Navigating Life's Seasons: Embracing Curiosity and Creating Space for Growth

Over the past few months, I’ve been paying attention. Not just to my own life—but to the cultural moment we’re all living in. And if I’m honest, something feels different. People are tired.

Burnout remains high.
Information overload is constant.
And many people are operating in what neuroscience describes as chronic threat mode, where the brain scans for danger rather than possibility.

But something interesting is also happening.

For years, the dominant message was productivity, performance, and optimization. Now the conversation is moving toward nervous system regulation, meaning, and wholeness.

In this episode, I share:

• The three cultural phases that shaped modern personal growth
 • Five signals that a new movement focused on regulation and meaning is emerging
 • Why I’m entering a season of prayer, study, and reflection

This episode is also an invitation. To slow down. To pay attention. To consider what life is asking of you in this season.

What’s Coming Next

I’ll be sharing a six-episode series on the tools that have helped me most, including:

• nervous system regulation
 • thought awareness and the Clarity Loop
 • breath and somatic practices
 • aromacognition and sensory grounding
 • values and identity
 • designing a life aligned with purpose

These are not quick fixes. They are practices that shape a life.

During this upcoming season you can still connect with me, just choose one or more of the options below! 

And in the meantime…Choose a couple tools you love.Practice them. Master them. Let them become part of your daily rhythm.Because every morning we wake up with a choice. To react to the world around us. Or to default to yes—to the extraordinary life we are called to live.

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:00

Welcome to another extraordinary week. I'm really glad you're here. today I'm gonna share with you where I have been and what I have been contemplating lately. I'm recording this during Lent, and so this is a very reflective season and I have done some research into personal growth as a result of some of the things that I'm hearing from coaching clients, some of the things that I'm perceiving myself. So over really the past. Couple, few months I've been paying attention. I've been studying with with other personal growth influencers or thought leaders and as we navigate pre COVI through COVI and now, and just really how society is thinking and growing and how personal growth interacts in our culture and that there's a growing. Number of influencers and thought leaders that are, you're probably listening to them on your podcast and watching their shows and reading their newsletters, and we are bombarded with so many really good influences and good instruction. And sometimes it gets a little bit much. I noticed with my own clients that we were starting almost to beat ourselves up with self-care tools. Like they weren't helping as much as they were bringing on some. Feelings of guilt and shame even over not using them or their, or not being effective or whatever that is. Okay, so what I'm sharing with you today is over the past couple months, just really being able to put this on paper and then, form some thoughts around it, about my own, not just my own life, but the cultural moment that we're living in. If I'm honest, something just feels different and people are tired. I probably don't have to tell you that people aren't lazy and not disengaged, but just tired sometimes I think in the personal growth world, we can almost, may be made to feel like we aren't doing the work and so we aren't. So there's something lacking in us or we just aren't disciplined or whatever it is, however, that's landing for you. But really you can feel it in conversations and in the pace of the world, and you can feel it in what I would call the nervous system of society. And I've been focusing a lot on that. Lately. Mostly because in the medical, in the healthcare setting, that's what we're dealing with and we know that. And so it's really the only way in a crisis moment or in a moment when you're don't have time to maybe build rapport or relationship. I get a patient in there, just their anxiety is off. Off the charts and I have to do some procedures or start an iv, give them instructions, and they cannot hear me. And they are so overcome with anxiety that it makes it really hard for them to listen, to learn to cope. And so in that moment, what we have is nervous system regulation tools. Things that can physiologically change before we can get at some of the emotional charge or the stories or the mindset. So that's where I deal with in the healthcare society. So it just transferred nicely into some of the messages that I've given you here on the podcast and into coaching practice. but researchers and psychologists are also noticing the same thing. Burnout rates remain high even years after the pandemic, and many people are still operating in what neuroscientists call chronic threat mode, where the brain is constantly scanning for problems rather than creating possibility, which makes sense because we went through a trauma. To all certain degrees differently. We experienced the pandemic differently, but how many of you actually had a time to debrief or went to therapy to see what that meant? I know that there are, my kids are adults now and we're coming outta school at the time, and this has impacted how they think, how they start their careers and possibly how they're shaping the really big decisions that we make for our adult lives. With no real debriefing or no? How did that land? This really came to. Was heightened for me when we had that recent ice storm because our power went out. We had no heat, we had no electricity for days and didn't know when it was coming and when it, we di did start to return to normal. I noticed that there was a little bit of sense of trauma that crisis, and even though I wouldn't say my life was threatened, my brain was telling me that I was in danger for all of that time. And not, and having a time to debrief that was really important for me. And I thought we went through the pandemic for years and chaos in our messaging, all of that, because you went through it too. Like I said, we all experienced it differently, had different opinions about it. That's not really the point, but add to the constant noise of politics and news cycles and social media and pressure to optimize every area of our life. It's really no surprise that a lot of people are feeling overwhelmed and for a long time. This message, A personal growth sounded like this. Do more optimize. I use the word optimize a lot. Optimize your health. Now what I mean by that is taking wherever you're starting from and optimizing what your circumstances are, but optimize more sounds like work, push harder. All of those messages are really being repelled, and I've noticed that when I talk to coaching. People who reach out to me for coaching and then are back off at the point of committing to the to the work of it. Because maybe they are they're afraid that it is going to be more of the do more, optimize, more push harder, and our brains are afraid of several things. Traditionally we're afraid of ruin. We're afraid of being destroyed. We're afraid of the process that it will be hard and we won't be able to see it through. We're afraid of outcomes failing. Or maybe sometimes it's succeeding. We're afraid of what other people are going to think about the process. So do more, optimize more and push harder in today's society may not be where you're really coming from as far as how you develop personally. Something is shifting. And when you step back and look at the bigger picture, you can actually see the phases of culture and personal growth. For a few decades, we lived in what you might call the achievement era. That was a time that was focused on goals and productivity and success. No, I love that and I still do. I still love that. And that's really where I was coming out of in personal growth. And so it's all about smart goals and productivity tips, success. And what, however you define that, then came the optimization era. And this is where morning routines and life hacks, biohacking, habit stacking, everything could be upgraded. This is where I learned about essential oils and learned how you could really, I saw those as a life hack, something that would be motivating to and pleasant, enjoyable, and make some of those habits come to life and really be. Become sustainable. And that was pre pandemic but now something new is emerging and many psychologists and leadership researchers. Believe that we're entering into a new phase one centered around regulation and meaning and wholeness. And I really love this'cause it fits with my contemplative nature. It brings me full circle. Instead of asking only how to perform better, people are asking deeper questions. And I've always approached personal growth as a bit performative and I've had to really work through that to make it less so and make it more about who am I becoming, not what I'm doing or achieving, but who I'm becoming. My mom probably said this to me a lot but I wasn't ready to hear it because I was still back in the achieving mode and the success mode. And I didn't want to slow down. I wanted to go as fast as I could to to reach these goals that I had. But now we're at a place that instead of asking how to perform better, like I said, people are asking deeper questions. Who am I now? What actually matters? How do I live with clarity, peace, and peace in a chaotic world. That's something that I probably ask myself every day. I ask it in a form of, I don't understand the world that I'm living in anymore. But what I'm really saying is, how do I live with clarity and peace in a chaotic world? Now, several signals point to this shift, and I will say that I've also studied, spent some time in scripture, and if you read scripture and read some of the stories you'll see. See that this is nothing really new to the human story and it's really about, even if you go to the story of Job and being reminded of really the who we are and who God is, and that's always a good place to come back to, to put things in perspective, but. Regardless. Let's talk about some of the signals that point to the shift. First, the language of nervous system has entered the everyday conversation. It's not new, it's not foreign anymore. People are learning that behavior change is difficult when the brain is stuck in survival mode. I've been talking about this for several years, even on this podcast. It's why I say we need to train our brains to cooperate with us to, so that we can show up in the world in the way we really want to. And we've talked about mindset shifts, we've talked about clarity loops, we've talked about all sorts of tools in order just to take every thought captive and. And bring our brains on board with how we want to live and who we wanna become. Now. Second, mental health and personal growth are. Beginning to converge. Leaders and coaches are realizing that resilience and emotional regulation and psychological safety are foundational, not optional. You can never make the changes unless you have that psychological safety. You can not. Maintain the changes. If you don't have that emotional regulation and resilience is irritating. If you're asked to do that in an environment that just asks for more and more of you, what we're crying out for is how about let's live a life that require, doesn't always require me to uplevel my resilience. I, I am resilient. I am adaptive. I can emotionally regulate, I can pursue that psychological safety, but don't ask for more and more. That's not what, where we're at anymore. So third. Signal is that many adults, especially in midlife, are entering what psychologists describe as the stage of self authorship. Now, for years, life is shaped by expectations. We have career expectations, family expectations, cultural expectations. Undoing those expectations or revealing them for what they are is a crucial step in moving past. All of those things. Some of them are real, some of them are perceived, some we make, we just totally make them up because of a comment made or a feeling or a perception that we had of a circumstance that we didn't really pack. Unpack. But our brain logged it as a certain narrative or an expectation. But eventually the questions become what life am I actually to live? And that's where many people find themselves today. And honestly, I love it when we can get to that place and those roots. What when I say I for discovery sessions, those discovery sessions is where we find this out. This is where we find those. Expectations that, that are hanging over us, that are holding us captive. And this is where we can really set ourselves free and begin to pursue the truth. What life am I actually called to live? And that's where. Like I said, many people find themselves today and it's where I am today. Not chasing more success, but searching for alignment. We talk about alignment a lot, and that's what that means is aligning with those core values and the life that you really wanna be living. Now, lately I found myself entering a quieter season too. a time when I'm a more intentional and about community and prayer and reading and really set myself up with a plan that I'm gonna stick to because it's this certain amount of time, it's those seasons, but more time in prayer, more time in reading, and books like. I'm reading Discernment by Henry now, and that's been sitting open on my desk and I've been revisiting the genius of Jesus by Irwin McManus and reflecting on that radical wisdom of Christ and what it looks like to be Jesus' hands and feet, what it looks, what Jesus looked like. And I've been studying, the work of Marty Seligman as well on flourishing and human wellbeing, taking a course on the, what that means. And returning to ideas about mastery and calling and courage, and all of this is stirring something in me and. Mostly, I will say it's curiosity. I don't have any certainty or I can't even say that I have a great level of clarity about what that looks like, but it's a sense that it might be time to just take a step back for a season and go deeper. And not because the work is finished, but because the work is evolving. And so that's going to matter to how we interact and how we connect. And so I'm gonna have an invitation for you, but I'm also going to tell you a little bit about what I'm doing now. So why this matters to me is that if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know my story. I've felt the burnout, the pain of burnout, and I've experienced the frustration of knowing something needs to change, but not really knowing how. And I've also experienced the breakthroughs that come when we begin to understand our thoughts, calm our nervous system, reconnect with our purpose. I mentioned, I've mentioned. Numerous times that this all started with being introduced to essential oils and natural health. And it sent me on a journey to see what other tools that I could use to support my body, mind, and spirit in the becoming who I want to become. How I could support the habits and just the flow and alignment of how I wanted to live. But. The truth that I've learned is that growth is not a one-time event. We don't just all of a sudden arrive and I've been watching Call The Midwife and there's sister Monica, Joan in that in is one of my favorites. Love her and she is. In the end, at the end stages of her life as she reminds us continually. But she's always growing and pulling from her wisdom. She's pulling from the past and she's learning and. It just makes me see that you are always evolving and that it's an ongoing practice till the very end. It never ends. And I'm not saying that it's not hard, but We don't have to work for it. We can flow with that. It's a daily decision to run the race set before us. It's choosing not to grow weary and doing good. It's learning how to take every thought captive and align it with truth, and it's waking up every day and deciding again to default to yes to your extraordinary self. I am leaning in, I'm staying curious, and that means that I'm not drifting and I'm not being passive. And I'm not just taking what, like what comes at me. I'm being intentional about who I'm becoming and how I show up in the world. Now you might wanna say, I'm pressing on, I am. I'm. I'm holding true whatever words that you like to use for that is fine. It doesn't matter as long as we are moving forward and defaulting to our extraordinary selves Now. Before I step away from the podcast for a season, I wanna share one more series with you. This is going to be a six week series on the tools that have helped me the most The tools I return to again and again when life gets complicated. So we're gonna talk about practices like nervous system regulation, thought awareness, and I'm gonna go over the clarity loop, breath and somatic practices, some aroma, cognition, and sensory grounding. We're gonna talk about values and identity and designing a life aligned with purpose. Now, my hope for these series, this series is not to provide a bunch of quick fixes. These are practices that we can all be holding to as we journey forward and as we pay attention and strengthen our mind and body and spirit for this, these, for these times that we're living in, so that we can meet the moment in the way that honors who we are and our worthiness. Like I said, these aren't quick fixes. These are practices and I wanted to put them all in one place. So I'm going to put them into a six week series. They will be live here on the podcast, at the podcast site. They will be free. I am but I'm also going to put them. For subscribers to my email list. We'll also have access to a community so that I can put'em all in one place. And you can even share your own tips there or maybe interact with others. But my focus is just providing these, this six week series to leave you with for a while so that we can all be moving forward. My hope is that you will find one or two of the tools that resonate with you and begin to master them because mastery is not about doing everything. It's about doing a few things consistently enough that they become part of who you are. This first really clicked in with me with mindfulness, and if you can build in even a couple minutes of a mindfulness practice in the morning, it just changed everything for me. And so sometimes my morning routine has grown over the years and I've added practices as, and I've, as it became more valuable, I allowed more time for it. And when I started to see the results, it, yeah, it just made sense. Spend more time there and then set yourself up for the day. But if I don't have that time, there's a non-negotiable and it's not a certain amount of time. It's mine is three to five minutes of mindfulness in the morning will always be something that I do that with my aromatherapy and my aromatherapy comes. All throughout my morning routine, and so I can introduce it easily and stick an oil in my pocket, so it can be as simple as that. But regardless, it's about doing a few things consistently enough that they become part of who you are. And that's what mindfulness and aromatherapy have been for me. And so it won't be that for you maybe. A breath work is something that is still still something that I practice regularly and throughout the day. Regardless of what it is for you, it'll be different for you. Maybe it, it's gonna be breathing, maybe it's going to be having your morning coffee switching to tea. I don't know what it is for you, getting your sleep, whatever those things are, knowing your values, reciting them. I don't know. You'll figure that out because you have the insight and wisdom to answer all those questions for you. It's all, they're all right there. And if you get stuck anywhere, you know that you can always click the link and we can get on the phone or on Zoom and we can chat and work that out. Alright, after the series, I'm going to take a break from the podcast for a season. I'm not disappearing. I like to say, I'm creating space. This is gonna be space to listen and to study and to write and maybe just maybe space for a book that's be been quietly forming in my heart. During that time, we can still stay connected. I would love if you could, if you followed along, I'm going to, I'll put some of my thoughts down in a blog. I'll continue to do that. It will continue to be on in the Facebook group, the regulated nurse. And if you ever wanna talk one-on-one, you can always use this, the link to schedule a chat or join the list for updates. I'll be sharing them there, so it'll be more of the things that I'm writing and not necessarily recording. For the podcast. before we begin this series, I want to invite you to mo of your own contemplation. You might wanna take these questions into your journal or into prayer, and that's what season of life am I actually in right now? This is something for you to think about and really identify. That alone can be a very beautiful process, very honoring. and then where do I feel the tension between survival mode and intentional living? Maybe it's in your finances. Maybe it's in a relationship maybe it's in a job. Wherever that is, identifying that can also be very freeing. So where do I find the feel, the tension between survival mode and intentional living. Now you guys getting on the list is where I'm going to, I'm gonna send everybody on my list will get these questions in writing. So if you're thinking I needed to write that down, you could get it, I could email it to you. So just click that link and put, give me your email list to tell me where to send it. And I will send you the notes for this episode. You'll get the different references I mentioned along with the questions at the reflective questions that maybe you want to incorporate. another good question is what practices help me feel grounded, clear, and aligned? What voices, habits, or expectations might I need to release in order to live more authentically? I love this one because a lot of times we're picking things up all day long, but we're not letting things go. And perhaps the most important question is what might it look like for me to live more fully as the person I was created to be? I love the way that lands when it does, what might it look like for me to live more fully as the person I was created to be? This is so unique to every single one of us, and this is at the heart of my mission is to help. You to help others. To help the people around me, the community around me, to discover that person that they were created to be, because I think that is where the real beauty lies. I think we were all created to be interdependent. We were created to come together and offer our gifts and our uniqueness to each other and to be able to hold one other up and again, to meet the moment in a way that is honoring to all of that, that we were created for. so we have this next six episodes together. However you do that, whether you binge it or you spread it out for six weeks, we have that time together on the podcast. But in the meantime, choose a couple tools that you enjoy. Practice them, master them, and let them become part of the rhythm of your days. Because the goal isn't perfection. The goal is living, awake and aligned, living intentionally, living in the way that reflects who you are created to be. So tomorrow morning when you wake up. Take a breath, notice your thoughts and choose your direction. And then once again, default to yes, your extraordinary self.