The Jasmine Star Show

The Hidden Struggle of High Achievers (And How to Break Free)

• Jasmine Star

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 43:47

→ Set up a one-on-one Consultation with Karen at Calendly.com/kereneldad ←

↓

Have you ever looked at your life, your business, your success… and thought, “Why doesn’t this feel the way I thought it would?”

If so, you’re not alone—and this episode is for you.

I’m joined by Coach Keren Eldad for a powerful conversation about high achievers who look successful on the outside… but feel stuck, restless, or unfulfilled on the inside.

We talk about why the very traits that built your success—drive, discipline, perfectionism—can also keep you stuck… and what it actually takes to not just achieve success, but feel aligned and fulfilled living in it.

Inside this episode:

💥 Why success doesn’t always “land” the way we expect

💥 The illusion of “arriving”

💥 Why failure hits high performers so hard

💥 How to stay aligned after you’ve achieved your goals

Because building success is one thing…

But living in it—peacefully, fully, authentically—is something else entirely.

If you’ve been doing everything “right” but something still feels off… this conversation will meet you exactly where you are.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[00:00] Why I ONLY bring back repeat guests who deeply connect with you

[02:02] How to know if you’re a “high achiever” (even if you don’t think you are)

[03:41] Why success can feel like a “gilded cage”

[04:53] The difference between achieving success and sustaining it

[07:21] The illusion of “arriving” and why it’s misleading

[07:53] “I’m not out of the cage yet…” — what that really means

[08:00] Why high performers struggle with fulfillment and failure

Listen to Related Episodes:

Connect With Coach Keren Eldad:

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode635

Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show. And boy, are we in for a treat today. Because here's one thing if you have been watching this show for a while, you know I don't bring on repeat guests unless. Unless they are just so good and unless I've heard from you. I read every single DM, I read my own emails, and I get to know who's actually connecting and who's connective. Those are two separate things. Connecting means, ooh, this hit me. Connective means I actually want to get up close to this person. Now, the person who I'm about to introduce you to, she's coming back on the podcast. And the reason she's coming back on the podcast is because since her first conversation with me to today, I started noticing patterns and patterns of the people who I am attracting into my orbit are number one high achievers, number two perfectionist, and number three for people who on the outside people look at them and they're like, oh, they are special. Oh, they're doing something good.

Jasmine Star 00:00:55  Oh, oh, oh. And they themselves don't necessarily see themselves in the same light. So it is with that extreme honor and pleasure that I am excited to invite back. Caren. Eldad. Thank you for being on the Jasmine Star Show. Thank you, infinity.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:01:09  For having me back. It's an honor and a pleasure to be back and serve the audience.

Jasmine Star 00:01:13  I am so I'm very, very, very happy. And what the audience doesn't know is that you being the the recovering type A, you arrived early. Unbeknownst to me, you were able to sit outside of the studio door and you got to hear a podcast episode where I broke down a ton of things that was happening in quarter one and you're like, oh, Jasmine. I walked out and I said, Karen, you're here. And you're like, oh boy, did I hear a lot. And I was like, oh no, oh no. Because Karen is that you're like a master puzzler. You get different pieces that seem disparate, and then you interweave them through a whole theme.

Jasmine Star 00:01:46  And so I have my notes. Yeah, but we're going to take this wherever I believe, you know, we need it to go. But first and foremost, I want to frame it. Your message is for high achievers who live successful lives on the outside but feel different on the inside? Yeah. Can you expand there for a second? Because people are like, well, I'm not sure that that's exactly me.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:02:02  So most people who came to read my first book, gilded, felt exactly that way. I don't feel like this is me. And then they read the first few pages. I heard this again and again and again from readers, and they said, oh no, it's me. Here's the deal. Most of us do not really see ourselves as classic overachievers, but once we understand that we are intensely focused, we're intensely wired for focus. We're a little more obsessive than the average person in any direction, by the way, tulip growing, child rearing, or running a business. We start understanding this is our category.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:02:35  As a result of that, we have to start understanding that we are externally motivated. We are usually looking to get our bell rung by achievements. If so, it's very likely you've already experienced that happiness is correlated in the inverse, that it's not actually ringing your bells fulfillment wise, that for some reason, achievements don't land and at some point just stop landing. And even worse, that any form of making a mistake, failure, or detour is extremely painful. If so, welcome to our category. We're here, first and foremost, to dissolve all of the primal, limiting beliefs that got you into what is essentially a golden cage. A gilded cage means a gold covered or gold plated cage. And you and I know that gold plated is not real. It's phony baloney. So my hope is first to dissolve that. Today I want to talk about a more advanced case. What you see in your business. Masterminds for sure, because I know some of the wonderful people there and what I commonly see, which is all right.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:03:41  They busted out of the cage. Now they have to live that way. They have to stay in that zone. How do you continue to live that way? How do you continue to make integral decisions? How do you maintain that focus? That was the podcast episode that I had the privilege of listening to and sustain it. And so I realized, and I'll tell you the story of how this came about, because as you may recall, I told you we were like, are you writing a second book? And I'm like, I'd rather eat my cat. And I love my cat. So that's what I meant by that. I understood that the other piece of the puzzle, what people really needed to hear, was not just how I busted out of my own trappings, but how I've lived this way, lived free for ten years now. The analogy that comes to mind, and please forgive me, it's simplistic, is in the 90s I lost like £20. I was a chubby, delicious kid, but I figured out through Jane Fonda and Diet Cokes how to lose that weight.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:04:37  And that was brutal. It was very hard to lose that much weight. But you know, what's been like much more interesting is that I've kept it off for 30 years. Taking the weight off first is just one lever. What comes next is what I want to talk about.

Jasmine Star 00:04:53  Okay, so when I was on your podcast, your beautiful, sweet husband and you drove me back to my hotel. So you finished the podcast and you guys are so kind. I said, let me just Uber. I'm fine. And you said, no, we got to take you back. So we're in the car and we're talking about the book. And I come from the world, which, you know, and you've helped me a lot where I'm like, okay, so we just don't do a book like we do a book, all cap letters. And I said, so talk to me at the marketing strategy. Yeah, yeah. What are the goals? Are we aiming for New York Times bestseller? What's the strategy? How many podcasts and by what time? Let's reverse engineer.

Jasmine Star 00:05:25  And you were calm and you were sitting in the back seat because you. Of course you made me passenger princess. And you just said, oh, no, it does mean whatever happens is great. But I'm not on a timeline like the book finds the right people at the right time. I was like.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:05:41  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:05:41  Oh yeah, of course. Or and clearly that elevator, of course. So we talk about that. And then when you talked about, I didn't want to write a book, I'd rather eat my cat. And then the book became, well, there was something special about helping people get out. And then this is the next step. And then what happened off camera? Because you're very good at being you, and you are naturally you're good at what you do, and you're also very humble. But we have a love affair of a book called The Great Leap. Yes, by Gay Hendricks. And that was the book that started my early, early personal development. This is like, my God, like maybe 2015 that I read that book.

Jasmine Star 00:06:16  It still remains one of my top business books that I recommend to people, especially when they are starting out, especially when they're struggling. It's called the Big Leap.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:06:22  And Gay Hendricks.

Jasmine Star 00:06:23  Gay, Hendricks, and Gay wrote a kind word about your book. Can you tell me what he said?

Coach Keren Eldad 00:06:30  He said first, he said the long anticipated sequel to gilded is finally here. But he also said, this is a book about what happens after you bust past the upper limit. And it made me think he really understands the book. Very few people say much about what happens after you break through the first time after you land the husband, after you launch the business, after you achieve whatever goal you like. You got the podcast out the door. There's ten years on the back of that that needs to be discussed as well, because the real thing, the real work, is staying in the creation and staying true to yourself, staying authentic through that creation. And I've seen it go wrong many times, which, by the way, brings me to how I ended up in guilt free.

Jasmine Star 00:07:21  Okay, there's somebody watching, and I'm so attuned to who's watching and listening like, I know this person. And so what the brain will bring up is, well, I'm actually not sure I've left the cage. Yeah. I mean, yeah, like, the thing that we say is like, oh, it's the husband, it's the baby, it's the accomplishment. It's a podcast of the business. Right. And then you actually kind of sort of launch it, but it's not what it is that you think, because people think like, I start a business and it's like, oh, I have 200 clients. Yeah, it starts with one and it starts with two. So do people actually say I've identified as I'm out, I'm out of the cage, I've landed. They do okay.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:07:53  But and it's it's phony baloney.

Jasmine Star 00:07:55  Okay.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:07:55  So guilt free spelled guilt free means without any of that shininess. And the impulse for most people will be to create more shininess instead of just breaking free. They still are achievement oriented.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:08:11  And then they speak the language of abundance. They've learned how to talk like us, but they're not actually walking like us. And the tell is the results and their responses do not match what they intellectually know to say.

Jasmine Star 00:08:26  Okay, we've got to break this down in the example. So let's use a business example.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:08:29  So I'll give you the case study. So I wrote this book very simply I wrote this book because a couple of clients were in practice with me at the time. And I could see that there was a missing piece of the work for them. Okay, so that's why I write. I only create things when I see the need for it in clients, and I want to serve them at a higher level. I see kind of like I wrote Heal With Enthusiasm, my new program this year, and I just thought, there's a gap here. These people need this extra work. So I'll create this extra piece. Got it. That's basically it. And you know, the most interesting thing that happens when you do this is you start finding more glitches in yourself that you want to close.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:09:06  As gilded was going to press, I started to literally smell where there were gaps in the work. And so I thought, I have to write a sequel. This is an incomplete work. I thought it was actually perfect when I launched it, but as it's going to press, a couple of cases just became Earth suddenly relevant to me. I'm going to give you two that are in the business category. They're going to be very useful. The first was a woman who continued to come back, spoke the language of abundance like nobody's business. Constantly, I am highfalutin. The world is awesome. The deal pipeline is insane. Jet setting and spending money like nobody's business. I've been in the seven figure category for a few years now. I don't live that way, so I'm very aware of profit margins and of what it takes. And then she kept saying things like, I just want to make $1 million in the next year, which then completely makes no sense to me, because with that lifestyle, how exactly is this working and why do these ends just not land for her? Like something was?

Jasmine Star 00:10:10  Are you saying she was living a seven figure lifestyle without a seven figure business?

Coach Keren Eldad 00:10:13  I think easily so.

Jasmine Star 00:10:15  Okay. And by the way, I want to do this. Yes. And you're saying that.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:10:19  I'm saying there's something just doesn't make sense to me.

Jasmine Star 00:10:22  But explain why I want to get into your brain. And people are like, well, that's so somebody watching. Yeah. And they will have the opportunity to work with you. Maybe. But in case that they don't, what are you seeing? Like, if I'm that woman.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:10:33  I'm looking for incongruence. That's my entire secret.

Jasmine Star 00:10:36  So give me the in congruency. You're saying you're spending.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:10:39  Doesn't make sense if you're trying. If you say to me that my goal is to make $1 million next year and your lifestyle very obviously costs. I'm going to be humble and say more than $1 million. That's a mismatch. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't work on paper. The math is not matching. And that's just going to raise my alarm bells. It doesn't mean I'm going to accuse you of anything or anything like that. It just means I'm going to become aware of the fact that there's very likely a pattern here.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:11:05  And the pattern here is an identity. As you know, what really happens when we break out of the cages? We actually graduate identity. When you made the decision to defy your father, to defy the church, to defy your community, and to say, I am not staying in this miserable school.

Jasmine Star 00:11:21  Sitch.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:11:22  I'm going to go out on my own and do something cuckoo, cuckoo. According to the regs, you actually switched identity. You broke with some covenants that you grew up around for this particular person. And by the way, all case studies that I present are usually an amalgamation of case studies. This facade of I am impressive. I am always well, I am rich had to be destroyed for you to actually be a really solid entrepreneur. Amen. As I just heard you say on that wonderful podcast episode I got to listen to by osmosis, humility is part of the game. Scrapping is part of the game. Understanding how to do things and to just allow yourself to always grow is and to be authentic about it is part of the game.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:12:13  That's the second tell. The second tell was everything was always on the up and up. Now I've been in business as I just shared with you, almost ten years. I never had a bad quarter. Come on.

Jasmine Star 00:12:24  I've had a couple years, por favor.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:12:27  Exactly. Please. It's like somebody saying my marriage is absolutely perfect. And I'm like, who are you married to? The Dalai Lama? Like, stop enough. And so that was the first case study. The second is also very interesting. And that's again something that kept recurring.

Jasmine Star 00:12:44  So pause. Case study number one. Yeah was in congruency. And in this particular situation you lived a seven figure lifestyle without actually having a seven figure business. So it was a little bit of like.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:12:54  There's a dissonance there. And that means you're actually not only not manufacturing the success you want, but you end up in purgatory. You're not landing the success you want. That means there's a glitch in the system. That's what I'd like to explore here and explain why I wrote Guilt Free.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:13:08  To really take somebody who's broken out the gate has all the right intentions, like did everything in foundation coaching, in books like gilded, in books like The Big Leap and they're still not sticking the landing. The results are still not landing. That means there's an identity glitch and there's also a decision making glitch. So I helped myself solve these over time. And now I've housed these in a method that helps other people scan.

Jasmine Star 00:13:36  For that Was incongruity. Yeah. And then what was the second part of that caused you to say like. Wait a minute.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:13:43  Didn't stick the landing.

Jasmine Star 00:13:44  Oh. Didn't stick landing. Okay. Great incongruence and didn't stick the landing.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:13:47  How is this not sticking the landing? Eventually you're like, you know, it's kind of like when I coach a lot of people in relationships. After a while, it's not the world, it's you. You're making a decision. You're getting something out of that decision. Another book I really love is Carolyn Elliott's Existential Kink. Have you read it? You'll love it.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:14:10  It's really messed up. And what she argues is, the reason we continue to stay in these purgatory is essentially we're getting something out of staying in these purgatory. I accept that, but most importantly, I also understand that you're just afraid to pay the price. The price again and again and again for freedom. And that's the part that I didn't tell anybody in gilded, which is it's not that you're going to pay for your freedom one time. You will continue to have to put your money where your mouth.

Jasmine Star 00:14:39  Every.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:14:40  Day, every freaking day for ten years now. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:14:44  And so you were going to get into the second case study.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:14:46  Yeah. So the second case study that I really love is and you, you're familiar with this as an entrepreneur. You're familiar with this with clients is some people have the best year of their lives and then they hit a lull in a lull. Most people who are not in the mindset that makes good decisions and continues to put their money where their mouth is, have a little bit of a panic meltdown.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:15:10  They have a panic response. That panic response can offset years of work. That's the second case study. So for example, I saw this wonderful gentleman client. He'd had the best year ever. He'd produced a seven figure almost year, and then crickets. The regression was pretty fast. The old identity just woop! Right woke up. The success is in structural. I can't really trust this. This is a fluke. None of this actually works. How do we continue this? What is this? Even I need to redo my offer. I need to have more offers. I need to start hustling harder. I should be operating like the others. Let's watch more Layla and Alex hormone content and see how fast we can get stuff out the door. And I sat there going, yeah, I'm gonna write guilt free for you, buddy.

Jasmine Star 00:16:03  When you look back at somebody like that who had like a really great year, and then they go into the cricket season and then they want to do more, go back to the old identity.

Jasmine Star 00:16:13  How are you walking somebody through that?

Coach Keren Eldad 00:16:15  Well, the first thing I like to say is very unpopular and that's congratulations.

Jasmine Star 00:16:20  Okay. Say more.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:16:21  And when these things happen and this just happened to me, I had the best year of my business last year. Gilded went completely bananas for me. And it's not about hundreds of thousands of copies.

Jasmine Star 00:16:32  When did it.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:16:32  Drop? It dropped in February of 2025 and we six x the business by September. That was crazy. That was cuckoo Maluku. And by the way, that's why you write books. Forget how many books I sell. It's just so much wonderful new case studies and exciting new work coming through the door in Q4. There was an adjustment. The business just went back to normal. I started to initially respond, kind of like he did. What's happening? Oh, this was a fluke. Oh, this was just something that has to be sustained by a structure that I have to repeat. I thought, wait a minute, now I'm going to use my work on myself and first congratulated myself.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:17:17  I understood what happened. My identity had to expand. It had to move into a new zone. And it wasn't ready to do that yet. It still wanted to cling to the comfort of where I was. just let me stay here a little bit longer. I'm good where I am. You see the identity? If it really needs to expand to the next level, you need to hire more people. You need to operate at a different level. You need to walk into different rooms. You need to completely change your structure. I'm a one on one coach. Suddenly, groups become much more of a thing. By default, you you can't manage that volume any other way. And so I realized that I got to do the work myself, and I walked myself through it. I realized that this was a good thing, not a bad thing. This was the moment where I got to show myself what structural success is really about. And here it is. Structural success is about not freaking out, about chilling out, about enjoying this, and about asking for the real thing that you want so that you can actually start to receive it.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:18:21  And I'll be happy to dive into that.

Jasmine Star 00:18:22  I mean, girl, I'm gonna put my pin down because this is this is the real work. And so, you know that this podcast is it's the business of business. Yeah. And what we get to do with guilt free is to point back to it as how somebody who's watching you build a business, how they apply it to their lives because you know this product, you know for sure. I don't bring authors on the pod without reading their book and without actually understanding what it's going to do in somebody's business. And in both of those scenarios and cases, that's what I've done with you. And that's what experience on both ends of the book. I even asked you I was like, girl, you can come on my podcast, but give me the digital version. Like chop chop. And so what I would love to do because I know that you were open to it is in Spanish, we call it Cheeseman, like the tea. And so I want to use you as our case study.

Jasmine Star 00:19:04  So you had to step into the container that is the next version of Karen Eldad. And then now here's something else. You told me the last time we were on the podcast. The last time I interviewed you, we were in Austin, and you're like, I just do one on one, and then you offer it to my audience. You're like, I'm gonna do a free consultation, anybody who wants it. And I was like, what? I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure? Karen. You're like, yes, of course, send them my way and we will send everybody the way for them to have a consultation with you, too. But that's not here At the time, you were only doing one on one. So then what happens in the business when you step into this identity, where there's a lull and there's crickets and you're like, okay, I need to celebrate it. Yeah. And then I need to ask myself, what actually do I want? So number one, what did you decide you wanted? Did the structure of your business change and then who did you have to become in the process?

Coach Keren Eldad 00:19:46  Yes.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:19:47  Oh, very delighted to walk you all through this. And I want everybody who is an advanced entrepreneur to listen in particularly carefully, because what really ends up happening is you'll recognize it. It's a very, very similar structure to what happens when you get out the door. You just unfortunately, as an entrepreneur, sometimes become comfortable, particularly if you're successful and just chill for a while, you reach cruising altitude. People with my behavioral style love cruising altitude. You know this. I like to be in bed with a bathrobe and a cat most of the time, reading preferably, so we got to get ourselves out of it. We have to find big gusts of wind and we have to meet the moment when the moment presents itself. So let's talk about this. Q4 I'm supposed to celebrate.

Jasmine Star 00:20:33  For 2025.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:20:34  2025. I'm supposed to be celebrating the best year in business, and I see numbers I do not like because they're regular numbers. And I start going with the has just happened. And I was I was literally I was just angry and sad and didn't understand what happened and thought, you know, you've arrived.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:20:53  How does this not materially change the structure of the business yet? Now, for the record, in 2023 I launched the club. The club is an advanced group. There are 20 people. We're always running together. 90% of them were new a year over year. We always welcome 2 to 4 new clients so it stays fresh and it's very exciting. But I do have one group in place. It's a small container. I started to understand. The first thing was that this doesn't make sense. You cannot doubt your success. It is structural and here's why. It's not because of the numbers. It's because you're good at what you do and you like what you do, and people really like what you do, and the results are speaking for themselves. The case studies were still amazing, the clients were still really happy, and most importantly, the work was still really interesting. So why am I having this heart palpitation? It's simply because I have moved back into a form of perfectionism. And so the first step is to relinquish the things that still have a hold on you.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:21:55  The first section of Guilt Free, as you know, is dedicated to crossing the chasms of FOMO, comparison and obligation FOMO. Other people are having more fun than me. It's out there is much better, and something else is going on that I'm not a part of. Lose it. Be cool with not being in anybody else's race or at anybody else's party. And as you said so wisely in your last podcast episode, you spend a lot of time outside those rooms, and occasionally you do get invited into those rooms, and you can create those rooms so you can relax about this competition. Who am I exactly comparing myself to now? Did I decide to put myself in the category of an Alex or Mosey? In what universe am I running the same business as him? I don't even share his values. I mean, what's the problem here? According to whom am I supposed to be somewhere at some time? And then, of course, obligation. This fear of letting people down, but mostly the fear of not being impressive all the time.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:23:06  That's my biggest trap, Jasmine. I have grown up. And I told you this last time I shared with you. I grew up to be impressive. I was taught to always be an A student, to always be polished, to always be thin and to always say the right thing at the right time. So you start to build a facade, and when that facade starts to crack. Start freaking out again. So my job was first and foremost to just go through these and start understanding. No, I'm willing to pay all of them as a price. Sacrifice all of it. I have to go back into detachment.

Jasmine Star 00:23:43  So you are willing to sacrifice the hold that success has on you? Yeah. Relinquishing it. You were willing to sacrifice the idea of competition when you started asking yourself, who am I actually comparing myself to? And then, number three, you were willing to sacrifice the obligation that you had an old version of you that you had to impress people. That's right. And so take me back to December 2025 or quarter.

Jasmine Star 00:24:08  Quarter four. Let's go back to October or November, and you go back and say, these are the things I need to focus on. What happens? Like what do you do?

Coach Keren Eldad 00:24:16  Thank you very much for asking. So first I understood what was happening. Okay, so the reason I scanned for FOMO. I scan for obligation. I stand for competition is to start understanding what has a grip on me. And once you. You know, it's kind of like going to the doctor. It's 50% of the healing process is diagnosis. I understood I am hitting another one of my core wounds that's keeping my identity in a certain space. I have to eliminate this if I am ready to graduate. Because the reason the lull is happening, just so everybody knows, the reason that universe is creating that space is so you can go higher, not lower. It's not trying to kill you, it's just testing you. And the test is always the same thing. It's asking you, how bad do you want this? Are you really in this game for realsies? Or you know, are you only in it when it's good? Kind of like marriage.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:25:10  Do you really mean it? Do you really love this guy? Or is it only like till awesomeness? as long as awesomeness is happening.

Jasmine Star 00:25:19  Okay, don't lose your turn, I thought. You tell me what happens next. So here's what happens. No, no, no. But give me a clue because I want to ask you something before we get there. That's going to be distracting. But I don't want to get distracted because this is so freaking good. Yeah. So what? Give me a clue. For what? The next thing that you're about to say?

Coach Keren Eldad 00:25:33  Sure. So what happened next was I eliminated the need to move.

Jasmine Star 00:25:38  Okay, pause. Eliminated the need to move. So do you think that there is a time correlation to the lull? Is do we have the capacity to expand the lull, or does the do you believe. No, I know that you you're not an oracle, but do you believe in your experience and what it is that you see that the duration of the lull is expanded because you're out of alignment, or the duration of the lull is to say the longer the lull, the higher you're going to go.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:26:04  Well, I can only give the Law of Attraction answer to that. The longer the law, the more expanded you are. Because the length of my.

Jasmine Star 00:26:10  Little girl, I will be in the next hemisphere. I'll be. I will be in the next galaxy.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:26:15  Your job is to be cool with that. Don't play against life's game. You will lose. Instead, get comfortable. Get super comfortable. See, my impulse was to go into hyper achiever mode.

Jasmine Star 00:26:29  Fix it. Of course.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:26:31  Fix it as quickly as possible. My God. Of course. You have to stay. Impressive. Who do I need to call to become impressive again? How many old clients can I solicit?

Jasmine Star 00:26:41  How many? Not even that girl. It's. What can I do? What can I do.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:26:44  For other people.

Jasmine Star 00:26:45  To be.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:26:46  Exactly. How can I figure this out? How can we still right this wrong? And luckily, once I scanned for this and I went, wait a minute, there actually is no problem.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:26:55  First of all, the business is still profitable. And second of all, you're fine. Nothing has changed. Your body is fine. Your health is fine. Your family is fine. Thank God everything is okay. Once you understand, everything is okay. You neutralize the system. And from there, you do. I'm sorry for the entrepreneurs out there who are very high achievers and hustling and bustling, you do nothing, you do nothing. You create space, the job.

Jasmine Star 00:27:24  You're trying to.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:27:25  Fill, space. I know.

Jasmine Star 00:27:25  You're trying to.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:27:26  Kill us. I'm trying to create.

Jasmine Star 00:27:27  No, you're trying to kill the old version of axe that's bringing out the sword.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:27:30  And this is when I introduce the new framework. And I created gold. Gold the framework. Before I experienced this, in this new iteration, I had experienced this many years ago in the past, and I started to literally use my own system to find my way back. And now it's March. It's the end of the first quarter of 2026.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:27:50  And let me tell you, everything's fine again. We're back on the up and up. I just started the book tour, so it has nothing to do with the book. It's clearly just we are who we say we are. It's everything is awesome. Everything's okay. You're going to be just fine.

Jasmine Star 00:28:05  Okay.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:28:06  So going back to.

Jasmine Star 00:28:07  I definitely want to to clarify I okay. You know I'm just going to get I'm just going to be like my woo self. I knew when the low was over, I was told. I went and I spent seven days by myself. Yeah. No computer, no phone. Yeah. I went to a place called sensei. I cleared. Yes. And I stood in front of a banyan tree and I cried. Girl, I just had. I mean, no reason. I just, I was like, I felt like just a complete release. Yes. And then I was told it's over. Yeah. No. Go. The Lowell Karen was three years.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:28:41  Yeah. Unbearable.

Jasmine Star 00:28:42  Unbearable.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:28:43  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:28:43  And I kept on saying I think I lost it, and I think I lost my thing. And we had never been more successful. Yeah, ever. I know, and all I just felt was I think I lost it. And then I was told, yes, when you know that you're ready. So now here we stand a quarter and change from that. Yeah. What happened when you went through the gold process? Who did you have to become? What did you have to do? Or actually, what did you need to be? You know.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:29:16  I had to go back to being who I really am. Okay, a grateful servant. You know what happens to us in the lull? The reason the lull is perpetuating is because what we're saying to the universe is. Give me, give me, give me what happened? It turns into a demand. The universe is going to just keep that light red until you surrender. When you surrender, when you detach.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:29:39  The surrender does not mean to give up. It does not mean to stop your work. It means to lose the suffering, to find a way to be complete. In this moment when you lose that suffering, you do get that download. And I remember that moment very clearly. It was in January. I'm going to talk to you about how I got there.

Jasmine Star 00:29:58  Right.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:29:58  So gold is gold. It's my new framework for it's a thinking system. Kabbalah is a thinking system. Buddhism is a thinking system. This is mine. Okay. My thinking system, my new religion, and it is a series of moves that you want to scan yourself for. And then inside the book, I give anti rules for every single one of them to then show you how to behave in opposition to your impulses, so that you start landing your results more clearly. This is my Bible. G is good enough. The first thing you want to scan for is am I feeling grounded in my worth? Am I truly feeling my worth? Or am I bout to operate out of my worth? As you know, to know your worth is not to be super confident and host dinner parties.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:30:49  To know your worth is to say no to what is wrong for you. Even when you need the money, or you really want the contract, or you are with someone quite impressive and you'd like them to like you. This has been one of my hardest hurdles to overcome because I really want people to like me. Friendly bunny. I remember going to my first grade, first day, and I brought everybody Eminem's because I was hoping that they would be my friends. I was like the weird kid. Do you want some M&Ms? Please. Like them. I don't bring Eminem's anymore. The question I now ask is, do I like you? The first corollary of grounded is assume that everybody does like you. And for this I give a couple of examples like Jimmy Fallon. But my favorite example as a business is Hermes. Hermes plays a very different game. If you're familiar with their business story, it's incredible. There's an acquired podcast about it. It's called The Acquired Party for hours, about a business that literally did everything differently from everyone else, which, by the way, has resulted in them being a category of one.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:31:59  They don't freak out. It lulls. They decide which product to give you because they love the product and because they're behind the product, not because the market tells them that this is what is necessary. They decide on the pricing, and if you don't like it, too bad. I'm sorry. They don't even let you buy their flagship products. Before you buy a bunch of stuff and prove that you're worthy of their flagship product. And so I literally thought about this, and I thought, I'm about to act out of groundedness. I'm about to dilute my magic. I'm about to put myself out there in a way that doesn't feel integral. It doesn't feel organic to me. I'm a bi referral person. I'm a really, like, just different animal. And you stop yourself right there and you start really making the assumption that everybody does like you. Everything is okay. Now what.

Jasmine Star 00:32:49  G.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:32:49  Good enough G good enough then number two. Oh open. Open is when I start checking myself for how open I am to receiving from the universe, how open I am to the uncertainty.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:33:03  And this is the part in which you really have to learn how to surrender. The problem with hustle is the assumption that the hardest hustle is something we discussed in our last episode, which was scarcity. The only reason you would really move fast and try to close the gap is because your assumption is things are inherently going to go wrong and you might lose here, and that's going to screw you over.

Jasmine Star 00:33:26  Because we're going to pause and I'll link to our past podcast episode. But I you point it out and I can't unsee it. You pointed out that I wanted to rush through everything because time had collapsed for me. Yeah, because my mom was sick and death was always imminent. And so if death is always imminent, then everything must be done now. Yeah. And so I wanted to pause there because you and I were having a conversation, but I wanted to make sure that somebody who has no idea of what we're speaking about can actually say and pause there. So to check yourself, to receive what I say, to receive from God and uncertainty.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:34:01  Yes You by any chance? Love the musical Hamilton.

Jasmine Star 00:34:06  Oh, please. Girl. Young Hungarian. Scrappy. Yes.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:34:08  Obsessed.

Jasmine Star 00:34:09  Okay.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:34:09  One of their banner songs is. Why do you write like you're running out of time?

Jasmine Star 00:34:14  Girl, I bawled through that sign.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:34:17  I think a lot of listeners, particularly two who I love very much. Hi, Erica. Hi, Jacqueline. Have that. It's an impulse. Why do you write like you're running out of time? Because we were conditioned to write like we're running out of time. And then, unfortunately, our lives also met some traumatic events that scared the bejesus out of us and made us start to defend against our own inevitable greatness and success. Our job is to move back into openness and to move into openness literally means, please consider that there's also a best case scenario on the other side. What do you know? It could actually end up being better than you thought. This lull might mean that the next one is even bigger. And above all, what I was trying to say to you in that moment is life is long.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:35:04  Most of us massively underestimate what we can do in a year or in a decade. Life is long. What do you know? I'm going to be in this game for a long time, God willing. So what's a lull? What's a lull? And so you put yourself back into perspective. By this point, you've literally cleared your nervous system back, hopefully out of parasympathetic fight or flight mode, very, very active mode for entrepreneurs. And you've moved into vagal ventral vagal is to flexed feet on the ground. Deeper breaths. Not writing like you're running out of time. Just writing. Which brings me to the third letter L lit up. Lit up is when you find your mojo again, and you start going back to doing what you love without asking it, demanding it to repay you. For this I have exceptional anti rules and exceptional case studies and one of them is screw winning literally get like over it. Choose consistency. My two favorite role models I talk about a lot actually are Taylor Swift and the immortal Jerry Seinfeld.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:36:18  Taylor's career known more than 20 years of success. Jerry's career whether you like him or not. 50 years. How do people maintain success for this long? And that's the whole point of this book. How do you maintain success? How do you continue to make good decisions? It's consistency. The answer is keep going back to what you love and do it. And so that's when the answer came to me. You don't want another offer. You want to deepen your work. You want to sharpen your skill. You love reading. You're really interested right now in Jungian psychology. What if you create a new program. You test it on the retreat people. You offer it to some of your existing clients, see if they want to buy additional sessions in order to cover it. Let's see what happens. That thing sold before it even. I mean, I literally were still editing the videos. The program is not ready yet. So I was right. And I had a ball writing it, creating it, turning it into a retreat.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:37:23  Really sitting with this new level of material. And I never wanted to sell it externally anyway. I haven't announced heal with enthusiasm. I think this is the first time I'm talking about it. I had a joy writing.

Jasmine Star 00:37:38  It lit you up.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:37:40  Yeah. I spent weeks and weeks reading, writing, refining, recording. I was back in the zone. I was back doing exactly what Taylor does back to back albums. For example, she recorded back to back albums during Covid. I didn't like either of them. Then I went to the store and I realized that a lot of people absolutely loved them. She expanded and she allowed people to expand with her. She certainly did not ask people to come with her because she was writing what she was interested in at the time. That's the magic. That's where all the magic happens.

Jasmine Star 00:38:14  That's how you stay consistent.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:38:15  Jerry stays consistent the same way. He never asks the work to perform or to be good. He just keeps writing because that's what he loves to do.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:38:23  And that brings you to the final step, which is devoted. You go back to who you really are. A devoted servant of God, a grateful person. What I'd lost in that I must be impressive. And what the hell is happening is my gratitude and my humility and the understanding that with due respect, what I do for a living is a service to people who are suffering. And I'm delighted that the universe gave me a big flashing red light going. your ego is about to get you.

Jasmine Star 00:38:54  Ooh.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:38:55  So I'm hoping that resonates.

Jasmine Star 00:38:57  I mean, a thousand times I do. I feel like I've been divinely protected, warned. Yeah. I had a friend who said that, life will warn you with a knock, and life will warn you with a nudge. And then life will tell you with a rhinoceros.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:39:15  Amen.

Jasmine Star 00:39:16  And I just think that I've just gone through so many times being run over by a rhinoceros that I'm like, okay, listen to the knock. Yeah, listen to the nudge.

Jasmine Star 00:39:24  Like, trust your inner knowing that that ain't right, and then have the courage to do something about it.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:39:31  And you should do something about it before the universe intervenes. There's a wonderful movie from the 90s called Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. I just love that movie, a truly spiritual film. And there's a moment there's guys cheating on her, cheating on Gwyneth, I mean, and his friend at the pub says to him, listen, you either fess up or the universe will intervene and mess this up for you. And I like to say that lovingly to my clients too. You can either take care of this yourself, or this is going to spiral out of control. And if it spirals out of control. And that's really why I wrote this book, you might lose something that's really valuable to you, your marriage or your wonderful relationship to your business. Why should that be? Why should that be? Why can't we just adjust our sales and make it to the shore again?

Jasmine Star 00:40:23  I had no idea that we were going to be able to have the opportunity.

Jasmine Star 00:40:26  When I was driving in your car, and we were talking about this book, that it would be the precursor to meeting me where I was in my journey at the time, because it was one thing knowing that the lull has subsided. And then there's another thing of trusting the process of guiding you to where you were. And so having gone through things and just kind of piecemeal, like I'm homeschooling my own journey, right. And then to be intercepted and I. Because I'm friends and I'm very demanding. And, you know, people say I'm bossy. I just like to think I'm a boss. And my girl. Send me the digital copy like we know it's done. I don't need I don't need a press kit. Give me, give me it. And then to walk through these frameworks and I'm going to repeat back gold G. Then I am good enough and I am grounded in my worth. Oh that I am open to check myself to receive. And then for me, I'm going to add on another that I trust that God is going to do what I have been told.

Jasmine Star 00:41:18  Yes, that I'm going to trust it. Yes, l that it lit me up, that the reason why I feel like I'm back in the zone is because I'm doing the thing I was called to do, and for some reason I kept on saying yes to other things because it felt good. Yeah. And it got a lot of attention, and it pushed me in a way. And then I wake up one day and I'm like, I don't even know if this is the thing I want. Yeah. And to go back again and being like, what is it that you want and devoted? And I think that this whole journey has just been humility.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:41:47  And.

Jasmine Star 00:41:48  Being a reminder that I'm going to go back to who I am. Yes. And I like you. I'm a borrower. That I am a humble servant of God. Yeah. And when I get in the zone, came over.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:41:59  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:42:00  So I want people to have this experience because I often feel it's weird. But of course, because I'm an overachiever and I know.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:42:05  You don't, by the way. Build yourself a shiny cage. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's such an important point. We start drinking our own Kool-Aid. We're out again. We've built another cage. You have to be very wary of the ego. The journey of building a business is the reward. It's not the accolades. Amen. That's. This, is it. This is what you wanted. This is what you came for. Oh, you can end the podcast now.

Jasmine Star 00:42:33  Well, I want people to experience this. And what I was going to say is like, sometimes I do this podcast and I'm like, yes, I know time and money and energy go into it. So sometimes if I feel like I've been talking just about like my experience, it feels like it's robbing the audience when I know it's not because I become a vessel and people can see a bit of my story or themselves in this story right here. But you have been one of, I think, the only people who've come to the podcast and say, I'll set up a one on one consultation.

Jasmine Star 00:42:56  Yeah. And so I'm going to link.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:42:57  It's actually going to be me.

Jasmine Star 00:42:59  And it's going to be caring. Yes, yes, yes it will be caring if you want to experience this. It's calendly com forward slash k e r e n Eldad Eldad I'm going to link it in the show notes, but she offered it. So it's going to be on you. If you would like to step into gold and step away from guilt. Guilt please do that, Karen.

Coach Keren Eldad 00:43:21  Thank you. Thank you, my love.

Jasmine Star 00:43:23  Austin is better because of you. I come back and you know when you say Mikasa, Tsukasa, you mean it. And for those of you who don't know, I was invited yesterday to sit Shabbat. And it wasn't my time. But I'm going to come back. Oh, yeah. I'm gonna. I'm gonna enjoy it. We're gonna have. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it, and I can't wait. And so for those of you who are watching and listening, thank you so much to listening to The Jasmine Star Show for part two of Karen Elder.