Ep24: Master Your Focus Under Pressure: Mental Strength Lessons from TV News Anchor Jennifer Vaughn | Mindset Reinvented

MINDSET REINVENTED - EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Host: Jack Trama
Guest: Jennifer Vaughn, Emmy-nominated TV News Anchor

OPENING:
Jack Trama: As Walter Cronkite once said, in seeking truth, you have to get both sides of a story. Today, I am honored to welcome Jennifer Vaughn to Mindset Reinvented. Jennifer is an Emmy-nominated TV news anchor with over 30 years experience in delivering news to millions of viewers. She's mastered the art of focus and mindset control, and in high-pressure situations, she's here to share her insights on maintaining composure and confidence in challenging circumstances. Jennifer, I am thrilled that you're part of this today. So welcome to the show.

Jennifer Vaughn: What a pleasure. It's so wonderful to talk to you. These are such important topics. They impact everybody around us. It's such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL DEMANDS:
Jack Trama: You're very welcome. Very welcome. So let's dive right in. As a clearly respected TV news anchor, you've been around a while. You're constantly in the public eye. Can you walk us through the mental and emotional demands of a typical day in your role?

Jennifer Vaughn: Emotionally, you're also dealing with the first part of your day or the latter part of your day, which could involve something at home, something internally within your family. And these are all of the things that you and I and everybody will deal with. You compartmentalize them somehow, and then you report to your job, or you take the phone call or whatever it is that you do that your day requires or your job requires.

TV is a little bit different in that every part of you, from sort of your head to your toe, from your hair to your shoes, is fully represented on television. But you're not there to talk about yourself. You're there to talk about the story. You're there to introduce the reporter. You're there for, you know, in the instances of breaking news, to get it out to your audience quickly and accurately and make sure that they are as informed as they can be if something is going on in the community or state or nation around them.

COMPARTMENTALIZATION AND FOCUS:
Jennifer Vaughn: So you have to learn a different sort of compartmentalization, which is not just, you know, you might have a load on your mind and your face might reflect that if you're not in the TV world. If you're in the TV world, your face cannot reflect that. So it's learning and tapping into a part of yourself, and that's through training and that's through experience, and that's through decades of doing this, that that stuff gets shoved to one side.

And the formula of you as the TV news anchor, the person who has presence and the person who has the authority - I use that word in terms of I'm the one giving you the information. You're the one that's trusting me to do that. You have to have that in line. And that did take practice. That took, and in some days more than others, that took fierce focus because there are so many pressing things that come into your life.

PERSONAL CHALLENGES:
Jennifer Vaughn: And just in these past few years, I concurrently lost my mom, my dad, my dog, and my mother-in-law. And this was over the span of a year and a half. And there were days at work in which I was just loaded with grief or sadness or waiting for a phone call or monitoring hospital stay or whatever. And I couldn't ever let that break through because I owed it to the people of New Hampshire who were watching that show to not be any of that, to be my regular, professional, expectant self, delivering them the news they needed to know.

DEALING WITH PERSONAL GRIEF:
Jack Trama: So it's checking yourself at the door, essentially.

Jennifer Vaughn: Yeah, it's checking yourself at that door. Because, you know, there are ways that we represent ourselves. If you go to the grocery store, you know, if you're attending an event and you will represent yourself in a particular way, what that audience needs at that time. But on TV, that's a whole different door. That's a really heavy door. So you have to make sure that the door closes behind you and you are that person that your audience expects you to be and that your boss expects you to be. You know, you have a job to do.

COPING TECHNIQUES:
Jennifer Vaughn: In doing that, what I would do is sometimes even a tactile reminder, I would hold a pen and sometimes just click the top of the pen. And that would sort of bring me back into here I am, I'm at the desk, this is what I need to do, this is what I am doing, this is what they expect of me. And that would help.

There are other things too. In commercial breaks, I would move around a little bit and I would remind myself, I would look out beyond the TVs that line up in front of us, like the prompters and the cameras that line up in front of us, the monitors are below. I would look beyond that. I would look at the door exterior to the studio. I would see the windows where the rest of the newsroom is. So I would just sort of constantly remind myself of what was around me. And that reminded me of my job, where I was, and that shift in my focus and my brain to make sure I stayed there.

WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS:
Jack Trama: I think in terms of my experience in TV, it might surprise people to know that I am genuinely very close friends with my colleagues. That in my TV experience, it is different from what might be represented in a movie or on a TV show. That there is this infighting or banging of heads and sabotage or subterfuge going on to leap bound other people or leave somebody behind or show somebody in a terrible light out of competition, greed, or ego.

Jennifer Vaughn: And that just has not been my experience. Some of my very best friends have been my colleagues through the years. When they leave my station and go on to do other things in life, I still talk to them all of the time. They've known my kids, they know my husband, they know my family, they support my work with books. That might surprise people because I think it is honestly a lazy representation sometimes for media to be showcased as this backbiting industry full of fake people who have no emotion, who are out there to further their own career and block anybody who gets in the way.

MAINTAINING FOCUS DURING BREAKING NEWS:
Jack Trama: Can you describe a moment, on-air moment, where your ability to concentrate was significantly tested?

Jennifer Vaughn: There are more of those moments than you might realize. It's not necessarily one or two. And I can point to a major breaking news situation in which the information is coming at you and it's changing. And remember when you're in the position of being the TV anchor on the TV, you're not watching all the other channels. You're not watching what they're coming out with because they're covering the same breaking news stories that you are. You're focused on what you're doing.

HANDLING BREAKING NEWS:
Jennifer Vaughn: In that moment, you're listening in your ear to your producer who's bringing you the information from the booth. And if I can say we're in video or something, and I can check my phone, and I can actually see other sources bringing in information. But your focus could be pulled apart in those situations because it is so fluid, it is so fast. You have to have the presence of mind to maintain accuracy.

For instance, there might be an occasion when covering a breaking news story - and sometimes I've been on the desk for breaking news for hours on end, hours on end. And we're trying to remember what already has happened, trying to remember where all of the principles are, trying to remember what all the responding sources are delivering to us, the law enforcement angle, every angle. Being responsible with what we're reporting.

ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITIES:
Jennifer Vaughn: And my producer might indicate to me in my ear, "hey, we can't report this yet," or "we're not going with this yet." And then they'll relay a piece of information. If I didn't have a good grip, a focus grip, I might blab that right out at an inopportune moment. And an inopportune moment in TV news might be something like, everybody is watching this unfold, but what about the family at home that's being impacted by this, and they don't know this information yet? Maybe we had a trusted law enforcement source give us the information, but not the okay to go with it yet.

What about that family at home that doesn't know that their loved one has been impacted? And what if they had to hear it from me and not through the proper channels? So you have to have that very rigid, tight control over your focus to make sure that you're keeping the streams going.

MAINTAINING CONTROL:
Jennifer Vaughn: You know, like they're all coming in, feeding this one big ocean of breaking news. But then they divide into all these tributaries and streams. You got to keep all of those straight and you have to make sure that that sliver of information - we're not going with this yet - but that that stays in your head and doesn't unfortunately come out before it's ready to come out, and that you have the green light to let that out.

So that's one of those most succinct situation awareness things in which your focus cannot waiver. It just can't, because lives depend on it. The safety of law enforcement say it's like a hostage situation, whatever the case may be, lives depend on that a family has just been broken or damaged, or they're about to receive the most horrific news. You cannot be the one that breaks the trust between the regular channels of how something has to go down.

UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITY:
Jack Trama: Wow, that's another piece that I never considered, and it's more than words on a teleprompter. You're getting real live prompts at the time that they're having those releases, and you have to use your judgment in terms of what to release and what not to release based on what they're telling you. And that's... I've never done anything like that, quite frankly, but I could imagine the focus that you need to have and the discipline around that to be able to be consistent every time that you show up.

APPLYING FOCUS IN PERSONAL LIFE:
Jack Trama: So you've honed that skill, you've honed focus over the years, and I'm curious, I would imagine that it's applied outside of the newsroom in your life as well. Can you share how you've adopted that level of focus in different areas of your life?

Jennifer Vaughn: Think in being a mom, the area of focus is very tightly wound into constraint because you might have automatic reactions as a parent or as a loved one to someone going through an event, a problem, a trauma, and you have to control how you react in that situation. So your focus then becomes constraint. And what do I need to do as the authority figure, as the parent, as the trusted confidant in that instance to not go with my worst instinct, which would be to protect somebody, but it might not be the best way to go about doing it.

FOCUS IN WRITING AND OTHER PURSUITS:
Jennifer Vaughn: And then, as I write, focus means keeping myself disciplined and keeping myself on path to completion. Because if you're doing something that's not your main job, which, when I write books or I ghost write, that's not my main job. That's just something I love to do on the side. So that's going to take discipline from me and true focus to make sure that I can deliver on these things and that I maintain a schedule and I have no excuses, because there are a million excuses every day that we can fall upon anything to distract us from getting a job done or anything that can pull us away from doing something we know we need to do.

MAINTAINING DISCIPLINE:
Jennifer Vaughn: So in that respect, focus is accountability to myself and making sure that these are the morning hours that I can work on my book, or these are the morning hours that I can have phone calls and do podcasts like with you. And this is how I can make this work within the constraints of what else my day might look like. So focus then becomes a disciplined approach to all of the other things you want to fit into your day, and then holding yourself accountable.

ADVICE ON GETTING STARTED:
Jennifer Vaughn: When I do author talks or I talk to kids, and they'll always ask, how do you even get started in writing, and what do you even do? And I'll say, you just get started. You don't dilly dally in your head and make a million excuses as to why - well, I'm not experienced, and I don't know how to do this. You just actually start to do it.

KNOWING WHEN TO STEP BACK:
Jennifer Vaughn: And conversely too, if it's not coming that day, and there are many days when it just doesn't come for me, you know, the creativity, it's not there. Like the spark is dull. So I will just step away that day and give myself a pass and say, whatever you were going to write probably was not going to be your best. So this is okay, and we'll come back to it another time. But the focus and the discipline in that right there is making sure that you always come back to that a different time.

COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE:
Jennifer Vaughn: And that's like the focus at work. When you shut the door and you make sure that you're there, that's another door that you have to make sure you close. You know, you're not going to escape out that door every single time you're like, "oh, I don't think I want to do this." No. To achieve and excel and be extraordinary at something, be successful and be available, you have to make sure that that door too, the one that might be in your morning hours, in your free time, that that door gets closed behind you too so that you can't sneak back out again.

BALANCING GRACE AND DISCIPLINE:
Jack Trama: Yeah, see, that's super powerful, Jennifer. And I think, for me, I take away giving ourselves some grace. Even though we've planned on writing, we planned on doing something in a given day, if we're not physically or mentally able or ready to do it, even though we know we should, I think it's important to give ourselves some grace, because tomorrow's another day, hopefully, you know, and or later in the day when we're feeling more primed to do it. I think it's just having that awareness is really important.

EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES IN NEWS:
Jack Trama: The other thing too that I find fascinating with you as an individual, your line of work and the pressure around it, and of course, doing it 30 years, you've honed your skills to be able to navigate through all the offshoots, the landmines that come your way in a given day. But on the topic of all the craziness that goes on in this world and all the newsworthy headlines that we're seeing, whether it's local tragedy or disaster, or if we're on the global stage and we're looking at all these threats that are in our global geopolitical world, there's some emotion there for the viewers, and there's also some emotion for you and for other broadcast journalists.

MANAGING EMOTIONS:
Jack Trama: I would imagine that because you're so well skilled at managing your emotions and doing the things that you do, I would imagine, though, sometimes those emotions still come up because you're human, you're a compassionate person. You feel for people. And so there's really a two-part question - and I think you've kind of answered this - when those emotions start coming up, it's like a light switch for you. You can probably trigger the other side of you, the logic, the control, the constraint. But how do you do that?

ADVICE FOR NEWS CONSUMERS:
Jack Trama: And then, ultimately, for people that are struggling with emotions in their lives, especially when they're consuming news, that's not good news, and it puts fear into us. What would you suggest to them in terms of being able to handle that and have an observer mindset when it comes to the news?

GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN NEWS CONSUMPTION:
Jennifer Vaughn: That part first. When you're observing, consuming, taking all of this in. And remember, you know, a lot of our 20-somethings, and even younger, they're consuming news via social media apps, not necessarily sitting down and watching a newscast. And in that, there is power. Let me explain that there is power for a trusted loved one, a parent, a guardian come in and physically remove the device so that you can force disconnectivity rather than the constant connectivity that that generation and these kids have grown up on and expect and are so comfortable with.

BALANCING NEWS CONSUMPTION:
Jennifer Vaughn: For the rest of us, you know, the adults who still watch TV news or plug into CNN or MSNBC or Fox News, and you're consuming it that way. Again, there's a disconnectivity that is appropriate, and it must happen. And I say that from somebody on the news, you know, I don't want you to not watch. I don't want you to walk away. We need our viewers. It keeps our jobs, it keeps us going. It's important for what we do. But at the same time, I am the very first one to say, you got to shut it off, and we'll talk about that at work.

MENTORING YOUNGER JOURNALISTS:
Jennifer Vaughn: When we manage it at work, I think there's this ingrained sense of we're all there for each other. There's a lot of the younger producers or reporters who come in, and I like to touch base with them every once in a while and just ask, how are you doing? If they've been through tough story, if they've been experiencing something that I know they saw on the job, I would like to check in with them and say, are you okay? I know what you just saw. I know what just happened.

SUPPORTING THE NEXT GENERATION:
Jennifer Vaughn: I like to explain to them, I've been there. I know that you're going to be okay. And I know this because I've been okay. That's a really important thing for us in our generation, to talk to, connect with, and almost like touch the generation behind us. Because it seems that this generation, whether it's the constant connectivity that we just talked about or whatever the case may be, the pressures of being in that generation, the pressures of the world, the pressures around them, I feel it is our duty to make sure that we are stepping in when we can, to touch base with them and say, it's okay.

PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR MANAGING NEWS CONSUMPTION:
Jennifer Vaughn: You will get through it. You will see the other side, and then this will become experience to harden your focus, to make sure that you have the mental boundaries to do your job when you're doing it, and then step outside of it when it's over, to disconnect when you have to.

So it's almost the same concept as a person who doesn't work on TV as a person who does work on TV, is you have to have the connectivity to life around you. If there's a particularly potent thing going on in your life, there are a few things you can do immediately. First of all, if it's a breaking news situation on TV, you can step away for 15 minutes because you know what? It's still going to be going on 15 minutes later.

SELF-CARE STRATEGIES:
Jennifer Vaughn: But for that 15-minute break, you can go for a walk, you can make dinner. You can go pour yourself a cold drink. You can do some deep breathing. You can close your eyes. You can rub your temples and try to get rid of the headache that just formed. There are things that you can do in those 15 minutes that disconnect you from the horror, from the stress, from the drama, from the trauma that's going on in front of you.

BEHIND THE SCENES REALITY:
Jennifer Vaughn: Now, in TV, it's more of that reaching out to those who are on the scene, reaching out to those who are behind the camera. They're seeing horrific things. Interesting point, I don't mean to digress, but interesting point for TV news. Oftentimes, our photographers and reporters show up on a scene before law enforcement has even arrived. So they see things that in another industry, they would be taught how to decompress, and they would have decompression sessions. And we don't do that in TV news because it's fast onto the next thing.

HANDLING TRAUMA IN JOURNALISM:
Jennifer Vaughn: It's a very rapid progression of events. And so if you showed up at a scene as a young reporter, say, or a seasoned reporter, I mean, we all see the same things, and there is horror all around you. It might truly be before law enforcement even gets there. You don't have the skills to help anybody who's been hurt. You don't know what to do because you're not specifically trained in that incident, and yet you still show up and you handle the incident in your way, which is to broadcast news about it, to let the public know.

THE LASTING IMPACT:
Jennifer Vaughn: And that in itself is... it's very long lasting. It can be innately damaging. And that brings back connecting me, there was a responsible person who's been in the industry for some 27 years now and seen it all. It's my responsibility to check in with the newer reporter, someone who hasn't done this before, hasn't seen it as much as I have, and make sure they're okay. And through life, all of us should be doing that.

Jack Trama: Wow. Yeah, that is really, really powerful. And again, all very enlightening to me because these are things that we don't think about, especially as consumers. And we turn on TV or any news feed, and we capture the news. There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that none of us are really aware of.

NEWS SATURATION:
Jack Trama: And I think to a large degree, in the manner in which we consume our news today, which is so many different channels, so many different social media channels, so many different methods, there's bad news saturation. Let's talk about that. And then there's fake news.

DEFINING NEWS SATURATION:
Jack Trama: What is that concept and its impact on both news professionals and viewers?

Jennifer Vaughn: On viewers, let's put it this way. You wake up, you've got a morning routine. Oftentimes that might involve going down to the kitchen, making some coffee, sitting down, and turning on the TV, right? To watch the morning news. And that way you know what the weather's going to be like, you know what's going on in the world. But before you take your first sip of coffee, you're getting hit with, you know, this is happening here, this is disaster, this is going on here.

Yes, I'll continue formatting the transcript from where we left off with the news saturation discussion:

THE MORNING NEWS IMPACT:
Jennifer Vaughn: The reporter and the anchor might say something about your preferred candidate that you don't agree with. And already, you know, your blood pressure is going up, you can feel yourself tense, and that's before you've even finished half your cup of coffee. So that is saturation. Now, most people will eventually have to go to the gym or get in the shower, get in the car, get off to work, and then that's when you have the luxury and the privilege of shutting that off.

EVENING NEWS CYCLE:
Jennifer Vaughn: So that's what saturation looks like first thing in the morning. And oftentimes at night, when you're coming home and you're making dinner, you turn the TV on to see what's been going on all day. Again, it hits you. It hits you. It's like a pelting rainstorm. They come the news stories come, your perceived bias comes at you. You know, before you know it, you're yelling at the TV and you're like, "I can't believe they just said that. That is not true." And there you go. So you're saturated at the front end of your day, and then you're saturated at the back end of your day.

MANAGING THE SATURATION:
Jennifer Vaughn: So again, it's that removal disconnectivity process that most people can access. I highly recommend it. Even though I'm in the business, for us on TV, I think it's mental breaks. And again, I point to, in my experience, my very lovely newsroom that's full of friends and confidants and people who have my back and people who know I have their back.

FINDING RELIEF IN COMMERCIAL BREAKS:
Jennifer Vaughn: And it becomes just sort of in commercials, for instance, you know, we talk a lot in commercials, even though our mics are down. As a viewer, you'll watch the commercial roll. But what we're doing back in the studio is we're talking about pets, we're talking about kids, we're talking about houses. "Hey, did you see that new listing that went up in this particular town?" We're talking about, "What are you doing this weekend? Oh, you're going to that restaurant. You'll have to let me know how it is."

COPING MECHANISMS IN THE NEWSROOM:
Jennifer Vaughn: That is enough for us in these little three to four minute breaks in which the commercials roll that it sort of level sets us, you know, even though we might've been horrified. We see the same images that you see at home. We see more of them because we see the unedited version of the video that comes in. So we see exactly what you see. We hear exactly what you hear where it's coming out of my mouth.

MANAGING THE FLOW:
Jennifer Vaughn: So our disconnectivity or removal from the bad saturation is honestly and truly a break in between. We call them blocks. So after the A block, we get a commercial break. After the A block, we'll sit in that commercial break. We won't talk about the horror of the story that someone just reported on. We'll talk about, "Do you have that wedding this weekend? Where are you going? Oh my gosh, you're going to that state. Wow, let me know how that restaurant was."

NECESSARY RELIEF:
Jennifer Vaughn: That's sort of what we're doing. And maybe it's by default, it's just something that we slip into for regularity and because we need to, that removes it at least temporarily until we roll into the next block. But that is vital because again, it level sets us, it gets our heads back on straight and it lets us remove ourselves, at least temporarily, from everything you just saw. It bothered you. Trust me, it bothered us too.

TWO APPROACHES TO NEWS:
Jack Trama: Yeah. And what's interesting is that there's really two different types of camps for people. On one hand, you've got the consumer of news where you know that doom scroll is a constant thing for them. And sometimes they don't even make it out of bed and they're doom scrolling. And I've been there and I'm one of them. On the other hand, in another camp, you've got people that refuse to watch the news because it's negative in their minds and it's not going to help them.

FINDING BALANCE:
Jack Trama: And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because I think there's a middle ground. I think it's really important to be in the know, at least knowledgeable about current events and what's going on without it consuming you and changing the narrative of who you are. Because on one hand, if there is an issue that takes place locally, globally, and you're not in the know, it means you're not prepared. Maybe you're not prepared for your family, you're not prepared for certain things. So what are your thoughts around those two extremes?

TECHNOLOGY'S IMPACT ON NEWS CONSUMPTION:
Jennifer Vaughn: I feel like the middle has changed as technology has advanced. The instantaneous access has led us to a point where you really can't be so much in the middle because it's all around you all the time. It's accessible from multiple entry points. The bad saturation can get you no matter if you have a chosen position of that middle right. It comes at you no matter what.

STAYING CONNECTED:
Jennifer Vaughn: So I don't think, and maybe it's because I'm so ingrained in this industry and it's been my whole life and career, I don't think it's compatible with our daily lives and demands and pressures and opportunities to be thoroughly disconnected. I just don't. I think we have a responsibility to be partners in this world and human partners to each other. And to be fully disconnected from what's going on around us probably isn't the best way, from my perspective, to go through life.

FINDING BALANCE:
Jennifer Vaughn: But again, that's only my perspective. And that just means that I've been in this industry for so long that I think it still plays a vital role in what we do. For somebody who's trying to maintain calmness, I can appreciate that too. And in that instance, again, I kind of refer back to when you've hit the saturation point and the morning news has bombarded you. You are allowed to disconnect. And within that disconnection is life. And within that disconnection is happiness and joy.

MAINTAINING PERSPECTIVE:
Jennifer Vaughn: And it's the things that you seek outside of the saturation points. If it's your morning news or afternoon news, evening news, it's the things that you seek in the middle that keep you grounded, that keep you happy. They keep you connected to your friends and your family.

POLITICAL DIVISIONS:
Jennifer Vaughn: And one thing that I'm not liking right now, and I feel it more than ever, is the combativeness that we feel or portray against somebody of a different political mindset, political values, someone who might vote differently than you. And that has exacerbated through the years in my watching it from somebody in the industry, watching it develop all around us, that has exacerbated through the years to a point that's concerning to me, because that's a genie out of the bottle.

SOCIAL MEDIA'S IMPACT:
Jennifer Vaughn: And on social media, if you can rant and rail and you can call somebody out from behind your keyboard, that's different from having a disagreement with somebody who might have written an op-ed that you read that you didn't like. You know, you can reach them. They can hear you. They can listen to your points. They can be hurt by your points. You can hurt them by your points. You can hurt yourself.

THE ESCALATION PROBLEM:
Jennifer Vaughn: That is an escalation that I'm not sure collectively we know how to handle yet. And I'm not sure how to put it back into a point where it gets better. And that impacts all of us because that might be me tweeting out an event that just happened, but somebody seeing that tweet and saying, "No, that didn't just happen," and then it becomes this silly sort of regurgitation of, "Well, no, I'm right. No, I'm right, and this is right. No, you're wrong."

SEEKING COMMON GROUND:
Jennifer Vaughn: How do we get to the point where we function having disagreements, political disagreements, and still having friends that might vote differently than you and still having teachers who vote differently than you, but aren't teaching your children a particular way to think? That concerns me a lot with where we go and the responsibility of the media to keep that in check and to not fuel that fire, because I think in many cases, and this is a very honest take, and it's a critical take of my own business, in many cases we fuel that fire.

UNDERSTANDING DISENGAGEMENT:
Jack Trama: Yeah, which makes perfect sense as to why some folks just disconnect completely, because they see the level of dysfunction and the infighting and the things that are taking place at a great level. You know, if you're a child and you're growing up in a home and your two parents are constantly fighting with each other and they're fighting over lots of different things, and it becomes ugly, and you grow up in that world.

THE BIGGER PICTURE:
Jack Trama: When people see that happening in our government and they see it happening with political figures, it disappoints a lot of people. It also makes us as a country look very silly. Countries of all types have their challenges as well, but it always trickles down from the top. And I'm deeply concerned about it as well, and I don't know the answer. I don't know how it gets fixed because it's such a big issue.

STARTING THE CONVERSATION:
Jennifer Vaughn: I don't know how it gets fixed either, but I think it's critically important that we start to talk about it. And again, I lean on this responsibility that I feel to the people I work with, my friends, my family, to be accessible, to be available. And it might not be that I love what they're telling me.

PARENTING PARALLEL:
Jennifer Vaughn: You know, especially like think of you as a parent, and you always want your kids to understand that you can come to me no matter what. Doesn't mean that when they do come to you, you're going to love what they're telling you. I mean, you might be horrified by what they're telling you, and you might have absolutely no idea in that moment what to say back, but they're coming to you, which means they're not going to somebody else, which means they're not keeping it inside of them.

MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS:
Jennifer Vaughn: That said, how do we collectively get to the point where society, humans, each other can come to you, and yet we handle whatever they tell us with grace and we maintain the relationship. You know, I think so much of this is in maintaining the ability to talk to each other, maintaining the ability to sustain a relationship despite our differences. That's so fragile. That's so fragile right now. And we have to take that back to a point where that is just the norm.

THE POWER OF CURIOSITY:
Jack Trama: That is super, super powerful, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I think that as long as we as people remain curious and we stay in that curiosity mindset, and it's okay that somebody has a different opinion because we leave our minds open, then we may just learn about a different position, a perspective that we didn't consider prior. But if we keep ourselves closed-minded and it's our way or the highway, and we become defensive and it becomes a reflex, it's going to create an inflamed dialogue. And that's not what we want.

EXPANDING PERSPECTIVES:
Jack Trama: I talk about the focused, the single-lensed mindset versus one that's adaptive. If we're just focused on one track, it's like the same old school single focus lenses where you can only see one distance, but if you put on adaptive lenses, you have the ability to go outside. You can see from the air, you can see far, it's going to adjust in light. And that's an analogy to being open-minded and really just understanding other people's perspectives so that we can learn from everybody if we allow ourselves to do that.

MAINTAINING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS:
Jennifer Vaughn: And nobody's stripping you from your ability to do all of the things that you want to do. For instance, I can still vote however I choose to vote. Nobody is stripping me of that. But it doesn't mean that, like you just said, my mindset can't be open to somebody else's position. It doesn't mean that I can't treat a divergent opinion with disdain or react to it aggressively. It doesn't mean any of that. It just means that I have the privilege to do everything that I've always done. But how about if I do it in a gentler way? How about if I still maintain my ideals and my ideologies and my perspectives, but I give you the respect to listen to yours? That's all this really should be.

COMMUNICATION'S ROLE:
Jack Trama: Yeah, in its simplest form. Before we move on from this topic, I think that oftentimes the individual who has the strong opinion, the way that it's delivered then creates a ripple effect in the person that's listening to it. So the responsibility is on both sides. Let's learn how to communicate better with each other. I think that would be one of the best things that we can do. And we have two ears for a reason. So let's leverage that instead of jockeying for position and trying to win an argument.

POSITIVE MOMENTS:
Jack Trama: On a lighter note, can you share a story, an example of a story that particularly moved you? A positive story, something that just flooded you with joy and influenced your perspective in your life or even just as a journalist?

IMPACTFUL MOMENTS:
Jennifer Vaughn: So many, goodness. So many, and so many of them don't happen specifically when I'm on TV. It might happen when I've been invited to speak to a class. It might be when I'm in a book situation and somebody says, they wait after I've signed the books, and then they're still waiting in line, and then they come through and they say, "I just want to tell you I saw you at this event, and I started to write my own book because of what you told me to do, which is just go do it."

EMOTIONAL STORIES:
Jennifer Vaughn: And that, you know, I leave that thinking about that person and the event that we had prior and what I might've said that day that said to them, you can do this too. There's nothing wrong with trying. I'm a total sucker for the stories that we show on TV with a military person coming home and surprising their family. It brings me close to tears, as close as I've ever been on TV without fail every single time. It just hits me. Animals hit me. Somebody doing something completely unexpectedly kind and generous and gracious to somebody hits me.

EARLY CAREER MEMORIES:
Jennifer Vaughn: And it reminds me of when I was coming up as a young journalist, and it was a mix of city council meetings and town council meetings and trying to track down this senator who's going to be at this event and getting a one-on-one with this presidential candidate who's coming through New Hampshire. And I would do my job, right, and you would come back with the video and the interview, and you would think, okay, I got it done. But when you go out and you cover something that's at an apple orchard and they're doing a charity event for a little boy who might be going through a health crisis, and you see his family show up and look at the community turnout and know that they're there for that person, that family, that kid - that gets me too.

PRESIDENTIAL ENCOUNTERS:
Jennifer Vaughn: There have been really funny, spontaneous moments with presidents and their families that make me laugh when I think about them. Funny, spontaneous moments right before we go live when, you know, I'm leading an interview with Barack Obama, for instance, or whoever it might be, that we'll have a genuine moment of just, you know, two people talking right before the camera goes on.

HUMANIZING INTERVIEWS:
Jennifer Vaughn: That's one of the things that I've done through the years, is just try to talk to them as people right before we go on and, you know, we're live just to sort of bring them like, it's all going to be okay. You know, I'm just another person you're talking to. It's just another interview and remind them that we're all, this is good. We're fine.

FINDING JOY IN THE WORK:
Jennifer Vaughn: I love those moments, but anything - and it's not even the feeling of me in the moment doing it. It's what somebody else is doing that I get the privilege to see. And it's a range, but I can tell you it's every day. It's an animal story from, "Hey, a baby giraffe was born at this zoo." And I love it. I love it. And it just is, it's that bad saturation break that gives you something else to look at and laugh at and think about.

IMPORTANCE OF POSITIVE STORIES:
Jennifer Vaughn: And honestly, thank God we have those moments, because everything else can be so heavy that I love those moments. And I think I grab onto them with two hands because I need them so much as do the rest of us in the studio at that moment. So they're everywhere. They're all around us.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT:
Jennifer Vaughn: And I always tell people too, you know, give us story ideas if you see something amazing happening in your community, at your school, at whatever. And they do all the time. For instance, yesterday I was at a store somewhere and the owner of the store said, "Jen, I have this awesome story. It's a musician who's local to New Hampshire, but he has played with every name you can imagine, and he's got the stories and the pictures to prove it."

SHARING STORIES:
Jennifer Vaughn: So you know what I did? I took that information back and I went to the producer of the show that covers all of that stuff. And I said, "I have a really good story idea for you." And they're going to pursue it. And then that is the glory of being in a place where people can come up to you with the good things. I love that part. It opens my world into something that's right in and around me that I might not have known about, that we can then share with everybody else. And it's that good saturation at the end of the day, the moments that really hit.

FINDING BEAUTY:
Jack Trama: There is a lot of beauty in this world that sometimes gets clouded. It seems to be every time you turn the news on, there's a negative thing going on. But we also have a choice in what's coming in our newsfeed and the information that we want to bring into our psyche. We have to balance that stuff out.

Jennifer Vaughn: You're right. You've got it. You've got to break the bad saturation points with the good.

CLOSING THOUGHTS:
Jack Trama: You're a serial author and you have a series of books, which I'm going to drop in your show notes for everybody so that they can follow you and your books, because you've accomplished so much in your life and you've overcome a lot. You've had lots of lessons learned. You've done the hard work to bring yourself to the point that you're at right now.

FINAL QUESTION ON CONFIDENCE:
Jack Trama: But for somebody that might be struggling with some insecurities, and we all have them, but if those insecurities are causing them to be stuck in their lives, they're not fulfilling the things that are important to them because they don't know the way forward, they're lacking confidence or courage. What would you say to someone that's feeling that way, given your background and who you are?

CONFIDENCE AND ATHLETICS:
Jennifer Vaughn: Confidence is such a big part of life. Both of my children were college athletes. And confidence, you could see it ebb and flow almost in real time. And that was in spite of how my husband and I raised them. That was when they're exposed to the rest of the world and they're graded on different planes. And I attribute that to them because it was one of the most obvious fractures that we could see going on. And look at a team, you know, look at a business. Confidence is huge, and it's just so tenuous, and it's just, it's almost this vague reference to a thing we don't even really know how to identify.

CONFIDENCE AND AMBITION:
Jennifer Vaughn: So, confidence through your life, I've always looked at it as in confidence and ambition go like this, right? They're like two together. You have to have confidence to have the amplification of ambition, which is you could have a thought, I want to do that. But without confidence, you don't take the steps necessarily to actually do it.

TAKING THE FIRST STEP:
Jennifer Vaughn: So when you're following this path of ambition, you have dreams and you have goals. Consider confidence the first step in trying to make them happen, and then every step in between. For instance, in my industry, I wasn't sure I could do this. I knew I wanted to, and I had the early confidence to try. So that was the first step through the door.

EMBRACING CRITICISM:
Jennifer Vaughn: So then once the door was open, I would say, I don't know that I did really well on that particular story. I don't know what I could do better, but I feel like I missed something. And that entailed collaboration with others around me, people who were better at it than I was at the time, people who had had more experience, I would ask them questions.

THE ROLE OF FEEDBACK:
Jennifer Vaughn: So confidence is part of your being able to receive criticism and being able to ask questions and being able to ask for it, because sometimes you might close a task or finish a project and you don't want to talk about it again. You don't want the criticism from somebody who takes the project and then dissects it and says, "Well, maybe, Jen, you could have done better on A, B, and C, and I don't know what you're doing over here on H and J," but I always tried to stay wide open to that, because at every point, hearing criticism, asking questions about, was that the right way to approach this?

LEARNING AND GROWING:
Jennifer Vaughn: Was that the correct way to phrase this? Did I reach out to the right source? I learned, and if you don't seek the criticism of what you could have done better in that moment, you will never graduate beyond that moment with the confidence you need to maintain the path of ambition.

PERSPECTIVE ON SUCCESS:
Jennifer Vaughn: So I look at confidence in the same way as being open to hearing that you didn't crush it, you didn't win. You weren't successful, you weren't the best. I've always sort of understood that that's a necessary part of maintaining confidence, to crush that hurdle, to win that game, to be the best I can be, to get better. And that's a lifelong thing. You never close that door, because you can always be great at something.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT:
Jennifer Vaughn: But imagine the moment you could have on the next project or the next newscast or the next story or the next book. If you talk to somebody who's been doing this as long as you have or longer, and they said, "Hey, what about that? Hey, did you consider this?" And you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I asked you. I didn't consider that, but I will next time." And that brings me to a project more confident than I was before.

Jack Trama: Yeah, it's being open. You have to be open to all sorts of feedback.

Jennifer Vaughn: The hard talk. Yeah, like you can't run away from that stuff. That makes you better.

CLOSING THE SHOW:
Jack Trama: Jennifer Vaughn, everyone. Thank you so much for coming to the show and sharing your story with us. We're going to have all the links to your website and to your books in the show notes so our friends can learn more about your work and pick up a book or two and read about your wisdom.

FINAL DETAILS:
Jack Trama: In the meantime, friends, you can visit jvwrites.com. That's the letter J, the letter V writes.com to learn more about Jennifer and what she's all about. And thank you for tuning into Mindset Reinvented. If you found value, as I always say, please pay the show forward with others who may benefit by listening. There is a lot of gold discussed on this show. The key is that you never know what someone needs to hear today. And you can be that bridge to putting the show in front of them.

CALL TO ACTION:
Jack Trama: So with that, if you're not on our email list, make sure you visit us at mindsetreinvented.com so you can get notified of our newest episodes. Until then, keep living your best life and see everybody soon. And Jennifer, again, thank you for your time today.

Jennifer Vaughn: Thank you.