Vision Over Pressure: Manifesting the Next Chapter Without a Deadline with Dr. Jennifer Kaufman Walker

As the year comes to a close, I’m joined by Dr. Jennifer Kaufman Walker for a grounding, honest conversation about what it really means to move forward without pressure.

We talk about why New Year’s resolutions often leave us feeling behind before the year even begins—and how shifting toward aspirations can create space for authenticity, self-trust, and sustainable growth. From vision boards and manifestation to showing up imperfectly online, this episode is about letting go of timelines that don’t serve you and choosing alignment over urgency.

This is an invitation to end the year without self-judgment—and step into the next chapter as you are.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

We have hit the end of 2025. And to close things out, I have brought back a very special guest. You all loved her first episode with me. And what better way to end the year than with Dr. Jennifer Kaufman-Walker? Thank you so much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_03: 0:18

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 0:20

So we were brainstorming this episode, and we're like, what better way to end the year than talking about New Year's resolutions, which both of us have mixed feelings about, and we landed on New Year aspirations.

SPEAKER_03: 0:40

Why are New Year's resolutions tricky for you? I've never done them. I think you kind of set yourself up for failure in a way, because we have these huge aspirations or goals or whatever. And when we don't meet them within the first like few months, then it, in my opinion, taints the rest of the year in a way. And it also has, if you want to go like all psycho babble, it has like a negative impact on not only your self-image or the way you perceive yourself, but also thinking like going into it being like, oh, I need to fix something about myself. I just don't really like the that whole thought.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

Yeah, there's this idea that something needs to change or be improved upon, and it can only really happen like at the first of the year.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41

Right. That was a much better way of saying it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47

So how do you like to set goals for yourself?

SPEAKER_03: 1:52

You like this question, don't you? I don't it's it's weird. I don't really set goals for myself. Like I just say I'm gonna do something and I become focused on it and I just do it. Like I I've never been someone who is like, okay, here is my goal and here are my mini goals and here are my objectives and here are the strategies. I just envision what I want. Kind of I'm more of a vision board person. I guess that would be a better way to say it. I envision what I want and then I go and do it. Um that doesn't mean it happens easily. It doesn't mean that I don't have to pivot or adjust, but I feel like for me personally, it's better for me to see the big picture of like the end goal or like the lifestyle or the life or the feel I want, and then just navigate it and get there.

SPEAKER_00: 2:56

Yeah. I think if you were to ask me even like six months ago, how I feel about goals is like I believe in like setting goals and I want to check, I like to check the list off and say I've done it. And one of the biggest lessons that I think I have learned this year is the art of surrender. And so being able to focus on a big picture and recognize I might have to pivot. It might not work out the way that I intended, it might work out better than I intended. But I have to release control of that goal or that vision that I have and let the process play out.

SPEAKER_03: 3:38

Yeah. So you keep your eye on the end goal or the end achievement post, but not setting necessarily the stepping stones to get there because nine times out of ten, you're gonna have to pivot and take a different route.

SPEAKER_00: 3:55

Yeah, I do not, I'm not someone that does well with like the small scale, like this is the step that I have to do to get there. I'm like, I want this thing. I want this very big grand thing. And so as I'm working towards it, I think being able to evaluate if what I'm doing is bringing me further or closer to that large goal is how I typically play it, but very like big picture, and that big picture can sometimes really give me like tunnel vision. And so sometimes I have to zoom out and and kind of get back to like, okay, what's step one, step two, step three?

SPEAKER_03: 4:44

Yeah, I uh no, I agree. But it the funny thing is, and this is kind of contradicting what I'm saying, but like when I'm working towards that big picture, if let's say I have to complete my master's or my PhD or certification or whatever it is, I then I zoom in. So I'm not looking at, oh gosh, I have a hundred more hours or I have you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I zoom in on what I'm doing in that moment. Because if I look too far ahead, it's like it becomes daunting.

SPEAKER_00: 5:18

Hmm. Man, we're real opposites on that. Cause I I think if I zoom too far in, I like feel really defeated. I feel like, okay, this actually feels really unattainable right now. And I don't know if I want to do it.

SPEAKER_03: 5:37

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 5:42

What's the biggest personal aspiration or personal lesson you've learned for yourself this year?

SPEAKER_03: 5:52

That was just put me on the spot. I think a couple things. I think having taking care of yourself first and foremost, because you can't help anyone if you're not taking care of yourself. And it's easy to get pulled into work or kids or family or day-to-day life, and kind of put yourself on the back burner, which is the absolute worst thing you could possibly do. So that's one of them building a community, whether it's your friends and family, or if it's a community when it comes to your career, having that community to like bounce ideas off of, to support you, to support them, to have someone or that community root you on and do the same in return. And then the other thing is being comfortable with who I am, just being authentic. I think was I feel like I've always been pretty comfortable with who I am, but this year I became even more, and I don't know why. I can't attribute it to anything in particular, but I just know that especially in social situations, like I'm like, meh, I am who I am. I'm just gonna let it all hang out and you judge me, you judge me.

SPEAKER_01: 7:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:26

I was gonna ask, what do you think the catalyst to that is? Do you find it has been more freeing or has it been? Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 7:34

Yeah. 100%. I can be as goofy and all the things and the people who know me and love me will love me for that. And the people who don't, I don't really want around.

SPEAKER_00: 7:52

Yeah, it becomes like a lesson in discernment or even like a lesson in release, like being able to keep what is meant to stay and allow what isn't meant to stay to kind of fall at the wayside, and it typically happens pretty naturally.

SPEAKER_03: 8:10

And it's gonna happen either way, but at least you're being true to yourself when going through it, right? But it's definitely freeing.

SPEAKER_00: 8:19

I would second that. I think I would that I would also add as my I think biggest personal lesson in the sense that recognizing that people aren't around me or listening to me because of something very specific. I don't need to convey or create a better version of myself to be accepted or to be perceived as knowledgeable or anything, but being able to say, you know what, this is me. I contain like multitudes and it is what it is. And it's allowed me to not take myself so seriously. And so recognizing like, okay, I'm actually like gonna fold if I like keep this up because it isn't sustainable, it's not giving me a lot of breathing room. It's like okay, I'm just breathing a little bit and see what happens.

SPEAKER_03: 9:16

Yeah. And you know, the people that the quirkiest people that I know, they own it. And when they own it, what's there to criticize, right? Like if they're confident in who they are, then you just you're like, cool, let's go with it.

SPEAKER_00: 9:37

Yeah, but yes, it is it's freeing and it allows like that space to relax. And there's this idea, I think, even in this world of like social media where you feel like you have to present something a certain way to be listened to, you have to show up a specific way to be recognized when people gravitate to authenticity every single time, whether it's personally, professionally, online, people will always gravitate to someone that is being true to themselves. And when you're being true to yourself, no one can tell you who you are. Like when you believe that you are being true to yourself, no one anything that someone says about you or to you or speculates, you know in your heart that that's not the case, and you get to move freely in that authenticity. Found it.

SPEAKER_03: 10:37

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 10:41

You've managed to uh land some podcast conversations, and I know when we met last year, that was like far and few between who would have thunk it, and now here we are, and you're starting to post more on Instagram. What has that journey been like for you?

SPEAKER_03: 11:01

Absolute hell, and I blame you. I never in a million years ever would have thought of posting a reel in my life, a reel with my face on it where I'm speaking, and you forced me to. Well, you actually challenged me to, and I love a challenge, and so I just did it. And the first time I went through actually like one take because I did all the little words with it because it was like one of those pointy ones. I'm like, well, this is gonna have to do because I just spent 40 minutes on this thing, and then I noticed that this is where that authenticity piece comes in because then I noticed that I was doing all these takes when I was doing the reels moving forward, and I'm like, what are you doing? Who cares if you your hair is like wonky or you whatever, right? And so I just have really forced myself. That doesn't mean I don't do a couple takes, but it's not like 20. Um, and so I've gotten more comfortable with it. Some I look back and I'm like, oh, so cringy. But it's been interesting. It's definitely aided in that being true to myself and my authentic self and being confident with who I am.

SPEAKER_00: 12:26

I talk a lot about this, but it's it is a true lesson in ownership. And like whatever you post online, it's public, people can see it. And whether that's owning who you are, what you say, what you stand for, creating has been this lesson in what am I willing to take ownership of? And that's translated into like my personal choices, my work, everything. But content, it's amazing how something that takes maybe 60 seconds or 30 seconds, there's a big lesson in learning more about yourself that I think a lot of us who went through a therapy program would rather not have to do again.

SPEAKER_02: 13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 13:14

Yeah. Especially the listening to yourself in those mock sessions. But no, it's I'm glad that I'll say this now. I'm glad that you challenged me to do it at the time. It's been fun. And it also allows for someone to have the opportunity to ensure that they're like authentic across the board, right? Personally, professionally, how I present professionally is how I present personally with a few less cuss words, right? Like, so a little less dark humor, but for the most part, who I am at work is who I am at home and who I am in a social setting. And so that's been a cool experience to just see how it all interconnects, I guess.

SPEAKER_00: 14:07

Oh, yeah, it's a real checks and balances. That's what I love about it. I'll look at some videos and I'm like, okay, if someone were to book a consult with me, if someone were to sit with me in session, would there be some congruence or would I would they look at my video and then sit in session be like, she just catfished me? Like, I don't know who I'm sitting across. Yeah, but it does, it's a mirror that we don't necessarily expect it to be, and that can be both challenging and rewarding at the same time.

SPEAKER_03: 14:41

Absolutely, it allows more people to call you out too who know you really well if something isn't jiving. Not to say that's happened, but I feel like it I would want it to if someone was like, Who is this person? Because I think like the authenticity piece is so cornerstone in in our work with clients.

SPEAKER_00: 15:05

What's the biggest uh professional lesson you've learned this year?

SPEAKER_03: 15:12

You're just gonna put me on the spot with all this stuff. Professional lesson. I thought we planned this, didn't we? I guess. Yes, a professional lesson. I think I would go with authenticity too. I mean, I I think that I really leaned in on showing up as me, leaned into sharing parts of myself with my clients, not like self-disclosing all personal details, but letting them know my life to a degree. I mean, it's a small area that I live in, so most of them have an idea of my life. But, you know, showing up, I had dental work, and I came to our meet street with it looked like I had stuff in my cheek. Like I showed up for session like that too. I, you know, I don't it looked weird, I couldn't talk very well, but I think that has been an important journey for me and the importance of showing up for your clients. So that's always been something that's been extremely important to me. But I feel like those little moments that you can be like, oh, it's their birthday and celebrate them in session, or oh, they had surgery and it's on my calendar, and so I text them, you know, just those little things. Um, I've made it a point to emphasize more so in my practices here.

SPEAKER_01: 16:50

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:55

I think showing up and presence is a big one that I've I don't know what is happening right now.

SPEAKER_03: 17:08

With my screen?

SPEAKER_00: 17:09

No. Are you crying? A little bit. OMG. I know. Uh presence, I think, is one of the bigger lessons clinically that I've learned. And so being able to show up, be present, and really be intentional about building the therapeutic space for someone has been really valuable. And as I've been, I think, building with you aspects of it, like just trying to figure it out. If you asked me a year ago, it would have been, you know, like building a business like in a silo would feel like would make the most sense for me. And so I as I've been able to uncover how I've maybe been forced into entrepreneurship and maybe what that and being a solo entity, what that would look like, I has been a really big magnifying glass or element of exploration for myself. And I love working with people and being able to collaborate with other people and bounce ideas off of other people. And so being able to cultivate that by working from home has been really important. And so whether that's in my business owner group that I sit in once a month with some friends or a consultation group or being able to hop on a call with somebody or check somebody, being able to feel like I have these co-workers that I can reach for instead of like feeling like, oh, nope, I'm at home. It's just me, has been really nice because I hated working from home like during my internship. And so that was like really hard. And I felt really isolated. And people were like, hey, like, why don't you do something else? And so I was hesitant at first to go back into working from home full time, but it's actually wielded the complete opposite of how I experienced before, experienced it before, and that's been really nice. So you built your community, yeah, built a community, building opportunities to like get out of the off I find when I am spending so much of my week in the house or like in front of my screen and not going out and playing volleyball or not going out and grabbing coffee, even, or even just deciding I'm gonna go to a museum today. I don't have anything going on, like allowing myself a little Little side quest here and there has really helped the fatigue that I the monotony that I can feel with working from home.

SPEAKER_03: 20:09

Yeah. Don't forget your cooking.

SPEAKER_00: 20:12

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 20:14

She made cinnamon rolls. And I would say cheese biscuits, but my dog ate them before I.

SPEAKER_00: 20:22

Yeah, we met for the first time at my meet and greet. And so I baked her cinnamon rolls. I was like, what's top of the line in the kitchen? So I made those. I thought they were good.

SPEAKER_03: 20:35

They were just gooey enough. But what would be cream? That doesn't surprise me. What was the what were the tears about for you in that moment?

SPEAKER_01: 20:48

Well, now you're putting me on the spot. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00: 20:53

I don't know. I I did a interview today for my grad school alma mater, and they wanted to highlight how successful I am, like perceptively, which was really nice. But it's been a really hard year. And it's I think that it's it has been really helpful and beneficial to stay really present with what I've managed to do in a year. Some of it in less than a year. And serious, like um resilience and just being able to say this is going to be really hard, and I'm choosing to move forward anyway. I think that's the if I were to say the largest professional lesson is that social media is a highlight reel, and what people see and what people gravitate to is a lot of times a highlight reel. The behind the scenes of what building a lot of this has looked like has been hard.

SPEAKER_03: 22:26

Yeah. I've been lucky enough to be there through some of it with you. So I get to see the ins and outs, and your perseverance and resilience is admirable, truly. Your grit. Someday I think you should share your whole story, but I'm not gonna put you on the spot for that today. But you not today. Look at like when you and I first started working together, you were in a very different place than where you are now. And not that there was anything wrong with that place, there was nothing wrong with it, but it's it's very different. Like your confidence is like so much better.

SPEAKER_00: 23:12

Yeah, I was in a different place, yeah, for sure. I think, and that's part of building the community, is like being able to say, yes, this is where I am, this is what I want, and it's okay to want that. And it's also allowed me to also maintain the space of like curiosity and learning and being able to balance the two and like knowing when I'm like, okay, yeah, like let's go full send on this, or like actually I'm gonna linger back on this piece because I'm not 100% and then and not being and feeling like okay, I know what I want, I feel confident when I want, I get to go after that, and having people bring that out of me and want to see that is healing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03: 24:13

Well, you've come a long way.

SPEAKER_00: 24:16

Appreciate it. So now we're at the aspirations piece. I mean, it'll be 2026, which is wild to say.

SPEAKER_03: 24:26

It really is. So I guess you're gonna ask my aspirations.

SPEAKER_00: 24:32

Did you come up some since we last talked about it?

SPEAKER_03: 24:36

Well, you know how I feel about all that. I think I I'm working on another children's book, so that's gonna be one of them. Whether I get it done this year and this upcoming year or not, I'm not sure. Probably a larger office space with a waiting room. And to continue like building that authenticity, not building that authenticity, but showing up authentically and confidently and probably about a gazillion more trainings and learning how to draw dinosaurs. I mean, yeah for my son, not my forte. How about you?

SPEAKER_00: 25:27

I don't know. I uh well after we had talked about aspirations, I went back and looked at did I accomplish everything? And I was like, oh wow, I actually accomplished everything and more. And so it's really hard to figure out what that I think I would like to get back to a space of working in person, not every day, but some days really miss that piece. And I think continuing to grow the podcast and continuing to get really great guests and really growing my social media to be what I hope it can be and can reach as many people as I hope it can reach, and maybe get a sponsorship from King Arthur Baking. So that's like a low-key dream of mine that I'm working on in the DMs right now.

SPEAKER_03: 26:31

Well, for their office, you can come here and see clients and bring baked goods.

SPEAKER_00: 26:43

She just wants to bake goods. I do just want to. Yeah, it's mostly for me to bring lunch or breakfast sometime. Oh, trust me, I've already, it's in my manifestation journal. I actually have never asked you, do you believe in manifestation?

SPEAKER_03: 26:59

Thousand percent. Okay. Thousand percent. If you just envision it and you don't waver on it, well, you can waver, but coming back to the original vision, absolutely. Vision boards are, I mean, I remember doing one, I forced my then boyfriend to do a vision board with me. And I put down dates, like you know, like 2020 or whatever, you know, nothing like super specific. And everything I looked, I found it when we moved out here in 2018. So it wasn't 2020 on the vision board, but in 2018, when we moved here, I looked at the vision board and everything had happened that was on there, and I completely forgotten about it. But I feel like just that initial act of like putting the things that mean most to you and that you're passionate about and that you want your life to evolve to um or towards, I I think it a hundred percent shifts the energy around you.

SPEAKER_00: 28:09

I've done a really big vision board that people can sometimes see in my videos, but I have three and I keep them hanging in my office facing me. And so whenever I'm sitting here at my desk, I'm always looking at the big, I'm literally always looking at the big picture. And so I'm excited to do my next one. It's very ritualistic. I go to the beach for two weeks and take art supplies. I'm starting to like save my magazines now for it, and I do it pretty much in isolation. It's my human design, it's it's how I manifest best, and then I come back with it. Very cool. What a great idea. I've done all three. I've been I've managed to do all three of them that way. The latest one I have ACA 2024, it happened, ACA 2025 happened. Everything that I've envisioned and what that would look like are have all happened.

SPEAKER_03: 29:20

It's crazy, right?

SPEAKER_00: 29:21

So I'm excited to sit down and see what comes up this year. This year's vision board, I actually did halfway through the year. I did it in like April, and it's so interesting. When I went to try and do it in January, nothing was coming up. I didn't feel inspired, and so I just tucked it away. So maybe like end of March, April, I revisited it, and it says burning the revolution. So needless to say, I think I've accomplished what is on that, and so I'm excited to see what comes to light for the next one.

SPEAKER_03: 30:05

Well, you just full circled to the very beginning where we were talking about, you know, New Year's resolutions, how you don't need it, doesn't have to be at the beginning of the year, right? Like you can have aspirations anytime and manifest what you want at any point.

SPEAKER_00: 30:26

That is a perfect place to close it out. Jenny, thank you so much for joining me today. Everyone, happy holidays. I will see you in 2026, where we're gonna keep being visible, keep being seen, and using our voices.