What if leadership is about becoming more conscious of how you show up in every moment? In this episode of Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Marcy Axelrod, bestselling and award-winning author of “How We Choose to Show Up”, TV Contributor, 2X TEDx speaker, and visual artist.

Marcy challenges us to stop living on autopilot and consciously choose how we show up. She introduces a deeper way of understanding our role in the world, including how our actions affect ourselves, the people immediately around us, and the broader social networks connected to us.

This episode invites you to reclaim depth and understand the leadership power they already possess.

What You Will Learn:

The difference between a job, a career, and a calling.

How quiet, grounded leadership can create meaningful influence.

Why consciously choosing how you show up is a form of leadership.

How childhood experiences can influence patterns of behavior and self-expression.

Why humans are constantly influencing and changing one another through interaction.

How interpersonal neurobiology helps explain connection between people.

Why your energy and presence can influence others before you even speak.

How to recognize when you are living from a default version of yourself.

Why deeper awareness can change how you experience people and everyday moments.

How purpose, meaning, mattering, and fulfillment are connected.

Why leaders need to take accountability for their own influence.

How intentional leadership can invite others to show up differently.

FAQ:

What does it mean to consciously choose how you show up?

Consciously choosing how you show up means becoming aware of your thoughts, emotions, behavior, energy, and influence rather than automatically responding from familiar patterns. It involves intentionally deciding how you want to engage with yourself, other people, and the situation you're experiencing.

Why is showing up important in leadership?

Showing up is important in leadership because people influence one another constantly. The way a leader communicates, behaves, and carries themselves can affect how other people respond. Conscious leadership requires recognizing that influence and taking responsibility for it.

What is the difference between a job, a career, and a calling?

A job is work performed to earn a living. A career is a longer-term professional path. A calling is connected to a deeper sense of purpose and what someone feels they are meant to contribute or express through their life and work.

Connect with Marcy Axelrod

Choose to Show Up

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LVP 147 Marcy

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Now, here's your host, Anjel B. Hartwell

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

Marci has been interviewed in Forbes, Psychology Today, and the Marketing Journal, among others. Her approaches have been tested and proven through projects with some of the world's largest high-tech companies, uh, like HP, SAP, and Cisco. With a background on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers and in Silicon Valley, Marci's work has been highly praised by professors, mm, professors at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Cornell.

I'm excited- Yeah ... to have you here today. Welcome to the show, Marci.

Marcy: Anjel, what an honor to be with you and on the Leading Visionaries podcast.

Marcy: I'm gonna give you a two-part answer, Anjel. Mm-hmm. The first simple, call it a societal level answer-

Anjel: Mm-hmm ...

Marcy: is a yes. Simple yes or no. A binary. People are putting a lot of assumptions on that. Now I'm gonna give you the rest of the answer. The rest of the answer is I was lucky enough to be raised by a mother and a father who have an intrinsic grounding in who they are.

Anjel: Mm.

And he would come home, and someday he would s- some days he would literally say, "I had a king on my table." And by table he meant an imaging, you know, like an MRI scanner.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Marcy: And some days he'd come home and say, "I had a janitor on my table."

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Marcy: And the day I'd never forget, I'm gonna have tears in my eyes, he said, "Anjel, I had a seven-year-old girl on my table."

Anjel: Mm.

So very much a leader in my mind as well. Mm. So was I leader? Yes, I was, but, but not in the I, I mean, yes, it was certainly being able to orchestrate a group and j- naturally and hopefully, humbly guide-

Anjel: Mm-hmm ...

Anjel: Mm. Beautiful. I love that. Well, what I'm hearing in that too, Marcie, a couple things. First of all, I love that you were called Anjel, so there's two Anjels on this show today. I love that. Uh, the second thing I love is that f- that little saying, "We all put our pants on the same way, one leg at a time." Yep. Is something I have said for years, and years, and years- Oh

to fully express who they were.

Marcy: Yes.

Anjel: And, and they, like your book title is, they showed up in- Mm ... in it fully in what their devoted or divine vocation was meant to be, right? Is that... Would that be a fair thing to say?

Marcy: Yes. I w- I'd like to, to add a nuance though, which is that meant to be an- I- there, there can be a breath to what we are designed to do.

My mother you know, uh, you know, needed to prove herself. You know? Mm-hmm. Her brother was always the best thing, and she, and she was insufficient, and she gets into medical school, and literally her mother said to her, "Now that you're engaged, you're gonna drop that med school thing, right?" Mm-hmm. And I, I mean, I just learned this, like, like two weeks ago.

Mm-hmm. And I couldn't believe that. So I do believe my mother, um, who originally was gonna be a high school science te- teacher and was doing research over the summer, and the person she was doing research with said, "We need women like you in medicine." And sh- you know, it was this big deal on, on, on campus.

Anjel: Mm.

Marcy: And when we live a default life, being, you know, the strong warrior type person because our, our, our home environment required it, or being a people pl- pleaser, which I still am, because the home environment required it, that leads us to default to a self that is not our authentic self. And most of us- Hmm

have no idea about this, and we live our entire lives not recognizing that there's, there are passions and a fullness that we have not permitted ourselves to even discover.

Anjel: Hmm. Yeah, I would agree. I, when I had my spiritual awakening, I had spent 20 years in the real estate business, and I was putting numbers in boxes and foundations in the ground and sales on the books and was very masculinized.

Mm. And I had to say yes to, to shedding my old life and welcoming, you know, this adventure that became who I am now. So for our listeners, especially those listeners who are now called, right? Because- Yeah ... the cal- for me it was about the calling, and you've said the calling. Those listeners who are now called, whether they're technological innovators or whether- Mm

they're sociological innovators or whether they are, you know, they h- have been divinely inspired-

Marcy: Mm-hmm ...

Marcy: Yes.

Anjel: I'd love to hear you speak to them directly about your own leadership journey and how you stepped in to showing up as who you are today.

Marcy: Yes. Thank you for that question. I definitely will, and I have an interesting story.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Marcy: Be, it, and, uh, the truth about showing up and educating the world about that truly is my calling. I feel this through my heart into the universe.

Anjel: Mm.

Marcy: I started to stutter at age six, and I lost the ability to speak clearly.

So my throat locked- Mm ... and this was sixth grade. We had just moved. And what happened then is that the experience I had, and I, I, I share this story. I mean, picture, you know, a little girl or a little boy in, in, in first grade, and the teacher asks a question and, you know, a few hands go up. So my hand goes up, and at that point I experienced the entire class exhaling a collective, "Ugh."

Anjel: Mm.

Marcy: They... So showing up as a whole lexicon. Two becomes with and for. Individual becomes all d- dividual. You and me become mwe.

Yeah. That's actually a, uh, Dr. Daniel Siegel w- uh, word. Anyway, back in the classroom, my interpretation of that, right? 'Cause an event is just an event. It's not good or bad or hot or cold or blue or green. An event is just an event. My interpretation of that wasn't, "Oh, they can't stand to be with me," but it was I, the way that I am living in them is causing pain.

Anjel: Mm.

Mm-hmm. Of my trying to respond when called on and going uh," right? And not being able to get words out. But it wasn't that they were unhappy with me, it was that they were in me and I was in them. Mm-hmm. So we exist flowing through each other at all times. And in fact, Anjela, if it's okay, I'm going to explain what's going on.

As I experience your nodding affirmatively, your smile-

Anjel: Mm-hmm ...

Marcy: the intensity of your eyes, literally what's going on is called interneural synchronization.

Anjel: Mm.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Marcy: And these, this type of research, I think in, in my book I quote it from Harvard, from Stanford, and from Cornell, so it's replicated everywhere.

But we understand that these things ex- exist. In fact, Dr. Dan Siegel started a whole field called interpersonal neurobiology, right? Mm-hmm. Is how our bod- the biology of our bodies and, and, and our chemistry shifts as a result of experiencing each other.

Anjel: Mm.

Marcy: Right?

Anjel: It's- Yeah. We're gonna have to take a quick break right now, Marci, because we are experiencing each other, and I also have to experience the aud- we also have to experience the audience with us, and so we're just gonna take a really quick break, but when we come back, we're gonna talk more about this topic and your book and your visionary capacity as well.

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Your word is your wand, and as the leader, your ability to articulate and communicate your vision is essential to its materialization and monetization. Please enjoy with our compliments a free copy of the book Be Heard by Millions and Live Your Destiny, which was a number one new release in three categories to get you started.

Anjel: And we are back with Marci Axelrod. You can find out more about Marci at choosetoshowup.com. That's choosetoshowup.com, where I'm sure you're gonna be able to find access to her book and everything else that she has on display there, and, uh, we will have that for you in the show notes. So before we went to the break, Marci, we were talking about...

You've gotta say the words for me again. Interneural something, something, something. Interdividual. I didn't

Marcy: get a chance

Anjel: to write it down.

Anjel: Mm.

Marcy: Right? We are changing each other every moment. Yeah. Even if you're not looking into someone else's eyes, your energy shows up before you.

Anjel: Mm.

Marcy: Right? Your energy precedes you, so how others show up to you is created by you. Mm. So talk about being a leader. You are changing how others are showing up before you walk into the room.

Anjel: Mm. Now,

Marcy: what the question becomes, Anjel, and I haven't said this ever before, is how accountable are you with your own leadership power?

Anjel: Mm, great question. All right, listeners, how accountable are you with your own leadership power, which basically is you have the power to change anything. You have the power to influence anything.

Marcy: I mean, m- my ideal vision of the world is that everyone behaves in an accountable way with how they're showing up, and what... And showing up is a way of living, right, that reconnects us in the three roles that we're, that we're in at all times: ourself, our momentary, what I call situation member role, and our societal role, so our impact on the, the more.

But what the vision is is that people recognize that and live with that depth of mattering. You know, there's mattering, but there's also significance. There's a- And, and then there's meaning, right? There's a lot there, but why do I care about this, right? Why is this- Mm-hmm ... the vision?

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

How are you going to take your next breath experiencing that? How are you going to get out of bed and stand?

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Marcy: Right? When will your gratitude elevate you such that you don't even feel the ground, and you stay calm in a profound way? And guess what? When you look at the person who may be next to you, or think about the children in the home with you, or the people you're about to go be with, you will have novel thoughts-

Anjel: Mm, ooh

Marcy: and novel emotions that come to you about them. And I will tell you right now what to, what to look out for, what to notice when you are doing what I call truly showing up. This is what I call level three, which we haven't even talked about levels. It... People can w- find the book if, if they want that. What will...

Anjel: Mm.

Marcy: It is deeply grateful. It is focused. It does not wake time- waste time with distractions.

What you might find yourself doing is out of habit, you pick up your phone and then you put it down right away. Mm-hmm. 'Cause something inside of you says, "This isn't important." You will find yourself pausing You will find yourself looking at something that maybe you've seen a thousand times or more, and seeing it totally differently.

Ad: Mm.

It's, wow, he exists, and I get to shepherd him, right? A son, let's say, through some f- some very small smidge of life. Mm-hmm. And I use smidge specifically to diminish, right, the moment because they, they go by, but you get to extend it by being f- you know, far more fully there, and attend in this new way. It's a right hemispheric way.

Anjel: Yeah. Well, what I, I loved about that is the idea of depth, and I think that-

Marcy: Yes

Anjel: we live in a world that up until now, I'm gonna use the magic words up until now, Has focused a lot on the surface.

Marcy: Right.

Anjel: And I feel like there was a time-

Marcy: Mm ...

Anjel: before the last century, maybe we'll say the last century, where depth was- Mm ... how we showed up. You know, we were in community with one another.

Marcy: Yes ...

Anjel: that we actually, we reclaim something.

Marcy: Yes.

Anjel: We reclaim something.

We reclaim our divinity. We reclaim our connectivity. We reclaim our power. Right? And I love the idea of having novel thoughts. So Marci, we literally only have three to one minutes left. Three minutes and 21 seconds left. So in the last three minutes that we have, if there was something that you really would love our audience members to hear, because many of them are either leading visionaries themselves or nascent leading visionaries or leading other visionaries, and I feel like part of what we wanna do here is en- enthusiastically encourage them to continue- Yes

Marcy: Yeah. Yeah. There are two, two things. The first is each moment you are choosing how you're showing up. Don't default. Actively choose. I explain three levels of showing up, so if you're at all interested in, well, what am I ch- choosing among?

Is this just good or bad? No. There's a lot to it. It's which hemisphere of your brain you're using, how your body feels, what your nervous system is doing. There's a lot there. The second thing that I, that, uh, picking up on what you said, we're encouraging, um, and reclaiming the depth. Claim, to me, is a power over, go it, and get it type of approach.

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Marcy: So choose intent- choose purposefully- Mm ... and know your power.

Anjel: Mm. Beautiful. I love that. All right. Well, Marci, it has been an enormous pleasure to have you on today. Your frequency and power preceded you.

And, uh, we're really grateful for the time that you spent with us today. Again, listeners, you can go to choosetoshowup.com to find out more about Marci and what she offers, as well as access her book, How We Choose to Show Up, which was a Hayakawa Book Prize award winner. And we love feedback, remember, so please let us know what you thought of today's show by joining our community, sharing your takeaways, asking questions, or submitting guest suggestions.

Ad: Thanks for tuning in, downloading, and listening. Be sure to rate and review Leading Visionaries on Apple Podcasts and share with other people you know who can benefit from today's episode. Leading Visionaries is the premier podcast series for informing, activating, and inspiring the leading visionaries who are called to create conscious change and know that now is the best time to welcome wealth and cultivate a web of collaborative support to bring their vision to life.