Kind of a Big Deal

How the Voice in Your Head Can Change Everything

• Kristin Belden • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Is your inner voice curious, kind, and supportive when things don't go as planned - or does it sound more like criticism and doubt?

Join me as I sit down with Kara Whittington, founder of WE INC. Marketing, to explore how embracing your authentic self can transform not only your business but your entire approach to life. 

Our conversation digs into the importance of finding work worth doing, practicing self-compassion, and trusting that things will work out - even if not as you originally envisioned.

Kara has built a thriving business with intention and integrity since day one, now operating as a collective of majority women consultants with clients spanning the arts, culture, and social good. One of her secrets? Cultivating and practicing healthy self-talk and being incredibly intentional about her mindset.


You'll Learn:

⭐ How to build a business with intention from day one

⭐ Why work worth doing isn't always measured in money

⭐ The transformative power of changing your self-talk

⭐ How to practice self-compassion as a leadership tool

⭐ The art of letting go and trusting the process


Key Insights:

  • People-First Business Model: Creating a sustainable business means prioritizing people over profit margins and building structures that support authentic collaboration.
  • Self-Talk Transformation: The way you speak to yourself during setbacks directly impacts your resilience, creativity, and ability to lead effectively.
  • Work Worth Doing: Making space for meaningful work - including unpaid passion projects - enriches both your business and your life in unexpected ways.
  • Self-Care as Foundation: Taking care of yourself isn't selfish—it's the foundation that makes everything else possible, including modeling healthy behavior for others.
  • Intentional Growth: Building something meaningful requires constantly checking in with your values and being willing to let go of what no longer serves you.


Timestamps:

[00:01] - Introduction and reconnection

[02:41] - The power of expressing emotions and vulnerability

[04:28] - Kara's journey to founding her marketing collective

[08:53] - Creating a "people-first" business model

[11:45] - The importance of self-care as a foundation

[17:49] - Modeling healthy behavior for children and others

[20:24] - Making space for "work worth doing" beyond paid work

[23:38] - The transformative power of changing your self-talk

[28:44] - Catalysts for mindset shifts

[32:35] - The journey of getting to know yourself

[36:04] - Building a meaningful legacy


Resources and Links:

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review! And if you're interested in more stories and tools for women leaders, sign up for my newsletter at Beldenstrategies.com/newsletter. Let's continue to empower each other in our journeys!

Kara podcast
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Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Welcome back to kind of a big deal. Today I'm chatting with someone who's been building something truly remarkable in the Bay Area Arts and Culture scene. Kara Whittington and I first met almost 15 years ago through a brief overlap in San Francisco. But she left a lasting impression. Since then, she's built a thriving marketing collective while centering her own values and creating a business model that actually supports women's lives, not just their careers.

We dive deep into what it means to build with intention, the uncomfortable but necessary work of getting to know yourself again. And why? Taking care of ourselves first isn't selfish. It's essential. Kara shares her journey from burnout at a major museum to creating a 17 person women-led collective where flexibility and humanity come first.

And why she believes the work worth doing is ultimately about showing up as our highest. Brightest selves. This is a conversation about legacy capacity and what becomes possible when we stop [00:01:00] performing and start living. Let's go.

Speaker 3: Hi, Kara. Hi Kristen. How's it going? It's going good. Nice to see you. Same to you. Thank you for coming to chat with me. I appreciate you being here. My pleasure. Um, so I typically start out by doing like a quick little overview of how we know each other, um, before I ask you to kind of give a little intro of yourself.

So get ready. 'cause I'm gonna talk about you and I know it's deeply uncomfortable for most women. Um, so Kara and I had a very brief overlap. What I realized was almost 15 years ago, if not 15 years ago. Yes, I know. Isn't that crazy? Um, at a nonprofit journalism startup in San Francisco, and it was the briefest of encounters, like we didn't get to work together for very long.

But she left a lasting impression, and as I started building my own business a couple years ago, [00:02:00] she was one of the people that I had kind of like followed in and out and seen updates along the way that she had been building her own business. Um. So she went on to build a super successful marketing company that I consider like the most dreamy of all dreamy kind of scenarios where she works, um, with many of the kind of arts and culture spaces in the Bay Area.

And, and you can share more about that. I don't wanna speak for you, but. When we reconnected earlier this year, it was one of those things where you're like, oh my God, I feel like I've known you for 75 years and we're long lost, you know, sisters, and we had so much to chat about. And what I was really impressed by is how thoughtful she is just in every.

Kind of move that she's making in the world. And I know you've shared with me this is not, we are, no one's perfect. We don't always act like this. We can't always show up in these ways. But the overarching kind of theme that I receive from you is one of intention. And you've built [00:03:00] your company with your own morals and values, front and center.

And your desire to kind of make your corner of the world a little better drives your decision making, and it can really be felt in everything that you do and everything that I see you do. And she's someone that. You just leave feeling lighter after hanging out with and being in conversation. And when life feels a little heavy or when we're all looking around at all the craziness, um, I feel lucky to be back in the orbit of someone who brings so much light.

So thank you so much for taking time to chat. My pleasure. Kristen, you kind of got me on that last one. I've got some, uh, tears welling up, but that's now I roll. That's the only roll. I'm so glad to not be the only one. My husband and I are both big criers, like we cry the, I mean, it's everything. Like you can just like.

Look at me the right way and I'm like, oh, I'm beautiful. I think we need more of that. Yeah. [00:04:00] There was a time in my life when I would tell you I did not appreciate that about myself, but like as I've gotten more in touch with like, Hey, it's cool. You just feel things and that's not a problem, and my tears can show up whether I'm sad or touched or happy or angry.

My kids will always say like, mommy, are those happy tears? I'm just showing in. Just checking on you. Yes. I was singing on the way to drop off my daughters at gymnastics camp this morning. And we started singing, well, they started singing and I started joining in 'cause they had just been taken to see the sound of music.

Speaker 4: Theater production in Berkeley this weekend. And so we were starting to sing, do a female male dj, a drop of Golden Sun. And I start just tearing up, oh, why did I even put makeup eye makeup on this morning? You know? Um, it's a real, I think. [00:05:00] Privilege to feel. Mm-hmm. It really is. And, and like you, I feel similarly in that I wasn't really, I, maybe I was too much as a kid or I didn't know how to deal with a lot of my big feelings.

And so when the tears do come now, I try to just let them come instead of. Yes, I'm with you. With you. Um, that's true actually of all emotion. That's true. Yes, that's true. Um, so you, in the decade ish past, like how long have you had your company. Yeah, I left the De Young Museum in April of 2015. Okay. And I was, um, interim basically chief marketing and communications officer.

They hadn't had that title that, that institution yet. But I was filling in and I was at a breaking point. I had a missed miscarriage, so I had, um, that kind of devastating loss. And was [00:06:00] really unsure about whether or not I should stay in the arts, in the nonprofit sector. Mm-hmm. But, um, that was a really difficult institution for me in the time that I was in.

And reflecting back on it, it's probably where I really was beginning. I'm trying to make an earth analogy here. I don't know if it's gonna work. I think that's where, you know, a lot of shit was really happening and needed to be difficult so that I could then have something blossom from that place in the years, subsequent years.

So, I thought I would go on to be a real estate agent. I thought I was done with the arts and marketing. Let's go do real estate. So I, I did that. I did everything, including getting my fingerprints done. Except take the California State exam, which you know, in hindsight, we all have some regrets. And I probably should have done that and maybe I still will.

Speaker 5: But I didn't complete it because I [00:07:00] had some personal things going on. And then I got a call from a former colleague who said, Hey, I'm at this foundation. I need some marketing assistance. Can you come and help? And that's kind of when I. Was pulled back in. I got a call a couple months later to be the interim director of marketing and sales for SF MOMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Speaker 4: During their reopening of their expanded building in 2016. And what was fascinating about that time when just the client work really started pulling in when I was just doing it myself, was that I got pregnant again. Mm-hmm. And um, so that was a real blessing for us to welcome our first daughter at the end of 2016.

And in the years that followed, I, I learned that I could outsource some of the work that I was doing in both writing. I was doing a lot of social media, so content was pretty deep for the classical music and museum [00:08:00] industries that we were serving, or I was serving at the time. So I started bringing on.

People that would ghost right for me. Um, and that allowed me to spend more time with my newborn daughter at the time, or young daughter at the time. And then it spiraled from there. And then I started seeing opportunities. Come up where if I took on a little bit more in terms of the people that I could bring on, that I could take on larger clients to, and so things expanded.

I was working with Cirque de Soleil. I then, after the pandemic, I was able to work with this wonderful organization, family House. This was in and during the pandemic, which provides a home away from home for families of children battling cancer and other life-threatening illness at UCSF Children's. So it's a really special place in my heart.

So to be able to support an organization like that with the marketing skills that I have. Been building for 15 years was really [00:09:00] remarkable. Yeah. Give and get. And that also made me want to do more work in the social good space. So that's still an area we'd like to do more business in, but we have a sweet spot in the arts, and particularly in music, dance and the performing arts as well as museums.

But after the pandemic in 2021, I recognize. That actually the way that the business was going, I was paying too much in taxes between the self-employment tax and the regular tax. So we incorporated the business and we've expanded and I just realized with adding a couple contractors, we're up to 17 different subcontract.

Wow. We call it a collective because. That's what we are, and in fact, we're all women. We have a few great graphic designers who are men, though they're not on our website, so that's outside of our 17. We really look forward to working together because you know, as much as we like the clients to stay, we actually want them to fly.

We want them to get better at what they do in [00:10:00] marketing and then be able to do it on their own. Mm-hmm. We can still assist as needed, but. So that perspective on I'm not keeping a client forever mm-hmm. Is where we put our emphasis then on the collective. Okay. So on each other, on the consultants. And that's been a really interesting study in both, on a few different levels.

One is that I, no one is an employee, so they, everybody gets to create their own. Schedule, decide what they wanna work on, what they don't wanna work on. We're collaborative in rates. We discuss, you know, someone's gonna be out of office for vacation or wanting to care for their family member or friend.

You know, we cover each other. So the client still gets the full scope of work, but we also don't. Break anyone's back, including our owns. So we don't work nights and weekends unless that works for the consultant. But it's a really interesting model that I'm actually really [00:11:00] proud of. Um, yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you should be, that's amazing.

Speaker 3: I think this is coming all the way back to like what we were saying earlier. So many of us when we're out, you know, building our own things, there's so many different reasons and so many different philosophies and theories behind how to do it or why to do it. And yeah, tapping back into where you find your integrity or what.

Drives you. I think then if you build something around that, you're going to attract the right people that want to be a part of something that feels the way you've built it, right? Like I think where we get in trouble is when we don't quite know, and then we maybe are building towards different ideals or certain things that we think other people think are the right way to do things.

I was just saying this earlier to someone, there's no one size fits all for business, ever, ever, ever. Even with internal culture, right? Like as long as you are intentional about it and can speak to it, and can speak about it and your [00:12:00] why behind it, then I think it's all good. Because the right people then will find you and yeah, the right people will wanna work alongside you and then you have this kind of incredible.

Group of humans that are excited to show up and do what they're doing every day. I'm curious if part of what you experienced when things, you know, were feeling not quite aligned in your work environment prior, we've talked about how. You've shared something with me in the past, which is you're even more adaptable to change now because you're able to take better care of yourself, like you are able to show up for yourself differently than you were then.

Do you know if you consciously were thinking about that as you were building in the beginning, or was it just such a clear, internal, almost push against what you'd experienced that it's just the way it happened? You know, that's a really good question, and one I'm not sure I could answer. Fully without giving it a lot more thought, but I stepped out of [00:13:00] working for someone else because I thought that there was a lot of unnecessary.

Speaker 4: Meetings. Unnecessary bureaucracy, unnecessary red tape, unnecessary gatekeeping, and I think that's still pretty prevalent in the nonprofit world, though I hope that those silos are being torn down. I know that they exist still, and they exist in other industries certainly too, but it's really disheartening and disengaging.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. When you have, mm-hmm. Entrepreneurial, get it done. How do we do this as a team? You know? Or I'll do it by myself. I mean, I have both of those capabilities. All of those capabilities, and so I was just tired of working so hard and not I. Getting enough back, I had a manager at the Fine Arts Museums who just in my review, which you know, I'm hitting sales numbers we're growing.

Speaker 4: The team that had been [00:14:00] decimated we're building systems and rapport across other departments, and this manager told me that I needed to smile more. And it was, oh God. Okay, great. First of all, now I look back on it and just, I smile because I think it's silly, right? We shouldn't be telling people what to do like that.

Certainly not in professional settings, but like I was talking earlier about I need shit to be able to grow great flowers later. Totally. Yes. Like it's the same thing. So I experienced so much frustration in those containers as an employee. I recognize that it's gotta be better outside. My dad actually had been a freelance.

Jingle writer for most of. Oh, cool. My upbringing and my mom certainly did freelance thing as a violinist and violist and my aunt, you know, I saw some of this, my uncle and aunt actually in San Francisco architects, I saw different people in my [00:15:00] family do things on their own, like be their own boss. And I was very curious about that.

And I had dabbled in consulting throughout my career, including. M my first consulting was actually at the music center of LA County. I would edit the program books for the music center's Spotlight Awards, these youth awards that they did every year. And so when I thought, when I talked to my husband about leaving the de Young without a next job lined up, he said, absolutely, I trust you.

I trust with what you need. And thankfully. That led to all these opportunities in consulting and really spawned this company. And so I think going back to one thing you had said was, how did I shape the consultancy or the agency to actually be. I'm gonna say this. You didn't say this, but like people first.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. It's us first. It's the mothers. So many of us in the collective are mothers, and regardless of our being mothers, [00:16:00] we're women. We have so much more responsibility in this culture, in this world than many of our male counterparts do. Not saying that they don't take on their fair share. In some cases, they'd certainly do.

Speaker 4: But the vast majority, I think is pretty lopsided. Mm-hmm. And when I started taking better care of myself, I noticed that I could show up for everyone better, not just myself, but for my daughters, for my husband, for my friends, for my extended family. For my clients. Right. For my. Colleagues. Yeah. It's really remarkable and it's so foundational and a lot of my spiritual training, both in upbringing and what I've experimented and explored as an adult and yoga philosophy as an example, they go back to the one.

To the self. Yeah. Right. We're not. Taking care of this person first. Nobody else can take care of [00:17:00] us. Actually, 100? Yes. The, like, the putting your, the safety mask on first, right. Mask on first. Absolutely. Something very real about that. But it does. It feels so obvious and yet it also is so counter to what we've been taught over the years.

Speaker 3: It is just a constant drive to be competitive and be the best and win. And I think that might be changing a little bit generationally from what I'm hearing and seeing with some of the younger folks. But certainly for us, that was never the thing. It was you better. Show up and give 150000%, and if you don't, then someone else will.

Speaker 4: Well, that still might be the case, you know? Yeah. That might, that adage might be true or it might be the truth of what someone else is putting out there. They feel like they can't say no, they feel like they can't quit or redirect or take a break or rest or care for themselves in a meaningful way consistently.

Yeah. [00:18:00] Um. But I know that that doesn't work for me. Yeah. And the proof is really in the pudding. I mean, the way that I was caring for myself, you can see it from a physicality standpoint. I mean, you remember actually, maybe I didn't look like this when we met. I have taken such better care of myself that even my children don't recognize photos of me from Wow.

Um, and that's pretty remarkable. But it's a must have. Yes, it's a non-negotiable. Even yesterday, I am out reading outside and I think what's important for us to do is model the behavior that we want our children to. To consider, including as they become adults. Yeah. And modeling self-care in healthy ways is really, I think, imperative for us as parents, but anybody who is seeing, actually it's, I think it's true for anybody.

We're modeling it for each [00:19:00] other. Oh, yes. Oh my gosh, yes. Right. Because I think even without kids. We are all in some community in some way, shape or form, whether that is in a caretaking capacity for aging parents or it is within community activism, like whatever your version of that is, you're right.

Speaker 3: Everyone around us is a witness to how we're showing up for ourselves and for others. And I know for myself, I can literally physically feel the difference when I'm grounded. Trying to be more intentional about it. And then I'm out flittering around in my like weird, frenetic energy and I'm like, okay.

Like I'm like, woo. Like time to bring it, reign it back in. Right? And because we can't be perfect, to your point, or like we can't not do these things all the time, but it is about being able to find your way. To it, I think, or knowing at least what it feels like foundationally, so you can kind of like doggy battle your way back [00:20:00] totally to whatever that anchor is, you know?

But it takes exploring what those things are. I think at times too, we don't always know. Yes. What brings us that kind of joy? You have also shared in the past something that I have been sharing with pretty much every conversation. So I, I'll have to quote you and maybe you've been quoting someone else, so maybe we have to give someone else.

I don't know. But outside of self-care, we've talked a lot about the other aspects of our lives that outside of building a business. Are deeply important to who we are for you. It's teaching a Yoga for Kids program. There's a, a gardening program involved, and for me, it looks like being an art docent in my kids' school, come hell or high water.

I love being around kids. Other volunteer work that matters deeply to me, and you've called it Work Worth Doing, which is not just the work that we get paid to do, but the things that drive us and we find excitement and passion in are the elements that we cannot [00:21:00] ignore or we can ignore to our own peril, I suppose.

You know? And I think that's right. It can, we can tell ourselves that we don't have time. Um, do you find that. You naturally are able to carve out that space now, or is it difficult at all to still remind yourself that you've built a successful business and you get to have these other elements of who you are?

Speaker 4: I never really put the, I have a successful business. That's on a shelf, you know, and it stays there. I don't necessarily think of it like that. And in our conversations, I've really appreciated you reflecting back to me what I don't necessarily see, which is a successful business that I have built, and I appreciate that.

Um.[00:22:00] 

With regard to carving out the time I was reflecting back, I think when we had coffee in person a few months ago. I think that was at the time where the garden club that I had initiated for first and second grade at the kids' school was starting. And then I was also getting an, I think I had maybe gotten an opportunity to teach kids yoga by that time.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And those are the things that really are important to me right now in terms of what I do with either my volunteer hours or the work worth doing. Mm-hmm. Um, there's this knowing. There's this inner knowing, there's this peace, there's, it's the closest thing I can relate it to is if you feel contentment in being someplace, if you're really present somewhere, but it's, it's not any of those things.

And yet it's also all of those things, if that makes any sense. Because the, the feeling of, you know, [00:23:00] I put away the, oh, I don't have a. I don't have a flourishing garden. I know so little. Still I see all my gaps. Yeah, but it actually doesn't matter because who's doing it? Am I doing it or is somebody else doing it?

No, I'm doing it, so, okay, let's do it. Let's make this, whatever it can be. But I think now I'm a lot, I'm trying to be a lot more in flow state, so understanding that. Things are gonna work out. Mm-hmm. Trust that they're gonna work out. It doesn't mean a lack of action. It doesn't lack of Right. Action either.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm trying to be more in a state of. I'm gonna be authentic and truthful about what I can do for others and to try and do it with less of holding on really tightly. And consider what it feels like to hold loosely, to carry things loosely. [00:24:00] Remember that just like we ourselves are flawed and.

Imperfect, take what you need and leave the rest the past. And the same thing in the past, and that's something I've done a great job of caring for a long time, is my past mistakes or the past burdens or you know, issues from childhood, et cetera. But when you leave what you don't need in the past, you don't have to carry it in the future.

And it just, I think, un harnesses you to be. A light being mm-hmm. Of love and and kindness. And boy, do we need more of that in our day-to-day lives, I think, and in our general culture and more people deserve to feel love and valued just for who they are. I love what you said around things will work out if we can.

Speaker 3: Let go of the reigns just a little bit. I think when we think about our just [00:25:00] daily lives and what we have in front of us, that is true. And I think the difficulty is it's like yes, but with the tiny caveat that it might not be in the way you think it's going to be. I think when we think it's all going to work out, it's like with this very specific vision in our minds, and I think that is another interesting thing that comes with I.

Getting older and some wisdom is like things do work out generally, they just might look a whole lot different than what you thought. Exactly. That's where the trust piece comes in, right? Yeah, that I didn't know that I would end up here. But, and I don't know where I'm gonna end up in 10 years, 20 years.

Speaker 4: 30, 40, right? Yeah. I don't know what's gonna happen over the next year to two years. There's an element of letting go when you trust. It's the trust fall, realizing that you're gonna be caught or you're gonna [00:26:00] land. Yeah. Just fine. That it's not about, oh, it's gonna work out this way. Yeah. I have a new lens.

To look through. Which is a lens of curiosity. Yeah. How is this going to work out? I wonder how this is going to unfold. I wonder how the pieces are going to fall into the, into place. Yeah. Yes. How might they, right. It's, there's still too much tightness when you think that this is gonna, oh, fall into place, this, this, and this.

No, I'm fascinated by. The synchronicities that happen in my life. I wanna say something too really important, Kristin, in this conversation, which is the way that I talk to myself, has changed drastically over the years. Mm-hmm. It's changed from when I worked at the San Francisco Symphony from earlier when I worked at the Santa Rosa Symphony to when I worked at the LA Opera, when I was going to [00:27:00] school in Los Angeles.

Even when I was on a swim team in high school things. Really have evolved in the way that I speak to myself and I want part of the work worth doing, I think, in working with young people and even just in community, is to say, you need to practice loving and kindness to yourself. Yeah. 'cause the shift is truly in this.

Being an US first. Yes. And when I am more understanding of myself. Ugh. You really wanted to get a lot more on your to-do list. Done. Yeah. Didn't you today, Kara? Yeah. Well I think you still did a great effort. Let's see what you can do tomorrow. Is there anything you wanna adjust? Okay, try to get up a little earlier.

Try to go to bed a little earlier. That's a constant for me. What can you do to help yourself? But don't berate yourself. Don't tell yourself that you're not good enough. Don't tell yourself that you're shit, that you couldn't do it, that you're dumb. And when you transfer that [00:28:00] mindset shift to be curious, kind, supportive.

Your whole inner ecosystem and world changes and then so does your outer one. It's a powerful practice. Oh my gosh, absolutely. I think that I never understood the power of mindset until very recently, which is interesting because I spent a lot of time in my head, so, and like you would think, someone that spends a lot of time up here, I would have been a little bit more clued into that, but I think.

Speaker 3: It took other people sharing the power of it with me. You know, the coaching program I went through. You don't get to move past, go until you've done the foundational mindset work. Just like, just an awareness and a foundation of being cool with yourself. Very replaceable. And it's priceless. Yes. And it's free.

It is something that you can do for [00:29:00] yourself. And I think we tend to look for things. That like, oh, if I follow this formula or if I do this, then this is gonna make me better, or gonna make me show up differently. But ultimately it is on you to do the work. Do you feel like there was a moment in your life or on this journey, 'cause it, you know, you share this in a way that is such a clear market difference from where you saw yourself before and to where you are today?

I know it takes time, right? Yeah. These things don't just happen overnight, but yeah. Was there anything that was kind of a catalyst for you to start thinking about this? Or was there any experience that you had that made you go like, wait a second, I gotta start doing this work? Or did someone share it with you?

What was your kind of entry, if you can remember? There are a couple of things that came to mind when you were asking that question, and the first was actually practicing different breath work. Hmm. So just getting in tune with the breath, taking full breaths, [00:30:00] taking expanded side body, back body, you know, base breaths, everything.

Speaker 4: Um, and then playing with the breath that I think, I didn't know it at the time. I think that was really foundational into shifting mindset because when you can, it's kind of a control, right? It's controlling the breath. When you harness it, when you can take bigger, deeper breaths, you oxygenate everything better.

I mean, physiologically, it's a great improvement in your overall health and wellbeing, and think about all the blood that's then flowing to your brain and mm-hmm. Actually, maybe you can make more sound decisions because you're in a more balanced homeostasis. Mm-hmm. The other thing that came to mind actually was really definitely motherhood, because I think you mother, you shift a lot.

I mean, we are not the same people. You, you can't be the same person after you. Mm-hmm. Or a mother, or I think a parent in general, but particularly the experience of growing a [00:31:00] person in the womb and then birthing them and then caring for them. Yeah. Transformational. Yeah. The other thing that came to mind was certainly the pandemic.

Yeah. Yeah. That was such a pressure cooker for so many of us, so many of us parents. I know that many people had a very difficult time for other reasons, but the pressure cooker for me was really, I recognized I was coming back to drinking alcohol a little bit more, and I, in May of 2020, realized I could.

Keep doing this and running away from my problems, or I could take control of what I have control over, which is me. Mm-hmm. So I stopped putting alcohol in my body and just did that one day at a time, one five o'clock hour at a time, you know? And one day became two, two days became a week. A week became months.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. And then here [00:32:00] I am at. Over five years. Wow. So alcohol, and when you recognize what you're putting in your body mm-hmm. What you watch, what you smell, what you taste, what you drink, what you listen to. Mm-hmm. Right where you put your body. When you recognize the power that you have yourself, there's really nothing that can stop you.

Speaker 4: I think.

Tapping into your inner essence, your inner power, your inner fire, your. Just self, how do you get to know yourself? And I feel like in our society, and I think it's probably always been the case at this stage, we're being told so much of what to do, what to think how to act, because we have these devices that control our attention.

But when we decide how we use our attention. With intention. [00:33:00] Yeah. Yeah. That we're unstoppable. And I think that that's what's scary to most politicians or other people looking to make money on our attention. Hmm mm-hmm. Yeah. Is that the more that they distract you, the more profitable you are to them.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Right. But I don't wanna be a cog in somebody's. Wheel. Yeah. Yes. I'm here for that. I'm here for me, I'm here for my own evolution, my own contributions. Again, the work worth doing. I'm here to see what I can achieve, how I can give, how I can grow, how I can be in community. I think there's so much of that that's needed.

Speaker 3: Yes. Oh my gosh. I wanna just very quickly double down on the concept of getting to know yourself again, because I think. Particularly women of our generation in the, like, let's just say middle to later, middle age-ish. We came up during a time when that was not necessarily, we, I don't even know what that, I wouldn't have known what [00:34:00] that even looked like.

I just, I performed, I did a thing I was meant to do and none of this is necessarily all bad. I wanna be careful. I think sometimes we have this tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water. So much of who I am today is because of the way I. Came up in the world, right? And so it's not all bad. There are definitely pieces that it's time to release or that no longer serve, but I think in the like getting to know yourself, it can be real weird.

Like it's like, what? Wait a second. It can be a bizarre experience when you have kind of gone through the world. Thinking of yourself in a certain way. Yeah. Showing up to things in a certain way, believing certain things. It can feel disorienting at times when you're getting to know yourself again. So I think putting that out there for anybody that might be starting that journey, that it's not always comfortable to.

Oh, it's extremely, it's extremely uncomfortable. I think I the pandemic the [00:35:00] last couple years of the pandemic, and even as we were starting to come out of it. I was definitely in a cocoon. Yeah, I mean I, in the cocoon of the sense of who I was being, you know, birthed into at this stage, if I reflect back on that time, it was definitely an exercise in trusting that it was gonna all work out.

Speaker 4: Though I hadn't really. Believed in that concept. I just knew I needed time and the sabbatical, I took six months. You know where I came back last March, 2024. After six months away from the business was still I think part of the cocoon. Mm-hmm. Because I didn't know quite how to show up. Yeah. In the world as myself.

That felt odd. Yeah. Just like as I'm learning how to transition poses in yoga, Asana, practice or transition, [00:36:00] you know, between the gardening club, transition between meetings, if you give yourself a little bit more space and time to breathe. Trust that it's going to fall into place. Be curious about how it's all gonna fall into place.

I find that that approach calms my nervous system mm-hmm. In a way that allows me to both do the next needed thing. Mm-hmm. And to trust that shit's gonna work out. Yeah. I love it. Um. Last question I ask everyone, and I've spoiler, I've asked you this before and you gave me a beautiful answer. I ask everyone because so much of the work that I'm focused on right now is around what does it mean to build a legacy with intention?

Speaker 3: And so much of it has to do with building lives, careers, et cetera, that we feel authentically proud of, not what somebody else tells us we should be proud of or how to build. Mm-hmm. Um. What does legacy, what does building a legacy [00:37:00] mean for you?

Speaker 4: It's the work worth doing. Mm-hmm. It's, um, you know, we actually talk about death in our family occasionally, and one of my daughters is uncomfortable with it. But I think it's important because we're all gonna die. These bodies are going to die. And we're going to leave a legacy, right? What kind of person do we want to be remembered as?

Mm-hmm. And that helps us live a life more fully if we think about our limited time. Yeah, I think. The legacy and often my prayers at this stage in my life are that I can be everything that I need to be kind of my highest, brightest self. Mm-hmm. For the good of all involved. So I wanna be who I need to be for myself [00:38:00] and who ever else needs it in and around my orbit.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. And that's such a privilege to think about. But it's really something that all of us have an opportunity to do in whatever size community that we're in, in all kinds of circles. Mm-hmm. We all just did our part. So it's that same aspect of if we all take care of one person actually ourselves. Yeah.

Speaker 6: Yeah. Right. Take care of ourselves first. Well, yeah. But that's the fascinating part that I've learned in the last few years is. Right. I'm taking on so much more. Where did this capacity come from? You know, it did, and I love what my mom said when she was reflecting back and told me about how she didn't know how she was gonna love another baby.

Speaker 4: I was the first born and she had a second, three years after me. But just like my mom, more love arrived when it needed to. More capacity arrives when we need it to, [00:39:00] and it's so beautiful to think of your life as a magical. Journey. Mm-hmm. People are gonna come and go and be part of it in short and long-term ways.

How are you gonna be that for somebody else's magical journey? You know this, there's so much seriousness. I'm very guilty of that, but there's so much seriousness. In the world, and generally speaking, so many of these systems are manmade BS actually don't matter, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What is the stuff that really matters?

Cut out clutter as much as possible, and when I do that, I get recentered and I think. That's the kind of legacy I want to leave, right? Yes. I love it. It's amazing. I love what you are doing and I love that you are showing up so authentically for yourself. Thank you. I appreciate it. Chris, it's always nice to chat with you.

It's really a privilege to have an opportunity to talk about things that we, this is work worth doing, right? Yeah. It's a conversation and it's um, [00:40:00] I think we have to remember that money isn't everything but time. Yeah, time. Both how we give it and what we do with it, uh, is very valuable. Anyway. Agreed.

Thank you again. You too. My pleasure.

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