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The Energy Xchange
Welcome to The Energy Xchange, a podcast for deep feelers and quiet leaders ready for expansion. This is where we explore what becomes possible when you stop fighting your natural energy and start working with it, in your business, relationships, and daily life. I’m Colleen Wolak, a corporate marketer turned mentor for my fellow deep feelers and author of "The Empath Detox". As a highly sensitive professional who spent years untangling the patterns of overthinking, people-pleasing, and shrinking myself to feel safe, I now help others step into their power without losing the superpower of their softness. We don’t have to be loud to be seen, and we don’t have to push to be powerful. Everything is energy… let’s start this exchange!
Episodes
41 episodes
Co-Creating Relationships (w/ Aaron King, Relationship Coach)
We do a lot of work on becoming more self-aware, setting better boundaries, healing our patterns, and learning how to show up as healthier versions of ourselves.But relationships aren’t a solo project.In this episode, I’m joined b...
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Am I Qualified Enough to Teach This?
So many of my marketing clients come to me with some version of this:I'd love to speak about this, but I haven't been doing it long enough.I could teach this, but I've only worked with five clients.
Leading Through Discomfort (w/Julie Gawle, Senior Change Strategist)
Julie Gawle helps people navigate change, which means she's spent a lot of time thinking about what happens when uncertainty, emotion, and leadership collide.In this episode, we talk about what it looks like to lead when you're a deeply ...
The Rooms That Shape Us
A lot of the rooms we find ourselves in were chosen by proximity — our workplace, our town, our industry, our existing networks. Those spaces serve a purpose, but they don't always give us access to the conversations, perspectives, or energy we...
Who Do You Become in Your Relationships?
When we leave something (a person, a job, a dynamic) there's often this rush of thank God I got out of that. And sometimes that's completely fair. But if we stop there, we miss the more useful question: W...
When the Reaction Is Bigger Than the Moment
Something small happens. One offhand comment, one changed plan, one shift in tone... and what comes up in me is so much bigger than the thing that actually just occurred. For years I chalked it up to being sensitive. "That's just me...
Lowering the Cost of Entry
Before I'd recorded a single episode, I was researching podcast studio rentals. I had a very specific picture of what a "real" podcast looked like — 45 minutes, video, the microphones, the whole setup — and I'd quietly turned that picture into ...
Why I’m No Longer Attached to the "Empath" Label
The word empath once gave me language for experiences I had never known how to explain. It helped me feel understood, and I’ll always be grateful for that.But these days, I’m less attached to it as the full explanation for who I...
The Structure That Gives You More Freedom
If you've ever blown up a "perfect" routine two weeks in and decided the problem was you, I created this episode with you in mind.For years I was convinced I hated structure. That I was bad at routines, not disciplined enough, j...
Your Worth Is a Misguided Pricing Metric (Pricing for HSPs)
I've lowered my pricing to get the job and then quietly resented the work the whole way through. More than once. It's one of the worst feelings there is — because you want people to get the best of you, and it's very hard to give someo...
How to Use AI In Your Marketing Without Losing Your Voice
I love AI and use it constantly in my work. BUT....! I think many people are using it in a way that's quietly erasing the only thing that makes their content worth reading.The question isn't whether you should use AI. The question is: wh...
Paying Your Dues or Paying The Price?
Years into a career I'd worked incredibly hard for, I found out what a brand-new employee was making — and it was almost as much as me. My first reaction was: they should have to pay their dues. But when I sat with it, what I actually ...
Knowing When It's Time to Move On
I spent five years in a job I dreaded... in the kind of workplace where everyone quietly packs up at 4:50 to sprint out the door at 5pm. I told myself staying was the responsible thing to do. Looking back, I'd learned everything that job had to...
"Wait... Am I the Narcissist?"
Have you ever gone through a season where you felt so consumed by your own problems that you started wondering, “Wait... am I a narcissist?”In this episode of The Energy Xchange, we’re unpacking the difference between narcissism...
Why Small Injustices Hijack Your Whole Day
I was standing in a gorgeous, fully renovated hotel room in Rome, the exact room I'd booked, the one with the terrace and the view, and I still couldn't let it go.The problem was solved. I was happy. And yet there I was, rehearsing custo...
What You're Consuming Is Consuming You
What if the anxious, behind, not-enough feeling you carry has less to do with your life and more to do with what's playing in the background of it?In this episode of The Energy Xchange, we're diving into becoming intentional with our inp...
When Marketing Yourself Feels Gross
This week, we're getting honest about why promoting your work can feel so uncomfortable when you're someone who genuinely loves to teach, create, write, podcast, or share what you know.Because for a lot of deep feelers, contribution feel...
Modern Healing Culture (Are We Ever Truly "Healed")?
This week, we're getting honest about the shadow side of healing culture, and what happens when your healing journey starts to look a lot like another achievement project.Whether you're...Someone who can name every wo...
What Do You Do When You've Outgrown Yourself?
Who are you when the old version of you no longer fits, but the new version hasn’t formed yet?That strange liminal space (one foot in the old thing, one foot in the new) is one of the most disorienting places a person can land. And most ...
Natural High Achiever or Just Good at Managing Anxiety?
Hypervigilance at work can be hard to spot because it often looks like preparation, thoughtfulness, intuition, or being “good with people.”But there’s a difference between emotional intelligence and constantly scanning for what might go ...
When Your “Why” Isn’t Enough Anymore
What happens when your "why" is clear, but the way you're living while pursuing it is quietly draining you?Whether you're:A business owner who's deeply aligned with your mission but barely hanging on,Someone in a tra...
Easy to Be With, Hard to Show Up For
In this episode of The Energy Xchange, we're getting honest about one of the most quietly painful patterns in relationships — attracting emotionally unavailable people — and more specifically, what role we might be playing in keeping that dynam...
The Annual Life Audit
In this episode of The Energy Xchange, we're getting honest about the weird, heavy, quietly exposing feeling that can show up on your birthday, even when everything is "fine".Whether you're someone who tends to reflect deeply, someone wh...