Why do successful people feel the most overwhelmed during the holidays? You've built something impressive, you're capable of managing complex projects and leading teams, yet the moment the holidays arrive, you're barely hanging on. You're over-functioning for everyone else, saying yes when you mean no, and by the time you collapse into bed, your mind won't stop racing about everything you still need to do tomorrow.

Sara Intonato is the founder of Autism Changemakers, a parent coach, consultant, and bestselling author. She's also been a yoga teacher and nervous system practitioner for over 20 years. Her work is rooted in ancient, time-tested practices from her 11 trips to India to study Ashtanga yoga, supporting parents of nonspeaking autistic children to regulate their nervous systems in high-stakes moments where safety is a concern and regulation isn't optional.

Sara took her first trip to India in her early 20s thinking she'd have a beautiful spiritual experience and get it out of her system. Instead, she discovered that to truly master something, there's no shortcut. You can't buy a certificate or complete a weekend training. You have to show up day after day, year after year, and let the practice change you.

What makes Sara different from the trendy breathwork facilitators flooding the coaching space is her commitment to teaching these practices properly. In India, she learned that advanced breathwork practices were withheld from students until they had a strong foundation because introducing them too soon would be "crazy making." They would move energy around so profoundly that students wouldn't be able to manage it.

This is exactly what Sara sees happening now in mainstream wellness culture. Coaches are throwing breathwork into their programs after minimal training, parents and professionals are trying to release trauma without knowing how to regulate what comes up, and people are more dysregulated than ever. Sara brings these ancient tools to her clients and students in bite-sized pieces that are safe and effective for all levels, because who needs more chaos in their life right now?

Here's what most people miss about nervous system regulation: they think it requires complicated practices, special training, or hours of time they don't have. So they do nothing. They stay in reactivity, they over-function for everyone else, and they wonder why the holidays feel so overwhelming instead of magical.

But Sara's work proves that regulation doesn't require perfection or massive time investments. It requires one minute. Four counts in, four counts out. Ice cubes in your hands when you can't escape the room. Counting your breath when your mind is spinning.

The cost of staying dysregulated isn't just that you feel stressed. It's that your children remember mom as a ball of stress. Your colleagues remember your overwhelm, not your competence. Your partner experiences your reactivity, not your love. You rob yourself of the presence and connection you're craving because you think you don't have time to regulate.

If you're reading this and recognizing yourself, if you've been running on fumes for so long that you don't even remember what regulated feels like, it's time to stop.

The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the success you've built on the outside and what you're actually feeling on the inside. We'll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in over-functioning and reactivity, the wounds driving your need to be strong for everyone else, and what it's going to take for you to finally create success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

This isn't about adding more to your plate. It's about understanding why you keep saying yes when you mean no, why you can't give yourself permission to rest, and what needs to shift so you can finally stop running and start being present.

How To Thrive Through The Silly Season Workbook: https://lisacarpenter.ca/holidays/

Book your free Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit

And if you know you need more than a 15-minute call, if you're craving a complete reset where you can step away from the noise and actually remember who you are beneath all the doing, Sara and I are taking a small group on a walking pilgrimage along the Camino in Spain in September 2026.  Learn more HERE

This isn't a vacation. It's a sacred reset. Six days walking more than 100 kilometers with daily coaching, integration circles, yoga, breathwork, and deep conversations that help you release what's been weighing you down. Spaces are intentionally limited to ensure intimacy and depth of support. When it fills, it closes. Learn more at lisacarpenter.ca.

Website: https://www.saraintonato.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sara.intonato/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-intonato-23036b172

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This isn't about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It's about creating congruence so the life you've built doesn't just look good, it finally feels right.

You've built something impressive. You've proven yourself over and over. But you're exhausted, your body is breaking down, and no matter how much you achieve, it never feels like enough. You're the strong one everyone leans on, but you're quietly wondering how much longer you can keep this up.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. This is the hidden cost of being strong, and it's exactly what today's guest, Alex Snider, lived through before everything came crashing down.

Alex Snider is the founder of Leaders Who Build, a leadership development company working with founders and executives who are scaling fast but struggling to lead themselves through it. Alex helps her clients integrate strategy with self-awareness so they can grow their businesses without losing themselves in the process. She's a certified executive coach who knows this terrain intimately because she's walked through it herself.

During COVID, Alex was tripling her company in 10 months. On the outside, she was crushing it. But her back was in constant pain for 12 months straight. Her business partnership had turned toxic. Her personal relationship was unhealthy. She was over-giving in every direction, having emotional reactions that would take her out for days, and her body was physically breaking down from carrying the weight of it all.

Alex had gone from being hyper-independent and emotionally unavailable to swinging completely to the other extreme: over-functioning, people-pleasing, and seeking partnerships to fill the gaps she believed existed in herself. She was operating from scarcity, not abundance. She was trying to earn love by being helpful and valuable enough. And she was attracting emotionally unavailable people so she could over-compensate by being the caretaker.

The breakthrough came when Alex realized she was having outsized emotional reactions because she had given every ounce of energy to everyone else. There was nothing left for her. She had to face the uncomfortable truth: her patterns of over-functioning weren't making her a better leader or partner. They were destroying her health, her relationships, and her ability to feel the success she'd built.

Alex's journey reveals something critical: you can't strategy your way out of patterns rooted in unworthiness. You can't hustle your way into feeling successful. And you can't keep abandoning yourself for achievement and expect to feel fulfilled.

The real work is getting honest about why you're over-giving. What you're getting from being everyone's rock. What you're avoiding by staying busy and helpful and indispensable. And whether you're willing to do the uncomfortable work of learning to love yourself enough to stop.

If you're ready to stop carrying it all and start building success that actually feels good, this conversation will show you what's possible on the other side.

The patterns Alex describes (over-functioning, people-pleasing, seeking external validation, struggling to feel your success) aren't character flaws. They're coping mechanisms you developed to stay safe. But they're costing you your health, your relationships, and your ability to enjoy the life you've built.

The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the success you've built on the outside and what you're actually feeling on the inside. We'll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in over-functioning mode, the wounds driving your need to be everyone's rock, and what it's going to take for you to finally create success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

This isn't about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It's about creating congruence so the life you've built doesn't just look good, it finally feels right.

Book your free Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit

Website: https://alexsnider.com/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/snideralex

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leaderswhobuild/

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Your body has been trying to tell you something for a while now. The persistent low mood you keep attributing to stress. The exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. The feeling that no matter how well you take care of yourself, you're still running on fumes. What if it's not willpower you're missing? What if your body is finally saying no to a version of success that's costing you everything?

Lisa Corduff built a million-dollar business while her life was falling apart behind the scenes. Her husband Nick was struggling with addiction and mental health. She was solo parenting three young kids. And her business became the one place that felt purposeful when everything else was chaos.

She was creating non-stop. Documenting everything. Showing up in all the places because that's what successful entrepreneurs do, right? The frantic energy matched what was happening in her real life. And then Nick died in 2019. Lisa was 40 years old with three kids aged 5, 7, and 8, and she kept going because that's what you do when you're the only parent and three kids are depending on you.

But here's what nobody tells you about chronic stress: your body keeps the score. For years, Lisa would wake up every morning with her nervous system spiking, wondering "what's today going to bring?" She couldn't get back to sleep. Her system was wired for threat. And even after the acute crisis passed, her body remembered.

This year, everything shifted. At 45, Lisa finally got answers she didn't know she needed - ADHD and autism diagnoses that suddenly made her entire life make sense. She discovered her estrogen levels were tanked despite doing everything "right" - morning walks, good food, sleep hygiene, all of it. She realized that what she'd been calling stress was actually perimenopause masked by legitimate life chaos.

And she had to make a choice: keep running the frantic version of success she'd built, or completely redefine what success means when you're no longer willing to sacrifice your nervous system, your presence with your teenage kids, or your actual life for revenue targets.

Lisa Corduff is a successful entrepreneur, speaker, and writer currently exploring the complexities of "this moment in time" on her podcast Conversations with Lisa. A powerful storyteller, she teaches experts, coaches, thought-leaders, and business owners who want to stand out online how to expertly weave stories into their content for greater impact, connection, and trust. She believes storytelling is, as it always has been, an essential skill for our times.

This conversation between Lisa Corduff and me isn't just about hormones or business strategy. It's about the wake-up call that comes when your body finally says no to a version of success built on chronic stress, over-functioning, and pushing through at all costs.

Maybe you've been attributing your exhaustion to "just being busy." Maybe you've been telling yourself the persistent low mood will pass once things calm down. Maybe you've been white-knuckling your way through because you don't know another way to operate.

But here's what Lisa and I both learned the hard way: you can't out-discipline a dysregulated nervous system. You can't out-supplement tanked hormones. And you can't build sustainable success while abandoning yourself in the process.

The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the success you've built on the outside and what you're actually feeling on the inside. We'll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in chronic stress, the cost of continuing to override your body's messages, and what it's going to take for you to finally create success that doesn't require you to sacrifice your health, your presence, or who you're becoming.

Book your Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit

This isn't about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It's about creating congruence so the life you've built doesn't just look good - it finally feels right. Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

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Everyone talks about self-love like it's a destination you reach after enough bubble baths and affirmations. But what if the real work of loving yourself is learning to stop abandoning who you are every time you enter a relationship? What if being "the loving one" has actually cost you more than you've been willing to admit?

In this raw, solo episode, Lisa dismantles everything you thought you knew about unconditional love, self-love, and what it takes to be in a healthy relationship without losing yourself in the process. She challenges the narrative that many of us, especially women, were raised with: that being loving means holding it all together, forgiving everything, and sacrificing yourself to make it work.

Drawing from her own journey of overgiving, abandoning herself, and ultimately setting boundaries in her current relationship after a major wake-up call, Lisa reveals why unconditional love has a place (with your children) but becomes toxic when applied to adult romantic relationships. She breaks down the difference between compassion for someone's humanity and tolerating harmful behavior, between loving someone deeply and staying when it costs you who you are.

This isn't about becoming cold or withholding love. It's about understanding that healthy love, both with yourself and others, requires discernment, reciprocity, and boundaries. It's about learning to meet yourself with the same compassion you've been giving everyone else, and recognizing that the relationship you have with yourself is the blueprint for every relationship you'll ever have.

Lisa Carpenter is a Master Life Coach and host of the Congruent podcast. She works with ambitious, Type A professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs who look successful on the outside but feel exhausted, unfulfilled, or like it's never enough on the inside. Through her signature Congruency Loop™ process, Lisa helps clients stop living in Doing Mode and create success that feels as good as it looks. Find her at lisacarpenter.ca and on Instagram and LinkedIn @lisacarpentercoaching.

If you heard yourself in this episode, if you recognized the pattern of overgiving and calling it devotion, if you've been mistaking tolerance for love and endurance for commitment, it's time to get honest about what this is costing you.

Because here's the truth: you can love someone with your whole heart and still feel unseen, unsafe, and disconnected. You can love someone deeply and still completely lose yourself in the process. And the highest form of love has to include you.

The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the relationships you've built and what you're actually feeling inside them. We'll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in overgiving, the wounds driving your need to earn love through sacrifice, and what it's going to take for you to finally create relationships (including the one with yourself) that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside.

In 15 minutes, we'll pinpoint where you're abandoning yourself, what's driving that pattern, and the single biggest shift that will change everything. Because you didn't come this far to keep losing yourself in every relationship you enter.

Book your Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit

This isn't about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It's about creating congruence so the relationships you're in don't require you to disappear. Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside starts with you including yourself in the love you give.

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You've done everything right. The degree, the career, the salary that finally exceeds what your parents made. You're checking all the boxes. But if you're honest, you still feel broke. Not because your bank account is empty, but because you never feel safe with money. You're controlling, budgeting, tracking every dollar, and somehow it still doesn't feel like enough. That constant financial anxiety? That's not about your numbers. It's about the unworthiness conversation running underneath every money decision you make.

Lisa Chastain grew up blue-collar on a dirt road in Las Vegas, watching her dad never make more than $60,000 a year. She did what good girls do: got the degree, landed the job with the 401k and health insurance, bought a house at 24, married at 25, had her kid at 28. She was winning. Until she wasn't.

When her husband lost his job nine months after she left her career to stay home, everything unraveled. The $100,000 in her 401k? Drained trying to hold it all together and start her financial advisor business. The perfect marriage? Hiding active addiction and chaos. The life that looked so good from the outside? Completely unsustainable on the inside.

Lisa spent years trying to control her way to safety—budgeting harder, fixing her husband, making herself smaller, believing if she just did more, it would finally feel secure. But control was never the answer. The real work was healing the "not enough" conversation that made her use money to prove her worth, use debt to fill voids that weren't fillable with things, and stay in toxic situations because leaving felt like failure.

Through divorce, a public rebound relationship with another addict, and what she calls her "come to Jesus moment," Lisa rebuilt her entire relationship with money. She stopped budgeting. She redefined success beyond bank account balances. She learned to use debt strategically instead of shamefully. And she made it her mission to help other women do the same—because financial shame keeps successful women stuck in scarcity longer than actual money problems ever could.

Today, Lisa is a nationally recognized personal finance coach, bestselling author of Stop Budgeting, Start Living, host of The Real Money Podcast, and the woman teaching thousands of women how to stop controlling money and start trusting themselves with it.

Lisa Chastain is a nationally recognized Personal Finance Coach and bestselling author with over 20 years of experience helping women take control of their money. Featured in CNBC, O – The Oprah Magazine, Fortune, Business Insider, and Forbes, Lisa is known for her fresh, no-shame approach to financial empowerment. After burning through $100,000 and nearly going broke, she rebuilt her life and made it her mission to help women fix their finances—without rigid budgets.

In 2016, she launched her coaching business to teach women how to track money intentionally, invest wisely, and create sustainable wealth. Today, she's the host of The Real Money Podcast and the bestselling author of Stop Budgeting, Start Living, which challenges outdated money rules and inspires financial confidence.

Lisa's work focuses on money mindset, leadership, and financial emotional intelligence, guiding clients and organizations to achieve long-term stability and freedom. She has been featured in Cosmopolitan, NBC News, MSN Money, Fortune, and Entrepreneur Magazine, and was named one of Las Vegas Women Magazine's "People to Watch."

Find Lisa:

If Lisa's story hit close to home, it's because you're carrying the same pattern: doing everything right, checking all the boxes, making good money, but still feeling broke, unsafe, and like it's never enough.

Here's the truth: That anxiety isn't about your bank account balance. It's about the unworthiness conversation running underneath every financial decision you make. The shame you carry about debt. The belief that if you just budget harder, control tighter, manage better, you'll finally feel safe. But control is never the answer. Self-trust is.

You're exhausted from white-knuckling your way through your financial life. You're collapsing into bed at night, mind racing about money, even though objectively you're doing fine. You snap at your partner about spending. You feel guilty every time you buy something for yourself. You've built a life that looks successful on the outside, but inside it doesn't feel congruent.

The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the financial success you've built on the outside and what you're actually feeling on the inside. We'll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in financial control instead of self-trust, the wounds driving your relationship with money, and what it's going to take for you to finally create success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

This isn't about budgeting harder. This isn't about more spreadsheets. This is about healing the "not enough" story that's been running your financial life since childhood—so you can finally step into the version of you who trusts herself with money, makes decisions from abundance instead of scarcity, and redefines success on your own terms.

Book your Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit

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What if your greatest strength is actually your prison? What if the capability everyone admires, the drive that built your success, the resilience that got you through everything, is the very thing keeping you exhausted, overwhelmed, and unable to let anything be easy?

Manja Horner learned early that she couldn't be a bother. With an older sister battling cancer and parents stretched beyond capacity, four-year-old Manja absorbed a profound lesson: be strong, be capable, never add to the burden. That pattern of over-functioning became her operating system, driving her to perfectionism, straight A's, a full-ride scholarship, and eventually a high-powered corporate career at BMO's Institute for Learning.

On the outside, Manja was killing it. Executive track. Great salary. Respect. Security. But when she was asked to pour months of her life into a project she didn't believe in, something shifted. She walked away from the comfort, the salary, the stability, because her integrity mattered more than her safety. She sold a rental property to fund her business, had three small kids, and her husband, a police officer whose core values are security and stability, watched his wife blow up their predictable life.

Fast forward to today: Manja runs a thriving learning and development company serving the skilled trades industry, she's pioneering AI applications to capture retiring tradespeople's wisdom, she's writing a book, raising three kids, doing somatic therapy, acupuncture, and EMDR to heal childhood wounds. She's accomplished, capable, and deeply successful.

And her biggest challenge? Learning that ease is safe. Learning to soften without losing her edge. Learning that she doesn't have to make everything uncomfortable just because comfort feels dangerous.

Manja Horner is a learning experience strategist and trusted advisor to companies who want to transform their business with training and team procedures and processes in a seamless, digital and easy-to-implement system. As founder of Boost, she's on a mission to create amazing employee experiences and get results for leaders in the skilled trades. She helps clients in the skilled trades and construction create inspiring, enriching, and all-encompassing experiences for better employee retention, integration, and education. Manja is also the author of the forthcoming book Passing the Torch in the Trades and a former corporate learning executive at a leading financial institution who left security to build a business rooted in integrity and impact.

Find Manja on:

If Manja's story landed, it's because you recognize yourself in it. You're strong, capable, the one everyone turns to. You've built something impressive. But you're exhausted. You can't remember the last time something felt easy. And the idea of softening, of allowing ease, of not carrying it all? It terrifies you because doing feels safer than being.

Here's what nobody tells you: Your strength isn't the problem. Your capability isn't the problem. The problem is that you learned a long time ago that being a burden wasn't safe, so you became the opposite. You became the rock. And now you're carrying weight that was never yours to carry.

The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the success you've built on the outside and the exhaustion you're feeling on the inside. We'll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in over-functioning, the childhood wounds driving your need to never be a bother, and what it's going to take for you to finally create success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

This isn't about doing more or being better. This is about learning that ease is safe. That softening doesn't mean losing your edge. That you can be strong AND allow support. That you can be capable AND let things be easy.

Book your Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit

This isn't about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It's about creating congruence so the life you've built doesn't just look good, it finally feels right.

If you listen on Spotify: 

You're over-giving because you're terrified no one will see your value. You know you're doing it. You're even aware it's exhausting you. But awareness without understanding why you do it? That just fuels the shame cycle.

Emma came to this coaching session with a question about imposter syndrome. Twenty-five years of teaching, consistently getting great results with her clients, and still doubting whether she's doing enough or good enough. Still uncomfortable asking for money. Still over-giving in every session because maybe, just maybe, if she gives enough, they'll finally see her value.

But here's what I don't coach to: I don't coach to imposter syndrome. I coach to the operating system underneath producing that symptom.

Within minutes, we uncovered what was really running the show. Emma watched her mom overwork her entire childhood. Watched her put herself last, neglect her health, tie her worth to productivity, and never value herself. Emma loved her mom. So she learned this is what you do. You work until you're exhausted. You give until there's nothing left. You prove your value through doing.

And now, decades later, Emma's middle-aged, looking in the mirror, and seeing her mom staring back at her.

This is what it sounds like to work with a coach who doesn't address what you think the problem is. I go after the beliefs and identity driving the behavior. If you've been telling yourself it's just imposter syndrome when it's actually about worthiness, tune in.

What pattern are you repeating that you watched growing up? What are you getting from over-giving, from tying your worth to productivity, from staying exhausted, that you won't admit?

Emma came in thinking we'd coach on imposter syndrome. But the real work was uncovering the operating system underneath that was running her life. And I'm willing to bet there's an operating system running yours too.

If you're done perpetuating the suffering, if you're ready to stop recreating what you watched and start becoming the conscious creator of your own life, book a free Congruency Audit with my team at lisacarpenter.ca/audit. We'll identify what's working, what's out of sync, and the single biggest opportunity to bring your life, work, and self back into congruence.

What pattern are you ready to stop repeating?

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You've built something impressive. From the outside, it all looks good. But if you're honest with yourself, you've been playing small. Making things look perfect so no one sees the truth underneath. Smiling through the exhaustion. Saying "I'm just" when someone recognizes your power. Shrinking yourself so others feel comfortable.

Today's guest knows this pattern intimately because she lived it for years.

Sarah Albritton has spent over 30 years as the trusted catalyst for high-impact leaders who've achieved massive success but know something's still missing. She works with CEOs, founders, and senior executives who look unstoppable from the outside yet privately feel their compass spinning. Her clients include billion-dollar business leaders and visionary founders who've realized the old playbook isn't working anymore.

But before she was coaching the world's most accomplished leaders, Sarah was the woman who made everything look perfect while quietly crumbling inside. The high achiever with imposter syndrome who spent 20 years in a marriage where she wasn't fully present. The capable woman who carried chronic back pain because her body was screaming what she wouldn't say out loud. The leader who walked into rooms full of elite coaches and heard herself say "I'm just a coach here, just like everybody else" in that high-pitched little voice, watching doors close behind people's eyes.

Until the day she couldn't keep playing small anymore.

In this raw, vulnerable conversation, Sarah reveals what it actually costs to make things look perfect when you're not being real. The physical pain her body carried from years of inauthenticity. The devastating betrayal when her entire friend group turned on her during her divorce, not just walking away but actively trying to destroy her. The moment at a coaching seminar when she caught herself shrinking and made the conscious choice to show up bigger. And how learning to treat her body as her hero instead of her villain changed everything.

Sarah Albritton is a transformational coach and leadership catalyst who has spent over 30 years working with the world's most accomplished leaders. She's known for her rare ability to deliver what she calls "catalytic jolts of clarity," helping CEOs, founders, and senior executives torch limiting patterns and reclaim aligned leadership. Working from deep 1:1 coaching to transformative team sessions to soul-awakening retreats at her North Carolina farm, Sarah balances self-compassion with radical candor and a refusal to sugarcoat. Her new program, Leading with Backbone, helps both business leaders and coaches show up courageously with truth. Find her at sarahcalbritton.com and on LinkedIn and Instagram @sarahcalbritton.

If Sarah's story hit close to home, it's because you're living some version of it right now. You've built something that looks good on the outside. People think you have it together. But you know the truth. You're playing smaller than you're capable of. Making things look perfect so no one sees how exhausted you really are. Shrinking yourself so others feel comfortable while your body carries the weight of everything you're not saying.

Here's what that costs you: your energy, your presence, your health, your relationships, and your ability to actually feel the success you've built. You collapse into bed exhausted but can't sleep because your mind won't stop racing. You snap at the people you love most, then feel guilty for not being present. You know you should take better care of yourself but you always run out of time and energy. You've built a life people admire but inside it doesn't feel congruent.

The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the success you've built on the outside and what you're actually feeling on the inside. We'll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in playing small, the wounds driving your need to make things look perfect, and what it's going to take for you to finally show up as big as you actually are. This isn't about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It's about creating congruence so the life you've built doesn't just look good, it finally feels right.

Book your Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit

Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.

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In this episode, I'm getting real about what's happening in my own body right now, hormones out of whack again, depression, anxiety, fatigue, memory loss, and a complete loss of zest for life. My get-up and go has left the building.

But here's what I know: what I'm feeling is real, but it doesn't make it true.

I've been on HRT for years. I take amazing care of myself physically. I work with practitioners. I've done decades of emotional work. And I'm still navigating this.

Because HRT can support your symptoms, but it's not a magic bullet for all the emotional work you've been avoiding. Taking physically good care of yourself doesn't mean you've taken emotionally good care of yourself.

Your hormones don't tank out of nowhere—they reflect how you've been living. The chronic stress, the over-functioning, the self-abandonment, the patterns you've normalized for so long you don't even see them anymore.

This episode is for high-achieving women in perimenopause, menopause, or post-menopause who are exhausted, overwhelmed, and wondering if they're losing their minds. If you're ready to blow up your life or feeling like a victim of your own body, this conversation will challenge everything you think you know about hormone health.

I break down what hormones can do, what they can't do, and the deeper self-leadership work your body is demanding you finally pay attention to.

Because hormone therapy can change your chemistry, but only you can change your capacity.

If you're exhausted from feeling like a victim of your own body, if you recognize yourself in this episode and you're ready to lead yourself differently, book a free 15-minute Congruency Audit.

We'll identify exactly where you're out of congruence with yourself and what needs to shift so you can navigate this phase with awareness instead of reactivity, with self-leadership instead of self-abandonment.

Book your Congruency Audit

You're afraid of not feeling good enough. Meanwhile, you wake up every day already feeling that way. So what exactly are you protecting yourself from?

In this live coaching episode, I work with Laurie-Ann Murabito, a successful speaking coach who's built a beautiful business but came to me feeling stuck. Not confident enough. Not getting the engagement she wanted. Not seeing the results she expected. So she stopped promoting her work and held back from the bigger vision she knew she was being called toward.

Within minutes of our session, I exposed the pattern she was living: She was afraid of not feeling good enough, but she was already experiencing that feeling every single day. She was protecting herself from what she was already living.

This is imposter syndrome in its most insidious form. Not the dramatic "I'm a fraud" moments, but the quiet, daily erosion of confidence that keeps accomplished people playing small. Laurie-Ann had all the evidence she needed that she was creating real results. Clients hiring her out of the blue after listening silently for months. People telling her she was their only choice. But she wasn't looking at that data. She was hanging her confidence on likes, comments, and downloads that would never be enough.

Here's where the coaching got interesting: I asked her what she was getting from staying stuck that she wouldn't admit. What was the real payoff for playing small? Her answer shifted everything: "I get to stay right here. I don't have to step into that bigger role."

This is the work I do. I don't coach to what you think the problem is. I coach to the operating system underneath that's producing all those symptoms. While most coaches would focus on confidence-building exercises or mindset mantras, I go after the unconscious pattern that's creating the lack of confidence in the first place.

When Laurie-Ann described the vision she's been holding back from, building a world-class speaking and communication company, tears came. That's when I knew we hit the real issue. This wasn't about confidence. It was about identity. Who would she need to become to step into that vision? And what parts of herself would she need to stop being loyal to?

I guided Laurie-Ann to see that she was choosing evidence that kept her small because looking at evidence of her real impact would require her to step up. And stepping up meant leaving behind the familiar version of herself that feels safe, even when it's exhausting.

In this coaching episode, you'll hear me guide Laurie-Ann through:

This episode is for you if:

This is what it sounds like to work with a Master Coach who sees the operating system underneath your surface symptoms. If you've been holding back from something bigger, tune in.

Ready to explore your own patterns?

Book a free 15-minute Congruency Audit at lisacarpenter.ca/audit. We'll identify what's working, what's out of sync, and the single biggest opportunity to bring your life, work, and self back into congruence.