Last week, self-defense instructor Tina Pascal gave me four words I haven't been able to shake: phone down, head up. She meant it as a safety rule. I heard it as a rule for my whole life.

A few weeks ago, I told you about our family trip to Florida — the day I stood at the locker at the water park and told everyone their phones were going in. My kids looked at me like I was out of my mind. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip. Nine days later we walked back into the house, and before our feet were fully on the ground, every one of us was back on our phones. Including me.

This isn't an episode about screen-time apps or a seven-day digital detox. It's an honest look at what the phone is actually costing me as a CEO and as a mom, and what I'm trying to build instead.

Early in my career, and especially when I was building my firm, I built my identity around being reachable. Somewhere along the way, "I have to be available" quietly became "I check my phone all day." One is a business requirement. The other is a habit I never examined. My team proved in Florida that they don't need me reachable every hour of every day — which means what's left isn't a business problem. It's mine.

The biggest insight for me: that Friday on the beach didn't work because of willpower. It worked because the decision had been made once, in advance, so I didn't have to make it forty times an hour.

In this episode:

• Why "reachable" and "present" are not the same thing — and how one quietly turned into the other

• The sentence that costs me the most: "Let me just check quickly"

• Why the real cost isn't the twenty minutes — it's the presence you don't get back

• Systems over willpower: what the Florida locker actually taught me

• The small, specific habits I use now — at bedtime, at dinner, and at my desk

• Why our kids are watching what we do with our phones, not what we tell them

• Situational awareness beyond safety, and why walking around head-down matters

• One small challenge for this week: build your own version of the locker

Phone down, head up — that's Tina's line, and I'll keep giving her credit for it every time I say it.

I said at the start of this year that I wanted to bring more guests onto this podcast — people I think will genuinely benefit you. Tina Pascal is exactly that.

Tina teaches self-defense through Life Force Self Defense, and she came to Catina Law earlier this year to run a class for the women in my office. I brought my daughter Caylee with me. Caylee walked in cranky, arms crossed, absolutely did not want to be there. She walked out smiling. That class raised things I had never once thought about, and I have been thinking about them ever since.

Tina's path into this work started seventeen years ago. She was stalked by a man she'd met casually at a lake near her home in Rockland County. She later learned he had murdered a woman down the street from her. She walked into her first self-defense class shaken, met her teacher John Perkins, and never left.

What I wanted from this conversation was a way to think about safety that doesn't require living afraid. Tina gave it to us in one line: awareness is more than ninety-five percent of it. Not fighting. Not martial arts. Just knowing what's happening around you — and knowing what's happening inside you.

That second part is the one that stayed with me. Your discomfort, Tina says, is information. The feeling that someone is standing too close, that something is a little off, that you want to leave — most of us were raised to override that and be polite. She teaches women to treat it as data and act on it. "Use your comfort as your guiding light."

We also get into the part of this that nobody pictures when they hear "self-defense." The danger is rarely the stranger in the bushes. It's overwhelmingly someone the woman already knows — which moves the conversation into manipulation, coercive control, and pattern recognition. And for our daughters, it moves onto a screen, where people are forming real relationships with people they have never been in a room with.

If you have a daughter heading into high school, or one leaving for college, the back half of this episode is for you. Tina walks through what she'd actually tell them — and shares a statistic about the first months of freshman year that made me put my pen down.

In this episode:

• How Tina got into this work, and why being stalked changed the course of her life

• Why awareness — not fighting — is more than ninety-five percent of self-defense

• "Your comfort is information": trusting your gut as a skill you can practice

• Why most violence against women comes from someone they know, and what that changes

• Managing your personal space, and why most of us were never taught how

• What to tell a daughter going into high school, and a daughter going away to college

• The campus "red zone" — and why the first few months matter more than the rest of the year

• Why criminals look for easy targets, and how straightforward it is not to be one

• The difference between sport fighting and real self-defense — and why you don't need years of training

Prepared is not paranoid. Send this one to a woman you love, and to her daughter.

Find Tina: lifeforceselfdefense.com | Life Force Self Defense on Facebook | @womens.self.defense on Instagram

I was in my third year at New York Law School, eight blocks from the World Trade Center, on a very different path than the one I ended up walking. I was working toward securities litigation and enforcement, interning with what was then the National Association of Securities Dealers, hoping to land a job with the SEC — whose offices were inside the Trade Center itself.

The night before, a brutal commute home from the city in the rain left me in tears, and there was no way I was driving back downtown the next morning.  I was going to take the train.   In the morning, I made a last-second decision to drive into the city instead of taking the train and PATH route. That decision meant that at 8:46 a.m. on September 11th, I wasn't walking out of the World Trade Center PATH station. I was sitting in a classroom.

What followed was watching the first tower burn in my rear-view mirror as I drove to midtown on my way to safety. It was the most frightening day of my life — and one that, without my fully realizing it that morning, ended the career path I thought I was on. The SEC's offices, my resume, the job I had interviewed for and hoped for — all of it was gone. I never worked in securities law. Instead, that redirection eventually led me into litigation, and years later, into building my own practice close to home.

Twenty-five years later, I still think about the timing, the weight of having survived when so many didn't, and what it means that a single decision — one I almost didn't make — quietly decided the next quarter-century of my life. This episode is my story: what I saw, what I lost, and what I've come to understand about being grateful for the path you're actually on, even when it isn't the one you planned.

In this episode:

• Why I was supposed to be walking out of the World Trade Center PATH station at 8:45 that morning

• The commute home the night before that changed my plans for September 11th

• What I watched in my rear view mirror

• How the SEC job I wanted disappeared with the towers — and where that redirected my career instead

• What 25 years of hindsight has taught me about gratitude and trusting the path you're actually on

If this brings back your own memories of that day, or reminds you that the path you're on now might be exactly the one you're meant to be on, I'd be grateful if you'd share it.

Quick recap if you're new here: last episode I told you about our nine-day trip to Florida — the first real vacation, not built around a tournament, in three and a half years — and the habits that let me actually step away from my firm.

A few days after I got back from that trip, I pulled Atomic Habits off my shelf. I read it about five years ago. This time, it hit differently — because five years ago I read it looking for a hack, and this time I read it as someone who'd actually built the habits it describes.

In this episode I break down what habit stacking actually is, why it survives stress when willpower-based habits don't, and how I'm applying it beyond my own health — to how I run my firm and manage my team. This one is a direct follow-up to last week's episode on the trip. If you haven't heard that one yet, it's worth a listen first.

In this episode:

• What habit stacking is and why James Clear's formula works when other habit advice doesn't

• The identity-based habits shift that hit different on a reread at 49 than it did the first time

• The habit I built by accident on last week's Florida trip — and the framework behind why it held

• How I'm using habit stacking to run team check-ins at my firm, not just my mornings

• The one discipline nobody tells you about: not stacking too much, too fast, onto one anchor

If you're rereading a book you first picked up years ago and getting something completely different out of it this time — you're not alone. Share this one with someone who's trying to build a habit that actually sticks.

We just got back from nine days in Florida. It was the first non-sports vacation we had taken in three and a half years.

That number stopped me cold when I said it out loud. Not that we hadn't gone anywhere — we'd been everywhere, for tournaments. But a trip that existed for no reason other than to step away? Three and a half years.

The trip got built around Christopher, who is a Chiefs fan, and a preseason game against the Bucs on August 22nd. Beach in Treasure Island. A Rays game. The Bucs game in Tampa. Then Orlando — water parks, Discovery Cove, Mickey's Halloween Party. Somewhere in the middle of it was a Friday where I sat on a beach from 9:30 in the morning until four in the afternoon and did nothing at all.

I have not done that in years. And if you have heard me talk about the trip to Aruba my husband surprised me with for my 40th — the one where I panicked because he didn’t check with my office first — you know that stepping away from my firm has never come naturally to me.

This time was different, and I want to be precise about why. It wasn't willpower. It wasn't a mindset trick. It was that I have spent the last stretch working hard on delegating — with Kim, in my coaching work — and I have built a team in my office that can run without me standing over it. I checked email. There were a few client matters I handled. But the office did not need me, and I felt that for the first time.

The realization on the other side of it is the part I'd want you to take: the work was still there when I got back. Nothing was a crisis. Nothing fell apart. Which means it probably wouldn't have any of the other times either.

The second half of the episode is about the other thing that made the trip work — habits. I have built health and wellness habits over years, and this was the trip that proved what they're for. I packed my supplements by the day. I finished my progressive overload program in the hotel gym. And then I made a decision I have never made before: I did not start my next program on schedule. I waited until I got home, until I could do it right. Who is this person, honestly.

In this episode:

• Why "I can't step away" is usually a team problem, not a discipline problem
• The delegation work I've been doing — and the version of CEO I'm still building toward
• What actually happens when you leave: the honest inventory of what broke (nothing)
• How built habits let you travel without falling off — and why flexibility is the habit, not the enemy of it
• The phone lockers at the water park, and the difference I could see in my kids within hours

If you own the business and haven't taken a real break in years, this one is for you. Send it to someone who needs to hear that the world will keep spinning.

This week, I am traveling enjoying time away with my family. I wanted to replay one of my most listened to episodes this year - the timing is perfect as we head into what is always a very busy season - the fall!

In this episode, I’m sharing exactly how I manage my time, energy, and stress when life gets especially busy. With sports in full swing, work demands, family logistics, meals, appointments, and everything else layered on top, this is the season where staying organized is not optional.

I talk about the systems that help me hold everything together, from syncing calendars and color coding schedules to planning meals, protecting my morning routine, and using AI to help me see my week more clearly. I also share why managing my calendar is one of the most effective ways I manage my stress.

If you are in a season where life feels full, heavy, or overwhelming, this episode will help you think about how to simplify decisions, organize your time, and create a little more calm in the middle of a lot.

Check out my favorite supplements and workouts that keep me on track through every season here:

https://linktr.ee/lauracatina

I don’t love the idea of New Year’s resolutions. By the time the ball drops, the holidays have wrung me out and the last thing I want is a list of rules for the “new me.” But September always hits differently. The kids go back. The schedule resets. The house gets quiet again at 8:15 for the first time since June. It turns out I'm not alone in that — “September is the new January” is everywhere in working-mom content right now, and there's a real reason for it: this reset actually matches our calendar.

Here's what I want to be careful of, though. Scroll for five minutes and you'll also see the other September trend — the “Great Lock-In.” Extreme discipline, optimize everything. That's not a reset. That's just a different flavor of the 50/50 standard I told you was a lie last week, dressed up for fall.

So this episode is the practical follow-through on everything we talked about with seasons. I'll walk through how I use the season framework to plan the next twelve weeks, why a reset and a lock-in are not the same thing, and the three things going on my list this fall — with everything else deliberately staying off it.

In this episode:

→   Why September, not January, is the real reset for working moms — and why the calendar backs that up

→   The difference between a “lock-in” and a reset, and why one of them burns you out by Halloween

→   How I use the season framework from last week to plan the next twelve weeks

→   The three things going on my list this fall — and what I'm deliberately leaving off

→   A permission slip to plan this season without doing it perfectly

If this one's useful, send it to a working mom who's about to scroll her way into a lock-in she doesn't actually want.

Last Thursday I had a real estate closing at my old office — and I ended up sitting in a chair I sat in for eleven years, at the firm I left in 2019.

I hadn't been in that chair since December of that year. My kids were born during those years. So were the nanny disasters, the 4 a.m. workouts, and the stretch I can only describe as drowning with a career and three little kids. Sitting there again, all I wanted was five minutes with the woman who used to sit there.

That, plus a conversation with Kim on our Legacy League mastermind call, put the same topic in front of me twice in one week. And August — the deep breath before September's tidal wave — is exactly the right time for it.

So I'll say it plainly: work-life balance is a lie. The 50/50 split — fully present at home, fully focused at work, everything humming — is a fictitious ideal. Chasing it made me feel like I was failing at everything, at a time when I was actually doing the work and doing it well.

What's real is seasons. Some pull you toward home: the winter everyone is sick, the childcare that collapses overnight, the spring calendar that swallows you whole. Some pull you toward work: a federal trial in Manhattan, a jury trial in February, an acquisition that turns your firm upside down. I've lived all of them. Both kinds are normal. Neither one is failure.

In this episode I share the childcare crisis that upended our entire routine, the trip to Aruba my husband surprised me with for my 40th that I couldn't fully enjoy because I was worried about the office, and exactly what I'd tell my younger self — the one taking care of her partner, her clients, her kids, her house and her husband, and nobody else.

In this episode:

• Why the 50/50 model sets working moms up to feel like they're failing
• The Grant Cardone line that changed how I think about all of it: "There's no work life and home life. It's just life."
• Real examples of home-heavy and work-heavy seasons across nearly two decades of practice
• The one thing I dropped for years that can't get dropped in any season
• How to walk into September without an impossible standard

If this one hits home, share it with a working mom who's holding herself to a standard nobody can meet.

Check out my favorite supplements and workouts that keep me on track all year long:

https://linktr.ee/lauracatina

In this episode, I’m talking about “separation season” — that stretch of late summer when you can slow down just enough to get intentional, sharpen your goals, and put yourself ahead before fall begins. I share how I’m using this time to focus on planning, improving my business systems, and staying consistent with personal goals instead of letting August slip by.

A big part of that strategy is AI. I walk through the ways I’m using tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and NotebookLM to support both my professional and personal life — from organizing work, comparing documents, and tracking email to building meal plans, adjusting macros, and staying on top of fitness goals. I also explain how AI has become a true companion in my workflow, not a replacement, and how it can help you stay accountable, efficient, and focused.

If you’re looking for a way to make the most of the rest of summer and head into fall with more clarity and momentum, this episode is for you.

Check out the supplements and workouts that keep me on track all year long here:

https://linktr.ee/lauracatina

During the week after I told you about walking out of the office at four o'clock, I received a late night text from a client. And for about four seconds, I almost responded and let the whole “I need to rest” conversation from last week evaporate.

That's what this episode is about.

Last week we talked about giving yourself permission to rest. This week I want to talk about what allows you to rest: permission doesn't hold without a boundary behind it. You can decide, in your journal, in your car, in your own head, that rest matters. But the first time someone calls at 7 a.m., or your kid needs a ride during your one quiet hour, or a client emails “just circling back” for the third time on a Saturday — that decision gets tested. And if there's no boundary attached to it, it loses.

In this episode, I'm walking through why boundaries feel like conflict for so many of us, what a boundary actually sounds like when you say it out loud, and how to hold it the first time someone pushes back — because someone always pushes back.

A boundary is not a wall. It's the thing that makes the rest you fought for last week actually stick.

In this episode:

• Why the rest from Episode 270 doesn't survive contact with your calendar without this next step

• The real reason boundaries feel like conflict when you've built your identity on being the one who handles it

• How to set a boundary in one sentence — without a paragraph of justification attached

• The exact language I use with clients, my team, and my own kids

• What to do in the first ten seconds after someone pushes back — because they will

Check out my favorite supplements and workouts that help keep me on track all year round here:

https://linktr.ee/lauracatina