Bloom Your Mind

Let’s go back to emotions 101. Your emotions ARE your superpower.  

There are three ways that we naturally deal with them; we stuff them down, we act them out, and we buffer (put something else on top of them like work, sex, tv or scrolling, food or booze, or even thinking a lot!). All of those things make our feelings expand and deepen- like pushing a beach ball down underwater, so that eventually it pops out with a lot of force. 

The only thing that actually works to move through a feeling, is to get curious, and allow the feeling to exist. 

So that’s feelings 101. 

In today’s episode, we’re going way beyond feelings 101. Today we’re talking about expanding the limitations of what emotions we’re capable of feeling, and willing to feel. 

That’s what happens when we increase our emotional capacity.   

Because here’s the deal. 

Sometimes, we SIGN UP for increasing our emotional capacity. 

We do that because we want to put ourselves out there in the world. 

We have an idea we want to make real, a change we want to make in ourselves. We want to grow or expand. When you’re doing that, you’re on two parallel roads of growth. 

In one lane, you’re taking new actions. But right there next to it. On the other parallel track, the other growth is happening. You’re expanding your capacity to feel. 

What you’ll learn on today’s episode: 

• The two new skills you’re building anytime you do something new and different 
• Why expanding emotional capacity is essential to forward momentum 
• The external signs that will tell you clearly when you need to expand your capacity to feel 
• What the payoff is of doing the work to learn to process deeper, harder, darker emotions 
• The one question that will reveal the capacity expansion that you need next 

Mentioned on this episode: 

• Your Feelings Are Your Superpower 
• Be a Time Whisperer 

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

When I thought of time management, I used to feel and think… ’Blahhh.’

‘That is NOT sexy.’

‘I am not wasting my time on that. I want to be here in the present.’

‘It’s so boring. It’ll melt my face off. I just won’t do it.’ 

Ironically, all of those things proved to be the opposite of what’s true. 

As I became a time whisperer…I had time to do sexy stuff, like take care of myself and literally actually have time for a sex life. I had WAY more time to do the things that brought me joy. I became WAY more present for my life, and now? 

I actually love planning out my week. I legit look forward to it now because I love all the stuff I’m putting in my calendar. 

Just right now, the people I’m working with who are focused on time whispering range from a Family Medicine Doctor to the Director of a school. They are stay-at-home parents and C-level executive teams. They are musicians and sales managers. ALL of them have found freedom, joy and success from the skills they’re building in time management, and that’s just the handful that I’m currently supporting with this. I’ve literally helped hundreds of others make friends with their calendars, their lists, and start falling in love with the time they have and how they spend it.  

But let’s get real. Being an excellent time manager does not sound sexy.

So, let’s be time whisperers. Let’s you and I develop the grace and decisiveness, the follow-through and the systems to make time our bestie. 

In today’s episode, you’ll learn: 

• How being a time whisperer gives you a mind like water 
• Three productivity theorists whose books you can order right now to do a deep dive 
• How using your calendar can be like appreciating really great art 
• How to know what to do no matter where you are but still feel totally free 
• The one hour a week that is more important to your life than any other period of time
• The three levels of time whispering skill you can build and how to learn them

Mentioned in this episode: 

• David Allen and Getting Things Done 
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown 
• Deep Work by Cal Newport 
• EP 118: Three Priority Tricks

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Have you ever gotten roasted or teased for things you were kind of surprised about? 

Or what about this…have you ever been teased for saying something that you didn’t know was unique to you? 

I’ve recently been told multiple times that a certain word that I say is a “Marie-ism”, and I had no idea. In friend groups, family text threads, the Bloom Room and more I’ve had people say “As Marie would say…Wegotchu.” This got my attention, of course, and it made me think about this word and why I use it. 

The answer I found is that I LOVE this word. 

I say it because it’s my philosophy of life. 

Because it’s my purpose in life to help as many people feel the meaning that the apparently made up word “Wegotchu” means to me. I want to feel that way myself, as much as I can in my life. I want YOU to feel that way as much as possible. 

So this episode is all about Wegotchu, because it’s a total Mind Bloomer. 

If you are a recipient of the Wegotchu vibe, your mind will bloom. 

And if you treat yourself with the Wegotchu vibe, you will be OKAY. no matter what goes down. 

In this episode you’ll learn: 

• Why the Wegotchu experience is a word to describe an actually known phenomenon called “the connection web” 
• How applying Wegotchu to your physical body will help it heal 
• How applying Wegotchu to your own life will make you more resilient 
• Why responding to other people’s low moments and challenges with this approach brings out the highest in others
• How acts of service are absolutely reciprocal 
• Why responding to vulnerability with an assertion of connection heals and connects 

Wegotchu communicates that you are seen. 

You are understood. 

You are accepted at your most vulnerable. 

And it communicates that we’re in the web, and there’s no falling here; because we’re in it together. 

Wegotchu. 

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

A client recently asked how I get up at 5am in a house with squeaky floorboards and a husband who’s a night owl. The answer to this, and to so many other things comes from knowing my priorities. 

While the 5am wake up call might ring just so I can get some exercise and some alone time before the chaos of the world wakes up…there’s something else that’s even more important to me than either of those things. Knowing my priorities makes a 5am wake up call easy, and ALSO makes it easy to forgive myself if 5am passes me by. 

Priorities help us set goals and realize them, of course. But they also help us meet day to day challenges with confidence, communicate with clarity, and feel clear as we’re making decisions to meet the big challenges that will inevitably arise. 

In this episode you’ll learn three tools that will help you:  

• Use priorities to plan your week and your calendar 
• Use priorities to troubleshoot the unexpected day to day interruptions 
• Reflect on your days and weeks, so that you can use clean, clear logic to adjust how you choose to spend your time
• Make easy, guilt free decisions to let go of one goal when another is more important 
• Move through big life challenges with clarity and confidence about how you’re showing up 

Mentioned in this episode: 

• Ep 38: Retros Are Everything
• Ep: 24: Nostalgia for Right Now
• Ep 02: The Land Inside

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

There are two ways of looking at the world. We can think that there is one truth to everything; “one thing is true”…OR we can realize that many things are true at the same time. We call this “two things are true” thinking.  

Recently, I was working with a collaborator on something who was consistently letting me down by not meeting their commitments. When I was just trying to understand the hard things that were coming up for them and getting in the way of their work, my compassion was all that was true. I was in my “one thing is true” mindset. After a few occurrences of this, I moved into a “two things are true” mindset. I realized- It’s okay that those things didn’t get done, AND it’s not okay that those things didn’t get done. 

When that happened, I could both be compassionate AND hold them accountable to what they committed to. When we realize that two things are true, we move from convincing energy to understanding energy. And that’s when the magic…and the problem solving happens. 

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

• “Two things are true” vs “one thing is true” thinking 
• A three step process to solve problems that involve more than on truth
• How learning to use “two things are true” to help turn ideas into real things 
• Why validating different perspectives is different than agreeing with them 
• Why it’s hard to do this in a convincing culture that teaches us power and dominance instead of curiosity and understanding 
• How understanding and validation are way more effective than being right 
• How understanding that two things are true allows us to gathering data and develop awareness to make better decisions 

When we understand that two opposing things are true at once, we can get creative. Our thinking is innovative and elastic because it’s open to different perspectives, realities, possibilities and thinking. Instead of sweeping everything under the rug, we see it all and solve for it all. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

• Good Inside by Dr Becky Kennedy 
• Listening is Sexy 
• Institute of the Future 
• The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
• Moving through Obstacles

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Two things stop people from taking action on the ideas that they have to make their own lives, their communities, their workplaces, families, and the world a better place. 

• They think that they’re not special enough…or 
• They think they’re too special to work hard for it.  

Both of these beliefs are just as harmful, because both of them rob the world of what what we have to give. 

Both of them are about seeing ourselves as different, special, and other. 

They are two different sides of the same coin, or for today’s purposes- two different sides of the same snowflake. 

We all have these snowflake moments! There’s no shame in it as long as we call it what it is; a snowflake moment. A moment where we think we’re a little more or less special than everyone else. 

Because it’s okay to be a snowflake if that means you realize you are a once ever happening complete miracle of a human being that has drop dead gorgeous things to do and say and be in the world. 

AND if you realize that everyone else is just that special too. 

It’s a freaking blizzard out there. When we can overcome our separateness and illusions of otherness, that’s when we start really living with the freedom and the power to make our ideas real. 

What you’ll learn in today’s episode: 

• Examples of the snowflake moments that sneak up on us 
• What become possible when we realize that we’re incredibly special, and that everyone else is too 
• How entitlement and self depreciation both step from ego 
• How freedom from both of those things allows us the self worth to walk away from anything that detracts from our power
• How clarity, peace, passion and curiosity replace snowflake syndrome
• How we can begin to hear the whispers of possibility that have always been there, when the snowflake noise dies down 

Freedom, healing, and ideas that create a better world come when every single one of us realizes that we are in fact undeniably and unbelievably special…and EVERYONE else is too. 

Because the only way that we can have a snow pack is if we allow ourselves to be a snowflake. AND the only way that we can have a snow pack is if we understand that everybody else is one too.

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Grace was sitting across from me, with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. Our session was first thing in the morning for both of us, and I could imagine that the rain that I could see falling so consistently in gentle waves outside my office window was falling just outside the window in her office too. 

“It’s disorienting” she was saying. “This new feeling is disorienting.” 

She was describing the change that has happened inside of her over the past couple of years in the Bloom Room and coaching one-on-one with me, as she’s become more and more clear on who she is and what she wants. 

“All of the sudden”, she said, “there are things that I can’t follow through on, even if I want myself to. Because I know they’re not true for me. All of the sudden my clients are asking me for things, and I hear myself saying  that I’ll only use materials that are ethically and sustainably sourced, and that don’t bring microplastics that will impact people’s health…into their homes. 

I’ve never said that out loud to a client before. I don’t even really know what happened- I just said no.” 

“All of the sudden, if it’s a no for me, I know it. Clearly. And I can’t ignore it anymore. 

And that feels really good and amazing, and also…NOW what do I do?” 

This has been a progression for Grace and for so many of my clients as they find the ways that they’re not listening to themselves. As they see how they’re overriding their instinct and internal guidance, and once they see them, as they begin to make different choices. But what happens when we start being able to hear our hell no’s more and more clearly? What do we do when are hands are full of no’s? 

That’s what today’s episode is all about. 

What you’ll learn on this episode: 

• Why knowing your list of no-go’s in life is incredibly valuable 
• Why we are more likely to know our no’s than our yeses 
• How a list of no’s can become the big idea you want to make real in the world
• Why the ideas that come from a “no” are sometimes the most authentic ones 
• How our list of no’s turned inside out becomes a project plan 
• Three ways you can get support turning your Big Idea into a real thing

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Did you know being an excellent listener is a way to practice great boundaries?

It’s hard as hell to do, with a human ego standing right in the way…but it’s also the skill with the single biggest payoff.  

Listening as a boundary tool always surprises people when they hear it for the first time. Until a few seconds later…when they have a lightbulb moment. 

Great listening makes the space between two people clear, instead of muddy. 

When we listen to someone without argument, disagreement, or judgement and instead reflect back what we’re hearing; we hold up a mirror that lovingly keeps them accountable to what they’re sharing. We keep the space between us clear, until it’s time for us to share. And this keeps us more accountable to our own words as well. 

Great listening reverses a triggered nervous system, bolsters empathy and connection, and ultimately gives each person we’re in relationship witn the one thing that they want most. 

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

• How being a great listener =  having great boundaries 
• How to keep clarity around “what’s yours and what’s mine” during disagreements 
• How listening keeps us, and others accountable  
• How listening moves us out of fight or flight and into empathy 
• What to do when we don’t agree…(this might surprise you!)  
• Learn why we letting others have their feelings and experience is the golden ticket for us to have our own experience too 
• Why being the better listener is worth it, every. Single. Time. 

If I could give the world a gift, and just download every human with one skill, it would be to listen to understand others across differences. 

Truly listening to understand someone is truly seeing them. Listening is loving. And that’s just sexy. 

All of us just want to be heard and understood. In order to experience that, we need to hear and understand. 

So let’s hold hands and go first. 

You and me. 

Let’s listen first.

Mentioned in this episode: 

• Listen to this 
• The Bloom Room

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Bekah Salazar and Marie McDonald are lifetime sister-friends. We are also all about becoming EXPERTS at loving ourselves so that we can give our best to the world...and even more importantly than that, because we deserve it. 

And so do you. 

We see the people around us giving everything to families and work and communities, and we want to help our people to slow down; say no to everyone else a little more, and say YES to ourselves.

Together, we created the Art of Self-Lovin’ and you’re going to hear all about it in this episode. This content is a sneak peak at an all-day in-person workshop and online course available through the Bloom Coach website. 

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

Self Lovin' on the inside: 

• Learn how to examine your automatic thoughts about yourself, where they come from, and the feeling states they generate in your body. 
• Hear examples of how to shift those thoughts into beliefs that create a more fulfilling life. 
• Learn two tools for generating lists of self love attributes and desires that are in line with your intuition and your body wisdom. 
• Understand how to honor the finite resource of your time and love by choosing to put your energy into people, communities and projects that reciprocate and fill your cup. 

Self Lovin' on the outside: 

• Hear a nod to the holy trio of self lovin’: water, sleep and movement. 
• Understand how style as a form of self expression is a great way to practice self lovin’. 
• Be introduced to skin care rituals as a form of meditation, completing the stress cycle, and daily self lovin’ on the largest organ in the body. 
• How dietary choices that support gut health and protecting the microbiome protect our overall health. 

Self Lovin’ is an art. 

Let’s get really good at practicing it.

Mentioned in this episode: 

• EP 18: The Tool That Changed Everything 
• EP 24: Nostalgia for Now 
• Bekah Salazar on Instagram 
• Wear it Well by Allison Bornstein

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Ever feel like stress just piles on stress? We all know stress is a part of life, but are we handling it right?

For most of us, we tend to get stuck in a cycle of feeling stressed, instead of finishing the cycle by shaking it off and actually resolving the issue.

In this episode, leaning into one of the two stress experts, the Nagoski sisters, I'll break down what stress is and our modern day stressors, share three stories that focus on the non-helpful ways we tend to deal with stress, and give you a few different ways that you can alleviate stress in your daily life.

What you'll learn in this episode:

• Strategies for managing stress and reclaiming balance in your life
• How burnout and trauma symptoms often overlap 
• Actionable techniques for completing stress cycles to prevent burnout
• Ways to integrate stress-relief practices into your routine

Mentioned in this episode: 

• Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski Ph.D.
• Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski DMA

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!