Shows
Leadership and Innovation UnlockedA conservative/liberal divide on kids vs. career, Campbell soup faces a crisis, and how to fix burnout at work with Dana WeekesDana Weekes, host of The Rest of Us podcast, joins Nadia and Rob to help us see signs of burnout culture and to share strategies for leaders to help fix it. Nadia and Rob also reflect on a Wall Street Journal story about conservative women opting for kids earlier in their career and a Campbell's soup exec is recorded disparaging the company's customers and products. Later, the rare double rant! Nadia rants about the US Coast Guards tolerance of hate symbols and Rob points to the consequences for communities from the (not so) Beautiful Bill.
2025-12-0242 min
The Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 25: Celebrate Yourself Your Way | Season One FinaleIt’s the Season 1 Finale of The Rest of Us! But this episode isn’t just a wrap-up or a celebration of this milestone. Host Dana Tenille Weekes invites you to redefine what it means to celebrate yourself in ways that align with your truth, your joy, and your rest. Dana walks through five realizations about what celebration now looks like for her after self-reflection on why she hasn't celebrated her birthdays, milestones, and herself in ways that were "sufficient" to societ...
2025-11-1429 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 24: Friend, Say "Yes" to Nothing. Embrace Boredom, Silence, and Slowness.We use apps to save time, outsource errands, and even boil water in under a minute, yet we still claim we “don’t have time.” In this second-to-last episode of Season 1, Dana Tenille Weekes challenges our cultural addiction to speed, noise, and endless doing with a simple but powerful invitation: make time to do nothing. Dana explores rest by reclaiming three undervalued states of being:BoredomSilenceSlownessBy the end of the episode, Dana takes us through a five-step reflection exercise to s...
2025-10-2728 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 23: Rethinking Rules We Follow, But Do Not Serve UsStop and ask yourself this question: What are the rules that I live by that actually do not serve me? In this episode, host Dana Tenille Weekes invites us to question rules around us and our internal scripts that keep us tethered to unrest. Dana shares three categories of rules for listeners to rethink or examine closely that may seem obvious to identify, but not always: (1) "this is how it's always been," (2) unified fronts, and (3) shame or conformity, rather than understanding. By the end of the...
2025-10-1327 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 22: Rest in Conversation with Nia Ariel Davis Sigona - Rest Calls for Us to ReimagineIn this special live-recorded episode from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 54th Annual Legislative Conference, host Dana Tenille Weekes sits with Nia Ariel Davis Sigona to explore the relationship between rest and reimagining. Dana and Nia talk about the power and necessity of reimagining in adulthood. How reimagining is a way to world-build and live differently, especially when you have few or no models to reference. As part of the conversation, Dana and Nia delve into how rest helps to cultivate the courage to stay connected t...
2025-09-2932 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 21: Rest in Conversation with Sullivan Summer - Why Rest as Liberation Reaches Far Beyond Self-Care (Part 2 of 2)This episode is Part 2 of Dana Tenille Weekes’ raw and resonant conversation with Sullivan Summer, a poet, essayist, literary critic, and dear friend of Dana's. Picking up where they left off, Dana and Sullivan's conversation deepens on societal conditioning, particularly how feelings such as guilt can undermine rest as liberation.Sullivan also holds space for Dana to share the story behind her deep embrace of the question, "Whose mountain am I climbing?" Dana recounts the moment during her year-long journey of rest when she decided to...
2025-09-1530 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 20: Rest in Conversation with Sullivan Summer - Why Rest as Liberation Reaches Far Beyond Self-Care (Part 1 of 2)In Part 1 of this two-part, intimate and thought-provoking conversation, Dana Tenille Weekes is joined by a dear friend and listener, Sullivan Summer, a poet, essayist, and literary critic. Together, they explore the layers of personal transformation, ancestral wisdom, and how societal and familial conditioning undermine the vivid details of who we truly are.Opening with the first two lines of Audre Lorde's poem, "Change of Season," Sullivan asks Dana, "Were you once someone else?" Sullivan also raises the question of whether Dana's definition of rest is meme-worthy, leading into a...
2025-09-0134 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 19: What Are You Chasing? Exploring a Life of Expectations vs. BeingIn this important episode, host Dana Tenille Weekes questions the non-stop exhaustion that we call ambition: What are you chasing, and is it even meant for you? Through thoughtful reflection, storytelling, and three main points, Dana unpacks why so many of us are trapped in the "chase" (striving, following, and supporting - yes, even supporting) that steals our agency to live a life of expectations ... a life that was never yours. As a complement to the popular episode, Whose Mountain Are You Climbing? (Episode 5), this episode calls for you to stop running, settle in...
2025-08-1830 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 18: Just Do the ThingIn this motivational episode, Dana Tenille Weekes speaks to the tension between knowing what you're meant to do and avoiding doing it. Her message? Just do the thing. Whether you're stuck in the loop of overthinking, waiting on the perfect sign, drowning in comparisons, or buried under the weight of others' expectations, this episode calls you out (with love) and invites you to stop planning and start acting.If you've been waiting for clarity, certainty, or permission, this is your sign! (Although, as you'll learn, you don't really need a...
2025-08-0420 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 17: Feeling Unrest at Work? Maybe You're Prioritizing Etiquette Over ProfessionalismIn this episode, Dana Tenille Weekes challenges the commonly overlooked confusion between niceness and professionalism and how that confusion can create a work culture of unrest.Dana explores how avoiding the truth under the guise of being "polite" or “professional” leads to unrest for you and your colleagues. She offers a retake on the definition of professionalism: "Owning your responsibilities and the truths and realities of your work with a deep sense of care, requisite skills (and competency), and required pace."Drawing on her experiences as a lawyer in Big Law and now an o...
2025-07-2125 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 16 - If the World's Burning is Burning You Out, Be Conscious of RestIn this urgent episode, Dana Tenille Weekes speaks to the global unrest that is happening around us and what it means for rest as self-liberation. She talks directly to listeners who are opting to "rest" to avoid and disengage from the world's realities or those listeners who are refusing to rest for the "sake of the movement." Dana continues to build on the past two episodes, which focus on rest in the context of comfort, peace, and liberation. She also revisits the rest continuum and how people must cultivate spaces for the continuum's three forms of rest t...
2025-07-0722 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEpisode 15: Rest Requires Distinguishing Comfort, Peace, & LiberationIn this thought-provoking follow-up to “A Love Letter - To Folks Afraid of Their Liberation,” host Dana Tenille Weekes challenges listeners to more closely examine the differences of living a life of comfort, peace, and liberation, and why mistaking one for the other may be holding us back from true rest.She defines comfort, peace, and liberation as:Comfort: your familiar that avoids, ignores, or distorts truthPeace: your ability to recognize truth but not act on itLiberation: your willingness and readiness to protect and act on trut...
2025-06-2323 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 14: A Love Letter - To Folks Afraid of Their LiberationWhat if comfort is not meant to serve you?What if the life you’ve built is actually a quiet form of unrest?In this special episode, host Dana Tenille Weekes reads a deeply personal love letter, “To Folks Afraid of Their Liberation,” she has written to listeners. After witnessing loved ones and strangers alike disassociate from their agency and belonging during these times, Dana shares this letter as both a message and mirror on whether we embrace comfort, peace, or liberation. The three are not th...
2025-06-0927 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 13: Want to Be Respected? Tell People How You Want to Be Helped. (Part 2 of 2)In part two of this powerful episode, host Dana Tenille Weekes completes her conversation on the three mindset shifts that can reframe how we think about asking for help.Dana talks about the third and most actionable shift: “actually tell people how you want to be helped.” She calls in (not calls out) listeners to think about some of the default ways we navigate life “independently,” like assuming people are mind readers and refusing to define the accountability line for how we want to be respected.Before ending this episode of The Rest...
2025-05-2628 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 12: Want to Be Respected? Tell People How You Want to Be Helped. (Part 1 of 2)Do you struggle to ask for help, even when you're overwhelmed? Do you find yourself quietly hoping others will understand what you need without ever having to say it out loud?In this powerful two-part episode of The Rest of Us podcast, host Dana Tenille Weekes opens up about her own journey from silent strength to unapologetic self-advocacy. She explores how independence, when misapplied, can become a mask—one that isolates and quietly demands that we carry everything alone.Dana unpacks two of three mindset shifts tha...
2025-05-1228 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 11: Five Life Lessons Learned from Writing Poetry (Part 2 of 2)In the second episode honoring National Poetry Month, host Dana Tenille Weekes shares the remaining two life lessons she’s learned from her poetry practice. These are lessons about life, not writing, that continue to shape how Dana defines rest, agency, and belonging. The two lessons are:When You Confront a Constraint, Lean into Your Freedom. What are some constraints in your life that are really opportunities to break through and return to yourself? What superpower can you lean into where your details are free?Gratitude is a Boundary. How doe...
2025-04-2828 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 10: Five Life Lessons Learned from Writing Poetry (Part 1 of 2)In honor of National Poetry Month, host Dana Tenille Weekes shares three life lessons on self-liberation she’s learned from writing poetry. In this two-part episode of The Rest of Us podcast, Dana opens up about her recent struggles with overthinking, overstimulation, and emotional exhaustion to make space for a grounding conversation about lessons from writing poetry that go beyond the page and into our everyday lives. Dana cultivates this episode to return to these lessons as she shares them with the listeners. Three of the five lessons are:
2025-04-1432 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 9: What's Your Identity Outside of Producing? (Let’s Take the Seven-Day Call to Create Journey)We were not created to produce. We were created to exist freely and thoroughly in our details.In this rich and deeply personal episode of The Rest of Us podcast, Dana Tenille Weekes invites us to pause the production line of life and answer a powerful call: the call to create. Not for performance, not for praise, but for freedom, joy, and ourselves.Dana unpacks the difference between "producing," which we often do for others at our own expense, and "creating," which centers and celebrates t...
2025-03-3133 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 8: You're Not Indispensable at WorkIt’s time to unpack the myth that we’re indispensable at work. (‘Cause we’re not!)In this episode of The Rest of Us podcast, host Dana Tenille Weekes talks about how we unintentionally contribute to unsustainable work environments by making ourselves irreplaceable. Through personal anecdotes and a reality check on “work-life balance,” this episode challenges the conventional wisdom of hustle culture and invites listeners to rethink their relationship with professional identity and rest as liberation.In doing so, Dana asks and explores five thought-provoking questions...
2025-03-1727 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 7: Progress is in the PauseFriend, stop. Let’s lean into the power of the pause. In this episode of The Rest of Us podcast, host Dana Tenille Weekes names five life moments that call for us to pause: (1) when worrying; (2) when your body says so; (3) when you should celebrate; (4) when in the midst of change; and (5) when you are stuck in the familiar. (There’s also a sixth moment Dana sneaks in.) In discussing each of these moments, Dana emphasizes the importance of the relationship between her definition of rest and the necessity of pausin...
2025-03-0332 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 6: Standing in Your Truth and Reclaiming Your PowerIn this episode of the Rest of Us podcast, host Dana Tenille Weekes calls us to stand in our truth and reclaim our power after conversations with friends, mentees, and clients who feel robbed of their truth by societal pressures and the current political climate. In doing so, she emphasizes that these societal constructs are intentionally designed to undermine our humanity, often causing us to question our existence and self-worth.Dana shares a personal story of a recent road rage incident laced with racist hate speech to illustrate how largely orchestrated and everyday events are...
2025-02-2430 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 5: Whose Mountain Are You Climbing? Exploring Succeeding vs. ThrivingHost Dana Tenille Weekes asks a profound question she believes every person must answer truthfully to reclaim their right to rest: “Whose mountain are you climbing?” This episode of The Rest of Us podcast distinguishes between succeeding and thriving and reveals how succeeding keeps us mountaineering for others. Through storytelling, Dana shares five types of encounters that contributed to unrest in her life and redirected her to climbing other people’s mountains. They are encounters with the: (1) Dream Decision-Makers; (2) Breadcrumbers; (3) Well-Intentioned Fearfuls; and (5) Inner Narrator (that isn’t your vo...
2025-02-1734 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 4: The Rest Continuum - Exploring Three Forms of Rest (Part 3 of 3)Host Dana Tenille Weekes closes out the three-part episode on the rest continuum by exploring the third form of rest: liberating rest. After settling in with listeners on doing nothing/being and restoring as two forms of rest, this The Rest of Us podcast episode focuses on the importance of holding sacred space in your life to engage in liberating activities—activities in which you are enlivened by your own details. Dana discusses how liberating rest is often sourced from creative and nature-based activities. She also encourages listeners to start thinking abo...
2025-01-2717 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 1: Defining Rest as LiberationIn the inaugural episode of The Rest of Us podcast, host Dana Tenille Weekes explores rest as a form of self-liberation and introduces listeners to her definition of rest. Dana delves into the fundamentals of her definition, including self-acceptance, agency, and belonging, and why rest is a mindset and not simply a self-care practice. In doing so, Dana reads a poem by Nikki Giovanni titled “Revolutionary Dreams.”Released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the day of the U.S. presidential inauguration, Dana invites listeners to join a comm...
2025-01-2025 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 2: The Rest Continuum - Exploring Three Forms of Rest (Part 1 of 3)Host Dana Tenille Weekes kicks off a three-part episode on the rest continuum, three forms of rest to incorporate into our everyday lives. In this episode of The Rest of Us podcast, Dana guides listeners to reflect on how we rest and introduces the rest continuum as a way to cultivate space for doing nothing/being, restoring, and liberating. 00:00 Introduction to the Rest of Us Podcast01:05 Defining Rest and Its Importance01:55 Reflection Exercise: Identifying Your Rest Activities04:44 Categorizing Your Rest Activities08:01 Analyzing Patterns and Themes in Your Rest09:37 C...
2025-01-2012 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEp 3: The Rest Continuum - Exploring Three Forms of Rest (Part 2 of 3)In this episode of the Rest of Us podcast, host Dana Tenille Weekes delves further into the concept of the rest continuum, focusing specifically on two forms of rest: doing nothing/being and restoring. Dana explains the importance of cultivating space for rest (in addition to living in a rest mindset) by illustrating how each form of rest can help us reconnect with our agency and sense of belonging. The episode concludes with reflective questions to help listeners incorporate and embrace these forms of rest into our everyday lives.00:00 Introduction t...
2025-01-2017 minThe Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesIntroduction to The Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesWelcome to The Rest of Us with Dana Tenille WeekesEmbracing Rest as Self-LiberationOn the Rest of Us podcast, host Dana Tenille Weekes discusses the importance of self-care and rest as a form of self-liberation. By challenging societal norms and finding humor in the process, the podcast aims to help listeners reclaim their lives and prioritize their own well-being despite the demands of work and others.Subscribe to get new episodes in your feed. :) If this episode feels like a message or m...
2025-01-1800 min