Aligned Anyway

Burnout can hide behind being the friend who always has everything handled. Leona Thackston joins Josh and Tiffany to talk about single parenting, friendship expectations, and the pressure to keep giving when you’re already stretched thin. Should the people closest to you notice? Or do you have to ask?

Leona Thackston is a mother of four working in finance and restaurant management, with a bachelor’s in child psychology and a master’s in marriage and family therapy.

In this conversation:
• Checking in on the people who seem fine
• Asking for help and communicating expectations
• Supporting friends without adding judgment
• Parenting after divorce and overcompensating
• Teaching children about priorities
• Recognizing when it’s time to cut back
• Making time for meaningful friendships

Strong language. Personal experiences and perspectives; not individualized professional advice.

Watch, listen, and connect:
https://linktr.ee/alignedanyway

🎧Guestisodes🎧
Every Other Friday
Wherever you podcast.🎙️

Who were you before the world told you who you were supposed to be?

Tiffany and Josh sit down with transformation facilitator, author, and speaker Kevlan for an honest conversation about returning to the truest version of ourselves—the person beneath the fear, social conditioning, limiting beliefs, and unconscious patterns we accumulate throughout our lives.

Kevlan explores why so many of us lose the carefree spark we carried as children and begin measuring our worth through success, comparison, productivity, and the expectations of others. Together, they discuss living in survival mode, separating intuition from fear, breaking cycles of self-sabotage, and finding fulfillment that doesn’t depend on another accomplishment or someone else’s approval.

Kevlan also shares his journey from hiding behind a carefully constructed persona to finding the courage to speak his truth and create a more authentic life. He introduces his book, *The Science of Breaking Free*, and explains how his [Becoming You Framework](https://inpowermentbykevlan.com/about/) helps people develop self-awareness, release old patterns, and create lasting change from within.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from yourself—or wondered whether the life you’re living is truly your own—this conversation is an invitation to pause, observe your thoughts, reclaim your power, and begin the journey home to yourself.

Learn more about Kevlan, his book, and his work at InPowerment by Kevlan (https://inpowermentbykevlan.com/).

Is that uneasy feeling intuition, or anxiety writing a story before anything has even happened? Josh and Tiffany get personal about social anxiety, imposter syndrome, overthinking, reassurance, friendships and the pressure to seem confident when your mind is doing the opposite. How do you trust yourself without letting fear take control?

That central distinction is a real conversation in the episode, where Tiffany says sometimes anxiety has protected her and other times she realizes she has dramatically overthought what was happening.

00:00 When anxiety starts taking over
01:04 Music as a coping tool
04:40 What anxiety really looks like
05:44 Networking and imposter syndrome
07:57 When anxiety becomes panic
11:19 Josh's first experience with anxiety
13:40 Crowds, concerts and fear
17:07 Waking up anxious
18:11 Anxiety or intuition?
20:12 Overthinking conversations
21:41 Fear and hypervigilance
25:18 Awareness and action
26:40 Anxiety in relationships
31:34 Medication and identity
33:15 Grounding and personal rituals
34:34 Finding support that works
35:15 Anxiety does not get to silence you
37:19 What anxiety can really look like

Listen, watch and connect with Aligned Anyway:⁠https://linktr.ee/alignedanyway⁠

Getting married is one thing. Staying married asks something completely different of you.

The vows don't tell you about the impatience, money conversations, changing expectations, vulnerability, annoying habits, outside opinions or the days when loving someone and liking them don't feel like the same thing.

In this episode, Josh reflects on nearly five years of marriage while Tiffany looks at it from the beginning of her own.

What has marriage actually taught them?

Maybe love matters deeply, but love by itself isn't enough. Relationships require effort, honesty, patience, communication and the willingness to keep learning the person beside you.

Because the vows may happen once.

Choosing your person keeps happening.

Watch, listen and follow Aligned Anyway:
https://linktr.ee/alignedanyway

Instagram: @alignedanyway
TikTok: @alignedanyway
Facebook: @alignedanyway
YouTube: @alignedanyway

#Marriage #Relationships #AlignedAnywayPodcast

You can look completely put together and still feel disconnected from yourself.

In this episode of Aligned Anyway, Josh and Tiffany sit down with Christina Flach. Christina is a nationally recognized celebrity makeup artist, beauty and wellness expert, media personality, and founder with more than 25 years of experience in the beauty and fashion industry.

Known for her signature glowing aesthetic, Christina has worked with top celebrities, athletes, and CEOs around the world. She is a recurring beauty expert on NBC’s California Live, and her expertise has been seen on or featured in Vogue, Forbes, ELLE, Glamour, and Women Fitness Magazine.

Christina is also the founder and CEO of ITB Brands, a beauty, wellness, and media platform created to simplify high-performance self-care for busy modern lives. She is also the founder of I’m Too Busy!, a media platform featuring honest conversations with founders, creatives, and leaders across beauty, wellness, and business. Across her beauty and podcast channels, Christina has built a community of more than 85,000 YouTube subscribers.

Together, we explore appearance, identity, self-perception, and the deeper kind of confidence that makeup alone cannot create. It’s an honest conversation about showing up beautifully while remaining connected to who you truly are underneath it all.

Connect with Christina Flach

📸 Instagram: @christinaflachmakeup
🎵 TikTok: @christina.flach
▶️ YouTube: @christinaflachmakeupartist
🧵 Threads: @christinaflachmakeup
📘 Facebook: Christina Flach Makeup
📌 Pinterest: @christinaflachmakeupartist
💼 LinkedIn: Christina Flach
🌐 ChristinaFlach.com

🌅 NBC California Live!

Pretty Girl Makeup
📸 Instagram: @prettygirlmkup
𝕏 X: @prettygirlmkup
📘 Facebook: Pretty Girl Makeup
📌 Pinterest: @prettygirllips
💄 PrettyGirlMakeup.com

I’m Too Busy with Christina Flach
📸 Instagram: @imtoobusytv
▶️ YouTube: @imtoobusypodcast
🎙️ I’m Too Busy TV

What if your life isn’t something that begins after the next accomplishment, the next decision, or the next version of you finally arrives?

Following the heartbreaking loss of actress Hayden Panettiere, Josh and Tiffany reflect on how one person’s story can make us see our own lives differently. What begins with grief becomes an honest conversation about appreciating what is already here while we still have the opportunity to experience it.

They unpack the pressure to become completely healed, the tendency to invalidate our accomplishments, the lives we leave behind with every major decision, and the expectations surrounding education, careers, parenthood, success, and personal growth. They also explore whether restoration may be a more freeing goal than endlessly trying to “fix” ourselves.

This episode is an invitation to slow down, notice your progress, give yourself grace, and stop treating life like it will begin sometime later.

Because we’re still here. Still growing. Still becoming. And there is still so much life left to live.

Everybody says they want authenticity, but what happens when someone is actually honest?

This week on Aligned Anyway, Josh and Tiffany sit down with Dr. Mitchell Levy, Global Credibility Expert, executive coach, two-time TEDx speaker, and bestselling author, for a powerful conversation about trust, leadership, credibility, success, and what it really means to be aligned.

In a world where people are exhausted from trying to figure out who is real, Dr. Levy challenges the way we think about credibility, not just in business, but in relationships, leadership, identity, and everyday life.

Together, we explore:

• Why credibility is more than image

• The difference between authenticity and integrity

• Why trust breaks down in leadership and relationships

• How success can still feel empty when it is not aligned

• Why people confuse titles with identity

• What leaders often miss when they focus only on numbers

• How clarity, credibility, consistency, and commitment shape real leadership

• Why legacy is what people say about you when you are not in the room

This conversation is thoughtful, challenging, and deeply relevant for anyone questioning what success really means.

Because credibility is not about performing the part.

It is about becoming someone people can actually trust.

Connect with Dr. Mitchell Levy:

www.mitchelllevy.com

Two friends. Different worlds. Aligned Anyway.

Do you still believe in the dreams you once had for your life?

This week on Aligned Anyway, Josh puts Tiffany in the hot seat as we talk about the dreams we’ve chased, the ones we’ve abandoned, and the ones we’re finally brave enough to come back to.

We get into the pressure to have life figured out by a certain age, comparing our progress to everyone else’s, fear of failure, taking risks, and the difference between having a dream and actually making a plan for it.

We also get personal about writing, podcasting, career goals, self-doubt, and what happens when the people in your life remind you of a part of yourself you almost forgot existed.

Because maybe your dream hasn’t happened yet.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Sometimes success isn’t finally getting there. It’s realizing you’re already on your way.

🎙️ Two friends. Different worlds. Aligned Anyway.

Season 2, Episode 10: Healing or Avoiding?

At some point, growth changes you. You say no faster. You protect your time. You trust a little slower. You stop explaining yourself to everyone.

But when does protecting your peace become avoiding vulnerability?

In this episode, Josh and Tiffany get honest about the people they used to be, the boundaries they’ve built, friendship, authenticity, people-pleasing, happiness, identity, and the parts of ourselves we learn to hide just to feel safe.

Because healing doesn’t mean becoming who you used to be.

Maybe the better question is: Do you like who you’re becoming?

What if the thing holding you back is not failure, but the labels you were told to carry?

This week on Aligned Anyway, Josh and Tiffany sit down with Katy Rey, a two-time author, speaker, podcast host, founder, mom, and self-described disruptor. Katy is the founder of Fostering Hearts FL, a nonprofit focused on supporting foster youth through education, resources, advocacy, and the belief that every child deserves the chance to build a future beyond survival.

In this powerful conversation, Katy opens up about purpose, reinvention, foster care, leadership, motherhood, labels, faith, shame, resilience, and what it means to stop asking for permission to become who you were meant to be.

Together, they explore:

• Why labels do not get to define your future

• What foster youth need beyond survival

• How education can change the path for children in the foster system

• Why people need people to thrive

• The power of showing up as your full self

• How purpose can come from pain, rejection, and lived experience

• Why healing people help heal people

This episode is bold, honest, emotional, funny, and deeply human.

Because sometimes the life you were expected to live is not the life you were meant to build.

Connect with Katy Rey:

www.katyrey.com

Learn more about Fostering Hearts FL:

www.fosteringheartsfl.org

Two friends. Different worlds. Aligned Anyway.