Your Kick Ass Life Podcast

It’s no secret we are living in complicated times. Sometimes going back to the basics to focus on the present can be incredibly helpful. This week, Laura Cathcart Robbins, speaker, and host of the podcast, The Only One In The Room, joins me to talk about turning shitty situations into amazing opportunities.  Laura went viral when she wrote an article about being the only Black woman in the room at an Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed writing event. She has been active for many years as a speaker and school trustee and is credited for creating The Buckley School’s nationally recognized committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Together we discussed her experience being ‘othered’, as well as, how sharing that experience encouraged people from all ethnicities, races, genders, and abilities to speak out and feel connected with one another. She also offered a transparent look into her life as a mother and addict, going into treatment, wrestling with shame, and how she is coping today. She is a true wordsmi

We’ve all experienced some form of grief over the last several months; grieving our life before COVID, people we’ve lost and more. Joining me for a deep and transformative conversation about grief is acclaimed grief educator, Christina Rasmussen. Christina is also the author of Second Firsts and Where Did You Go? and host of The Dear Life Podcast. In this episode you’ll hear: Christina describes grief as a catalyst for redefining entry. She shares about her philosophy on grief and the process of reentry or returning to life. (5:13) Invisible losses: any experience that broke your heart and how they dictate the narrative of your life. (10:39) Grief, COVID-19, and being triggered by invisible losses. (20:43) How to know when you are ready to do life reentry work. (24:48) Does reentry or returning to life mean you won’t experience waves of grief? (26:58) The phases of reentry or returning to life. (36:47) http://yourkickasslife.com/366   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the last few months, I’ve been exploring various personal development modalities with my guests. Another area that has been of interest to me is hypnotherapy. To explore this topic and discuss how we can utilize hypnotherapy to transform our subconscious mind is my bestie, Amy E. Smith. Amy is a certified and credentialed confidence coach, masterful speaker, and personal empowerment expert. She is also a certified hypnotherapist who aids hundreds of women in stepping into their authentic power and craft the lives they desire. Together we discuss various methods that can help you analyze and address the state of your subconscious mind, including emotional freedom technique (EFT), dreams and what they mean, as well as what your handwriting can tell you. In this episode you’ll hear: From a lay person’s perspective, Amy describes hypnotherapy. (12:38) How the conscious and subconscious work and what it has to do with the inner critic. (19:35) EFT: what it is and how it can help. (26:03) Handwriting analy

There are multiple ways to heal, and you know I love to give you many avenues. This week we are exploring the topic of internal family systems and how this modality can be a powerful lens of healing. Rebecca Ching, our unofficial resident therapist returns to the show to help us understand more about this type of healing.  Rebecca is a psychotherapist, trauma-informed leadership coach, and host of the Unburdened Leader podcast. She helps established leaders, entrepreneurs and business owners navigate the curveballs of life + leadership without sacrificing their health, important relationships, and their business bottom line.  In this episode you’ll hear: Rebecca shared an in-depth explanation of internal family systems (IFS). (4:47) There are many ways to heal and staying curious about the various methods.(19:04) With IFS all parts are welcome. No judgment. (27:00) Trusting your practitioner and how to break away from a clinician you no longer trust. (30:31) How someone might resolve a common conflict us

How can you have more tools to become the best version of yourself? Well, today we are going to find out how Human Design can help you get there. Erin Claire Jones is a guide, coach, and speaker who uses Human Design to help thousands of individuals and companies step into their work and their lives as their truest selves and to their highest potential. Human Design was a new topic to me and I had so many questions for Erin! Together, we explored the different Human Design types, ways of making decisions, strategies, and more. Erin even read my Human Design chart and shared some specific insight into my true self. She provided practical tools and suggestions so you can integrate them into your own life too, plus how you can learn about your own Human Design.  In this episode you’ll hear: Erin describes Human Design and how understanding your design gives you permission to be who you are. (4:12) Human Design can help you in your day-to-day life, Erin explains how. (8:33) The five different types of Human De

Are you a woman who has trouble listening to their intuition and has unresolved trauma? This week, Lara Riggio joins me to discuss using energy work to heal from trauma. She says that moving these emotions through the body is key and explains how energy healing versus talk therapy can help.  Lara is an Energy Intuitive. Her videos, classes, and sessions have helped tens of thousands discover and heal the mind/body, ancestral, and past life blocks that sabotage health and happiness. Enjoy our conversation.  In this episode, you’ll hear: I start the episode off by sharing the strategies I use to combat anxiety thought-spirals. (2:39) How Lara helps clients create a safe space to work through unresolved trauma. (10:38) Using energy healing to address trauma and how it helps you to retrain your reaction to it. (13:29) Some tell-tale signs someone needs to seek out a trauma therapist. (19:45) Reprogramming your response to triggers. Being present to the feelings you are feeling and teaching yourself to keep y

Ancestors and ancestral healing is a topic I’ve been really curious about lately. And with many topics that pique my interest, I found an expert to bring onto the show to discuss it further. This week, Ash Johns, an international spiritual life coach, and ancestral healer, joins me to discuss ancestral healing, an interesting aspect of personal development.   Ash Johns is also a conscious business strategist, speaker, and creator of ​Creating Queendoms™, a holistic healing and business development program for visionary femm-preneurs and healers ready to create (or nurture) empires in alignment with their soul's purpose, contribute to healing the world and cultivate generational wealth through their deepest dreams and desires.  Ash starts off with an intention setting practice and then explains how she came to be a spiritual life coach and ancestral healer. (10:02) Ancestral healing and why is it important to our lives. (20:00) The role of a Psychosynthesis Coach and how Ash approaches the work she does. (2

Finding joy when a difficult relationship ends is possible. This week, Liza Harper, a life redesigner, joins me to talk about finding joy and clarity through relationships and life’s transitions. She’s a life and divorce coach who seeks to empower women to unleash their desires.  We discuss some ways you can infuse joy into your life. Liza opens up about the personal development work she did for herself and how it led her to do the work she does today. Plus, we explored fear, shame, and stigma surrounding failing relationships. In this episode you’ll hear: How Liza helps her clients find joy in the next chapter of their lives. (5:02) Why it always works out when you bet on yourself. (14:42) Ignoring your intuition during a difficult past relationship. (26:02) Fear and shame women may experience following a relationship with a narcissist. (35:04) http://yourkickasslife.com/360   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s no secret that this year has been challenging and many have been put into situations where they need to have tough conversations. In fact, many problems can be solved when two people can have a thoughtful, mature, and healthy conversation. Yet, having tough conversations or simple communication was never taught to most of us in school; we don’t know how to do it. This week, Alexandra Jamieson returns to the podcast to discuss how to have game-changing conversations.  Alexandra is the co-author of Radical Alignment, a book about how to have tough conversations at work and at home. In this episode, Alex helps us learn the steps needed to show up as your best self, regardless of how the conversation turns out.  How a communication workshop for couples inspired Alex and her husband, Bob, to write their book, Radical Alignment. (22:00) How we fall into traps of bad communication. (10:00) Why the common culprit in miscommunication is the missing conversation. (18:16) You can create team psychological safet

“Narcissism” seems to be a buzzword these days and I wanted to have an expert on who can give us the low-down. According to trauma therapist, Britt Frank, everyone has shades of narcissism. She goes on to say that high-level narcissism is an addiction to self-protection by any means necessary. And for those who have experienced a relationship with a narcissist, it is a traumatic experience.  In this week’s episode, Britt joins me to discuss how to heal from traumatic relationships, including those in which narcissistic abuse is present. Britt is also a teacher and speaker who specializes in the "Science of Stuck."  In this episode you’ll hear:  What is a narcissist and how does someone know they may be in a relationship with someone who is a narcissist? (6:33) Britt’s goal is “dismantling the mental health myths that keep us feeling STUCK and SICK”. She shares what she means by that. (13:34) Dealing with trauma: Some signs or patterns which signal someone should deal with their trauma. (16:07) Why someone

I am doing something I have never done in any podcast episode. For the first time, I am bringing you an interview I did on another podcast, where someone interviewed me. My dear friend Rebecca Ching has a podcast called The Unburdened Leader. It was such a fantastic conversation and I am so grateful that she said, “Yes,” when I asked her if I could air it for my listeners. We talked about a lot of hard things, including grief and addiction. On 9/27, I celebrated nine years of sobriety and recovery from alcoholism. It is something we talked about in this particular episode. I share how commitment to my values helped me maintain my continued healing and sobriety and how grief nearly brought me out of recovery.  In this episode you’ll hear:  My addiction to alcohol and what it symbolized. Why I needed to understand and heal my traumas in order to fully unburden the last of my addictions. Perfection, control, and overachieving worked until it didn’t. Drinking worked for a while until it didn’t.  The role comm

Dr. Alexandra Katehakis is a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist and Founder of Center for Healthy Sex and she joins me to discuss the topic of healing from love addiction. While love addiction may not be something affecting your life where you need to seek treatment, it could be something to look at in terms of some unhealthy coping mechanisms affecting your life. We discuss what love addiction is, the root cause (which stems from father abandonment), and what the steps to healing look like. Dr. Alex offers amazing insight and advice about what it means to be a love addict and how to step into recovery. I hope this episode is helpful to you, in some way.  In this episode you’ll hear:  What is love addiction? And how it differs between men and women. (5:59) Women struggle with a concept called ‘mother hunger’ and therefore it is crucial for women to find support from other women in order to heal from sex or love addiction. (12:33) The root cause of love addiction. (14:45) There comes a point when we realize

This September is the 10th year anniversary of Your Kick-Ass Life! Over the years, the YKAL team has evolved and grown. In this episode, Liz Applegate, our lead coach here at YKAL, joins me for a conversation about shit that matters.  We are talking about aging, perimenopause, and depression. One of the reasons I wanted to have a conversation about these topics was to shine a light on some of the ways they can show up in one’s life, especially in 2020, and the curveball we’ve been thrown this year.  In this episode you’ll hear: Liz shares her history with depression and antidepressants and how she gave herself permission to seek mental health help. (8:30) I share my experience of how a discussion with my therapist about burnout turned into one about high functioning depression. (19:33) Our thoughts and feelings (and struggle) on being middle-aged. (22:08) What we think about navigating perimenopause. (34:25) http://yourkickasslife.com/355 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic

Happiness. It’s 2020 and I have a feeling that many of us could use a dose of that. Right? Well, you’re in luck because Kim Strobel, happiness coach, joins me to talk about how to be happier. Happiness isn’t always born from unicorns and rainbows. In fact, you’ll hear how Kim’s happiness coaching was born out of her own trauma, darkness, and suffering.  Together we discuss toxic positivity, why turning off negative feelings isn’t helpful, and the importance of putting your happiness first. Kim also shares some of the happiness habits we can practice in order to increase happiness levels. Finally, we also explore the Arena of Bigness, what it means, and how to step into the Arena with courage and do really hard things.  In this episode you’ll hear: Kim opens up about her struggle with mental illness and what that looks like in her life now. (5:20) Why today’s culture of positivity and the conventional formula for happiness is wrong. (21:30) Putting your happiness and wellbeing at the forefront is of the utm

This week on the YKAL podcast we’re talking about resilience and intuition. To help me unpack this topic is my guest, Dr. Andrea Pennington. She is an integrative physician, acupuncturist, meditation teacher, #1 international bestselling author, and TEDx speaker. Together Dr. Andrea and I discuss what it means to be resilient, how tolerating stress is not the same thing as being resilient, and how self-care plays a key role in resilience. Plus, she shares what it means to learn who you really are, how to share your personal story, and listening to your intuition. In this episode you’ll hear: Dr. Andrea shares her story of debilitating imposter syndrome and how it led her to do the work she is doing today. (9:18) What it means to be resilient and some traits of resilient people. (11:30) Tolerating stress is not the same as being resilient. (14:20) In order to embrace who you are, you must first need to learn who you are. (17:49) Dr. Andrea shares about her own struggle with depression and how music has be

  Are you a woman who struggles with asking for what you want at work? This week we are talking about some of the things that hold women back in the workplace with guest, Sara Laschever! Sara is an authority on the challenges that shape women’s lives at work. She is the co-author, with Linda Babcock, of Women Don’t Ask, the groundbreaking study that first focused public attention on the forces preventing women from negotiating on their own behalf. I stumbled upon Sara’s work while doing research for my third book and I was fascinated. I am thrilled to have her on the show! In this episode you’ll hear:  Some common obstacles women confront in the workplace and some ways in which they can overcome them. (5:35) The impact of subconscious biases on women in the workplace. (13:07) Direct or controlling behavior in men at work will often go unremarked, yet with women, we tend to mark it. (18:12) Some ways in which women can go through the process of evaluating their talents and target what will make their perso

When it comes to personal development, positivity and cheering people on is great. And…if we really want to support and love women, we have to also make room for the difficult stuff, for the traumas and the “shadow side”. That is where this week’s guest, Christine Gutierrez’s work really comes in. Christine returns to the YKAL podcast and together we discuss honoring your pain, going to the darkness in order to get to the light and living in a world where your light side and dark side can co-exist.  Christine is a Latina licensed psychothera​pist, life coach and expert in love addiction, trauma, abuse, and self- esteem. She is the author of the upcoming book, I am Diosa: A Journey to Healing Deep, Loving Yourself, and Coming Back to Your Soul. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Who is Diosa and what being Diosa is all about. (4:06) Christine’s book is broken up into three parts: The darkness, the light and the integration. She explains why she chose to write it in this way. (9:34) Why it is important to ex

This week on the show we are talking about emotions, which my guest, Sherianna Boyle, has a specific methodology to work through them. I was “emotionally illiterate” for a really long time, which led to lots of numbing out, so I love learning different tools to process them!     Sherianna Boyle is an international Emotional Detox Coach®, author of eight books, including her most recent Emotional Detox and Emotional Detox for Anxiety. Emotions are so much to carry sometimes. But as Sherianna said during our time together, “Emotions are not the problem, it’s our reaction to them.” She helps us understand emotions, how to process them, and honor them.    In this episode you’ll hear: How emotions support a kick-ass life. (3:26) Sherianna shares how she was drawn to work as an Emotional Detox Coach®. (6:32) Emotional detox for anxiety and what it means. (7:35) All emotions are good when you process them. There is no negative emotion. (11:25) The Emotional Detox philosophy and how it applies to triggering expe

Work is the number one place we make friendships as adults, according to Shasta Nelson. So why not focus on friendships where we are most of the time? Well, Shasta is back on the podcast this week to talk about this topic, one she is an expert in, friendships. Her newest book is all about friendships at work. And, this is definitely an interesting time for workplace friendships, with many working from home or working in the office but with socially distant restrictions. We can all use a little help with our relationships whether they are our personal relationships or friendships at work. I am happy to share our conversation with you. In this episode you’ll hear: The three things needed in a healthy relationship: consistency, vulnerability, and positivity. (5:43) Why having a best friend at work improves employee experience and organizational success. (9:31) How to handle the coworker friend who sucks the energy out of you and how to reduce the impact of their toxicity. (12:04) #RelationshipGoals at work -

This week on the YKAL podcast, my guest is Leah Campbell Badertscher. She is a former attorney turned artist and Master Life coach for world-class performers and leaders in the arts, business, and movements in positive change for the social good. During our conversation, Leah asks simply, “What are you giving up if you don’t go for it?” And that is the question she pondered after graduating law school. In this episode, she shares openly her battle with her inner-critic and how she pushed forward to pursue an artistic career. Her story of wanting to follow a specific path, but experiencing push back from self-talk is common. My hope is that if you see some of yourself in Leah’s story, you will be inspired to take action in your life.  In this episode you’ll hear: Leah shares her journey from law career to artist. (4:14) Why it is important to not dismiss your intuition and instead listen to what you really want. (11:13) Leah talks about the battle with her inner critic and how she kept going. (24:58) How L