Builders of a Better World

What happens when we intentionally look for the good—even when life feels anything but good?

In Part 1 of this conversation, Ashlieya welcomes Dr. Christie McMullen—educator, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and host of the Productive Joy podcast—to explore how choosing joy can shape our mindset, clarify our purpose, and deepen our connections.

Christie shares how a simple gratitude practice helped her navigate one of the hardest years of her life and became a foundation for her approach to teaching, leadership, and relationships. Together, they discuss starting small, caring for others without losing yourself, and staying curious rather than judgmental.

They also explore insights from Christie’s book, Learning Can Stick, including why “clear is kind” is such a powerful reminder in both our personal and professional lives.

This is a warm, thoughtful conversation about creating the conditions for people to thrive—and how building a better world begins with the way we see and treat one another.

Continue with Part 2 for more on learning, laughter, authentic leadership, and bringing joy to life.

In this episode of the Builders of a Better World podcast, Ashlieya sits down with educator, researcher, and author Dr. Whitney Hegseth to explore how school leaders can build environments where students feel capable, respected, and supported.

Drawing from her book, Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader’s Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students, Dr. Hegseth shares lessons from her research in Montessori and International Baccalaureate elementary schools in the United States and Canada. Together, they discuss how leaders shape school culture; why student agency, independence, and belonging matter; and how instructional systems can either expand or limit what students believe they can do.

They also explore the extraordinary demands placed on educators, the role schools often play as part of the social safety net, and how leaders can use local decision-making to create more humane, effective learning environments.

In this conversation, you’ll hear about:

• School leadership, school culture, and student agency
• Montessori and International Baccalaureate approaches to learning
• How children develop independence, confidence, and resilience
• Why leaders’ decisions about systems and support structures matter
• Respectful communication with children and the importance of treating young people as capable
• The pressures facing teachers, schools, and families in the United States
• How intentional leadership can help create better schools—and a better world

Dr. Hegseth’s work offers a meaningful reminder for educators, parents, youth leaders, and anyone responsible for creating learning environments: children are not problems to be managed. They are people with insight, capability, and enormous potential.

Listen in, share this episode with an educator or leader in your life, and join us in building a better world—one intentional learning environment at a time.

Get your own copy of Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader's Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students by Dr. Whitney Hegseth on Amazon.

How can school leaders build environments where students feel respected, represented, and capable of thriving? In this episode of the Build a Better World Podcast, Ashlieya speaks with Dr. Whitney Hegseth, assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of La Verne and author of Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader’s Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students.

Dr. Hegseth shares insights from her work in educational policy, systems-level change, qualitative research, and international comparative education. Together, they explore how school culture affects student belonging, teacher well-being, family engagement, equity, and young people’s ability to develop meaningful autonomy.

They also discuss the difference between equality, equity, and student agency; the line between supportive classroom management and compliance; why leaders should examine systems instead of blaming individuals; and how comparing different educational settings can reveal assumptions that may be limiting students and schools.

Whether you are a teacher, parent, school administrator, aspiring leader, or someone committed to building healthier communities for young people, this thoughtful conversation offers practical questions for reflection and meaningful change.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Student belonging and culturally responsive school culture
• Action research and systems-level educational change
• Qualitative versus quantitative educational research
• Equality, equity, autonomy, and mutual respect in schools
• Supporting teachers, parents, and students as partners in education
• Rethinking classroom management, authority, and student voice
• Lessons from Montessori, public, charter, and international school systems
• Dr. Hegseth’s new book, Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader’s Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students, available now for pre-order on Amazon or VitalSource

Listen now, share this episode with an educator or leader in your life, and subscribe for part two of this conversation.

What if time is not the enemy—but the story you have been telling yourself about it is?

In “Time Is Killing Me: Rewriting the Story of Aging, Energy, and Possibility,” Ashlieya and Neff explore the relationship between time, perception, aging, energy, presence, and personal possibility.

Together, they reflect on why time can feel like it flies in moments of flow and drags when we are uncomfortable; how beliefs about age and limitation can shape our experience; and why rest, recovery, and intentional living are not signs of falling behind. They also discuss using time as a tool rather than allowing schedules, expectations, or old narratives to dictate your worth.

This is an invitation to release the countdown mentality, question what “too late” really means, and decide how you want to use the time you have.

In this episode, you’ll hear reflections on:

• Rewriting limiting beliefs about aging and possibility
• Presence, flow, and the subjective experience of time
• Honoring your energy and allowing intentional recovery
• Using schedules as tools without becoming ruled by rigidity
• Choosing appreciation, curiosity, and self-leadership
• Building a better world by building a more empowered relationship with yourself

How do you want to use time?

In the final episode of Facing the Origin Story, Ashlieya and Neff explore healing meditation, collective intention, and the practice they call Operation Gift a Miracle. They reflect on a group healing session for Carl, the power of offering healing with permission and benevolent intention, and why “gifting miracles” may also transform the person offering them.

The conversation moves into coherence: becoming attuned to your body, emotions, intuition, and the energy behind your actions. Ashlieya shares her perspective on radical forgiveness, generational patterns, reclaiming the meaning of the past, and choosing to embody the change you want to create.

Together, they consider how love, gratitude, awareness, and clear intention can shape our inner worlds—and how personal healing may ripple outward into families, communities, and the collective.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Healing meditation and collective intention
• Operation Gift a Miracle and the healing session for Carl
• Coherence, embodiment, and emotional awareness
• Radical forgiveness and shifting generational patterns
• The relationship between belief, perception, and possibility
• Moving from fear and judgment toward compassion and intentional action
• Magic, miracles, and becoming the change you wish to see

What would change if you allowed yourself to believe that healing, growth, and transformation are possible?

In Part 1, Ashlieya shared how growing up in survival mode with a “monster” father shaped her sense of self, and how years of inner work and a profound meditation began to soften that story into forgiveness without denial. After nearly twenty years of no contact, she chose to answer a quiet inner calling: to sit down, face‑to‑face, with the man she once believed defined her own darkness.

In Part 2, we pick up right there—on the back‑patio “meeting with the monster.” This episode dives into the conversation itself and the complex humanity inside it:

• What Carl revealed about his childhood, including abuse, shame, and the moment he believes his “darkness” truly began.
• How unprocessed emotional pain, addiction, and family secrecy can turn into cycles of harm that feel almost inevitable.
• The deal he made as a child to protect his siblings, and the lifelong guilt he carries when that protection fails.
• How hearing his story allowed Ashlieya to see places where she could unexpectedly relate to him—without excusing his actions.
• Why compassion with boundaries is different from spiritual bypassing, and how it lets her send love and healing energy while still choosing not to invite him into her ongoing life.

This conversation is not about rewriting history to make it prettier. It’s about what happens when you sit in front of the source of your deepest fear and see a wounded human instead of only a villain—while still honoring the impact of their choices and protecting your own nervous system, future, and relationships.

If you’ve wrestled with estranged parents, family secrets, religious messaging around “forgive and forget,” or the fear of becoming what hurt you, this episode offers a real‑time example of meeting the past with radical honesty, spiritual depth, and firm boundaries.

This is the second half of the original conversation that began in Part 1. In the next installment, Part 3, Ashlieya and Neff return after this experience has settled to unpack the two‑part healing ceremony they mention here, the “miracle” they set out to gift, and how this kind of compassion continues to unfold over time.

In this opening episode of multi-part series on Builders of a Better World, Ashlieya shares the tender, raw story of growing up in survival mode with a father she once saw as a “monster,” and the long inner journey that followed. After nearly twenty years of estrangement, she begins to question the narratives she told herself as a child: Was her past really as dark as she remembers? Is she destined to become what hurt her? Or does she have the power to write a different ending?

Together with interviewer Neff, Ashlieya explores:

• How childhood trauma, addiction, and family dysfunction shaped her sense of identity.
• The crossroads between victimhood, villainy, and choosing a heroic path.
• Her years‑long process of emotional work, nervous system healing, and spiritual practice that led her to ask for true understanding of forgiveness.
• A profound meditation experience in which she first feels her father’s and grandmother’s humanness instead of only their darkness.
• Why she no longer identifies with a “tragic story,” even though she lived through genuinely traumatic events.

This episode is part 1 of a multi‑part series about the same pivotal event: meditating on, then visiting, her father after two decades of no contact. It sets the emotional and spiritual groundwork for the later episodes, where she will sit across from him, hear his own story of woundedness and wrongdoing, and discover a deeper, more embodied form of forgiveness.

Episode 1 is for anyone who has ever feared “turning into” the people who hurt them, who feels defined by their past, or who wonders whether it’s possible to honor the truth of what happened without carrying it as their identity forever.

In this episode of the Builders of a Better World podcast, Ashlieya shares insights from a recent solo pilgrimage to Scotland and Ireland—and how returning to her ancestral homelands became a living lesson in using the body as an instrument for intuition, presence, and service.

She and co‑host Neff unpack what it really means to treat your body as a vessel, a “ship” that carries you through life, and how far you can go when you’re truly “fit for service” in every sense.

Together, they explore why self‑care is more than bubble baths and days off—it’s an act of devotion to creation itself. From a serious infection that nearly cost Neff his ability to teach dance, to falling asleep in 4 a.m. meditations, they get candid about how sleep, food, alcohol, hormones, gut health, and nervous system regulation all shape your ability to meditate, receive guidance, and live in a state of presence.

If you’ve ever wondered why your meditations feel foggy, why your intuition seems hit‑or‑miss, or how to move from survival mode into a grounded, high‑vibration life, this episode is for you.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Your body as an instrument, vessel, and “ship” for receiving and transmitting wisdom
• How self‑care and discipline become acts of self‑devotion and devotion to the divine
• Nervous system regulation, threat perception, and re‑conditioning your baseline from survival to presence
• Practical factors that influence meditation: sleep, alcohol, sugar, weed, gut health, hormones, and fasting
• Developing intuition, telepathic sensitivity, and “sixth sense” awareness without losing your grounding
• Freedom as a core value—time, physical, financial, and spiritual—and the I Thrive lens on human thriving

You’ll also hear about:

• How a health scare almost took Neff’s ability to teach dance
• Why “mistakes” are actually lessons when you’re willing to stay present
• What it looks like to be a lifelong student of life, the body, and the unseen
• Why partnering with your body is essential if you want to build a better world from the inside out

This episode is an invitation to see your body not as a limitation, but as a sacred, living instrument—one that can be tuned, cared for, and devoted to, so you can receive more, serve more, and thrive more.

If this resonates, please like, subscribe, share, and leave a review so more Builders of a Better World can find this conversation.

In this episode of Builders of a Better World, Ashlieya and Neff explore what it really means to find the sweet spot between emotional extremes—where suffering, joy, and genuine emotional balance can actually coexist. They unpack why chasing constant “high vibes” is unrealistic, how duality and contrast are built into the human experience, and why learning to live closer to the middle of the spectrum can expand your capacity for peace, compassion, and resilience.

Through a deeply personal story of losing a beloved dog, they talk about grief, anger at the divine, the pull toward numbing out, and the conscious choice to move through pain instead of around it. You’ll hear practical insights on defining your core values, shrinking your list of “sky is falling” triggers, and becoming less reactive without becoming detached or apathetic.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by your own highs and lows—or by the extremes you see in the world around you—this conversation will help you anchor into a more grounded, high-vibration baseline you can actually sustain.

Content note: This episode contains sensitive conversation around grief, pet loss, sobriety, and emotional processing, including brief references to substance use.

In this conversation, Ashlieya and Neff unpack one of the powerful insights Ashlieya brought back from a recent trip to Scotland: how to use judgment as a tool without losing your peace. What begins as a reflection on a public reaction to an event quickly unfolds into a deeper exploration of mysticism, self-awareness, coherence, and the inner work required to build a better world from the inside out. Together, they explore how our perceptions shape our reality, why judgment can be a navigation guide rather than a weapon, and how choosing truth, love, and compassion can help us respond to life with greater wisdom and less reactivity.

This episode is for anyone who wants to live with more clarity, more intention, and less emotional whiplash. If you’ve ever wondered how to stand up for what matters without becoming consumed by negativity, this conversation offers a grounded and spiritually resonant path forward.