Dear ,
Lately, I’ve been talking a lot about why it’s so hard to tell the truth about what you want and how you feel.
But I realized something humbling the other day.
I haven’t been telling the truth about what I want and how I feel … to myself.
I started my coaching business ten years ago. I was 35, single, no kids, no one depending on me.
I had chronic pain and low energy even then, but I had what I can now see was a lot of capacity. If my brain refused to work one day, I could just work on the weekend. I had the kind of hyperfocus that comes with everything being new and exciting.
Now I'm 45. I'm married. I have stepkids half the week. I'm in perimenopause. And over the last few months, my capacity has been significantly reduced.
I used to have four good brain hours most days. Now it's closer to two, on a good day. And while I used to bounce back quickly after a hard day, now I often wake up to another one just like it.
You'd think this would be hard to lie to yourself about. But I was doing it anyway.
Because in my mind, admitting this was my reality right now meant admitting it would be my reality forever.
So I kept treating each bad week as an aberration. I kept pushing through. I kept telling myself things would go back to normal if I just held on a little longer.
And while I was doing that, I wasn't making any adjustments. I wasn't delegating. I wasn't ruthlessly prioritizing. I was just spending whatever capacity I had on whatever happened to be most urgent – which meant the things that actually moved the needle kept getting pushed to later.
My brain told me that admitting the truth would make things worse. But refusing to admit it was already making things worse.
What finally shifted things was reminding myself of two things.
The first: whatever is true is true whether I admit it or not.
My capacity is what it is whether I like it or not. I can fight it and make my life harder. Or I can accept my current reality and figure out how to actually work with it.
The second: admitting something is happening right now doesn't mean accepting it will always be this way. It just means being honest about what's true in this moment.
Once I let those two things in, everything shifted. I delegated work I'd been holding onto unnecessarily. I told my COO we needed to hire support in one area. I told my team what was going on.
And none of it went the way my brain had predicted. My team wants me prioritizing what maintains and grows the business. That was obvious the moment I stopped refusing to see it.
And that same dynamic shows up everywhere. If you aren't sure you want to stay married, that's what's happening whether you like it or not. If you want to be promoted, that desire is there even if you're scared of it. If you've been snapping at the people you love and blaming it on a hard week – and it's been a hard week for six months – something else is going on.
Reality is what it is whether you admit it or not. And things usually work out better than your brain predicts – once you stop letting the fear of what it might mean keep you from seeing what's actually there.
This week, notice where you might be in resistance. Where are you pushing through something without really acknowledging it? Where have you been treating a pattern as temporary when part of you knows it's been going on too long?
Mindset win of the week:
Maria shared how coaching helped her become more honest with herself (and changed her relationship with anxiety.)
“I have made progress on how I view anxiety. It is not something to be feared, and it is my body speaking to me. Through coaching, I am becoming more honest with myself and not letting society impact how I express myself.”
What you’re loving this week
I asked what books you’re listening to at the moment. Here were a few of your favorites:
Want to add your own recommendations for future newsletters? Respond to this email with any products or indulgences you’re currently obsessing over.
How to go deeper this week:
When was the last time you really wanted something – a raise, an hour to yourself, something different in bed – and you just ... didn't ask for it?
Or the last time something bothered you, and instead of saying so, you smiled, said you were fine, and stewed about it the whole car ride home?
Or the last time you told your mother-in-law "of course you can stay with us," when what you actually wanted to say was "please, for the love of god, get a hotel"?
If you're anything like most of the women I coach, you didn’t have to think back too far. In fact, you probably have eight examples from this week alone.
After a decade of coaching over 15 thousand women, I learned that almost every unspoken sentence traces back to one of three patterns. I call them the Speak Up Barriers.
I created a free quiz to help you understand which one’s been holding you back from asking for what you want and saying how you feel – and how you can finally start speaking up.
Here’s what’s on the podcast this week:
UFBY 519: Coaching Hotline: How Do I Know if I Am Indulging a Negative Emotion?
How do you know if you are truly processing an emotion or just stuck thinking about it over and over? This week, I answer a Coaching Hotline question about the difference between allowing a negative emotion and getting caught in a cycle of recreating it. The question isn't whether you're "indulging" an emotion, but whether you're letting it move through you or feeding it with the same thoughts on repeat.
UFYB 520: Speaking Up from Activation vs Peace (My Own Self-Coaching!)
Have you ever been so angry you wanted to say something immediately, but knew you weren't in the clearest state of mind? In this episode, I walk you through a real moment from my own life where I was furious and very tempted to send an angry email. I show you how I coached myself through it and found a way to speak up without exploding or shutting down.
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That's all for now – see you next week!
Kara
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