Stand Still with Jerry Colonna

Ellen Williams welcomes Jerry Colonna, CEO at Reboot.io.

Jerry shares his perspective on the importance of pausing, drawing from his personal experiences and insights from his books. He emphasizes the concept of standing still as a means of coping with challenges, particularly his own battle with depression. They discuss the cultural shift towards acknowledging the value of taking breaks and the historical significance of pausing in various wisdom traditions. Jerry also explains his approach to sabbaticals, viewing them as opportunities for exploration and rejuvenation rather than seeking specific outcomes. Throughout the conversation, they highlight the importance of creating space for reflection and relaxation, encouraging listeners to embrace the power of pressing pause in their own lives.

Transcript

Ellen: Welcome to time to press pause, a podcast for CEOs by CEOs. I'm your host, Ellen Williams, CEO of The Salient Strategist. And today I'm speaking with Jerry Colonna. Jerry is a leading executive coach who uses the skills he learned as a venture capitalist to help. Yours. He is a Co-founder and CEO of Reboot, the executive coaching and leadership development company, host of the Reboot podcast, and author of Reunion, Leadership and the Longing to Belong and Reboot, Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (both published by Harper Business). Previously, he was a partner at JP Morgan partners, the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase. Welcome, Jerry, it's so great to have you on today's episode. 

Jerry: Thanks, Ellen. It's great to be with you. 

Ellen: Excellent. So, Jerry and I have been chatting a little bit about his books and his approach to life and I'm really excited to hear your time to press pause story. 

Jerry: Well, I think that the best way to understand this for me, and I write a bit about this in my first book, Reboot, Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, I don't think of it as a time to press pause, I think of it as a time to stand still. And that line is really important to me because it's evocative of a very moving poem by David Wagner called Lost, the first line of which is “when you find yourself lost in the woods, stand still.” Standing still as a theme saved my life.  

Ellen: Wow!  

Jerry: When I was 38, I was a rock star, a superstar venture capitalist. I often likened myself to moving like the DC comic hero, the Flash. Just moving at the speed of light. Until my lifelong relationship with depression caught up to me. And it was a kind of collapse that was well beyond burnout. It was marked by suicidal ideation. Which was a serious issue because I had attempted suicide when I was 18, so there is a lifelong relationship with these feelings. And it would be too simplistic to say that the reason for the depression was moving at the speed of light. But the ability to actually withstand standing still was critical for me. And I just turned 60 just a few months ago. 

Ellen: Congratulations and happy birthday. 

Jerry: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am officially an elder now. Just sit up straight. I'll sit up straight and eat your vegetables. That's what I like to say. 

Ellen: We're in the same club. 

Jerry: But so we're talking about a time in some ways that began. Just shy of 30 years ago. 

Ellen: And that was a very different climate for this kind of conversation. 

Jerry: Ohh, I said. Yeah, I think. I paused because on the one hand, I agree. That today things have shifted, and perhaps it's more acceptable to talk about things. For example, I've been on Tim Ferriss's show twice. And the first time was to talk about my first book, Reboot 2019, but then I came back on the show. And this is relevant to what we're talking about here, because Tim sent me an e-mail and got an auto reply. And the response was, “Hey folks, I'm on sabbatical. As I do every year.” 

Ellen: OK. 

Jerry: And I take July and August off to stand still. Every single year. And Tim wrote back and said, “What the heck is that? Sabbatical.” And we recorded an episode. I think he broadcast it in December of 21. But I can't tell you the number of people who reached out to me and said sabbatical. Yearly. Or yearly pressing pause. 

Ellen: Right. 

Jerry: Well, that's crazy, but I think that the truth is, Ellen, people have been doing this forever. 

Ellen: Unless they're moving like the flash. 

Jerry: Well, I think what it is that. David Wagner wrote that poem decades ago. Thomas Merton would go into retreats. Every wisdom tradition I've ever encountered suggests the power of pausing. Every wisdom tradition teaches us that when you're lost in the woods, stand still. Don't keep moving, only to get further lost. I think the difference and I don't even know that we're so different now, I think what we're identifying is that there's this cyclical phenomena of where we as a society speed up, speed up, speed up, and then we crash. And someone comes along and says time to pause. 

Ellen: Yeah. 

Jerry: But really, what you're doing, Ellen, is just tapping into millennia old wisdom. You know, whether it's the desert fathers who would say, “Go off.” Or even the biblical story of Jesus going into the desert for 40 days. You know the the word sabbatical, which you responded to, its root meaning relates to Sabbath. Its root meaning relates to that which is holy. And the reason I go here is because I think that we do the pause and injustice. When we see it merely as an antidote to burnout. 

Ellen: Yeah. I'm definitely connected to that. I think it needs to happen way before you even gotten to feeling burnt out. 

Jerry: I want to bring it up, keep holy the Sabbath. The Sabbath occurs every week, right? Right. The challenge with seeing the pause as an antidote to burnout, which is so tempting, is that it puts it in the realm of one and done. Whereas what I think I'm suggesting, and I have a feeling you would violently agree, is that this actually should be built into our experience. You know my company, Reboot, which is a coaching company. We formed it 10 years ago. And when I sat down with my cofounders and we said, “Hey, kids, let's put on a show. Let's build a company.” The one criteria that I said I had to maintain was the 10-year the previously 10-year tradition of my taking off every July and August. 

Ellen: 10-year tradition? 

Jerry: Ohh, it's been 20 years now. 

Ellen: Right, but now it's an annual tradition. 

Jerry: No, no, no. I had been doing it annually for 10 years at that point. 

Ellen: I understand for 10 years. 

Jerry: Right. And so, people will say to me, “Well, OK, how have you been a CEO of a coaching company? How have you been a coach? How have you written two national best-selling books?” Because I pause. But what? See, when I go on sabbatical, I don't stop being Jerry. 

Ellen: Right. 

Jerry: I give myself space to explore, to energize, to like this summer. I have a camping van and my youngest son, and I are going to go take two weeks and we're just going to go into the woods and. You know, we're debating whether or not they bring Internet access with me because I have a satellite. 

Ellen: I was just gonna ask if you were gonna disconnect. But I love that you said not just time, but space. I think that's key. It really is the ability to press pause or take a sabbatical or take that step back however frequently you need to do so. It's not only time, it's space. It's allowing for that room, that breathing room. 

Jerry: Yeah. And I would, you know, if people were to ask, what would I advise? I'd say change your venue. 

Ellen: Right. 

Jerry: Yeah. Change your point of view. You know, I try to spend as much of the weekend not staring at a computer screen as possible. I have migrated back to physical hard copy books because the temptation to look away and look at the screen is just too great. Even with a Kindle, you know kind of thing. 

Ellen: Yeah, I'm a fan. I'm a fan of a of a hardcover book as well. 

Jerry: They smell good too. 

Ellen: They feel good. They I think they. They cause a pause. You know, you do have to step away from technology and other distractions in order. At least I do, to really focus and get what the writer is trying to communicate. 

Jerry: And as a writer, I will tell you that's exactly right from my point of view. 

Ellen: So your time to press pause story is do you have an actual outcome or a specific story about one of these sabbaticals where on the other side there was a revelation. 

Jerry: I don't approach the the sabbatical as wishing for a revelation at the time.  

Ellen: OK 

Jerry: I remember one time I went on a quest. And I went into the desert for two weeks and I spent four days on a water-only fast. And before going my Buddhist teacher, who was Chinese, said to me kind of shaking his head, “You Americans, you think you can order up a vision just by going on vacation.” And so I don't, I don't approach it in that way. 

Ellen: OK 

Jerry: The way I approach it is. Have you ever lain on your back and stared up the sky looking for shooting stars? 

Ellen: Yeah, sure. 

Jerry: OK, so the trick is to actually not focus. The trick is to relax your gaze so that your peripheral vision can catch the movement. And the way I approach to use your term, the pause or the sabbatical, is to relax my gaze and see what comes across my eyes. Sometimes it's resulted in books. Sometimes it's resulted in deeper relationships with friends and family. Sometimes it's resulted in commitments to my health and well-being. But every single time it's been like a such a surprising shooting star. But if you stare too hard at the sky looking for shooting stars, you'll miss them. So, to me, that relaxed gaze is the key for my sabbaticals. I wonder what's going to happen this year. 

Ellen: That's amazing. So, you understand the need to stand still, even if it's not driven by any specific thing. And open your mind to whatever comes from that experience to, I don't know, to work on moving forward. I mean something always comes out of it, right? Even though you're not necessarily looking for that specific thing? 

Jerry: That's right. I kind of drive my clients crazy because every May or June, I say, hey folks, just another awareness I'm taking July and August off and invariably at least one or two clients come in and say, “Sabbatical, great idea. I'd like to take a sabbatical. Do you think I should learn Portuguese?” I say, “I think you should do nothing!” 

Ellen: Right. 

Jerry: I think you should drop any attachment to a goal. I think you should just relax. Relax your gaze and see what arises. 

Ellen: Well, I was going to ask you if you had any advice but. You sort of. Got there already. Right? When just now talking about what you tell your clients and I think it's fascinating. Certainly, a different approach to pressing pause that I that I truly understand. And appreciate what you brought to the conversation. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. It's been. 

Jerry: Thank you. 

Ellen:  A pleasure listening to you and learning from you. 

Jerry:  Well, that's very, very sweet of you and kind and thank you for the work you're doing right now. I hope everybody. Learns to stand still and take a pause. 

Ellen: I do too. I think I've learned from the interviews I've done so far, the value that comes from it. Even though everyone seems to have a different approach as they go into it. And certainly you know yours, yours is as unique as anyone else's. I think what I've learned is I'm going to take, I'm going to press pause a lot more frequently than I used to. 

Jerry: There you go. You have permission. Let's put it that way. 

Ellen: Oh awesome. Now I feel now I'm old. That's perfect. Thanks so much, Jerry. 

Jerry: It was a pleasure, Ellen. Thanks for having me on the show 

Ellen: Thank you for listening to this episode of Time to Press Pause to learn more about Jerry Colonna. Go to reboot.io. To learn more about me, go to thesalientstrategist.com and be sure to join us again wherever you listen to your podcasts.