Choice Wisdom

What if you throw your life up in the air and see what happens when it comes down?

That's the question we asked Cathy Derksen, who runs a collaborative book publishing company called Inspired Tenancity.

After leaving a toxic marriage, Cathy reinvented herself and now inspires other women to share their own stories of reinvention. It's an inspiring conversation about what it takes to embrace the courage within you.
Five years ago, Cathy was navigating some major changes personally and professionally. She eventually walked away from financial planning and found herself doing something she never expected, helping women tell their stories and become published authors.
But this conversation isn’t just about publishing books. We talked about what it takes to start over when you don’t know exactly what comes next. About trusting yourself enough to pivot. About finding purpose in places you never expected.
And we talked about the power of our stories. Sometimes we convince ourselves that nobody wants to hear what we have to say. But your experiences, the things you’ve learned and even the things you’ve had to overcome could be exactly what somebody else needs to hear.

That’s the beauty of sharing our stories. We never really know who they might reach or what they might unlock for someone else. Such a good conversation about courage, purpose, community and being willing to choose differently when life is telling you it’s time.

Find links to Cathy's work and other Choice Wisdom episodes at https://choicewisdompodcast.com.

What if meditation is helping you before your brain can prove it?

That’s one of the questions that came up in our conversation with Chelsey Charbeneau of Breathe Meditation and Wellness and Dr. Claudia Porras Pyland of Texas Woman’s University.

Chelsey and Claudia conducted a study looking at how often people actually need to meditate to experience the benefits. Participants who weren’t regular meditators were divided into three groups: a control group, a group that meditated twice a week and a group that meditated four times a week. Their brains were scanned at the beginning and again at the end of the study.

But the brain scans weren’t the whole story.

People in the meditation groups reported better sleep, less fatigue, greater well-being and more mindfulness. And those improvements didn’t always line up neatly with what showed up on the scans.

So what do we do with that?

We live in a world that wants data. We want to measure progress and see proof that something is working. But if you’re sleeping better, feeling calmer, experiencing less fatigue and handling life a little better, does it matter if a brain scan can’t fully explain why yet?

We don’t think so.

There was something else we loved about this study. You may not have to meditate every single day to experience a benefit.

That feels a little like kindness to us.

Taking care of yourself shouldn’t become another thing you have to do perfectly. Maybe being kind to yourself means finding a practice that actually fits your life instead of feeling guilty because you can’t fit your life around the practice.

That’s something we talk about often through #MakeKindLoud. Kindness isn’t only about how we treat other people. It’s also about how we treat ourselves.

Maybe twice a week works for you. Maybe four times a week works. Maybe the first choice is simply making a little space for yourself and paying attention to how you feel.

Because not everything meaningful can be measured.

Want to learn more about Choice Wisdom or listen to other episodes? Visit https://choicewisdompodcast.com.

Studies have shown that babies laugh more than 300 times a day. Yet adults only laugh about 15-20 times per day.

So, what gives?

Louisa and Gayle explore the many facets of humor in this episode of The Choice Wisdom podcast - including the places where laughter goes to die (school, adult-ing and work), as well as places where it may be inappropriate, but secretly welcome (like the middle of a church service).

Laughter is infectious, and with intention, we believe that all of us can laugh and smile more. And by doing that, we can infect the world with joy.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Join us for this fun- and joy-filled conversation on the nature of laughter and how we can find ways to put more laughs and smiles into the every day:

• Using habit-stacking to find places where we can laugh;

• How laughing yoga and other practices are far more practical than they seem; and

• The ways in which adult-ing is way overrated.

We guarantee you will leave this episode smiling! And our intention is that you can find ways to keep that smile on your face throughout the day - every day!

Want to listen to more episodes of Choice Wisdom? Check out our website at: https://choicewisdompodcast.com.

Lena McDearmid has spent her career turning fintech ideas into billion-dollar realities.

As a two-time founder with more than twenty years of experience building and scaling high growth startups, Lena’s passion for culture has been shaped by fast moving environments where clear communication, strong leadership and intentional behaviors and actions have a direct impact on performance.

She founded her latest venture, Wryver, to support leaders who want better systems, stronger alignment and healthier ways of working. In short - she wants to work with leaders who want to build the organizations today’s workers - and workplaces - require.

In this lively conversation, Lena talks with Gayle and Louisa about what culture is and what it is not. For Lena, it’s pretty straightforward - culture is the way a company functions, communicates and makes decisions. It shapes how people work together and how the business performs. In her work, Lena helps leaders replace outdated habits with practices that support modern teams and create clearer, more sustainable environments to work and lead in.

The benefits of culture extend beyond healthy relationships at work. Leadership and culture architecture firmly support sustainable growth - and it can be measured with real numbers across any organization: decision velocity, leadership alignment and the operating discipline required to scale.

Learn more about Wryver here: https://wryver.com/

To learn more about Lena, you can follow/connect with her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lenamcdearmid/

Learn more about Choice Wisdom and find past episodes at: https://choicewisdompodcast.com

In 2020, we were all going through a lot. But Cristina Bernardo was really going through a lot.

In November of that year, her 10-month-old daughter’s heart gave out at a hospital in San Diego, leaving her and her husband in shock and grief, with questions that went unanswered as to why. To this day, they and doctors cannot explain why their beautiful daughter, who was full of love and life, fell exceptionally ill several times in her short life and eventually died.

They still have no answers.

And during that year, Cristina also lost other people who were very close to her - including her cousin Patrick, with whom she was very close - leaving her heart not just broken, but shredded.

Cristina heard from others the phrase we all say when tragedies strike, but is often said when we can’t think of a clear “why” - and that is, “everything happens for a reason.”

At first, she was angry when she heard that phrase, but she came to know that things happen. Terrible, unimaginable things. The reason is something we have to find for ourselves, she discovered. We need a reason to go on, and to honor those we lose.

Alongside this outward, difficult journey, Cristina started to take an inward journey and discovered she wasn’t kind to herself. At all. She was not kind in basically every part of her life - career, aspirations, appearance - you name it. But becoming a mother really put a fine point on it. As she says, “It was just one more thing I was bad at.”

Cristina’s choice was one of self-acceptance and self-love, so profound that it will bring a tear to your eye (fair warning - bring a tissue to this episode)! But born from her commitment to herself was something powerful and beautiful - the company she co-founded with her husband - Avocado Health - which offers text-based parent coaching and resources designed to help parents feel more confident in child rearing - from pregnancy to the teen years.

And it’s caught fire - growing rapidly and expanding through organic growth and partnerships.

Most important, it’s empowering parents to make good decisions for themselves and their children. It’s giving parents the confidence to believe they can be good at parenting, and at life. And that’s a powerful notion that can change the world.

Following our interview with Cristina, she decided to publish a newsletter that had been in the works for about three years - waiting for her to hit “send.” You can read it on LinkedIn here:

Yes, Everything Happens, and we need a Reason to keep living.

You don’t want to miss this amazing, uplifting and insightful episode!

And you can check out all Choice Wisdom episodes on our website at https://choicewisdompodcast.com.

Joanna Zhang loves spotting the genius in other people. So much, in fact, that she named her company ⁠Operations Genius⁠.

At a practical level, Joanna’s firm provides outsourced solutions for the “busy work” tasks in any growing business, including social media, lead gen, general admin, web/I.T. support, and digital transformation.

But the genius behind it goes beyond just solving the “work stuff.” Joanna’s work with founders and executives also bridges emotional maturity, energy integrity and strategic leadership - where she guides clients toward using their new-found time to build impact without self-abandonment.

And she’s well-qualified to do it, because she’s been through her own spiritual journey to let go of the belief that achievement equals identity.

In this episode, Joanna gets real with Gayle and Louisa about what it takes for a high-performing professional to move from performance-driven identity to alignment-based influence, based on her own transformative journey. She shares her own take on how to let go of imposter syndrome and re-align internal fragmentation to arrive at a place of peace and self-trust rather than external validation.

The episode is titled “Cup of Genius” because we talk a lot about how you make choices to fill your life with purpose using your own unique gifts and talents.

Rather than “filling your cup” with all the expectations other people have for you, it’s our hope that after hearing this conversation you can take a deep drink from your own well of genius and see what happens!

Learn more about Joanna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhang-joanna/

Listen to more Choice Wisdom episodes at https://choice wisdompodcast.com

Judgment is easy.

We do it all the time. We judge people’s choices. We judge their reactions and the way they live their lives. Sometimes we even convince ourselves we are helping when we point out what they should do differently.

But judgment starts to look different when you slow down and take a closer look.

In this Choice Wisdom podcast, Louisa and Gayle talk about something that shows up everywhere in our lives...the stories we carry about what people “should” do.

Yet, when we can see ourselves in the attacks we launch on others, it changes the game.

Noticing that changes the conversation. It shifts the focus from blame to awareness. It creates space for a little more grace for ourselves, and the people around us.

We share our very honest conversation about it in this episode. Nothing was off limits.

And we challenge you to simply notice when you point the finger, then gently notice the four fingers that point back at you. 

And then forgive yourself and see what happens.

You can learn more about the Choice Wisdom podcasts and the two co-hosts at https://choicewisdompodcast.com.

“All the things.”

That’s a direct quote from Louisa in this episode, when we talked about how she’s showing up on social media - spreading a message of kindness – each and every day for the past EIGHT YEARS.

She’s everywhere – Facebook, Insta, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, YouTube.

And now, she’s spreading her kindness through Choice Wisdom as co-host! This was just the level up the podcast needed!

When she said, “all the things,” it was about the channels where she shows up in kindness with her daily videos. But it’s also a great statement about where we’re taking Choice Wisdom this season: we are going to explore all the “things” that create the lives we want.

And by things, that’s really choices – but how do we make great choices?

In this episode, we share about ourselves, our journeys, and many things we’ve learned about being the most authentic you so that you can operate from your true default setting – and that’s JOY.

By sharing our take on this topic, along with various guests who also want to share their wisdom, we are covering exactly what a life of power and purpose looks – and – more important – how you create that life from the inside out through your thoughts and choices.

Of course, we’ll laugh a lot, too. Because that’s kinda what Louisa and Gayle do together.

Want to connect with us? Check us out on choicewisdompodcast.com.

Welcome back, Choice Wisdom!

I say “welcome back” because…well, it’s been a bit since I published a podcast episode.

Basically, I dropped the mic.

But not in the sense that I had something profound to say and it was time to exit the stage on that high note. The reality of what happened was a bit different. It was because I had a lot of realities I needed to sort out and choices to make to keep creating a life I wanted.

I dive into that a bit in this episode, so to get the full story, please listen in!

I also have the pleasure of sharing the stories of two other amazing women I interviewed before I went into podcast hiding:

Mei-Yung Lee is the CEO of Ageless Zen, a skincare company founded as for-profit, but built upon a nonprofit purpose. Her dad was a Chinese medicine doctor and herbalist and when she was growing up, she told me he would always create natural remedies for the family when anyone had a cold or flu. She mentioned it would stink up the house and everything was bitter to drink, but it always provided the cure. And it instilled her a belief in the power of natural healing.

Cara Castellow is a State Farm agent in Ennis, Texas and a force of nature herself, especially in her dual-life role as founder & president of Cara Caters, a nonprofit feeding schoolchildren across her community. Since its founding, it has provided more than 35,000 meals to food-insecure kids in her community.

Among us, we share what it takes to commit to more than one passion and find peace and joy in all of it.

Keep making great choices, and stay inspired, friends! - Gayle

If you'd like to learn more about the guests on this episode, visit https://choicewisdompodcast.com.

"The secret to extraordinary success isn’t pushing harder - it’s unlocking the natural brilliance already within you." - Liam Naden

Liam is a transformational coach who works with business owners and leaders. His pioneering coaching methods combine neuroscience, psychology, and practical strategies to help high achievers unlock their potential and live a deeply balanced, purpose-driven life.

Through his work, Liam helps ambitious people unlock their brain’s full power for business, career, and personal growth. He also helps people build stronger marriages and relationships through connection, trust, and intimacy through employing his proven brain-based methods.

Liam has been in it in a way most successful business people don’t experience. His journey has taken him from the heights of being a serial entrepreneur and millionaire - to losing everything and becoming homeless in his mid-40s – literally overnight. It was only as he rebuilt his life and wealth in a more fulfilling way that he discovered the missing link to true success: the correct functioning of the human brain.

Today, he’s living a life a lot of people would want. I caught up with him on his yacht off the coast of Italy for this conversation. And he’s going to share with you the secret of how that worked for him, and it’s based on something he discovered about humans that happened to us about 12,000 years ago.

This interview is a masterclass in natural success.

If you'd like to learn more about Liam and his work, or reviewother podcasts available from Choice Wisdom, visithttps://choicewisdompodcast.com.

If you find value in this podcast and would like to contribute to making it a success, you can leave a tip here: https://buymeacoffee.com/gaylegoodmanlynch