field for 25 years.  He has a doctorate in education and two books on the subject and he is passionate about learning and so am I. So William joins us today.  William, welcome. Thank you so much for coming I'm glad to be here.  Now,  I just want to run this scenario past you. I started a new job 12 months ago that required me, I'm 61, and the job required me to learn a whole bunch of new computer programs.

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and protocols in a government role.  And it seriously took me 12 months to stop feeling completely overwhelmed  by this.  Now everyone says, oh, it's normal,  but at 60,  I feel more of a need to get my head around things just as quickly as the young people do.  Feeling,  you're very passionate about the whole overwhelm thing.  How common is is feeling overwhelmed?

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Well, I just, the third book just came out this week about, yeah, we're going to talk about that. Yeah. So, you know, we're in the era of overwhelm. So I think we need to talk about how real that is. Yeah. For everybody. Yeah. It's not just our generation. I everyone's. Do you think, am I right in comparing overwhelm to technology? Is that where we mostly overwhelmed or we overwhelmed in other areas of our lives as well? Well, overwhelm. I say we're in the era of overwhelm.

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So we're literally a new chapter. were talking earlier about knowing where we are. And if we know where we are, we may be able to know how to participate and not take it out on ourselves. So the overwhelm is the technology, the speed of everything happening. It's the fact that what happens on one side of the planet we know about instantly. We all know what's happening on the planet, which concerns us. We feel  collectively  very quickly when there's a war.

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when there's a disease, when there's an election,  there's less and less thinking time. Things are immediate. Things are, I mean, people can't even keep up with their emails.  And so we're in a completely different world.  And so we're operating  as if we're in an old world, but we're not. And so technology is part of that, but it's also the speed of things. It's the fact we're not together anymore. It's the fact that we need time to think.

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to see what's happening, to understand what's happening, to normalize where we're at and not make it about it. Like, oh, something's wrong with me. Nothing's really wrong with us. We're just experiencing this new era. So that's how I think You know what comes to my mind is the images that were broadcast around the world of 9-11 in real time. And we were all watching that. And to try and fathom that those buildings collapsed in real time and we were watching 2,000 people die.

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You never store. was a high school teacher when that happened.  So the Internet was really starting to. Well, it was just starting to permeate the culture today. It's it's completely permeated culture.  And I was  it was  I would get to work at six thirty in the morning. It was a high school teacher and I was driving to work. And on the news, they were talking about this plane. But I was half asleep, so I didn't think anything of it.  And got to work and we were all gathering. And the teachers started talking. It was happening. And I got online.

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This is the first time this ever happened and you could watch it. I mean, now it's like, and I kept watching it, not believing I thought it was a movie. couldn't, I couldn't process. was overwhelmed. I couldn't process what was happening, but I remember that day and I remember the kids and I remember there was a girl who we brought the kids under the sidebar, but we watched the building collapse. And one of the girls, I still remember her started laughing and I was like, but what it was, was  her emotions.

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didn't know to proc, we couldn't process what was happening. The difference now, and in that time, we had some time to process what was happening. We did, and I was living in the States at the time, we did have time to process it. We don't have time anymore. And I don't think we give ourselves time because you'd have to feel something. So sometimes the overwhelm allows us not to feel anything.

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And I won't harp on the 9-11. But I remember that night, I was working from home that night. It was late and I'm seeing it in real time. And it was almost too much information to digest. And I know you mentioned the book and we'll get into that a little bit later. But you do say in there that being overwhelmed is sometimes a good thing and sometimes it's needed in our lives. We need, I think the kind of overwhelm. Look, I'm 55 this year. You're talking about six, you know, the years, the sixties.

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I think what we're craving is the overwhelm. we  were talking earlier and my book launched Wednesday  and there was an emcee and there was somebody talking and I stood up to honor everybody and I got really emotional. I got overwhelmed. And I don't want to get emotional here. You know what the overwhelm was?

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I looked out to who was in the room.

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I could feel the generosity of who's in my life and it hit me.  It flooded my system so that my brain stopped and my heart took over. I think what we're craving now is that kind of  overwhelm. The overwhelm of hope, the overwhelm of kindness,  the overwhelm of community. I think in some ways we  only

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I feel like I only really got that later in life. You know, you're so gung-ho when you're younger, but then when you get to your fifties and your sixties and you start to appreciate and you've lived a life and you hopefully are grateful and gracious and you get, is that why older people get more emotional? Maybe that, maybe, maybe it's those, you know, we're talking earlier, the gift of the sixties might be the time where we start to get to reflect and it might overwhelm people too because

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If we haven't, and I don't mean any disrespect to anybody, if you haven't lived a congruent life that might come back to you, you might see where you're not congruent and start making little adjustments. So it might be a really important time of reflecting on where you're at and feeling overwhelmed in all different kinds of ways at this time. And then we don't know what to do with it. So this podcast is really exciting because probably I'm guessing people can gather here to think about what they're doing with it.

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And if they find they need to make some adjustments, maybe the podcast helps you think about where those adjustments might need to be. Right. But also to stop to be overwhelmed with gratitude with what's happened to. Maybe. your book is focused primarily on education, but it has much broader message, doesn't it? Can you explain to both of us and everyone listening,  what's the era of what you call overwhelm and what's causing it? Well, my doctorate is in education.

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I work primarily with schools, but we work with businesses running professional development training. So I started business and I've been in both countries. I've been in three different universities, la la la. And I was, I've been in more classrooms that you could possibly imagine. And about four years ago, I started noticing, I couldn't put my finger on it, but I just was like, something's changing. So I talked to the leaders and I kept saying, something's going on with you folks.

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And I said, I think you're actually just completely overwhelmed, but that sounds, it could sound like you don't, can't do your job. Like something's wrong with you. That's not what I meant. And they said to me, that's, that is true. That's what's happening. And there was, and they're flooded with strategies. They're, they're just flooded. They're inundated with information now, best practices, this, this, this. So there's more information than ever before, but that just floods people.

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And so my head started coming up and I was looking around with the businesses we worked with and then people in my life and I was saying, I think you're overwhelmed. And they're like, that's what's happening. And I started talking about we're in a new era.  I just call it the era of overwhelm where nobody can keep up. We're  flooded with information. This is a podcast. This is a podcast that think of the online courses, the emails you're getting,  Netflix.  You can't keep up. It's not possible.

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And people are dealing with that in different kinds of ways. Some get into very black or white thinking and afraid. They shut down. They don't believe in anything anymore. Some think they just work harder. And it's also our thinking time is going away. Like, I mean, deep wisdom, thinking, reflection time. So that's kind of the, that's the era we're in. In your book, you talk about the shadow beliefs that can emerge when overwhelm hits us. Can you explain a shadow belief? Yeah. the, um, look, I'm not expert in shadow beliefs, I'll

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describe it the way I think about it. Anything that we don't want to address about ourselves,  I call a shadow belief. So a way I think about it, this is an easy way for people to get it. It's like, I don't have kids, but mothers,  a shadow belief is I'm a bad mother. That's a very common shadow belief. And there's a lot of reasons why that shadow belief will come up. So it's any unrealized part of you that you like don't want to pay it. Like if it was in the New York Times and it said,

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Jenny is a bad mother, like whatever that is. And you're like, I don't want people to know that that's a shadow belief. So now you need the shadow. The shadow is a great gift because here's an example of the gift of the bad mother. You might find if you do work investigating the bad mother, you're like, yeah, I am a bad mother based on  what society says. I thank God I'm a bad mother. I would kill. I would be overwhelmed. I would not be living the life I live. So you need or the bad mother might help you.

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reflect on how you're doing and your values. So you need the bad mother. But what happens is when stress happens, all of your shadow beliefs of I'm a bad parent, I'm a bad partner, people are gonna find I'm a fraud, I'm alone, no one cares, whatever it is, is gonna come to the surface. And the way I think of a shadow is like, if you've got, how it's described, you've got beach balls and you're holding them underwater, it takes a lot of energy to do that. So those are the shadows. They're gonna come up.

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And I think maybe the 60s, maybe they start, maybe you've got time, they start emerging and you have time to investigate them. But some like famous people have sabotaged themselves because there's a scandal, sex scandal, drug, whatever it is, but it's really a shadow that's finally just come to the surface. So when overwhelm hits, what I notice is our shadow beliefs can emerge because we're under stress. So we need time to investigate what that stuff, I'm a bad teacher, I'm a bad leader.

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People are thinking I'm a fraud. So when it emerges, the role is to not think you are that, it's to investigate what that means and then give yourself. Why you think you are that. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times it's because, well, the shadow is such a gift. So if you could bring it up and then investigate it, it usually is the greatest. It's a great source of wisdom. Cause we don't do that, do we? We tend to sort of look at social media and think that's how we're supposed to be.

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and you don't feel like those people on social media who are successful and whatever, know,  so many followers, so much money, don't think of yourself as that. So you think, must be. So there, I'm not successful. Yeah. Yeah. There's a shadow. I'm not doing well. Right. Yeah. Like I'm,  but then if you investigate it, go, thank God I'm not like, you know, so, but I just would encourage people, lot of the shadow beliefs  rise during major transitions.

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I would assume in your sixties, cause transition's happening, I'm assuming,  I run a business, shadow beliefs come up all the time and I go, oh, that's interesting. So we just need to travel with them, but not think we are them. That's what I think.  We were talking before, we were talking about transitions and being in your sixties is a big transitional period. You're looking after probably older parents.  There's kids involved, there's technologies, there's professional decisions. There's a whole raft and that all comes under that  overwhelm.

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sort of period. What are things that those of us in our sixties or can smell it from there need to consider?  do men and women tackle this differently? That's such a great question. Okay. Let me think through this. So I'm 55.  This is really, I'm 55.

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What I'm, this is what I'm noticing. Let's see if I answer the question. If I don't bring me back, okay. We need enough. What's missing is we need enough time to know where we are.

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And so what I notice is I'm 55 this year. I took a week off last week on my own on the South Coast to get quiet to kind of see where I'm at. I feel something's dying off right now. Like in a good, I think like a good thing's dying off and something's emerging. I think it has to do the aging process. Nothing's dying, but so I, we have to give ourselves enough time to know where we are.

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piece about the men and women is I'm gonna speak for what this is gonna sound funny. I'm speaking for women right now. I don't mean it that way. I a lot of diversity work. A lot has put on women women in this culture. So I'm assuming how they're experiencing moving into their 60s shadows coming up expectations, the life they lived, whose life they lived, were they able to be congruent or they're not being able to be congruent. And then men, let's put on men.

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specifically straight white men, I would say, because it's a different game. That is time to reflect on if  they're reflecting on themselves in that way, what has emerged? Am I living a congruent life?  Whose values were I living? So I think it's a great opportunity. I don't know if I answered the question, but I'm thinking of this transition period that we go through that are really these rites of passage.  course.  And you've spoken internationally, culturally, is it different?

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overseas and say the US or the UK as well. mean, do we,  we should sort of revere our, our, our more elderly  people and, and gather information and all that. Is it different culturally as far as that whole overwhelmed thing?  Uh, there were, look, so I'm originally from the States, I've been here 20 years, right? So there was this woman, I was at a conference, she was an Aboriginal woman.

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And she, we sat down, she gave this talk and I was mesmerized by her. I'm thinking through it. So I sat down with her. She was part of the stolen generation. And I sat with her and I said, I don't know how you can still be so generous. Like I don't know where it comes from that you still are generous. I don't know if I'd be generous. And she said to me something to do with this, because this comes back to the cultural identities, all the power.

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She said, and if I mispronounce, I'm not speaking for Aboriginal people, this is what I heard her say. She made a comment and she said, eldership in our community is not by age. You apply for it. So the community might nominate you or you say, I wanna be elder, and then you start working towards it. So she had such meaning and purpose about, so the overwhelm,

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that she might have been under was in service of something. That was very powerful to me that she was working. She goes, it might take me 10 years. I've got some. I don't know if that answers the question. No, it does. But I always felt so honored her explained this to me and to work towards something in her 60s might take her 10 years to become an elder.

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as opposed to, and again, no disrespect, taking the cruise.  But that's so, I mean,  being the elder thing, it's  valued in some cultures and it's not, I don't think in Western culture as much anymore. think older people are not  valued. Would you agree? Yeah, I would. And we need them desperately. Yeah. We need them desperately. Cause you know what the elders do, which we were talking about earlier.  So  we're in this new era, call it the era of overwhelm. So we're flooded.

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We don't know where we are often. My grandmother, she's 98, but she's not really at much capacity now. But when she was in her 90s still, we would talk all the time, and she would locate me. Like she would tell me where I was. Oh, I remember my  50s. You're kind of at this stage now.  She would give me a  map. No, no, she would give me a compass, not a map. That's what it was.

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because I was in a different world than she was living, but the compass, she gave me a compass. So we need elders to help us with the compass. And then we need to be with them to know, to not feel so alone in this process. You're asking a great question. These are great questions. What about people we talk, just wanna stay on the cultural and identity side of things, people who have had to negotiate their identities.

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And that seems to be changing all the time around the world  on how we identify with different cultures and different  people's lives and the whole, you know, LGBTQ plus community.  None of us kind of know how to identify or seem to know how to be in this world. Do you have any thoughts on that? Well, think that to me, the question is,  if you're, this is how I,  so,

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If you're in  a minority position.  this whole idea of like... Is that subjective though? Well, it's power. Because you might, some  people might think you're in a minority, but you don't think you are.  So the way I describe, so my doctoral work is around identities, right? So the way I would describe identities is if you're having...

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Well, this is a whole nother podcast. This would be a really good podcast. This would be a really good podcast. OK, so I think if you're having to think about defend,  stand up for, deny, pretend it doesn't matter, educate, worry about. Your race, gender, sexual orientation, languages, age, abilities,  and you're doing that all the time. Your negotiate identity, you know it.

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Now some people have done it for so long, they'll say, oh, I don't have to do that. I'm not doing that. But they actually are.  So I think as you're moving through your 60s or you're trying to find where you are, if you're  in a minority position, you might need to find different stories because the general culture stories may not fit you. So let me give an example. Let's say you're a woman. I'm just making stuff up right now. Thinking out loud. You didn't have any kids.

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Maybe didn't want have kids. And the culture is talking about in your 60s,  these markers, and those aren't your markers. That can be very lonely. So the work then becomes to find yourself is finding the stories, finding your tribe.  But that takes energy and time to locate where you're at. Because if you're getting the story from the majority and you're not in that position and they're telling you about your life, that's very lonely.

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And then all of sudden you're in the minority. Yes. So you've got to find the stories of the other elder women who didn't have kids to find the power of who you are. I was at a conference once and the speaker was talking about the orphans. I always remember that she said the orphan archetype, you know, no disrespect can be very difficult if you're an orphan. But she said, you got to understand the archetype of the orphan in most literature.

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major powerful characters are orphans. Harry Potter was an orphan. And they come into Earth school as an orphan because if you're not in the tribe, you'll go on the adventure. And they usually have very big impact on the culture. But if you don't know that and you're an orphan, you might feel very alone. So the orphan's a very powerful archetype. But if the culture's talking about family all the time and this and this and you have

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chosen family or you went on your adventure, you might think something's wrong with you. But if you read about the orphans, you go,  oh, I'm a, there I am and I'm powerful and people need me. That's empowering. So I think we've got to find our stories and your podcast is probably helping people find their stories.  we getting better at it though?  I know you're 55. I don't know whether it's going to be an overwhelming thing to turn 60.  Do you need to stay focused?  What are some of the,  you know, the ways that

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you actually deal with things on a day to day, to week, just in life generally? Well, I'm overwhelmed all the time. But I'm overwhelmed because, well, let me say it differently. I'm overwhelmed because I'm trying to put stuff out in the world that I think will make a big difference for people. And that can be very isolating. So I've had to find my tribe of people who make it less isolating. But what I do throughout my whole life, sorry, I'm going hiccup.

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My whole life, what I've had to do is two separate things. One is I will retreat a lot. So I just spent a week on the South Coast on my own. I will go one year. I mean, this is super privileged. I had these miles, you know, like Qantas or whatever it was. I work was really difficult and I was really flat out overwhelmed. So I went to Bali.

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But this is privilege. Okay, so I'm saying, but I went there on my own. And I'm thinking, what am doing here? And but this is what I always do. So I was walking around town, I spent a lot and around the fifth day, I kind of could hear that I could hear rumblings. And the sixth day, I heard the truth. And the I just was this is the message. The message was, build the rest of the business. Don't worry about money. Don't compare yourself to anybody else. All day long. So I wrote that down, got on the back of the plane and went.

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This week at the end of the week it was like  I just could hear it.  I got to get quiet to hear. That's just how I've always done it. So I got to get really quiet. You can do that in community. I'll go on retreats. So there's a paradox that you can go deeper in yourself by being in community.  This week was  I just knew the last day you're doing what you're supposed to do. Let go of expectations. So what I do

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to, because it's an overwhelming time,  as much quiet as I can get, not to be,  not isolating myself, but to get quiet to hear. And in this era where we're on the phones and we're, you know,  we can stay distracted because we may not want to hear what we're going to hear. And so I've got to get quiet enough to do that. And I've done it and,  I went as on a retreat one time and I realized that the retreat

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It was pretty intense retreat, but I knew how deeply I went inside myself by being with other people. So I would just encourage people to find ways to get as quiet as possible. However, you're to do that to hear what the next step is, because it in the era of overwhelmed, we want the immediate. I do. I know I do. I do. I want the immediate. I want it. Tell me now. It does not work that way. It's so subtle. It's like for me, it's like.

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Oh, this is what it's like. You think you're in charge? No, no, no, no, no. We're in charge. We tell you. We'll let you know when. We'll tell you what you need to know. So I'm trying to just be a listener. I'm not talking religion. I'm just talking inside. I get quiet. So like I said, I noticed that 55 something's dying off. I can feel it. I can feel I'm moving into something. And so my job is just to get quiet enough to hear it. Trust it.

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and have really good people around me. That's really important that have good values. So I hope that answers the question. And that is important because  some of us can find that quiet time, but your mind doesn't always speak the truth about what's happening in your life, does it? And I found,  I call it the third voice. So let me see if I can remember how I say this. The first voice is always my brain. The second voice  is  a hunch. The third voice is the threat.

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And I get a,  the third voice takes longer to get to. But the third voice,  look, when I moved Australia, the reason I'm in Australia was I get, I won't tell the whole story, but I get this job offer. It made no sense. This has made no sense. I was in Australia. I was in San Diego. I get this job offer to work at Charles Sturt University in Albury. It made no sense. So I told the dean, this is what I want. You have to give me,  he said, yes, yes, yes, I'm like, this makes no sense.

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So I was  in my house.  I had the contract on my table and I said I need a month.  So my brain's like all the reasons why. The second, oh, it the second voice in my heart. I'm worried this isn't going to work out. Why would you this? The third voice was, was in my brain. was  on your death bed. You, there's a door that's opening here on your death bed. You would be very disappointed to have not seen what the door leads to. That was the third voice.

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That was the first voice. I've got a house, I've got a car, I've got, why would I leave my friends? Second voice. Oh my God, I'm afraid. I'm gonna be alone. Why would I move to a small town? Then the third voice was, I swear to God, what the third voice, third week. You would, on your deathbed, it wasn't intellectual, on my deathbed, I would be disappointed to not have taken the adventure. I signed the contract.

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And now I'm sitting with you folks. But I would never had if there wasn't quiet enough. And you know what it is also, if I was living off of people's expectations, what does a good son do? Good son stays.  What does a good person do? I need to take care of my,  if you're playing that role, I would never have left. So I had to be a bad son for a while, right? The bad son is,  fortunately I had parents going, go for it. You like, thank, you know, those types of people. But, so the third voice.

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That's served me very well. The first voice does not serve me well because my analyzes, cause that's the doctor of me. Second voice is, my God, what's going to happen? I'm afraid. Third voice emerges and it will say, it will, I mean, it sounds great. They'll say, trust me, take the next step. It'll be okay. Yeah. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be okay either. Cause it could be really hard. Yeah. But it will usually say, just take the next little step.

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And in the air of, what's gonna, is it gonna work out? Is it gonna be, you know, just take the next little step? I'm assuming this podcast is helping people take the next little step. Because they're gonna listen to people. And I'm just guessing, I can feel that they're gonna just listen. And they go, oh, that's the next little step. Just all it is a little step. And then the next little step. That's what you're offering to people, I bet. That's what I hope it's happening for people.

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Can I bring it back to  learning now?  Some people think that only children are young people are good at learning, the truth might be that  children are put into a situation every day in school,  all the way for the first 20 years of your life where you are in that environment. And you're also with people who are doing the same learning. So those relationships and those things are very, very strong at that stage. so there's this misconception that young people are better at learning than older people.

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I don't necessarily agree because  what older people bring to learning,  I don't think you stop learning till the day you die, or you shouldn't,  is the life experience that comes with that and being able to see learning in a different way.  What are your thoughts on that? Well, I've just,  absolutely.  Well, there's two pieces, I hope I can remember to say this. There's two pieces in the overall overwhelm or flooded.

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So the problem with being flooded is it's hard to learn when you're flooded. if the floodgates are open, it's very hard to, you can get information, but you're not necessarily learning. There's a big difference. I also wonder is as we get older, what we're really doing is unlearning. Sometimes, sometimes. So sometimes for us to ascend, what I mean by ascend is, I mean, look, it's my philosophy. think we're following this, I mean, it sounds.

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I just think there's this thread and you're supposed to follow the thread. That's your job. If you think you're following your parents thread or what society says you're going to get lost,  follow the thread. So to follow the thread in my  50s,  there are some things I have to unlearn because I don't need that anymore. So it's actually not serving me. So maybe in our 60s, some of it that's shedding, sometimes we're shedding because we have to unlearn. We don't need that anymore.

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They said, again, don't cite this research as moat, but the  adolescent brain, the reason adolescents, I was a high school teacher, sometimes acting weird and all that stuff, they used to call it brainwashing because what the brain was doing was doing a cleanse. And what it was doing was it was  getting rid of what it didn't need anymore. So the stuff they had from childhood that you didn't need to get ready for adulthood. So it's like in your early 20s, you really become an adult from the brain.

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So you're going through brainwashing. So that's what the kids will be like, who is this child? I a fan? What are they doing? They're driving me crazy. Well, it brainwashing because it was cleaning out. I think as we age, we have to sometimes also unlearn stuff because some things we don't need anymore. And then some things, it's the wisdom now. Now we're turning into not trying to take on the next webinar. We're moving into wisdom.

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sharing wisdom. And that's what I think that's partly the job as we get older is to be that's a great life  to be able to share wisdom. Wisdom is very different than my grandmother shared a lot of wisdom,  deep, deep wisdom. And then there was stuff she had to unlearn and I got to help her unlearn some of that stuff too. That wasn't  some of her shadows that weren't working anymore. Can you give us an example? Yeah, my grandmother's shadow. She won't mind me saying this.

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Her shadow was, I'm not smart.  And she'd say it all the time. And she had to drop out of high school very early because of the family and all that kind of stuff. And as a woman, the limitations on her as a woman. So her shadow belief that she took on is, she's not smart. Well, my grandmother is the most smartest. I won't swear. She is so smart. She's smart in different kinds of capital. But doorways were closed to her as a woman.

33:45

So she took on, she's not smart, but I spent my summers with, I mean, I think of it now, I talk about it all time, I spent my summers as a kid until I was 12, every summer in Upstate New York, near Niagara Falls. So she had this big farm, she had no hose, and we would water this garden, and we would cook, we would bottle, we would jar, we would, all the stuff these influencers are doing today is who she is, it's what I do because of her. She's so smart, this woman.

34:13

is one of the smartest women I know, but in the capital of this world we're in, where it was limited for her, her shadow was.  So I would, helping her unlearn that she wasn't smart to let her know how smart she is.  And that was really helpful to her, right? Does that answer that? Yeah, definitely. In an era of information technology and just an overload of, know, whether it's an influencer or whatever you're seeing on the internet.

34:42

Are we getting better  at problem solving and are we still emotionally growing to be able to deal with everything as we get older?

34:54

Well, here's the Debbie Downer part of me. Okay. So I'm just say if the, if, if information was making us smarter, the internet would have made this a much more kind, lovely, smart planet. And I think we're going the opposite.  And  this is a whole nother podcast, but what's, what starts happening in the era of overwhelm is we start stop paying attention to the beach and we look at a grain of sand. And so a lot of the stuff that's going on is a grain of sand rather than the beach. That's a great analogy.

35:23

And what a what wisdom is is we what? Kind of chokes me up some thinking about the book launch and what we were all talking about actually thinking out loud is that?

35:34

what we're desperate for is to talk about the beach, because the planet's not going to survive if we're just talking about grains of sand.  So a lot of the, here's a webinar, grain of sand. Here's a book, grain of sand.  And there's some that we need sand if we're working on the beach, but lot of what's happening is we're paying attention to smaller and smaller bits.  And what elders can tell us is there's a beach, there's a planet, there's a continent. So I think we're breaking down

36:04

information rather than going bigger of what we need to do. And I think we're desperate for the bigger. And I think part of the bigger is like, again, not to just keep propping you up, but what you all are doing is helping people. I'm assuming what you're doing is the 60s, you're saying, let's explore what we might be right now. And what I'm offering is if you're not in majority, all those stories may not help either, because it might make you feel even more alone.

36:33

So the more times you can hear from more people, you can kind of get your, but so we're desperate to talk about the beach and there is a beach, right? There's a beach and people go, oh, there's a beach. I don't feel crazy now. You know, I was in, I moved to Charles Sturt University, Aubrey, California, 35 million people. Aubrey was a hundred thousand people. I was in the moon. was like, what is this? And I loved the job. They were so great, but I was really lonely for a while. So,

37:02

I would drive to Melbourne a lot, listen to this podcast. And there was a woman and she was talking about, here's the beach. I'll give you an example of I'm listening to this podcast and she was talking about cocoon stages. We go through cocoon stages. Some people, you need a year. Some people need five years. They complain about cocoon stage, but you need the cocoon stage. And I was like, oh my God, Albrey is my cocoon stage. I knew it. I knew it. was like, no, but it was the greatest. And she said, if you're in cocoon, decorate it. Yeah.

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I needed the quiet of Albury in a way I cannot describe to you. once I knew that's what was happening, I was like, And then I remember one day going, I don't need the cocoon anymore. And it really birthed rest of this life I'm living now was that cocoon stage. So that's the beach. But a lot of times we just pay attention to the sand.

37:55

I want to talk about your book. You're all asking the best questions. Go ahead. Your latest book. It's called A New Way Forward for Schools, Advancing Teaching and Learning in the Era of Overwhelm. We've talked a lot about overwhelm. What is it about the book? Tell me what's in the book that you hope the main message is to get to people. Well, the Americanism, I say you say era. How do you say it? I say era. Era. Yeah, there's joke how I say I say era. Yeah, we say era. Yeah. Okay.

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I'm just saying if I'm saying it the way you say it, because they're always teasing me. I'm like, however the word  is. really what it's offering for schools  is for the leadership team to know where we're at. So that's where to say we're in a new era. Here's the beach now.  And when I would tell the leaders that we had to explain what the air what's happening. Oh, my gosh, that's what's happening. And now they feel normal and they feel less alone. And so then what it's what it's needing.

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is rather than what's happening in education, here's the education piece, is they're flooded and they're focusing on strategies, which is grains of sand, or the latest initiative, and they're chasing, chasing, chasing. So what we embed is a teaching or any mission, location, destination,  and a system, which is easy to know, which is the ship that doesn't change. And then when information comes to them, they can easily situate it. So they're meant to load drops.

39:19

So the goal of the book is to let leaders know here we are now. And if you're trying to do this for, like teaching learning, I hope get in trouble, but a lot of leaders will tell me that teaching learning is dropping off the radar of the school because they're so overwhelmed with all the grains of sand, they can't get to teaching and learning. It's not their fault. So this puts it where teaching learning is the top of the agenda, but in a way that doesn't overwhelm them anymore. And they can't, the old way doesn't apply anymore. You can't keep up.

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So you put this structure,  Margaret Wheatley calls it an island of sanity. You create an island, the leader holds a space, and when new information comes, they can situate it and not be overwhelmed. They oh, it fits here, it fits here. And they just keep getting better and better and better. And they feel empowered. Because I think partly, I don't know, you've had lots of guests here, but I think the  60s, or any time in your life when you don't know you are,  I think depression can sometimes not be,

40:19

It's you don't know where you're at You're lost or you don't know how to be where you are. What does that mean to you? What does that mean to you? How do I what just I don't know what 60 looks like? What am I how am I supposed to behave? How am I supposed to think? What does the society expect me to think that's and be and dress? Ah, that's really good. Just yeah, just from my perspective and you know, I wonder I don't know if it's true for you, But because we're moving so fast

40:48

We're supposed to know it tomorrow. And actually that might take 10 years to figure that out. But we haven't got the time, right? Because there's more stuff coming on. Yeah. So I find like the Bali initiative, the initiative, the Bali analogy. think it's a metaphor for me. I didn't hear it. I didn't hear the third voice until the sixth day. Yeah. It usually takes about a week.  It takes a week for me to start kind of hearing if you're in a new chapter, like how to dress, what feels right for that might take five years.

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So you gotta go, might take, and so maybe you need the, you know, there's a shadow belief. How about the light belief? This might take me five years you put on the wall or you have a new, even new belief. I'm going to stay open and curious. Or here's the other one. What is this time asking of me? That's a better, I think that's a better question for me. Cause I often, what I often now I go, okay, you're in charge, whoever you are. And my mom calls it the celestial planning committee  and she, that's what she calls it. I say,

41:49

I say, whoever you source, whatever it is, I go, just let me know what you want now. And what I find if I ask the right question, the answers start coming and the right people start coming too. So when I got, you it's still kind of, I feel it still now. I'm not going to get emotional. Wednesday. You know, Wednesday was for that book launch for me was I stood up, I had the script. It wasn't a say. It was all literal in my head.  I stood up  and.  What?

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You know what overwhelmed me? I'm thinking it now, sorry to say it right here, but what overwhelmed me were who was in the room? And they were the answers to all my questions for all these years. That's what it was. And I had to go through, I mean, thank God for Albury, that cocoon period taught me so much that quiet and how hard things have been and you

42:43

Earth school is not for the faint of heart.  if we're looking for comfort, know, find a new planet, that's not how this works. It's gonna crack you open on purpose. So why I got emotional was who was in that room  and how much support. I knew it, but until it's around the room.

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who's around me, who's, it's still hard right now, but who's around me, who's supporting me. That's a good lesson for all of us. Who's around you and what are they trying to teach you? William, I could talk to you all I could talk to you. This is amazing. You too, you two are incredible. Thank you so much for your time. We've run out of time, but the book again is called A New Way Forward for Schools Advancing, Teaching and Learning  in the Era.

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of Overwhelmed by William DeGene. William, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for what you're doing. Thanks for having me here. Thank you, William.  The views and opinions expressed on the Big Six are personal  and reflect those of the hosts and guests.  They do not represent the views or positions of any affiliated organizations  or companies.  This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice. Please consult with a qualified professional for guidance on any personal matters.

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And before we go,  let's give credit where credit is due.  Kayleigh Harris and I came up with all the genius content for this week's episode.  Our producer,  Nick Abood,  well he keeps the lights on and makes sure we don't accidentally upload a cat video instead of a podcast. thanks for keeping us on track, Nick.  Nick?  Nick?