Whitney Johnson's Blog

I almost didn’t go.

I told myself it was preparation — that I needed more time to get ready for my keynote. But if I’m honest, I was shrinking back. Avoiding something uncomfortable.

The invitation was from BYU’s Executive MBA program — a Learning Adventure designed to help their leaders practice navigating the Launch Point. Outside, in the dirt and on the cliffs of Moab, doing things most of them had never done before.

That was the point.

They had asked me to come speak about change. And here I...

This past Sunday, within the span of a single hour, luck found me twice.

First: I was waiting in a hotel lobby when Sidney Crosby walked by. (Yes. That Sidney Crosby.) I could have stayed in my seat. Instead, I got up, walked over, and said something to the effect of — my daughter is a huge fan, would you mind a photo? Mildly embarrassing. Completely worth it. (If you’ve seen my recent post (here) about our hockey weekend together, you’ll understand why that selfie means everything.)

Seco...

I hit send this morning.

I submitted the manuscript for my next book to my publisher, Page Two.

Kendra, my editor there, will undoubtedly have lots and lots of comments. And those comments will make it better. But the manuscript is out of my hands and into hers.

I’ve been thinking about this idea for close to ten years. There were stretches where I was writing. And long stretches where I wasn’t. There was procrastination. There were competing priorities, like running a business. There we...

It’s February, and if there is one thing I’ve learned after years of disrupting myself, it’s this:

It’s never too late to become the person you want to become.

So, in December, I did something that I started doing a few years ago––I wrote a letter from my December 2026 self — as if she were writing back in time to thank me for how I chose to live this year.

A thank-you note from the person I’m becoming.

I wrote across categories: spiritual growt...

I wore my daughter’s hockey pants the day after Christmas.

Padded. Bulky. And exactly what I needed.

Miranda took up hockey a year ago after watching the Penguins play. She told me it looked like magic.

So for Christmas, she didn’t ask for anything wrapped. She asked me to come skate with her.

I loved skating as a child. Won a competition when I was eleven—camel, scratch spin, waltz jump. The ice was my place once.

But I hadn’t skated in decades.

So there I was in Roanoke, lacing up, borr...

Every so often, someone asks you a question that makes you pause—not because you don’t know the answer, but because answering it helps you discover something true about yourself.

That happened recently.

A website I admire, Authors Insider, sent over a questionnaire—twenty-three questions about writing, creativity, and the behind-the-scenes moments that shape a book long before it ever reaches a shelf. I said yes, partly because I love what they’re building, but mostly because the question...

Last weekend, something wonderful happened: friends came to visit.

But not just any friends. These were a special kind of friends—people we met when our adult lives were just beginning. We were newly married, still figuring out who we were, and dreaming about what life would be like.

Roger and I met Jeff and Paula Chipman in New York City when Roger was getting his Ph.D. at Columbia, and Jeff was starting medical school there. We spent countless hours together in our tiny one-bedroom apar...

“Never suppress a generous thought.” – Camilla Kimball

It’s been a hard week. Painful, overwhelming, terrifying — hard.

After church on Sunday, I learned that someone had driven a truck into a chapel in Michigan, shot four people to death and wounded eight others, then burned the chapel down. People who knew the killer said he hated people of my faith — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That was hard to sit with.

The night before, the president of our church, Russell M. Nel...

When’s the last time you felt jet lag – really felt it, your bones and your mind refusing to believe that it’s mid-morning and not the dead of night? Your muscles are screaming out – why are we not in bed? Or why are we in bed? 

Last month, I was in Australia for work, a whopping 14-hour time difference from my home in Virginia on the East Coast. And all that travel indeed affected my body’s natural clock. At 6pm in Australia, I was feeling the call of bedtime, then shooting wide awake at...

My husband and I just returned from a trip to Tahiti, an island about halfway between Australia and South America. It was a fundraising trip for Southern Virginia University, where my husband is a professor. We’re all in on supporting SVU – so we sailed out on a marvelous eight-day cruise, joined by the amazing President Bonnie Cordon and a truly splendid group of people.

Out on the water, I made a conscious choice to record all the good things about this trip. I wrote them down. It’s som...