Explore Beyond: A Real, Raw Beginning for 2026

Welcome back to Explore Beyond  and welcome to 2026.

In this first episode of the year, I’m showing up without a script, without a plan, and with a whole lot of honesty. What started as a quiet morning with a dusty journal turned into a reminder of how much I need space to explore with myself and with you.

In this episode, I share:

• Why I decided to pick the mic back up after a long pause
• How journaling, vision boards, and creative rituals help me reconnect with my body and intuition
• What it looks like to be excited and scared at the same time
• Reflections on conscious leadership, fear, and continuous growth
• A glimpse into my love for travel including an upcoming conscious travel journey to Rwanda

This podcast isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about being real, being curious, and allowing ourselves to explore beyond what’s familiar together.

If something here resonates, I’m glad you’re here.
 If it doesn’t, that’s okay too.

Let’s explore beyond.

Transcript

Hi, this isCourtney, and I'm the owner of traverse beyond. I'm going to take you on a journey of my ups and downs and all arounds in this podcast of explore beyond, and I hope that you join me, and if you find little pieces that you resonate with awesome, and if you don't, that's okay too, but I'm here to just be real, be raw, and explore more and explore beyond with you. So welcome to this first episode of 2026 and I hope that you enjoy.

Are you ready to go on a journey? Because I'm ready to take you there.
Welcome back.
It's been a while, and it's currently January 18, 2026 and I just want to get back on here and share what's going on in my world,
some of the highs, also the lows,
because it's been an amazing adventure thus far, and I wanted to share kind of Everything, what's real, what's raw with me, what's going on. And so this is my first podcast of this year, and I hope you enjoy. And I'm here to kind of just be with you here and now and share what's going on in my world. So I woke up this morning and I actually had no intention of recording a podcast at all. I had started a podcast a couple years ago, and thought to myself, who knows if I'll ever pick it up. I pay for a monthly subscription, but I'm not even sure, and kind of talked myself out of it for the longest time. And I got this journal from a co worker last Christmas, and I didn't do anything with it. It's actually been sitting on my desk for,
well, since last Christmas collecting dust,
and I decided I wanted to open it up and give it a go this morning, and I, and I'm very particular about how I follow the rules. I'm with myself, like I'll say, if I'm going to journal, I'm going to start on page one. And there's a bunch of prompts in this, and it said, start wherever you want. So I go, okay, great. I'm gonna tap into myself energetically and decide where I want to start in this journal. And the page that came up was, you know, what makes you feel the most excited, the most at ease, and I started just writing, and it felt really good. It felt really good. Number one, to just pick a random page in the book, which I'm not great at, and number two, to just tap in and tune into my body, because over the last couple years, I have gotten into conscious leadership, which I'm really excited to share, some things that I have learned from that over these last couple years, and one of them, though, the biggest thing that I've learned is really to tap into my body and to feel what's going on in there. And so as I was writing this journal prompt, I really tuned in to the feels of these questions, how did that resonate with me in my body? And when I got done with the journal, and I was thinking about what makes me feel most at ease, it's when I have time and space with myself to explore. And then I thought, Man, I have this podcast called explore beyond, and I haven't recorded anything in forever, so why not just start recording and see where it takes me? And funny enough, this is like my second take, because my first one had a bunch of scratchiness behind it, and I figured nobody would want to listen to a candy wrapper behind my voice. So here we are. Take two. It's very different from number one, turns out. So anyways, welcome and I guess you know a couple. I guess the story that I want to share today that just is kind of coming up for me is I was at this networking event with a bunch of women powerhouses last week, and one of them said we should do a vision board for 2026 and immediately what came to mind was yes, and let's go get all these magazines and cut out all the magazines, and that's going to take forever, but sure, and they're like, No, Courtney, we don't do that. We do it digitally. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, that. Well, that makes a lot more sense. But funny enough, back in the fall, I think it was around November, I was pulling my animal spirit deck, which is, if you do know me, you know that I love my energetic alignment and my spirit cards. If you don't, I love that stuff, and I try to pull them every day, and I kept on pulling the same one, and it said, you know, when out of alignment, do a creative project, and I was definitely feeling out of alignment. So I decided to dive in to this creative project, and it was my vision board, and so I figured I'd share it with you today a little bit. But I went to the store and I bought five magazines, and I started coming home and just cutting out pictures and gluing them old school to my paper. And this vision board actually sits on my coffee table. Sometimes I move it depending on where I'm at, but in general, it sits where I can see it. And on this vision board, I have things like travel the world, because that's what I do, explore adventure. I actually have a wedding ring, because at 39 years old, I am never been married, no kiddos, and I have, you know, my love story is unfolding in divine timing. I have mind, spirit and soul. I have book fans, because I really want to write a book. I have time to shine. Get curious, lean in, staying grounded. I have enjoying the view from the top. I you know, at this point I don't know what the top looks like? Because when I started side blurt traverse beyond, I never said, I always said that you don't ever get to the top. There's always a bigger peak to climb. However you can get to a top, you can look around, and then you can keep climbing. And so I always love getting to the top of wherever I am and looking around and seeing where I've come from. And so that's where that comes from. Superpower in my voice, smile, and all of these things I get to look at every day, and I continue to want to make even new ones like I am really excited. Actually. I'm really excited to do the digital one, because I get to kind of not find magazines necessarily, but find visuals all over that really resonate with me, and so I really enjoy the visual part. There's other things that I do. I write letters to myself, and when I'm leading retreats, I also have my participants write letters to themselves. And funny enough, I send those letters. So I have a full stack from different retreats of participants that have written letters to themselves. In that I have send June of 2026, send March of 2026 but I think it's really fun and really powerful when you are looking at how you want to live life into the future. And so anyways, I am testing this. Theory. I'm testing the theory with the journaling. I'm testing the theory with my vision board, my letters to myself, knowing that, yes, I am on a continuous learning journey, like every single soul in human and I'm really excited, and to be completely honest, scared, there's a lot of fear, and I look forward to talking about fear, because it's something that I have not experienced outwardly a lot in my younger years of my life, and now as an adult, it has cropped up more and more in the last three years than I have ever experienced. So I look forward to bringing that in to this. I look forward to talking about travels. I love, love, love traveling. I actually take individuals overseas, and I am really excited because in May, I have an incredible conscious travel retreat for women over to Rwanda. And it's so interesting to me that a lot of individuals get really nervous talking about Africa and talking about traveling over there. And honestly, when I was a little girl, I was like, I don't want to go to Africa ever. And now I've been a few times, and I absolutely love it, and I cannot wait to bring these souls over to this beautiful country and experience a new culture and give back a little bit. This is not religious or anything. This is just putting yourself out of your current environment, giving back to another culture, seeing how they live, and then also exploring through trekking. So we're going to trek to see the silverback gorillas, which are really, really excited about a total bucket list item. I've had friends go over there and do it, and they're like, Absolutely, I would do it again and again and again, and then be able to rest and reflect and see where we've come. And so you'll hear about my travels. You'll hear about even things that are like not going well, and vulnerability. And I just want to get on here and make these
super fun, super well, maybe not always fun, but, you know, short and sweet, and I have no idea, maybe some of them will be 10 minutes. Some of them will be 15, some of them will be five. Who knows, but I figured I want to put it out there and just be and just be with you. And you know, open to comments and suggestions on anything questions. I love answering questions, and so if, if there's anything that comes up that you would like to hear about. I'd love to talk about it. And yeah, so I hope you enjoy. I'm really excited to be back on here and explore this part of myself verbally. And I hope you enjoy and I hope you have a great week this week, and I look forward to talking with you soon.