Paula Jones spent twenty years in human development before a horse taught her how little of it she had lived in her body. This is a conversation about softness as strength: meeting your work, your people, and yourself with only the effort the moment actually needs. Try the cup exercise while you listen. You will feel the argument before you can explain it.
In this conversation
Paula came to horses thinking she was learning to ride, and found a mirror instead: how fearful she was, how reactive, how absent, despite all the training. Out of that came the practice she now teaches to leaders. We get into why a felt experience changes people when information cannot, why a spooked herd goes back to grazing while we run our stories for years, and the harder problem of making change stick once someone returns to an organisation that will happily digest them. Paula's answer is not motivation. It is structure and practice. You will leave with one small, physical thing to try, and a question worth sitting with: where are you using far more effort than the moment requires?
About Paula Jones
Paula Jones is co-founder, with Ellen Coomber, of The Softness Revolution, where she helps leaders, founders, and creatives trade striving for a softer, more sustainable way of working. Her path runs through more than twenty years in coaching and human development, an academic background in language and behaviour, years in Japan studying budo, and a deep apprenticeship with horses, including equine bodywork and ongoing study with master horseman Mark Rashid. She is co-writing a book, The Power of Softness.
Resources mentioned in this episode
The Softness Revolution — softnessrevolution.com
The Power of Softness (book and 6-week online programme) — thepowerofsoftness.com and softnessrevolution.com/book
Contact Paula — paula@softnessrevolution.com
Instagram — instagram.com/softnessrevolution
Mark Rashid, horseman and martial artist (“Softness Bootcamp” clinics)
Happy Dog Ranch, Colorado (horse sanctuary)
The Masterson Method (equine bodywork)
Brené Brown — “Knowledge is rumour until it lives in the bones”
GRACEWorks is a podcast for leaders, high achievers, and thoughtful humans who sense that success alone is no longer enough.
Hosted by Paul Crick, each episode explores what it means to lead, live, and work with GRACE especially when we find ourselves under pressure of some sort or another.
Through honest conversations, lived experience, and reflective inquiry, GRACEWorks invites you to move beyond relentless striving toward clarity, presence, and alignment.
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