Join me as I chat with Jill Sherer Murray, an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, and communications expert. Jill shares how her obsession with TED Talks inspired her to give her own talk, "The Unstoppable Power of Letting Go," which now has millions of views. She opens up about how letting go of a long-term relationship helped her build a whole new chapter of her life, inspiring people everywhere to release what’s holding them back – and she shares her story with a wonderful sense of humor too.

We dive into the challenges of letting go, why it’s never easy, and how Jill’s personal process helps people break free from toxic relationships, dead-end jobs, and limiting beliefs. Jill explains that letting go isn’t about giving up—it’s about finding the courage to move on when you know you deserve better.

She also talks about the importance of relationships and how most of her big career moves came from random, real-life connections. Plus, Jill teases her upcoming novel, which explores love, family dynamics, and finding yourself in the middle of life.

This conversation is full of laughs, wisdom, and real talk about embracing change and betting on yourself.

Discover:

• Jill’s TED Talk, "The Unstoppable Power of Letting Go," shows how releasing what holds us back can lead to incredible personal growth.
• Letting go isn’t easy, but Jill’s process helps us break free from toxic relationships, unfulfilling jobs, and limiting beliefs.
• Moving forward requires courage; letting go is about making space for what we truly deserve.
• Jill’s biggest career moves happened through unexpected connections, highlighting the power of relationships in finding new opportunities.
• Letting go doesn’t mean giving up—it’s about detaching from what no longer serves us and choosing a better path

Connect with Jill

Email: jillsherermurray@gmail.com

Website: https://www.jillsherermurray.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jill.sherermurray

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

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

In appreciation for being here, I have some gifts for you:

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by taking the

3 Card Sampler – you won’t regret it.

AND … Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and be eligible for my

complimentary LinkedIn profile audit – I do one each month for a lucky

listener!

Connect with me:

http://JanicePorter.com

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

https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1

https://www.instagram.com/socjanice/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and

think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social

media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a note in

the comment section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can

subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcast review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and

greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple, which

exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute,

please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.

Jill, hello, hello and welcome. I am so

excited for my guest today, Jill sharer Murray, and she is

someone that I I met on a zoom call, but I just was drawn to to

talk to her, and so reached out on LinkedIn, and as I always do,

and it has gone from there, and I feel like she's my new best

friend. I'm so excited to have her on the show. Welcome. Jill,

well,

Jill Sherer Murray: and the feeling is mutual. So thrilled

to be here. So so happy that you did reach out on LinkedIn.

Always very tuned to those and judicious. You know about the

ones that we we pick up on, but I'm, I'm thrilled to be here

with you today.

Thank you. So a little bit about about you for

my audience, I'm just going to say a little bit, because what

drew me in even more was when I went to your LinkedIn profile, I

started to find out that you are a multi award winning author, a

journalist, a writer, communications expert, and a

TEDx speaker. Now, I'd never wanted to be a TEDx speaker, but

I helped organize a TEDx conference once, and I know how

much goes into it, and even more, what goes into being a

TEDx speaker. So I went and found your TEDx speech called

Let Go for it, which is now the name of your business as well, I

know, and it's a lifestyle brand aimed at improving people's

situation through the simple mantra of letting go. And your

TEDx speech the unstoppable power of letting go. I know it

was a few years ago now that you did it millions of views, and it

talks about your journey of letting go. And I wanted to be,

I know I'm talking too much, but I just, I wanted to say, no, no,

no, is that so much came out in just listening to your speech,

because when it's personal, it's a personal story. Two, you have

such a great sense of humor, and then I find out that you did

some comedic training. So all of that came together to do a very

entertaining, empathetic, or empathic speech. So talk to me

about your journey to do that first, because I'm curious what

made you want to do that? Oh, the speech, yeah.

Jill Sherer Murray: So back at that time, I was, I was just, I

was so fascinated by Ted. I I just remember I would sit on I

would sit on the sofa. I would sit out back, or when I had any

free time, and I would just watch one video after the next.

Like I would start, I would click on one, I would scroll and

I thought, Oh, this is so fascinating. And then without

doing anything else, they would just start rolling into each

other. And I would think to myself, what an amazing time to

be able to have access to all of these brilliant human beings

talking about such fascinating things. And just like, I mean,

if you think about it, you know, up until then, really, nobody

was doing anything like that. And it was just very like, I was

just, I was fascinated. I remember watching one talk some

guy was doing, like he he filmed like one second of every day of

his life for like 10 years, and then he did a talk about how

meaningful one second was. And I thought, my God, that is so

creative and inventive and powerful. So I loved Ted, and I

thought, well, I want to give a TED talk. I want to do this.

And, you know, I'm a writer. I've always been a writer. I

I've always been speaking in some fashion, whether it's on a

stage or in business or in a client meeting or whatever. And

I just, I kind of put that on my list, like I want to give a TED

talk. And then somebody that I loved died, and it affected me

really deeply. I didn't expect it. I didn't know what to do

with it, and I thought, you know, we spend so much time

spinning around on such tiny little things that don't mean

anything, and this is how our lives just pass us by. We don't

have time. We need to let go of those little things so that we

can really enjoy being here and be in the present and all those

things. And I sort of built a platform around it. And I wound

up, it's funny, I worked with a I worked with a coach to help me

kind of figure out what what the talk was going to be about. And

I remember we had gone through the process and the talk was

done, and she sent me an email and she said, Well, there's a

talk happening in Wilmington, but the application is tomorrow.

Have to have it in by tomorrow. So Friday. And I remember my

husband and I were going up to New York City for the night to

be with friends, and I thought, tomorrow, and an application for

a TEDx event is not like name, address, phone number. It's, you

know, name, address, phone number, and why are you. You

different than everybody else in the free world. And how about a

little video? And why don't you get up and show me your two step

like it's a whole thing, right? We're saying to my husband,

there's no way I could do this. There's no way by tomorrow, we

have to leave it go up in the city. And I remember he looked

at me. He's like, What happened to what did you do with my wife?

Where is she? We got in the car. We drove up to New York. I spun

myself out. I slept the whole way. We went out with our

friends, came back to the hotel room. By midnight, one o'clock,

he went to bed, and I got to work. And by the time I got up

in the morning and I had filmed a video, my little Microsoft Pro

on the Bible in the hotel room, looking up my nostril, bent it

off, I said, That's it. We're done. Get up. It's 730 I'm done.

We're going to go eat and we're going to go shop. That's how

it's going to roll now, because I deserve it.

Yeah,

Jill Sherer Murray: and and then they picked me, okay, invited me

to an event, and I was so thrilled. It was a TEDx

Wilmington, Delaware. It was a it was a beautiful event. 25

women on a big theater stage, the main, one of the main

theaters in in Wilmington, several 100 people in the

audience. I had a terrific organizer. He kept us all very

on track lots of things. You know, when, if you have a good

organizer, when you give a TEDx, I mean, you you have to be on

track. So like, one week they're asking for an outline. The next

week they'll they want to see a first draft. The next week. They

want to see a video of you performing like they want to

make sure that you're not going to get on that stage and melt

down or do anything that is going to be, you know, not just

harmful to them as a as an experience, but like it's to

you. You know, you've worked very hard to get up there on

that stage and present this idea. And it was just such a

tremendous experience. I'm so grateful for it, actually every

day. I mean, not only was it incredible, and is it still

amazing to me that almost 6 million people and counting have

watched my talk.

So let me just interject here a little bit in

that this, I think one of the reasons is that this is a topic

that so many women can relate to. It's about that toxic

relationship that you hang on to forever because you love the

person, but you deserve way better than the way you're being

treated. Is basically, I think, what what you were talking

about, right? And then to coefficient that you know you

need to get out of this thing. And

Jill Sherer Murray: you know, what's interesting is that my

talk was really not supposed to be about that necessarily. It

was really about supposed to be more of a holistic talk about

letting go, okay, but I started with a story, and I chose a

story that, to your point is so was so incredibly resonant for

every single human being on this planet, yeah, which was like

such a happy accident on my part, in some ways, that it's

trying to think of a very impactful story of a time in my

life when I let go of something that was so hard to let go of.

And,

yeah, but you told it really well, as well

with such great humor. And, you know, the, you know, the fact

that you, you know, he was a great, I forget some of the

terms, but he was a great boyfriend, maybe, or, you know,

like you're, you're coming right, great as well in in

thing. But yeah, you everyone's got one of those daggers that

they think they deserve more. They finally, well, no, they

don't all come to that realization, unfortunately. But

you know, when you do, it's such a letting go. It's such a relief

that you can see the forest for the trees now you couldn't

before, and it's really

Jill Sherer Murray: like that was a story about a long term

love. You know somebody that I'd been with for 12 years, which is

a very long time to date someone if you're interested in being

married, if you're not, it's totally fine. No one right way

to be but, we don't just linger where we don't just linger too

long in relationships. I mean, we linger too long in jobs. We

linger too long in friendships. We linger too long, you know, in

personal habits that aren't serving us like I think, I think

that was such a big, such a big experience that I heard from

people from all over the world, especially young women. I heard

from a lot of very which, which surprised me a little bit, in

the sense that, you know, I am not in my 20s, right? And, but

hasn't, yeah, but I, I was really happy to hear from these

young women in the sense that I felt that I had something to

offer them that could potentially change their lives

in a meaningful way

sooner than it happened for you. So they That's

right, that's right,

Jill Sherer Murray: yeah, like in time for things, in time to

if they wanted to have families, if. They want just to not, not

make so many hard mistakes that were painful and have to learn

the hard way that, you know, as we get older. I mean, certainly

we can do a lot of things, but it's a fact of, you know,

reality that as we get older, something stopped being

available to us, and so to be able to kind of get to young

women early in that stage, where they can potentially make better

choices for themselves, or see some of the blind spots that

maybe they had to reverse some of the things that you know,

that they learned about themselves that gave them some

limiting beliefs that were never going to serve them to really

even stop and say, Wait a minute. Maybe that's not right.

Maybe I need to think about this in a different way. And that

felt, that felt really wonderful to me. And it was interesting,

because I also heard from some men, which I loved so much,

because the the person in in the in the relationship, his name

was Hector, who I stayed with, who made all the promises, and

was a wonderful person. Did not do that in any kind of malicious

way, but some of them came to me and said, Oh, my God, I'm

Hector. Ah,

oh, wow. And was it a fear of commitment, or was

it just that they didn't know? Okay,

Jill Sherer Murray: they didn't know, and they didn't realize.

They didn't realize the impact their actions had on another

person's life, on their partner's life. And I just, you

know, a lot of men did not like what I had to say, the ones who

because I was trying to empower people, not just women, people

to recognize their own self worth and to make decisions

based on that. But when I would get those notes and from people

saying, oh my gosh, I'm Hector, what do I do now? I I just

wanted to put my arms around them, yeah, say, well, first of

all, I mean, be so incredible, right? Like, like, what it what

a revelation for you to and to be willing to acknowledge it is

so big. And you know, that's the beginning of change. So, so I

love that. I love that.

So, at the time that you did this, you were

working in corporate, yes, you

Jill Sherer Murray: at the time I've done anything jealous.

Okay, so you've been in that, that corporate

water wheel, whatever, it's all right, no, and you did this for

yourself, and you for this experience for yourself. Did was

it a catalyst to you start to start to think of doing

something other than corporate, or were you also, had you been

an author yet, like I know you've then you then wrote this

book called Big, wild love, the unstoppable power of letting go,

which I think came after the TED Talk. Correct, correct.

Jill Sherer Murray: Yep, yep.

Okay, so

Jill Sherer Murray: it's, it's so interesting because when I

was in my corporate job and worked with somebody who had an

interesting relationship with and at one point, you know, we

were kind of talking about who and what we wanted to be. And I

remember saying to her, Well, you know, I, I was running a

communications practice for a large company, and I remember

saying, well, someday I'd like to give a TED talk and write a

book. And I remember her saying to me, Well, you're very far

from that, aren't you. And I remember thinking, first I

thought, well, that's not very nice. And now I want to thank

her,

because she challenged you because right,

Jill Sherer Murray: because she was right, you know, she was

right. And so after I gave that talk and it started to get some

traction, I thought, okay, you know, this is, this is a

catalyst for me, really thinking about, sort of what comes next

for me. Maybe there is another chapter that is here and and

then an agent approached me about a book, which was very

natural for me. I've been a writer my whole life, so I have,

you know, I have had books with agents before that couldn't

sell. I have a couple books in a drawer. Probably have a couple

books under some old shoes somewhere. So I was thrilled.

Um, so, yeah, so I did think, Okay, I'm going to take this big

leap and see where it leads me, which I did. I did leave my job,

okay? And then my book was supposed to come out, and I was

supposed to have a book tour may 2020, and that's when the world

shut down, right? Okay, yeah, yeah.

So what happened for you then,

Jill Sherer Murray: Oh, let's see. After I well, I had a

canceled book tour, many canceled opportunities, no job,

a beautiful new book. And so after I ate lots of cookies and

pride in the bathroom, decided that it was time to get some new

solutions. And so I started my own business, and I. Consulting

and doing freelancing and doing a lot of, you know, online

virtual stuff, which I do not love. I was starting to, yeah, I

wanted to become a speaker, and all of the speaking

opportunities were really all online at that point. And then I

thought, okay, we're just gonna pivot here. And I think, like

everybody else in the world, Janice, I was like, just do your

best, you know, do the best you can to adjust to the world's

changing. And here's where we are. And, you know, find the

opportunities where you can find them make a living, you know, so

you

do that. And you said something to me earlier as

well about, and this might have been before we went on, on, on

live conversation here, but we were talking about some of the

things you're thinking are open to in the future, maybe going

back into a job, job, maybe, you know, doing it in a different

way, whatever. But you said something to me that really hit

home for me, and that was that you were talking to someone you

knew who thought there might be a job for you where she works.

And for me, that is always the way it is. It's about

relationships. And how do you work those relationships? And I

don't mean that in a negative way, but how do you leverage

those relationships to help you move forward? Because it's

always been for me, not what you know, but who you know, and you

know that's a new job by just sending out resumes is never and

I know telling my daughter that for a long time because she

doesn't like to talk to people. That's the way she ends up

getting a job in the first place, right? Is somebody else?

Well, you

Jill Sherer Murray: know, and you know it's that's the thing.

And I You're right, Janice, because I will tell you any I

don't even want to call it a job, any opportunity that has

come my way has come my way through other people when I have

not been looking for it. So for example, when I was working for

a large corporation building this communications practice,

prior to having that job, I had just moved into a new

neighborhood. I was newly married, I didn't know anybody I

was freelancing. I was getting antsy. I was interested in a

job. I had no idea what I was going to do, and so I did what

anybody in their right mind would do in this situation, is I

went and I got a manicure, and I'm sitting at the manicure,

getting a pedicure, and there's a girl sitting next to me, a

woman sitting next to me, and she looks very familiar to me.

And as you can tell, I'm super shy, so I started to have a

conversation with her. And the long and short of it is, hey, we

need a writer. Hey, I'm looking for a gig. Hey, let me bring you

in. Hey, Bing, bam, boom, higher trader, newsletter letter. Wound

up becoming director of marketing and communications,

communications Practice Leader, building a practice inside of

communications firm through someone I did not even know, but

because we had such a and who was still a very dear friend to

this day. And it's like look back at so many of the

opportunities. I remember moving to Chicago after I got my

graduate degree because I always wanted to live in Chicago. I got

my graduate degree in Boston, and I remember I didn't know

anyone in Chicago. I moved there without a friend or a job, and I

remember going to a pier one import store because I was so

I'd been there for a couple weeks. I couldn't find a job. I

was so sad. I didn't know where I lived. My friends were far

away. I didn't know what I was doing, and I met this girl. We

really had absolutely nothing in common except that she had just

moved there, and so we were both kind of desperate for a pal. We

started to hang out. And the long and short of it is her, her

brother was an editor at Crane's Chicago Business. Bing, bam,

boom. There I go, as I'm sitting in the tub crying because I

don't know what's to become of me. I hear him on my answering

machine saying, Would you like a job? So you just don't know.

It's like anything could happen at any time. If you are open, if

you're open, even like through LinkedIn, but even in real life,

if you're out in the world and you're friendly and you're

talking to people, I mean, sharing stories with them,

helping them to understand who you are, listening to them,

being the giver too. You know, it's, it's really, it's really

this, I love what you do, because I really believe that

that is the key to everything, not just a job. It's the key,

really, to to joy, to friendship, to to information,

to getting access to answers. You know, meeting people and

talking to them about things that you might be struggling

with or questioning, right? Oh, they know somebody, or they have

their own experience. And so it's making those connections, I

think. And

making real and making them, you know,

appreciated, and that kind of thing I know, I have a question

around from your TED Talk, talking about letting go and

that major life experience for you that you were talking about

in there, because it was a great story that we could all relate

to. Has it made it easier for you going forward, to let go of

different things once that big thing happened? Did it change

you in any other way? In other words,

Jill Sherer Murray: that's a really good question. I think

letting go? This came to me, yeah, no, it's a really good

question, because, you know, you would think that it would make

letting go whenever we have to much easier. And I did create a

process for letting go that I outlined in my book. And excuse

me, I wouldn't necessarily say that it made it easier, because

it's hard to let go. Yes, it's very hard to let go. It's hard,

you know, letting go of something, even if it's the best

thing in the world for us, involves loss, and loss involves

grief, yes, and so anytime we let go of something, you know,

whether it's a job, whether it's a friendship, and we know that

it's the right thing, it's still really hard. I think what

happened to me after that talk was it forced me to go even

deeper inside of what it really means to let go and to remind

myself that it is a tool I have available to me anytime that I

need to use it, and that if I do use it, when I use it, it will

be hard, but I will survive it, and I will come through it to a

better Place, and I know how to do it now, but I don't know that

it ever really gets easier. It depends on what you're letting

go of and and I love that question, because really, I

think it leads to the bigger subject of the title of the

book, which is big, wild love, which is the one thing we need

to have in order to be able to let go successfully. It's the

one thing that I was the common denominator from every single

person I talked to after that talk who reached out to me,

saying, I need to let go. I need to let go. How do I do this? And

the common denominator between all of them, all of them, was

that they did not understand that they deserved better, and

so they didn't have the ground under their feet to say, You

know what, if I let go of this person, if I let go of this job

or whatever I'm letting go of, I will be okay, because I have me

right, and I, you know, I always say, Janice. You might have

heard me say this if you listen to any other interviews, but I

say it over and over again, because it's really, I think

it's clear, you know, if we have big, wild love, which is the

courage and the confidence and the belief in ourselves, that we

can, that we can do what we need to do, and take care of

ourselves and be great, and that will allow us to take the risk

that's involved in letting go, because there's risk again,

because we're losing something if We go to the end of the edge

of the cliff and we don't see a net, we're not going to ever

jump. But if we see a net, we'll jump. And in in this case, big

wild love is we are the net. Yes, yes. So if I if I know

that, I am going to be okay. If I know that, if I jump and I

will be my own net. I will jump every time, because even if it's

hard, I know I'm going to land, I'm going to bounce, I'm going

to flop up and down, and I'm going to get on my feet. I'm

going to be somewhere completely different. I'm just going to

keep walking in that space. You're going

to bet on yourself. And that's the whole

thing about my podcast, is relationships rule, and your

relationship with yourself has to be strong in the first place

before you can have any other relationships, because

Jill Sherer Murray: that's and that's that's right, and we're

never done with that, because we're anytime we're in in a new

experience, or something new happens to us, or we change, or

we evolve, or we have loss, or whatever, we have new limiting

beliefs and new experiences that we have to kind of rise above

and reckon with in order to keep that ground under our feet so

that we can keep letting go, right, right? I struggle let go

of something, and you and I have talked over the past several

months about this. You know, when I'm struggling to let go of

something, the first thing I do is I say, What is my limiting

belief. What do I believe about myself right now that is getting

in the way of me, that is forcing me to hold on to this,

you know, how am I going to stand in this discomfort? Will I

be okay with it? And I give myself a whole lot of grace,

because it's about having all of. The feelings when you're

getting ready to let go of something. It's feeling the

sadness, it's feeling the freedom. It's feeling the the

Will I get through this. It's the anger, it's all the emotions

that eventually get you to the other side, and you have to be

like I said to you earlier. You have to be comfortable like a

flop and fish out of water,

right, right? You just reminded me of personal

development course I took many, many, many years ago. And I

think I was coming out of a bad marriage, my starter marriage, I

call it, and and I was getting on my feet again, and I walked

into the room the first day of the three day event. And

actually think somebody gave me a ticket to go to this because

they said I needed something to, you know, get me moving forward.

And up at the beginning, at the front of the room, there was a

big banner, and it says, What am I pretending not to know? Wow,

yeah, yeah, it was up there the whole time. What am I pretending

not to know? And yes, of course, made you want to have to look

inside to answer that question, and sort of yes evolved as the

weekend went on, but that's what you made me think of when you,

you know, said, Well, that's

Jill Sherer Murray: it. That's so powerful. I love that. What

am I pretending not to know? Because, you know, we can't run

from that for very long.

No, I know, because it'll catch up with us,

right? Yeah.

Jill Sherer Murray: I refer to that as the beach ball. It's the

beach ball we try and hold in our gut, but eventually the

beach ball starts to rise up through our windpipe, and we

can't hold it down anymore, right? You know, it's, it's,

what do we believe? What do we not want to look at about that

we have to, that we have to yes, that we have to in order to be

able to get comfortable with that discomfort that comes from

letting go. Right?

So over the years, have you, then, for lack

of a better word, I'm going to say Coach. Have you coached

people to let go of things? Have you Has that been part of your

own business as well, helping people let go?

Jill Sherer Murray: Yes, actually, I have done that work

and and I and I love doing it when the people who are coming

to me really want to get it when they don't just want to vent,

and I understand all the venting i so get that when it's really,

truly about, how do I do this and change and how do I how do I

build this muscle? You know, what do I need to do? What is

the process for doing this? And that process can take as long as

it needs to take. It's not like we you know, it's not like when

I let go of my 12 year, 12 year relationship that I talk about

in the talk and my book. I didn't wake up one day and say,

Gosh, I need to let go of this relationship, and then the next

day was like, bye, see you. Bye. Gonna blow up my life. Like it

doesn't work that way. And so I have helped people to understand

there are steps along the way that we go through, and I

actually continue. I have all the steps in my book. And

honestly, Janice, like I put myself through all of those

paces, when I am struggling and when I am uncertain about where

to go next or what to do next, or when I know that I have got

to let go of something, whether it's fear, whether it's imposter

syndrome, whether it's inaction, whether it's An issue inside of

a relationship, or an entire relationship, or a job, or a

person at my job, or a belief about someone or something at my

job, or how I engage with it. There's so many, in fact, in my

book, and I'm not trying to shove this book at anybody, but

there, there are, like, I put a list of 100 what I call let

gobles, things that are we can potentially let go of that you

wouldn't imagine are standing between us and the thing that we

want that really could, like, derail us. I mean, it could be

something as you know, I remember one time my husband and

I walk every day in the mornings, and I remember I had a

friend who was in a bad relationship, and she just would

not quit with this bad relationship, and every and I

was getting ready to make some big moves in my life, and every

morning, I would complain to my husband about this person. And

finally, one day, he said to me, Look, you need to get in your

process here. Because, why? Why are you spinning on this other

person so heavily? And it was because as long as I was

spinning on her, I didn't have to look at my own big moves that

were scary to me. It was a lot of deflection. And so I did, and

as soon as I got in my into my process, I stopped talking about

her, and I could put all that energy back. On me and what I

was doing. So it can be so nuanced to things that get in

our way.

So I am curious to know what was very different

about your husband than your 12 year relationship person,

Hector.

Jill Sherer Murray: Well, Hector was a no guy, and my husband,

Dan is a yes guy,

okay,

Jill Sherer Murray: and, you know, it's, it's funny, because

when I met my husband, I I remember we met, and we knew

fairly quickly. I mean, we met, you know, we're both in our 40s,

and I knew that I was not going to date someone for 12 years

again, and he sent me an email. It was such a lovely email. It

was a picture of a beach and a sunset, and it's something

corny, like, this is how I feel when I this is how I this is how

I feel when I think of you. So I went online and I found a

picture of the largest diamond ring I could find, and I pasted

it into an email. I said, Boy, I'm either going to hear from

this guy or I'm not. And I said, this is how I feel when I think

about you.

That's unbelievable. What a good

sport he was about that. But, um, he, you know, I think he

just we wanted the same things. We're both very my husband is a

musician and a writer and a poet and a creative and we kind of

wanted the same things from life. We had a lot of things in

common. We laugh together. He's such a wonderfully good person.

And so was Hector. That was always very important to me, you

know, to be with someone who had a really good heart, and he had

a very interesting life story. And it just felt really right

and it and, you know, honestly, like, timing is everything too.

Timing is everything. And, you know, I was at a point too,

where I was okay if it never happened, I was okay if I never

got married. You know, marriage is not the only way to be happy.

It was just something that I happen to want. Nobody has to

want it. But I think, you know, that's all part of it is really,

I think it's the hardest part of letting go. The hardest part of

letting go is deciding what we want. Yeah, yeah, because that's

really hard. And I, in doing the research for the book, I found

only one statistic about that, that said that one in 100 people

knows what they want. So if we don't know what we want, how

will we get it exactly? And so I think that is such a huge that

is such a huge impediment to being able to let go. Because if

you're in a job, let's say I'll use job, for example, and you

hate your job, but you don't know where you're going next.

Are you going to rush out of the job? I

was in that situation, but I I got

physically ill about it, and I had to leave. Yeah, but it took

getting but

Jill Sherer Murray: you had to get to that point. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, right. So if we could know these things at the

outset, if we are in a situation, whether it's wherever

it is in whatever aspect of our lives, if we could know when we

first get those, those those Inklings, the that we start to

see this is no longer right for me. It's and it's, you know,

listen, it's not about saying, like I would never say anything

bad about Hector. He was a wonderful person, and he helped

me, and he did a lot for me in my life, and I cherish the times

that we had together, because it taught me a lot that I needed to

learn. But so I never want to let go of something with bad

feelings or intent, even if it's coming from the other side, it

doesn't have to come from me. It's better if it doesn't right

that I can move forward. But I don't want to have to get to

that point where I'm sick or where it's so horrible that I

haven't, you know, kind of decided I'm going to get out.

I'm going to choose, even if what I want next is not is like

my starter house, you know, maybe it's not the big house,

maybe it's not the one that I'm ultimately going to want, but

it's okay to to, it's okay to choose a stepping stone as the

thing that you quote want, because it's hard to figure out

what you want, but if you're in a situation, you're holding on

to something that is bad for you, it's better to find figure

out what you want as a stopgap in the short term while you

figure out the next step, than to stay stuck in that thinking,

I don't know what that next thing is, so I'm just going to

stay here. And be miserable, and let the days of my life just

twirl by me until maybe every day I wake up and I am sick as a

dog and I hate everything. And you know, that's not good

either. Everybody has been there. I've been there. You

know, I know everybody who's been there, and we reason with

ourselves, why we must stay in these situations. But you know

what? There's a better way.

Okay, let's just reverse that for a second,

because one of the things that I notice today in with society in

general, that as I take it by gargantuan

Jill Sherer Murray: bottle, they won't

see that, but it's like this huge, the hugest

water bottle I've ever seen. Anyway I see today. So many

young couples have kids, and then they split up, they give

up, they give up too soon, on something. How? What's your take

on that?

Jill Sherer Murray: I mean, you know?

I mean, every situation is different. I'm not

trying to, you know, yeah,

Jill Sherer Murray: I mean, I don't, I wouldn't pretend to

know what's happening in anybody else's relationship. I think we

have access to a lot of choices now it's very confusing and

complicated sometimes, because I think sometimes we think

something is better than what we've got

and the graph.

Jill Sherer Murray: And I think, and I love that you brought up

the idea, actually, of giving up, because that's not what

letting go is, you know, letting go is not about giving up. It's

not about, you know, making peace with the situation, it's

not about taking a consolation prize. I mean, letting go is

about true detachment, truly detaching from a situation, an

experience, a job, a person, a relationship, an issue inside of

a relationship. So I mean, if people are are married and they

decide to divorce for whatever reason, I would hope that both

parties, you know, would have looked at the situation and the

stakes and how they're feeling and with love and respect for

one another, come to those decisions together from a

healthy place. Now, you and I both know that's very

idealistic, yeah, and you know, because I think a lot of people

are just hanging on to some old wounds and limiting beliefs and

things that they believe to be true about themselves and

themselves inside the world, and what they believe is possible

for them and what they deserve, so based on all that criteria,

if they're in a situation where they're unhappy and they think

just leaving it and going to the next thing without doing That

self examination to understand really, what is the underlying

issue here? Is it really me? Is it my relationship? Is it the

other person? Is it all of the above? And is there a way that

we can honestly and authentically pull out and

identify the issues and learn how to deal with them, and then

let them go completely, both detach from them, so that we can

move forward together. That's great. That doesn't happen all

the time. No no, and there's so much choice now. You know

everything. Like, when I was young and dating, we didn't have

internet, like, we didn't have phones in our pockets, we didn't

have all these apps. So like, if we wanted, I remember being in

my 20s and going to, like, singles bowling night at the

grocery store, because no other way to meet people. Yeah, so it

was harder. I think it was harder. So if you were in a

situation, it wasn't like you could just get on a phone and

say, Oh, look at all these other options out here. I can just

leave this. Maybe we had a little bit more tenacity and

grit about our situations, but if the situation is wrong, and

if you've tried and all those other positive elements are

there, but then, by all means, I would say, you know, move

forward. Yeah.

Well, this has been delightful, and I I could

talk to you for hours. I want to ask a couple of quick questions

before we end One is there's some interesting trophies behind

you on your desk. Oh, yeah, share with me what those are?

The Emmys? Are they?

Jill Sherer Murray: Oh, oh, I wish that would be so nice.

They're just some some awards that I have won for my writing,

and some of them are from the team the communications work

that I did with the team that I led in my in my business. So,

yeah, I absconded with these trophies. Love it for lack of a

better place to put

them. No, it's good. It's conversation. Okay.

And so as a writer, I'm curious what do you. Read? Do you read

fiction? Do you read business books? Do you read self health

books? What biography? What do you do? And when you read? Do

you read the traditional way? Or do you read on a Kindle? Or do

you Audible? Audible? What do you do?

Jill Sherer Murray: You know, I read books. Okay? I don't read

on a Kindle. I don't I love to hold books in my hands. I always

have many books going. I really love fiction. I love fiction

because to me, it tells the lie that tells the truth. And I find

that fiction is so just, there's nothing like being on page like

136 of a great novel like the best. Although lately, because I

have a novel with my agent now, and I'm getting ready to start

on the next one, I'm reading some some writing books. So I'm

reading, well, my agent has a wonderful book. It's called the

author's checklist, and it's a it's a great book for anybody

who wants to write a manuscript. And, you know, get it, get it

straight. But I'm actually reading this book called Truth

is the arrow. Mercy is the bow, by Steve almond, and it's a

manual for writing story. And so as much as I've been a writer my

whole life, I still love to read about how to construct great

stories. So I do read a lot of those books, but I am a fiction

girl. I love fiction, and I will have to say I have a lot of

friends who are writers, and lately I feel like I'm reading a

lot of their books, like we share our books. So hey, can you

read this? Hey, can you give me? So that's really fun. So yeah,

well, the

more people that I've interviewed and that our

writers, the more I've unders, I've come to understand that to

be a writer, I mean, a good writer is a lot it. There's a

lot of stuff, you know, involved and, oh yeah, hear people talk

about it, and the research and, you know, fact checking and and

style and everything. I mean, I'm not, I'm a talker. I'm not a

writer, but I'm, I'm fascinated by and in intrigued by it. So,

yeah, good, good on you. Okay, and last question, Well, where

can people find you? And I'll put it in the show notes on your

website, I'm assuming Jill, yes. Jill shiramurray.com Yep, and

you are let go for it on Facebook and Instagram and Jill

Shira Murray on LinkedIn. Um, yes, you'll write a blog or do a

podcast yourself. I can't remember. No, I

Jill Sherer Murray: don't blog and I don't do a podcast, but I

do help businesses. I do a lot of consulting on communications

and marketing, and I do a lot of writing, copywriting, that kind

of thing. So forgive me, I have terrible allergies this time of

year. Yeah, so I'm not currently writing a blog or doing anything

like this, because I'm trying to get this one novel finished up

so my agent can start getting it out on sub and then starting the

next one. So I've kind of been putting all of my energy into

that, but that is the, you know, for us authors, I mean, we have

to market, and so that's, that's a part of the job. We don't all

all love but, but I do love being on a podcast, and I do

admire you having a podcast. I admire all podcasters. I would

love to do that. I know it's such a time consuming, um

effort, but really fun, so I really appreciate that.

So can you give us a tiny hint about your new

novel? What's it about?

Jill Sherer Murray: Oh, well, yes, it's, it's, uh, I have to

get better at this. Janice, honestly, right? Why do I want

to story of a woman who falls in love in midlife and marries a

man his kids and his ex wife?

Got it okay? We have one of those in our family.

Got it okay? Yes. Well, look forward to that. It might be

interesting. So thanks for being here, thanks for sharing, thanks

for your openness and your sense of humor and personality. I

really enjoyed our conversation today. Thank you to my audience

for being here and remember if you like what you hear, let us

know and stay connected and be remembered. Thank you. Janice,

my pleasure. Bye.