The RISE Experience
It's not always about becoming someone different.
Sometimes it's about realizing you've been disconnected from yourself for longer than you thought.
The RISE Experience is a podcast for the woman who can handle a lot. She shows up, gets things done, keeps life moving… and still quietly wonders, Why don't I feel like myself anymore?
Shannon Denniston is the founder of RISE, with a deep background in behavior change and the human side of transformation. Here, she explores what real transformation actually looks like — the patterns underneath what we do, the beliefs and roles we've carried, the relationships that shape us, the systems that support us, and the identity shifts that happen when our old ways of functioning stop carrying us.
A lot of what gets called "starting over" isn't starting over at all. It's learning to notice what's been running in the background, reconnect with your own voice, and move forward without erasing who you've become.
No reinvention. No pretending you need to become a whole new person. Just honest conversations about finding your way back to yourself, with faith as an anchor, and learning how to live from that place.
The RISE Experience
Are You Shrinking Yourself to Keep the Peace?
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If “I’m good with whatever” flies out of your mouth before you even know what you want, this one’s for you. Let’s talk about the quiet ways you’ve been editing yourself down to keep the peace and what it could look like to bring your whole, honest self back into the room.
Episode Summary
Hey friend, this is for the woman who’s spent years being easy to be around and is just now realizing it’s cost her herself. You’ve gotten so good at reading the room, softening your edges, and taking the path of least resistance that you can’t always tell what you actually want anymore. You know how to make everyone else comfortable, but you’re quietly exhausted from disappearing in the process.
In this episode, we pull that pattern into the light, not to shame you, but to honor why you learned it and to help you loosen your grip on it. From restaurant orders to hard conversations, we walk through the small, ordinary places where you’ve been shrinking, and I invite you to start holding your preferences, opinions, and needs one beat longer. We anchor it all in the kind of rest Jesus talks about in Matthew 11, the kind that doesn’t require you to be less to be loved.
You’ll Learn
- How “I don’t care, whatever’s easiest” became a reflex you built a long time ago.
- The specific ways you’ve been managing how other people experience you without even noticing.
- Why softening your opinions so they sound like “just a preference” slowly disconnects you from your own convictions.
- How chronic accommodating makes it harder and harder to name what you need or ask for anything at all.
- The deeper belief underneath it all: if you’re difficult to be around, you must be difficult to love.
- How Matthew 11 is an invitation to stop curating yourself for God and come as the tired, complicated, real you.
- Everyday examples: ordering food, making plans, resolving conflict that help you spot this pattern in real time.
- A simple question to ask yourself in any room: “Am I adjusting from care, or shrinking from fear right now?”
- Why waiting for someone else to finally make room for you will keep you stuck and why permission has to come from you.
- A way to thank the version of you who survived by staying small, while letting her rest so you can step into your full self.
Episode Chapters
00:40 The cost of staying easy to be around
02:20 When being considerate becomes disappearing
04:10 Opinions, needs, and losing your sense of self
06:30 “If I’m difficult, I’m hard to love”
08:50 Matthew 11 and the invitation to real rest
10:30 The everyday moments you edit yourself down
12:40 The “that wasn’t me” feeling
14:20 Adjusting from wholeness vs. shrinking from fear
16:10 Choosing to take up space today
18:10 Gratitude, rest, and prayer for the real you
Memorable Quotes
“At what point does being considerate turn into you just disappearing?”
“When you spend so long curating yourself for everyone in the room, you lose track of which version is actually you.”
“If I become difficult to be around, I become difficult to love—that belief is doing an enormous amount of work.”
“This isn’t about waiting for permission. You stop asking to be let in and you start walking in as yourself.”
“She was never too much. She’s just herself, fully, honestly, without apology.”
Resources Mentioned
Matthew 11 – “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
About the Podcast
Welcome to The RISE Experience — a podcast for women who are finding their way back to themselves. This is a space to slow down when everything feels loud, to lead from steadiness instead of urgency, and to finally hear yourself think again. Here we talk about identity, faith, and the quiet inner wisdom that gets buried under all the doing. A place to pause, reflect, and rise from clarity instead of pressure.
Follow The Rise Experience and share this with one friend who’s been beating herself up for the thing she reaches for when life gets loud.
Your next step: https://msha.ke/risewithshannon
Read the blog: https://www.risewithshannon.blog/
Come hang out:
FB: Shannon Bell Denniston
IG: @risewithshannon
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