Author and former corporate executive Doug Earl Johnston joins Mairin Moore Cane on the Root, Realign, Rise™ Podcast to explore emotional literacy, decision-making, and the emotions beneath our leadership.

Doug is the author of Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart.

Drawing on nine years of multidisciplinary research, his “Emotionary” examines 272 emotions and emotional conditions through perspectives from psychology, philosophy, language, science, art, and spiritual traditions.

This conversation examines the distinction between an automatic emotional reaction and the response that follows and what greater awareness can help us notice before we act.

We explore:
• Emotional literacy and finding language for what we feel
• Emotions as protective responses
• Recognizing familiar emotional patterns
• How emotion influences communication and decisions under pressure
• Taking responsibility for behavior without blaming ourselves for every feeling
• Making room for both clear thinking and compassion

A question to take into your week:
What am I feeling and what response would reflect the person or leader I want to be?

CONNECT WITH DOUG
Learn about Doug’s work and find his book:
https://choosingemotions.com/

Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart
Published under D. Earl Johnston.

CONNECT WITH MAIRIN
Take the free leadership assessment:
https://form.jotform.com/261139523864057

Read Rooted, Not Rushed:
https://a.co/d/9fewKGc

Subscribe to the Leadership Journal newsletter and explore private advisory, speaking, and workshops:
https://mairinmoorecane.com

Social media:
@mairinmoorecane

Follow Root, Realign, Rise™ and share this conversation with someone exploring how to lead with greater awareness and responsibility.

This conversation is educational and does not replace individualized mental health care.

You don’t have to be whole to lead. Keep leading from where you are.

What happens when the career you’ve built no longer reflects what energizes you and how do you explore a different direction without abandoning your experience or responsibilities?

In this episode of the Root, Realign, Rise™ Podcast, Mairin Moore Cane welcomes author, speaker, and transportation leader Paul Comfort for a conversation about purpose, identity, fulfillment, and leadership.

Drawing on his experience across executive leadership and public service, Paul introduces his X Factor framework: the intersection of what you enjoy and what you do well.

Together, Mairin and Paul explore how experience prepares us to lead, why achievement and fulfillment can diverge, and how to approach your next chapter with intention.

Topics include:
• Recognizing the difference between professional success and personal fulfillment
• Exploring the connection between your strengths, interests, and purpose
• Building leadership confidence through learning and experience
• Reconsidering a role without dismissing everything you’ve built
• Taking practical steps toward greater alignment while honoring your responsibilities

A question to carry into your week:
Where are you using your abilities in a way that also brings you energy and meaning?

CONNECT WITH PAUL COMFORT
Explore his work:
https://paulcomfort.org/

Find Your X Factor: Follow Your Personal Treasure Map to Purpose:
https://www.findyourxfactor.ai/

CONTINUE YOUR OWN ROOT–REALIGN–RISE JOURNEY
Take Mairin’s leadership assessment:
https://form.jotform.com/261139523864057

Read Rooted, Not Rushed:
https://a.co/d/9fewKGc

Subscribe to the Leadership Letter and explore private advisory, speaking, and workshops:
https://mairinmoorecane.com

Connect with Mairin on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube:
@mairinmoorecane

Follow the Root, Realign, Rise™ Podcast and share this episode with someone reconsidering their direction.

You don’t have to be whole to lead. Keep leading from where you are.

They know what they want, understand what they should do, and may even have the strategy to get there. Yet they still procrastinate, overwork, second-guess themselves, or repeat patterns that conflict with the future they say they want.

In this episode of the Root, Realign, Rise™ Podcast, Mairin Moore Cane speaks with Dr. Joseph Drolshagen- mindset and performance expert, business strategist, author, speaker, and creator of the SMT Method™.

Together, they explore the knowing–doing gap: the space between what we consciously want and the subconscious conditioning that influences what we repeatedly do.

Dr. Joseph shares how growing up in a struggling blue-collar family influenced his definition of work and success, why he walked away from a multimillion-dollar opportunity at 22, and what missing his son’s first birthday taught him about inherited beliefs.

He also explains how those same patterns later appeared in his leadership, business growth, and response to disruption during COVID.

This conversation examines self-sabotage, fear, burnout, identity, sustainable ambition, and what it takes to build external success without sacrificing your health, relationships, or sense of self.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why information and strategy alone rarely create lasting change
• How subconscious conditioning affects leadership and decision-making
• The everyday behaviors that can signal self-sabotage
• Why high performers often respond to stalled growth by working harder
• How fear can prepare us rather than stop us
• What Dr. Joseph means by the knowing–doing gap
• How the SMT Method™ connects clarity, aligned action, and dynamic vision
• Why old patterns can return during disruption or uncertainty
• How leaders can pursue growth without being consumed by hustle
• The difference between achievement and fulfillment

EPISODE MINUTES:

00:00 Opening and show introduction
01:04 Why awareness alone does not create transformation
02:55 Joseph’s early conditioning and search for change
03:46 Turning down a multimillion-dollar opportunity
05:22 The cost of inherited definitions of success
07:03 From struggling salesperson to sales leader
08:44 Why capable people sabotage their own growth
10:05 How self-sabotage appears in everyday behavior
10:52 Stepping through fear instead of avoiding it
12:03 External blame and internal conditioning
13:10 Closing the knowing–doing gap
14:53 Can success become emotionally unsafe?
15:53 Why people stop before a breakthrough
18:14 Reframing failure through the car-wash story
19:42 Mairin on closing a business and choosing differently
21:28 The two points of clarity behind the SMT Method™
22:50 How the SMT Method™ works
26:15 How COVID reactivated Joseph’s old programming
27:20 Why burnout patterns can return
29:30 Creating growth without being consumed by hustle
31:00 Why overworking can hold a business back
32:20 Mairin on illness and permission to slow down
34:25 Scaling while taking more time away
35:02 From not wanting to live to experiencing joy
36:18 Fulfillment versus achievement
37:04 A practical challenge for changing repetitive patterns
38:17 Connect with Dr. Joseph
38:49 Closing reflections

CONNECT WITH DR. JOSEPH

Website: https://coachwithjoey.com

Schedule a conversation:
https://smtmethod.com/reg

CONNECT WITH MAIRIN

Website and Leadership Letter:
https://mairinmoorecane.com

Read Rooted, Not Rushed:
https://a.co/d/9fewKGc

Take the Leadership Clarity Assessment:
https://form.jotform.com/261139523864057

Connect on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, and LinkedIn:
@mairinmoorecane

Follow the Root, Realign, Rise™ Podcast so you never miss a conversation about the leader behind the leadership.

In this episode of the Root, Realign, Rise™ Podcast, Mairin Moore Cane sits down with Jon Michael Johnson- an award-winning sales professional, team leader, devoted father, and the first guest to join her in the new podcast studio.

This is not a conversation between two people who met after the transformation was complete.

Jon worked with Mairin and her family during some of the most unstable years of his life. She watched him struggle with addiction, leave, return, and try again. She also watched him become sober, rebuild trust, regain stability, purchase a home, develop into a successful leader, serve his community, and become the dependable father his children needed.

Jon’s story reveals that rebuilding requires more than promises. It requires repeated responsibility: telling the truth, accepting the consequences of past decisions, continuing to show up when others still have reasons to doubt you, and building patterns capable of sustaining a different life.

In this honest conversation, Jon and Mairin explore:

• What addiction and instability cost him
• Why lasting change required more than wanting a better life
• The role faith played in his recovery
• How he rebuilt trust after disappointing himself and others
• What fatherhood taught him about accountability
• The routines and standards that protect his sobriety today
• How rejection shaped his success in door-to-door sales
• The difference between raw talent and sustained excellence
• Why leadership is often revealed through ordinary responsibility
• What he hopes his children remember about the man he became

Jon’s past provides context. His present conduct provides the evidence.

His story is a reminder that your past can explain where you have been without deciding who you are responsible for becoming.

CONTENT NOTE

This episode includes a candid discussion of addiction, relapse, homelessness, family separation, and recovery.

CONNECT WITH JON MICHAEL JOHNSON

Instagram: @johnson.jonmichael
Organization: Holy Trinity Sales

CONNECT WITH MAIRIN

Website: https://mairinmoorecane.com
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Threads and LinkedIn: @mairinmoorecane

READ ROOTED, NOT RUSHED

https://a.co/d/9fewKGc

TAKE THE ASSESSMENT

Find what may be keeping you from moving forward right now:

https://form.jotform.com/261139523864057

JOIN ROOTED REFLECTIONS

Subscribe to Mairin’s newsletter for grounded perspectives on clarity, responsibility, resilience, and leading sustainably through real life:

https://mairinmoorecane.com

RECOVERY SUPPORT

If you or someone you love is struggling with substance use, free and confidential support and treatment referrals are available through the SAMHSA National Helpline.

Call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit:

https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/helplines/national-helpline
https://findtreatment.gov

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health, suicide, or substance-use crisis, call or text 988 in the United States.

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional medical, mental-health, or substance-use treatment.

In this first solo episode, I’m sharing the story behind the book, the woman I was when I wrote it, and what I understand differently now.

The book wasn’t written from the finish line. It was written while I was navigating illness, rebuilding my identity, reclaiming my voice, and questioning whether my life still held value when I could no longer measure it by productivity.

Even as I sat down to record this episode, I was still working through health challenges. This isn’t a story I’m sharing after everything has been neatly resolved. It is a real-time look at what it means to keep participating in your life and leadership while your body, identity, and direction are still changing.

I also share honestly about the uncertainty that followed the book, trying to understand how nearly three decades of leadership, writing, speaking, podcasting, and advising were meant to come together. I wasn’t starting over as a leader. I was learning how to carry established leadership into an unfamiliar form.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why being unfinished does not make you unqualified
• What illness taught me about identity, worth, and leadership
• The difference between movement and meaningful direction
• How Root, Realign, Rise™ evolved into a leadership framework
• Why Season Two will explore the leader behind the leadership
• What it means to retain authorship over your life while it is still unfolding

This is growth, live and in action and not a finished version of me performing after everything has been resolved.

You don’t have to be whole to lead. Leadership begins when you root yourself in truth, realign with what matters, and choose to rise with responsibility- right where you are.

Take the Leadership Assessment

Find out what may be keeping you from moving forward right now:

https://form.jotform.com/261139523864057

Read Rooted, Not Rushed

https://a.co/d/9fewKGc

——

Connect with Mairin Moore Cane

Website:
https://www.mairinmoorecane.com

Weekly Leadership Newsletter:
https://www.mairinmoorecane.com

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/mairinmoorecane

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mairinmoorecane

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@mairinmoorecane

——

Subscribe for More Leadership Conversations

If you’re navigating leadership pressure, identity shifts, difficult decisions, or seasons of transition, subscribe for weekly conversations that help you root in truth, realign with what matters, and rise with responsibility.

Every week, Mairin Moore Cane sits down with executives, entrepreneurs, authors, and thought leaders to explore what leadership really looks like behind the scenes—when the cameras are off and the hard decisions begin.

In this episode of the Root, Realign, Rise™ Podcast, Mairin Moore Cane sits down with Toni Will- TEDx speaker, executive leader, General Manager and Governor of the Kalamazoo Wings professional hockey team, founder of empowHER, host of the Women In… podcast, and author of the upcoming book Rebellious Success.

For years, Toni built a successful career leading in high-pressure, male-dominated industries. From the outside, everything looked successful. Internally, however, she realized she was living more from expectation than alignment.

Rather than waiting for a crisis, Toni made the intentional decision to remove alcohol from her life- because she had to, but because she wanted greater clarity, confidence, and self-trust.

That quiet decision transformed the way she leads.

Together, Mairin and Toni explore:

* Leading in high-pressure environments

* Why high performers often disconnect from themselves

* Confidence rooted in values instead of validation

* Leadership beyond performance

* Women leading in male-dominated industries

* Self-trust and intentional decision-making

* Sustainable leadership without burnout

* Why clarity changes everything

This isn’t a conversation about recovery.

It’s a conversation about leadership.

If you’ve ever questioned your identity beneath your achievements,

felt pressure to constantly perform, or sensed that success alone wasn’t creating fulfillment, this episode will challenge the way you think about leadership and yourself.

——-

Connect with Toni Will

Website:

https://www.toniwill.com

Resources:

https://www.toniwill.com/resources

Instagram:

@imtoniwill

LinkedIn:

Toni Lentini Will

——-

Connect with Mairin Moore Cane

Website:

https://www.mairinmoorecane.com

Weekly Leadership Newsletter:

https://www.mairinmoorecane.com

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/mairinmoorecane

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mairinmoorecane

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@mairinmoorecane

⸻

Subscribe for More Leadership Conversations

If you’re navigating leadership pressure, identity shifts, difficult decisions, or seasons of transition, subscribe for weekly conversations that help you root in truth, realign with what matters, and rise with responsibility.

Every week, Mairin Moore Cane sits down with executives, entrepreneurs, authors, and thought leaders to explore what leadership really looks like behind the scenes- when the cameras are off and the hard decisions begin.