CoJourn: Harnessing the Power of Connection to Tune into Your Wisdom, Achieve Your Goals, and Create the Life You Want

By Molly Keehn and Karl Henricksen

Are you having trouble achieving your goals? Are you struggling to find time for the things that really matter to you? Are you unsure of what actually does matter to you? In a world filled with seemingly endless demands and truly endless digital distractions, CoJourn is a path out of the wilderness. And best of all, it’s a path yo

• Language: English
• Publisher: CoJourn
• Release date: Sep 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781734020014

Book preview

WELCOME TO COJOURN!

By picking up this book, you’re saying alright, enough! I’m ready for a change.

Perhaps you’re here because you feel stuck, or life seems dull or overwhelming. Maybe you have some dreams that you can’t seem to get yourself to move on, or an impact you want to have on the world, but you feel discouraged, lost, unsure, or unable to get started. Maybe you’re going through a life transition—a move, the beginning or end of an important relationship, a new career, graduating from college, retirement—and you could use some stability and support. Or perhaps, like close to half of all Americans, you’re feeling disconnected or alone and are curious about a program that will support you to create more meaningful connection with someone in your life.

Back in 2013, the two of us (Molly and Karl) were experiencing many of the feelings described above: we were lost, stuck, overwhelmed, and disconnected. This book—and the program it describes, CoJourn—represents our rebellion against getting lived by life instead of living it. CoJourn was fueled by our frustrations with failed goals and New Year’s resolutions; we each had the sinking feeling that if we didn’t do something our relationships might soon be dominated by texting and social media instead of the face-to-face goodness we find so valuable. We both had the sudden realization that it was time to stop messing around, time to rebel against expectations, and time to start living the big, full life we wanted to live. And we needed to do it together.

You know that amazing feeling you get when you’re doing something that really clicks, something that makes you feel more alive and gives you a tingle up your spine as if to say yes, do more of this? It could be as simple as dancing with friends, floating in the ocean, writing a new song, or doing community service. Discovering and prioritizing these energizing activities matters, yet it takes intentionality to actually follow through on them, especially when juggling the demands of a busy life.

You probably also know that feeling when you make time to sit down and have coffee with someone you really like. That warmth you get when you’re having a great conversation— you feel completely connected and everything else fades into the background. The type of conversation when you really dive into the juicy stuff and share how you’re doing, REALLY doing, not the quick, automatic I’m fine response many of us give. You get some support and you give some support. You laugh and feel connected to the beautifully perfect reality of human imperfection. You leave lifted. CoJourn taps into both of these incredible feelings on a weekly basis: it allows you to stop and reflect on what really matters to you, and it generates that timeless sense of belonging, ease, warmth, and well-being you get from being heard and seen in real time by another human being.

CoJourn is the result of our combined experiences of struggling with new ways to follow through on the things in life that are important to us. These struggles led us to create a powerful program for personal growth and change that we have honed over the past six years with the help of hundreds of other CoJourn participants. These people were up for the adventure of pairing up and using our structure to check in weekly. In doing so, they stayed on the path they created to prioritize what really matters, propelling them forward in life in big ways.

In the pages that follow, you’ll hear from many diverse people who have used CoJourn to go after, and through, all sorts of big, small, funny, and heartbreaking changes in life with another person cheering them on. You’ll also hear from us, Molly and Karl, about the journey that led us to create this program, and the research and work we put into making sense of everything we already intuited and were learning along the way.

Much of this book was written together, in a shared voice. However, there were times when it felt important to include our individual perspectives. After all, we are very different people with distinctive personal and professional experiences. Molly has a background in counseling and education, and she can be a bit of an over-sharer when it comes to her emotional life. Our friends often laugh (and sometimes cringe) when she shares stories with more personal information than they are ready for. Karl takes a bit more time to open up about personal details and can come off as shy or distant. He was also socialized as a guy and trained as an engineer, so he presents ideas in a more direct, concise way. We decided to account for these differences, and to allow our different personalities to show through, by occasionally interjecting our individual voices throughout the chapters (designated with our pictures, below).

This book has been percolating, both on the page and in our conversations, since we completed our first year of CoJourn in 2013. We’ve seen big changes in our lives in the past years. We’ve moved, shifted careers, entered new relationships, and gained new interests. Through it all, CoJourn has remained a steadying, consistent presence in our lives. It’s offered us stability and the capacity to be bigger and braver than we might have been otherwise. In an age when loneliness is on the rise, CoJourn has supported us in our desire to cultivate and sustain real relationships with people—ones where we can show ourselves when we are confident and strong as well as when we’re at our most raggedy and vulnerable. And now CoJourn has a life of its own. Six years after we finished our first year, we have new people signing up for CoJourn every day from all over the world.

If you too are eager for a guaranteed connection every week—no matter how crazy busy life feels—and ready for the thrill of excitement that comes from getting back into the driver’s seat of your own life, this is the book for you. It doesn’t matter if you are an avid self-help book reader or have never picked one up in your life, whether you have set goals or intentions for years or don’t know a thing about the topic. Whatever your gender, race, occupation, or age— we believe that, yes, enough already! The magic of possibility is in the air. And whatever change you need, big or small, there’s no time like the present.

A Word of Caution

This program is not the quick fix you’ve been hoping for.

It’s not going to turn around your life in five days—or even ten.

There is no magic genie that will appear when you sign up.

No snake oil to ingest daily.

It does not enable you to use some new-fangled form of technology.

There is no filter to make you look a little more put together.

It’s about getting back to what’s real. What really matters.

And that is people.

Other living breathing human beings.

And making the most of the short time we’ve got on this earth.

We all have dreams.

We all have areas where we want to move. To break through fear. To be big.

And we all could use a little support.

A reason to break out of apathy. To push our comfort zones.

To experiment. Take more risks.

And then have someone on the other end, asking How did it go?!

Genuinely caring.

Being delighted with us for trying.

Even (especially) when we fail.

It’s about slowing down.

And stopping each week to check in about what matters to you.

To rest on the side of the path, take a couple of deep breaths, drink some water.

And check the compass.

To make sure you are actually headed in the direction you set for yourself.

To support you inside the messiness, the complexity.

To live in the grey instead of immediately jumping to black. Or white.

It allows you to get curious.

To embrace one step forward, and two back, and bad moods, and heart breaks.

And that exciting pulsing feeling when you can’t believe you took that risk.

Had that conversation. Said I love you first.

Went after that job and got it.

It’s about all of that.

It’s about cultivating a relationship with someone who’s got your back.

And who you trust.

Who might even get to hear your voice crack as you talk about what matters most to you.

Who knows more about you than your Facebook posts, Tweets, Instagram pics.

Or what is proudly presented in the family holiday card.

And then you get to hear their voice crack too.

And hear about their broken hearts and mess-ups and insecurities and big dreams and be buoyed.

Lifted at getting the chance to notice how much power and wisdom and light exists.

In every single one of us.

And comforted by the chance to notice that we all struggle.

Every single one of us.

You don’t have to have a degree to do this program.

You don’t have to have a lot of money or attend a seminar at a fancy hotel.

You don’t have to make a drastic life change to fit it in.

All you need is the willingness to practice listening to someone and allow them to listen to you. For thirty minutes a week.

Another living breathing human being.

Who might be up for joining you on this adventure.

Ready?

Let’s Go!

INTRODUCTION: Swamp Dread and Burnouts

How CoJourn Came to Be

March 2013

It’s 4:55 pm on a Wednesday. I’m standing in my bedroom, swamp dread in my chest, tears streaming down my face. I pull out my iPhone, and select Karl from my favorites list. As soon as he answers, I launch right into it, voice shaking, letting the tears fall. Karl, I’m a mess. My dissertation chapter draft is due next week. I’m spinning, my brain won’t work, and I just hung up on my advisor. It’s over. I give up. I’m never going to survive this.

Karl doesn’t say anything right away. He just listens to me vent and allows me the space to cry. But I can feel his warm smile over the phone. When he does speak, it’s with the calm reassurance of someone who knows me, REALLY knows me, and accepts all the parts of who I am—even these messy, falling-apart, dramatic ones. Karl doesn’t do much more than listen and remind me to go easy and be kind to myself. But the phone call shifts everything.

Karl knows my history with anxiety about academic writing, and he understands how hard the dissertation process has been for me. As we talk, he helps me develop a plan for the week that makes sense—both for my well-being AND my chapter draft. He writes down my goals for me: I decide to take a full day off from writing to reset, get exercise every morning before starting work, and cancel at least one of my social plans to have a little more time and space. Then it’s his turn to create his goals for the week.

My conversation with Karl is the healing that I need. Creating a concrete plan provides some relief, and focusing on Karl and his goals shifts my attention away from my distress and bubbling anxiety. But the real power is in my sweet connection with this person who is cheering me on, making me feel a little less alone in this world.

I didn’t always have this relationship with Karl. At first, we were bandmates who lived across the state from each other and liked to joke, drink beer, and have fun. Back then, he was someone I would never in a million years have imagined calling when I was in a vulnerable state of distress. He was not my boyfriend. Or my husband. Or related to me in any way. We did not grow up together. In fact, I’d met him less than two years before.

However, in January 2013, as a result of a perfect alignment of circumstance and a bold idea, we embarked on a year-long personal-growth and accountability adventure together which changed both of our lives. I’ve now completed a CoJourn year with five other people—people who have been with me as I’ve celebrated major accomplishments and experienced unbelievable joy. And when life gets hard and swamp dread returns, these people are my number one go-to’s for a reassuring smile and nonjudgmental acceptance and support.

- Molly

So, How Did This Happen?

Have you ever read a self-help book or attended a personal-growth seminar and left with all kinds of life-changing advice, feeling jazzed up and ready to change the world? Us too. Usually, we try out the advice or new ways of being for a couple of days, maybe a week or two if we’re extremely motivated. Then, the buzz wears off, the busyness of life rolls over us like a tidal wave, and new insights and learning are left to gather dust on our bookshelf. Like most people, we fall right back into our old patterns and behaviors. In fact, some estimate that only 5 percent of people actually follow through on things they learn from a personal-growth book or workshop!

When we first created CoJourn back in 2013, lack of follow-through was a challenge we shared. We were both seeing counselors and reading some life-changing personal-growth books. These resources gave us a clear sense of the changes that we needed to make to support us with our struggles: meditate daily, slow down, prioritize connecting with friends, exercise, make our beds daily, declutter our living spaces, and be more on top of things like our taxes. The issue wasn’t lack of awareness of the changes we needed to make. It was actually making them! There was an insurmountable gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

CoJourn began because we noticed this strong need within us, and we created a way to help ourselves with it. Simple as that. We couldn’t afford to pay for a life coach who might offer weekly support and accountability. We knew we needed a structure that would take a minimal amount of time in our busy lives and that wouldn’t be too complex or difficult. We needed a system—a practical mechanism to support us as we actually implemented the new ways of being we so desperately needed. We both were clear that we wanted support from another human rather than through technology. We didn’t want to use a habit-change app or another online service. We drew on our personal needs and professional experiences to create something both simple and profound. And it worked!

After we completed a successful year with the program together, we thought that others who shared our challenges with follow-through and our desires for human connection might want to try our model. And we were right. Once we made it available through our website and trainings, CoJourn spread around the country and the world. Today we’ve had participants in twenty-seven states and thirty-one countries. As we’ve refined the program over the past few years, we’ve heard success story after success story. One of our participants captured it perfectly: It’s pure magic! she said. You have to experience it to believe it. This book will show you how.

How Does This Relate to You?

Ultimately, this book is about you. It’s here to help you use CoJourn to create the life you want, whether that means a few small shifts or getting the support to take a big leap for a total life transformation.

Let’s start with a question:

What is an area of change that you just can’t seem to get yourself to tackle? In other words, What is one dream that keeps getting put on the back burner?

Finishing that novel you’ve been working on for years?

Starting to exercise?

Decluttering your home?

Getting back out on the dating scene?

Now is a good time to jot down some of your first thoughts.

Specifically, take a moment to consider…

What are some goals or hopes you have for yourself that you haven’t yet been able to achieve?

What prevents you from going after these goals?

You’ll get a chance to reflect on these in more depth later (see Chapter 5: Creating Your Guiding Theme). For now, these questions can help to jump-start your thinking about how CoJourn might work for you.

How Exactly Does CoJourn Work?

We will go into much more detail in further chapters, but, in a nutshell, CoJourn is a peer-support program designed to help you stay on a path you set for yourself.

Peer Support: You choose someone to pair up with to do the program. This can be a friend, colleague, family member, or someone you find from our partner-matching forum. Really, anyone who is up for doing it. You both learn our formula for successful peer-accountability relationships (see Chapter 2). You then use our structure for a brief weekly check-in. Together, you support and hold each other accountable to the milestones you set for yourself.

Staying The Path: CoJourn is about going after a Guiding Theme—an area of your life that you want to pay attention to over time. As you utilize the mechanisms for support and sustainability offered by CoJourn, and touch base with yourself and your partner each week to stay the path you set for yourself, you will be amazed by what you are able to achieve and how much progress you can make.

Why Does It Matter?

So many of us feel a bit lost, lonely, and overwhelmed—as if we are being lived by life instead of living it fully ourselves. Our current culture breeds both separation and shame. We are caught in an epidemic of loneliness, disconnection, and isolation. Diagnoses of depression and anxiety are growing at an alarming rate. People yearn for a sense of connectedness. However, many of us are so busy, and faced with so many choices, that it becomes difficult to even feel connected to ourselves.

We can’t ignore the role that technology plays in this. Smartphones have changed the way we live. We walk around plugged into these small computers, and we can start to live our lives through them rather than lifting our heads and engaging with the world directly in front of us. Connecting through social media or texting is slowly replacing good, old-fashioned, face-to-face conversations or phone calls. Though we can now have thousands of followers on social media, research shows many people claim to have fewer close friends and confidants than ever before. Rates of loneliness in the US have skyrocketed and have been labeled a public health crisis. The UK even appointed a Minister of Loneliness in 2018 to focus on this critical issue. In some studies, at least a quarter of the people polled reported having no one they felt they could talk to about important matters or turn to in an emergency.

Though research shows close relationships are becoming increasingly rare in our busy and disconnected society, it also shows that such relationships are the number one predictor of long-term happiness and well-being. CoJourn facilitates closer relationships by getting you and your partner together in real time (on the phone or in person) each week, providing both the mental and physical benefits that come with human connection. In an interview conducted at the conclusion of her year participating in CoJourn, one of our first program participants reflected on how the experience helped her develop a closer relationship in her life:

In this age where so much is done online, so much email and Twitter and Facebook you don’t get a lot of one-on-one time with someone. And here we know every week we have one-on-one time with each other. And we share all kinds of things we wouldn’t have had otherwise. And so it’s like renewing an old friendship and getting really close to each other. – Bridget, 68, paired with her college roommate.

Along with the benefits of connection, CoJourn also helps you follow through on and accomplish your goals. The program forces you to prioritize what matters most to you, and it allows you to continuously make progress on the path you set for yourself for the year. Research shows that simply making movement to follow through on goals can create a sense of well-being. And it’s in the small micro-wins where consistent long-term change actually happens. Showing up over and over again, resetting when we fall off, and getting back to it—these are all ways in which we create lasting success.

Another CoJourn participant talked about the power of following through on his goal over the course of a full year and the positive effect it had on his life:

Every New Year’s Eve, you’ll make your New Year’s resolutions, and you’ll say you want to eat healthy, start going to the gym, quit smoking, etc. and when do you really think about those, besides the next New Year’s? Maybe for that month of January or February they’re sort of floating around in there, but let’s be honest. Most people kick their New Year’s resolutions out the window by March. But with CoJourn, it was really a constant reminder. It was like having the New Year’s resolution every week, having someone check in on it with you every week, and being held responsible for it every week. So I think that’s probably how it changed my life. – John, 33, paired with a friend.

We’ll dive into the research on the benefits of closeness and follow-through in Chapter 1. For now, we want to stress that the key outcomes of CoJourn—closeness and follow-through—mirror what all of the recent research studies and books on happiness cite as two of the most important foundations for happiness and well-being: 1) social bonds and connectivity, and 2) cultivating an atmosphere of growth—a sense of purpose and movement toward your goals.

As we indicated in the section titled Cautions, CoJourn is not a quick fix or the immediate answer to all of your struggles. However, from our own personal experience, conversations with the hundreds of participants to date, and formal interviews with over fifty current program participants, we can confidently say that CoJourn does increase connection and ensure a mechanism for weekly reflection on your values and visions for yourself. It transforms the individualistic form of self-help into what we have termed Together-Help, which we find to be much more effective (and a heck of a lot more fun).

The History of CoJourn

As we began to share the unique structure of Together-Help with others, inevitably the same questions would arise. How did this all start? Where did it come from? Since we both had very different experiences starting CoJourn, and a lot of attachment to our own version of how and