Jennifer Louden (JenniferLouden.com) may be a best-selling author, but she is no stranger to asking herself the question, "Why bother?"

She says that this common turn of phrase, which is typically used as a sort of signal to indicate that we’re giving up before we really try, is actually a realquestion that deserves answering.

Her book, Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What’s Next, turns the rhetorical question into a literal one and a personal invitation to figure out what we really want, what our stake is in trying, and how to access our desire to pursue it. The sequel, Get Your Bother On: A Guided Journal to Discover What’s Next, features 200 bite-sized exercises and unique journaling prompts to help you access your desire and explore what you want to “bother” with, deep down.

For 30 years, Jennifer has been an author, teacher, and leading voice on self-care and creative transformation. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show; she’s a former columnist for Whole Living, a Martha Stewart magazine, and her work has been featured in People, USA Today, CNN, and two of author Brené Brown’s best-selling books, Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead.

With close to a million copies of her books in print in nine languages today, her 1992 book, The Women's Comfort Book, is attributed to helping begin the modern self-care movement.

We recorded our interview in February 2020.

Jen shares wisdom including...

• What it's like when, even after years of being a best-selling author, your latest book-in-progress "just isn't working"
• How Jen's lifelong fascination with understanding why people give up motivated her latest projects
• How we can summon curiosity, joy, desire, and more to help us reconnect with what we want from life

Thank you to Jen for joining us on The New Story Is!

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