Cultivating contentment and connection with Karen Mangia

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:00]:Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while and find yourself thinking, geez, I wish there was more good news, you can sign up for my newsletter. It's filled with my favorite products, recipes, tips and stories to help encourage you as you build your life of and the link is waiting for you in show notes. See you there.

Karen Mangia [00:00:18]:We are constantly chasing what I call vanity metrics instead of value metrics. It's more likes, it's more shares, it's more listeners of this podcast. It's more money, it's more space, it's more trips. Being able to choose contentment in each one of those moments is a really simple sounding concept and yet difficult to live out. And so I think, isn't that interesting that we think about building wealth in lots of other ways and really coming back to contentment and finding that and discovering that and choosing that serves you better than your 401K or the diet program that you're on or anything else?

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:01]:I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:04]:I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:07]:Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy and ever since, my husband J.R. and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you too. Im Tiffany Sauder and this is scared confident.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:43]:The conversation youre about to hear is between myself and Karen Mangia. Talk about somebody who lives a for real life of and she has experience working at like great big companies like Cisco and Salesforce and at and t. So like great big companies. She's a trained chef. No big deal. She's written five books, she's got her own podcast, and she's currently president and chief strategy officer of venture backed startup advising like b two b tech companies. So like wild. She has literally pressed into so many different areas of life.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:15]:I reached out to her because she just wrote this book called Sundays of Salvatore and she wrote it with her 100 year old grandfather. Amazing. And it is all about diving into how do you cultivate conversations, connection and community? And I know those of us with like families and trying to dive deep into relationships with our spouses. Like we are trying to figure out how do you do that? How do you cultivate conversation, connection, and community? So listen in as Karen and I talk about some of her tips from over a decade of Sunday dinners with her grandfather. The unique way that she wrote and put together this book, it's so very cool. And she shared some great resources at the end. For if you are wrestling fear as you're stepping into new projects, new ideas, new seasons of life, Karen has some, like, exceptional resources to help you get more clear about what is your fear, what is it saying and how do you uniquely get control over that? So listen in on my conversation with Karen. It was excellent.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:13]: I guess I just would love to start with this project of Sundays with Salvatore. What made you say this is an, and I'm going to add, like, this project is so special right now. What made it urgent enough to kind of do it right now?

Karen Mangia [00:05:35]:No regrets. That's been my theme ever since I discovered that my grandparents were relocating from Florida back to Indiana and they would be living within a very easy driving distance. I committed to myself that I would release other obligations to make room to spend time with them so that I would have no regrets about that chapter. And that became our Sunday dinner date, along with many other treasured traditions. And there was a real moment of truth in 2013 when my grandmother passed away, of whether or not we would continue this tradition, because you have to sit with the grief and the loss and that it's not going to be the same as it was before. And as time evolved. I had written four books already, and strangely enough, people would still say, when is your next book coming out? And I would always say, I have nothing left to say worth writing down in 35,000 to 65,000 words at this point. And then I started thinking one Sunday about all of the wisdom and the practical insights I've gleaned from my grandfather through the years and how much that gathering tradition every Sunday is a part of feeling connected and setting the cadence for the week.

Karen Mangia [00:07:05]:And I started thinking what would happen if I packaged him up and shared him with the world. And I started every Sunday posting on LinkedIn about our conversations and sharing a piece of his wisdom, sometimes sharing pictures of what we were eating. And what I noticed was people really gravitated toward a couple of things. First of all, he still lives on his own. He day trade stocks on his three iPads, smartwatch and two laptops. He plants a garden. He's vibrant, has a great appetite. He is what we would all want to be at 100, vivacious and fully engaged in life.

Karen Mangia [00:07:41]:And I also noticed that people would start sharing their own traditions or sharing about people they've missed and how it kept them alive. And also that people were gravitating toward this concept of an older, wiser person guiding us through these seemingly uncertain times. And so I started going through pictures with him and writing down favorite foods and building the outline for the book. And ultimately, what prompted me to really accelerate that was the opportunity to do this with him rather than about him. And the difference in that experience is when that box of draft books showed up on the doorstep and I knew what it was, I saved it to open it with him. And what I realized in that moment, I was so fully present with him in that moment. When we opened it, I thought the difference between regrets and no regrets is also kind of the difference between grief and gratitude. If I had waited until he had passed away and then thought, I should write all this down, when those books arrived and I open it up, inevitably there would be some grief in that moment.

Karen Mangia [00:08:49]:And the joy of experiencing his reaction to seeing the book and the subsequent ways people have engaged with him has made it all completely worthwhile.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:59]:That's so powerful. Karen, I want to dig a little bit into, like, how you've shared in some of your other books and places that you had a life event that made you pursue the pause. Those are my words. It sounds like these dinners with your grandfather and grandparents have been going on for decade plus, like this has been a long, long standing part of your life. How did you fight for the pause to even get into that routine? I think that we are allowing so many externalities to determine where our time is placed that we don't even understand the cost that we're paying and like being distracted and all over the place and not being rooted in some form of tradition. It usually looks like time around the table for our family, too. We have rich german heritage that can eat a bunch of sausage with the best of them. And you're sicilian.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:49]:I know food is a big part of your culture, too, but how did you force the pause into your life for this practice now? It's habit. But it wasn't first.

Karen Mangia [00:09:58]:Yes, and something I've discovered along the way is that we all have moments that will say, give us pause. Someone passes away, a relationship ends, you lose your job, you get passed over for promotion, whatever that looks like. We all have these moments where an inflection point is forced upon us, that we pause and we see our choices through a lens of knowing. What I know now, would I have done something differently? And something I've discovered is those pauses that are inflicted upon us, and in some cases, they're inevitable forces of life give us a feeling that we lack autonomy sometimes. And when those pauses are forced on us, we default, typically to the grand gesture, you overdo it to try to compensate for lost time or lost decisions, things you wish you would have done differently as a way to make up for the past. And what I've discovered is when I choose to pause and when I make intentional choices about my time, the opposite is true. It's very empowering when we choose our family, when we choose our health, when we choose no regrets, and that becomes the, and the thing we choose to add onto our schedule. It feels very empowering.

Karen Mangia [00:11:19]:Because what you're saying is, I am clear about my priorities, and I care enough about those priorities to make space for them. And what I've discovered is there's always something we want more than something else, right? Maybe you don't eat out for a month because what you value more is going on a trip for a weekend. There's always something we want more. And when we choose to make room for it, it is a very empowering experience, as opposed to when we're forced to make room for it, it's very disruptive and I think brings up a lot of more difficult emotions.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:50]:Yeah, I agree with you. I talk about in a, before my life event, I used to joke, I played life felt like a game of bumper cars where I would just like, go as fast as I could until I hit a wall, and then I would kind of like, put it back together and then I'd get back in and go again just as, like, hard as I could, just in a little different direction. Thinking hard and fast is the only way to do this well. And I started to get a sense of, oh, having really defined minimums that anchor me so that I'm not living in these extreme seasons of like glut and famine, everything from exercising to food, to time with my friends, to quality time with my husband, to my cleanliness of my house. Like, it was these extremes that were so exhausting. And I hear thread in what you're saying around that too, of like, look, we have to get to a place where all we're doing is managing the few choices we've made, what are our values and what are our priorities, and everything else is about managing to those things.

Karen Mangia [00:12:45]:One of the questions that helps me discern what moderation looks like is what is the biggest commitment that I can make and keep? And I think about that with nutrition. I've done the same thing we all have in some way, shape or form. And major medical certainly sent me through some aspect of, I'll call it extreme nutrition focus, extreme dietary changes. And I think to myself, what's the biggest commitment I can make and keep? Am I really going to be on fill in the brank diet or nutrition program for life? Could I really sustain that for life? Because what happens is when we make a commitment to ourselves and we break it, we stop trusting ourselves and our inner voice and our inner knowing, it threads those seeds of doubt of maybe I don't know what's best for me, or I hear a lot of the people I coach run the talk track of I'm failing as a human. I'm failing at adulting. I couldn't do this either. And so I think about that even when someone asks for something really worthwhile. Will you join our not for profit board? I think, is that a commitment that I can reasonably make and keep? And if I have any hesitation about that, I think, well, I'm not willing to make this a priority.

Karen Mangia [00:13:59]:I'm not willing to say no to something else, to say yes to this. And so I'd rather just say no and not set myself up for the bumper cars routine that you're talking about. Where now I'm over committed, now I'm over scheduled, now I'm resenting everyone that appears to have free time and enjoy their life because I'm so busy doing these worthwhile things. So what I've tried to do is pull that back a little bit sooner. You know, just interrupt my own desire to commit to what I feel like are worthwhile things that serve health or career or relationships or the community and really pause and consider that is this a commitment I can reasonably make and keep and still sustain these other things that are important? Health, relationships, well being.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:41]:Love that so much. Karen, let's get really practical inside of the book. Explain to listeners how the book is set up. I think it's such a creative way of honoring the physical and mental part of your grandfather and your experience together. So speak to how the book is set up. And then I'd love to just dig into a couple of examples as we're trying to create connection and conversation in our dinner tables with our families, connecting with our kids. I think, especially teenagers, we can feel like we're competing with the outside world a lot, but just love some practical ways to help me and my family and people who are listening to dig into that a little bit, too.

Karen Mangia [00:15:18]:The framing concept was inviting people to our Sunday dinner tradition virtually. And something I've discovered from my family, from also being a professionally trained chef and working in hospitality, is that there is something so nourishing about cooking and sharing a meal together and having a real device free conversation about something that matters. And I thought what would happen if I could theme the book around Sunday dinners, where all of this wisdom has been bequeathed to me through the years and is a treasured tradition. So the book is set up in 52 chapters. You really could have one chapter per week if you wish. And in each chapter, there's a story, a piece of wisdom from my grandfather, a conversation prompt to talk through and internalize and make his wisdom your own. And then one of our family recipes. And there's also lots of pictures as well.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:20]:Awesome. So do you have a few favorite conversation prompts or maybe ones that just had meaningful impact in your own life story as you have been unfolding your own life with your grandfather?

Karen Mangia [00:16:32]:One of the most prominent lessons I've learned from him, and I think is a key contributor to how and why he is living so healthy and well at age 100 and a half, is contentment is the most worthwhile wealth. And when I really think about that, when I think about what it means to be content, we live in a world that is all about more, more. We are constantly chasing what I call vanity metrics instead of value metrics. It's more likes, it's more shares, it's more listeners of this podcast. It's more money, it's more space, it's more trips, whatever. More friends, more obligations, more, more, more. Something that I've discovered about my grandfather is, you know, if you live to 100 years of age, you've outlived a lot of your family and all of your friends, most likely, and you and your body develop a different relationship. Things just aren't what they once were.

Karen Mangia [00:17:37]:And being able to choose contentment in each one of those moments. Back to our conversation earlier of moderate living. Not being too high when things are going well and not getting too low when things aren't is a really simple sounding concept and yet difficult to live out. And I observe that my grandfather never takes himself too seriously. Even now, when he's getting awards from the governor, he enjoys it for a moment. It doesn't fundamentally change anything about how he lives his life. He hasn't told anyone about it. And so I think, isn't that interesting that we think about building wealth in lots of other ways and really coming back to contentment and finding that and discovering that and choosing that serves you better than your 401K or the diet program that you're on or anything else?

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:27]:How do you practically activate that? Karen, I love to unpack this a little because in your professional life. You're a president. Like, you're running a business that has investors involved, I believe. And so there's expectations around that. In your past life, you had big sales jobs and great big companies. And so sometimes I feel like this tug of war between my own internal narrative and quest for peacefulness. And then the playbook of the sandbox I've decided to play in, which is business and achievement. And how do you walk that tightrope? And how do you still continue to push yourself into growth and new things, which does require tension sometimes to push into that, but also hang tight into contentment, which sometimes, to me, can.

Tiffany Sauder [00:19:23]:This picture in my head is like this rowboat in the middle of peaceful waters that's neither moving forward or backwards, but that's not like real light. Like, again, I'm not just, I'm not trying to like, dial down the point of the concept. I just want to hear how have you wrestled through this achievement world that you're in and the clarity and this, like, wisdom that this is really what life is about. This is where true longevity comes from, not just in body, but in life and vitality.

Karen Mangia [00:19:52]:It's a series of lessons and practical applications. I continued to learn the first principle that guides me when I think about what I choose to do, it's less about what I'm doing and how do I feel about what I'm doing. For example, I've worked in operations and sales enablement type roles. I mean, I can fill out a great template and put together a fantastic quarterly business review PowerPoint slide deck for your Google Slides, depending on your preference. I can do it. When I'm doing it, I'm miserable because I don't love to do it. It is not what I was put on planet Earth to do. There are other people doing that activity that love it.

Karen Mangia [00:20:37]:They are in their flow state and they feel like they're making a big impact and contribution. I feel like I'm trying to survive it, to get done so that I can get to the storytelling part where I share it with someone. So I pay a lot more attention now to how do I feel about the things I'm doing. Just because I could take a particular job, or I could join a particular board, or I could schedule a social get together with someone doesn't mean I necessarily should. I've dialed a lot more into how do the things I'm doing make me feel. Because I know when I'm under a book deadline and I love to write and I love to storytell, that feels very different to me. Yes, it's a push. Yes, it's time consuming.

Karen Mangia [00:21:14]:Yes, I pause other things to make room for it. Yes, it's always a crunch at the end. Even five books in, there's always something that surprises you. And yet I love it. I've done it five times because I love it. Even when it gets difficult, the effort and the outcome correlate for me, not just from what you produce, but from how I feel about what I'm producing and imagining the impact that hopefully it makes in the world. So the first thing is, I would say, tune into what you're feeling. The second is I think about what do I need to be okay regardless of the outcome.

Karen Mangia [00:21:52]:And I think about that and have thought about it through the years with promotions, with applying for jobs in personal relationships that maybe seem like they're a little bit tenuous or getting less healthy or bringing less joy. What do I need to be okay inside of this choice, this career, this relationship, if it goes the way I want or if it doesn't, can you.

Tiffany Sauder [00:22:18]:Give me like a really, really practical example of that? I'm trying to think of my own life. What do I need to be okay? How would that sound as you're like taking a scenario and speaking it out loud to me like it can be random or a real one in your life.

Karen Mangia [00:22:31]:I will give you a great example. In our world of business, we work with people every single day who are starting companies. They are startup founders, and we work with people who are innovators inside of organizations, meaning these are people who are wired into bringing their ideas to life. And part of my role in our organization is doing the consulting work to help them scan the market and identify their competitive advantage and put together their go to market playbook and figure out how they're going to position themselves and either go raise money, get their business case, and then ultimately the roadmap for this product that they're going to build. And sometimes in those conversations I will think to myself, I'm not certain this person has a viable business, and I will tell them that and they will make the decision to go forward. It could be very easy in those moments to feel a sense of ownership, of was the research good enough? Was I not convincing enough that maybe they need to do something differently? And so in those moments, what I think about in terms of what do I need so that I can be okay? Which is I have done my due diligence, I have left nothing important unsaid, and I've done it with kindness. You can't want something for someone else they don't want for themselves. So if someone has been fully, appropriately advised and they choose to move forward, that's not my choice.

Karen Mangia [00:23:53]:That is one example of sometimes we tend to take on ownership of other people's choices and feelings and lives, and that's not where the line is on that responsibility. If you've operated in an ethical and upright way.

Tiffany Sauder [00:24:09]:Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. So, one of the title of the podcast is called Scare confident. And so we talk a lot about fear around here. And as I look at your career and, like, the courage to step into writing five different books, and you have your own podcast, your keynote speaker, you're in more of a smaller organization today. You've worked at at and T and Cisco and these really massive engine of companies. Has fear ever been a loud voice to you, or have you always kind of had command over that in your journey?

Karen Mangia [00:24:42]:I can think of many milestone moments filled with fear. I'll start young. I'll start in university. I'm getting a minor in Spanish, and I decide I'm going to go live in Peru, South America, and volunteer with underprivileged people. I make it into the Miami airport where they're making the announcements in Spanish to board the plane. And I realize I don't think my Spanish is as great as I think it is. And now I'm getting on a plane to go live in a country where I can only speak to people in this language that I suddenly feel like maybe, I don't know, at the same level as I thought I did taking that conversational spanish class, for example. Naturally you have to proceed forward and get on the plane.

Karen Mangia [00:25:20]:It's, you know, you discover a lot, you learn a lot. You accidentally say yes to things because you don't really understand what you're committing to. That's okay. That's all part of the learning journey. That was one that was definitely a big, bold venturing into the unknown. For sure, career wise, there are several moments that come to mind. One would be a really significant and relatable one, probably, given the state of the world at the moment, is leading a big team of people and getting a 35% budget cut.

Tiffany Sauder [00:25:51]:Oh, wow.

Karen Mangia [00:25:52]:And the only way out of it I could picture was, we are going to have to let people go. And that was a terrifying thought. That, to me, was the mark of a very poor leader, and I wrestled with it. I put together a compelling business case and went back to my boss and pitched all the reasons why this would have negative implications to the business, given the work that was at stake. And he listened to the whole thing and said three words I will never forget. This changes nothing. And I was essentially out of a place of feeling, no other options. I shared what was happening with my team at that time.

Karen Mangia [00:26:26]:I was a leader of leadership, and we ended up together coming up with a plan to turn our cost center into a profit center that ultimately became fully self funding. That was a terrifying moment, though, to sit alone imagining these conversations with people who, through no fault of their own, were doing great work, were going to get caught up in a corporate machine. Definitely a fear filled moment. Also stepping into new types of roles. When youre an intrapreneur inside of a big company and you start something new and maybe you have part of the experience and not all of it, those have been some fear filled moments for sure. And then you go to work for a startup and every single day there's an opportunity to choose fear if you want to, which is why one of our core values as an organization is abundance. And really trying to lean into that abundance mindset of there are always more choices. And when I think about the founders that we work with, when I think about our own company on its own growth journey, as a founder, as a startup, as a scale up kind of company, the more you can release the fear, the better off you will be.

Karen Mangia [00:27:34]:Spending time even entertaining the thoughts of all the way something might not work absolutely does not serve you. And I think you realize that in a very fast paced motion, when you're in a small organization, in bigger organizations, you're a little more insulated from some of that, even if you don't realize it at the time.

Tiffany Sauder [00:27:50]:Yeah, totally. How do you release the fear? Is it going on a run? Is it saying it out loud? Is it journaling? How do you release it?

Karen Mangia [00:27:57]:I journal and I exercise. I've recently picked up weightlifting two days a week. So I pick everything up and put everything down. And yeah, so it's exercise, it's journaling. And also I became a positive intelligence certified coach. And what I love about the positive intelligence program is all the voices that live in all of our heads fall into ten categories. We all have some combination of the ten. And what I like about that positive intelligence body of work is you learn to recognize your own saboteurs that show up in those fear moments, and also strategies to intercept that and redirect it toward what they call your sage, which is the part of your brain that says, what other choices could this be? What's good about this.

Karen Mangia [00:28:45]:Will this matter 30 years from now? If I were to get curious about this situation, what would I see? Rewiring yourself to focus on other choices, other alternatives. The other one, too. I really like. If you've heard of Byron Katie, I love from her book, loving, what is her questions of, is that true? Right. So imagine your fear is you're going to get divorced. You think you're going to get divorced. Well, is that true? Is that absolutely true? How do I know that that is absolutely true? Who would you be without that story? And that last part is particularly powerful. Who would you be without that story? Because fear is often us projecting how we think the world will see us if something doesn't work out the way we think it should.

Tiffany Sauder [00:29:30]:Those are two places I want to dig in. Can you give me. You talked about the ten. What was the ten areas? What's that called again?

Karen Mangia [00:29:38]:Yeah, the ten saboteurs. The saboteur places.

Tiffany Sauder [00:29:40]:Can you, like, rip them off the top of your head?

Karen Mangia [00:29:42]:We all have the judge. We all judge ourselves, circumstances and others. Controller pleaser, restless, hyper vigilant, hyper rational. Stickler victim.

Tiffany Sauder [00:29:57]:I get the sense, yes. Oh, I'm so curious to dig into that a little bit, because it does start to give different colors of fear.

Karen Mangia [00:30:06]:It categorizes how your fear shows up. And there's a free online five minute assessment. If you just google positive intelligence, and it will say, take the saboteur assessment, it takes five minutes or less. I also have people do this with your spouse, significant other, with your children, because what you start to understand is how you potentially push someone else's buttons and activate their fear and their saboteurs. And what I also like is the pattern interrupt techniques that he teaches you, using your senses and your breath to reset yourself very quickly when you feel that you're starting to escalate. So the idea is, if you think about physical fitness and hiring a trainer, this is about improving your level of mental fitness. So you're just retraining your brain to more quickly default to it's bad, maybe it's good.

Tiffany Sauder [00:30:53]:What's good about this? My 15 year old is our oldest. Like all the classic firstborn, everything's poor thing, and congratulations. Like, both of those things together. But I had her take Patrick Lencioni's newer one. It's the unique. What is it called?

Karen Mangia [00:31:10]:I know what you're talking about. In fact, for three of my books at Wiley, he and I share the same senior editing team. So I just used it as my Pat Lencione six degrees of separation.

Tiffany Sauder [00:31:19]:You're a working genius. That's what it is. But that's awesome. I love his work. So working genius is what it's called. And she's very low in discernment and decision making. It's very painful for her because she wants life to be perfect and achievement. And so as you are going through those fear things, there's things that come up.

Tiffany Sauder [00:31:34]:The way that she behaves, that is, like, almost erratic when she's doing it. But I know it's this tension between options and decision that she, just like her 15 year old brain is melting. But this is the stretch of land where I have to teach her how to make decisions. That's what we have to do. Because I'm not going to be there. And this is a life skill, and you have got to find your toolkit. And I'm a high command mom, and so I can be very decisiony if I am not careful. So I'm so excited to dig into that.

Tiffany Sauder [00:32:06]:I think that will be a huge resource to help her see herself, help her understand what's happening. Cause it's usually physically that we feel it too first, and then, like, all this stuff comes spewing out of her face. If people are interested, Karen, in getting your book, where's the best place for them to pick it up? I wanna go through this with our family. We love conversation and food, so it'll be very fun.

Karen Mangia [00:32:28]:It is on Amazon. That is the best place to get the book.

Tiffany Sauder [00:32:32]:Awesome. And we'll provide links in show notes as well. Thank you, Karen, for joining me. It's like, it just feels warm for so much of your story to be informed by sitting still and listening to the wisdom of what was. I think we can look at life today and feel like it's all new, but it's not. So thanks for sharing your grandfather with us. Thanks for sharing some of your life wisdom with us as well.

Karen Mangia [00:32:57]:My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.

Tiffany Sauder [00:32:59]:Yeah, awesome.

Tiffany Sauder [00:33:01]:Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confidential. Until next time, keep telling fear. You will not decide what happens in my life.

Tiffany Sauder [00:33:10]:I will.

‍