Finding Treasures in the Trash

After returning from a meditation-filled journey along the Adriatic, Cari found herself asking whether ancient wisdom still has a place in a world increasingly captivated by neuroscience, energy, physics, and consciousness. Her answer was a deeper yes. In this Tiny Treasure, she reflects on Buddhism as a form of “ancient intelligence,” a practice that understood the mind, suffering, attention, and transformation long before science had language for them. This is a reflection on what becomes possible when timeless wisdom and modern understanding begin to meet.

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

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If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

What separates judgment from discernment? And why does that distinction matter?

In this Tiny Treasure, Cari explores the difference between judging from fear and discerning from awareness. While judgment often closes us off through certainty, discernment creates space for curiosity, compassion, healthy boundaries, and conscious choice.

Through personal reflections on comparison and the ways we protect ourselves, Cari invites us to examine our judgments with greater curiosity.

What might change if we stopped defining people by our conclusions about them and instead became more interested in what’s happening within ourselves?

Maybe real freedom isn’t in learning to judge less, but in learning to see more clearly.

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Where do Harry Potter and childhood trauma meet?

For author Barbara Latinka, the connection is deeply personal. Growing up with Harry Potter, she saw more than a magical adventure. She saw a neglected, mistreated child discover that he had power—and that his beginnings did not have to determine his future.

Years later, while working through her own childhood trauma in therapy, Barbara found a way to bring that possibility into her own storytelling.

Her three-book series, Spells for Surviving a Haunted Childhood, tells her life story through magical realism. Darkness becomes a shape-shifting monster. Generational trauma becomes a curse she is determined to break. And each chapter ends with a “spell”—meditation, grounding, and mindfulness practices recast as invitations to discover a little magic within ourselves.

In this moving conversation, Cari and Barbara explore how imagination can help us approach experiences we struggle to name—and how stories can offer more than escape. Sometimes, seeing ourselves in a character helps us feel less alone and imagine possibilities for our own lives.

Barbara shares her journey through a childhood marked by addiction, neglect, and abuse, the enduring love of her grandfather, and the importance of finding a therapist who could truly understand her experience.

Together, they explore what it means to be seen, to make room for difficult feelings, and to interrupt the patterns handed down through a family.

Trauma can move through generations.

But so can love.

And sometimes the magic begins when we discover that the story we inherited is not the only story we can tell.

The Treasures in the Trash:

1. Stories can help us discover our own power – For Barbara, Harry Potter offered an image of a mistreated child whose future held belonging, courage, and possibility. Her books invite readers to imagine possibilities for themselves.
2. Healing can have a language of its own – Shape-shifting monsters, generational curses, and grounding “spells” give Barbara a creative way to express experiences that once felt impossible to name.
3. Trauma can be inherited, but so can love – Her grandfather’s love remained an inner source of support long after his death. The care we receive can become part of what we carry forward.
4. Being seen matters—and finding the right support can take time – Barbara describes how a trusted friendship and a therapist who understood her childhood trauma helped her feel heard and supported.
5. Difficult feelings deserve space without having to run the show – Barbara’s writing began with permission to feel anger and grief. Giving those emotions a place in her story helped her begin imagining what could come next.

About the Guest:

Barbara Latinka is a self-published indie author, homeschool mother, and full-time photographer. Her work has been recognized by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy as a mental health resource for trauma survivors and therapists. After keeping her story in silence for decades, Barbara finally released Spells for Surviving a Haunted Childhood into the world with the hope of helping others who have experienced similar traumatic upbringings feel seen, understood, and less alone.

https://linktr.ee/hauntedchildhoodspells

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

Anger is not the problem. What matters is what happens next. In this Tiny Treasure, Cari explores anger as a natural, healthy emotion and looks at what may be underneath it: unmet needs, wounded pride, crossed boundaries, and the longing to feel seen and valued. She shares five simple, body-based ways to slow the energy of anger down, create space around it, and respond with greater clarity instead of slipping into aggression.

Because the goal is not to stop feeling anger. It is to stay connected to ourselves, and when possible, to one another, while we feel it.

What happens when the truth you have been avoiding becomes the only way forward?

For Aaron Tabacco, PhD, that moment came in midlife, after years of trying to reconcile his identity, his faith, his marriage, and the family he loved deeply.

In this deeply human conversation, Cari and Aaron explore authenticity, self-acceptance, grief, family transformation, and the courage it takes to stop living inside a false story. Aaron shares how coming out as gay became not the destruction he feared, but the beginning of a profound healing journey for himself, his former wife, and their three sons.

Together they reflect on the need to be chosen, the hidden cost of abandoning ourselves, and what can happen when we begin to claim sovereignty over our own lives.

Aaron also shares how his family chose to rewrite the traditional story of divorce, creating their own rituals of release, commitment, and love.

Through the lens of executive coaching, emotional resilience, mental health, and personal growth, this episode asks what becomes possible when we stop turning away from the parts of ourselves that frighten us most.

Sometimes the path to safety begins with telling the truth.

And sometimes our deepest strength is waiting inside our greatest fear.

The Treasures in the Trash:

1. Being chosen can become a substitute for choosing ourselves – When our sense of worth depends on being seen, accepted, or selected by others, we can slowly disappear from our own lives.
2. The stories that keep us safe can eventually become the stories that keep us stuck – What once felt necessary for belonging may no longer reflect who we are or the life we are ready to live.
3. Telling the truth changes more than one life – Aaron discovered that hiding his suffering was not protecting his family because the pain he carried was already reaching the people he loved.
4. We are allowed to write a different ending – By refusing the traditional scripts around coming out and divorce, Aaron and his family created their own language for love, release, commitment, and belonging.
5. Our deepest fear may be holding our deepest strength – When we stop turning away from what frightens us and meet it with honesty, we may discover that the place we feared most is also where our freedom lives.

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

What if the moments when your life stops making sense aren't interruptions in your path - but the very things pointing you toward it?

There is a Sanskrit word for the experience of having the world you thought was solid suddenly crack open: samvega.

It can happen when something falls apart. But it can also happen when everything goes according to plan. You get the title. The money. The relationship. The thing you were certain would make you happy - and a quieter voice inside asks: Is this it?

Vish Chatterji knows these moments well.

As a young man, Vish had a clear picture of success: America, achievement, the powerful executive in the suit. And he got there. But along the way came moments that punctured the story he had been living - moments of disappointment, disillusionment and unexpected redirection.

In this conversation, Cari and Vish explore what happens when we stop treating those moments as problems to solve and begin asking what they might be here to show us.

They talk about how easily achievement can become a way of outrunning deeper questions; why high performers are particularly good at overriding the signals that something needs our attention; and why there may not be one dramatic awakening that changes everything. Instead, Vish suggests, a life may be shaped by a series of samvega moments - each one nudging us a little closer to who we are becoming.

They also explore an important paradox: listening to the deeper voice doesn't necessarily mean abandoning the life you've built. Sometimes we needed every chapter. The invitation is to learn how to witness ourselves while we are living it - to participate fully without becoming so consumed by the race that we can no longer hear ourselves.

And sometimes, the treasure that emerges from the trash isn't something new at all. It is a part of ourselves that has quietly been there all along, waiting for us to recognize its value.

Because the question may not be simply, How do I get out of this?

It may be: What is this here to teach me?

The Treasures in the Trash

1. Samvega is the moment the old story stops working. It is the disillusionment that comes when something punctures the world we thought was predictable and secure. It can feel like everything has gone to trash - and that may be precisely where something true becomes visible.
2. We are remarkably good at outrunning what we don't want to know. Another promotion. Another goal. More money. A new purchase. Staying busy can keep us from confronting the uncomfortable question underneath all the striving: Is the life I'm building actually the life I want to be living?
3. There may not be one big awakening. Vish describes life as a series of samvega moments - small and large encounters with disappointment, discomfort and disillusionment that gradually redirect us. The question is whether we notice them or simply return to the status quo.
4. Listening doesn't always mean leaving. Not every moment of disillusionment is an instruction to quit the job, end the relationship or reinvent your life. Sometimes we need the chapter we are living. Spiritual practice gives us the capacity to step outside the momentum long enough to witness ourselves inside it.
5. The treasure may have been with you all along. Long before Vish became a coach or studied Vedic astrology, meditation, yoga and his Indian spiritual heritage were quietly accompanying his more conventional ambitions. Eventually, what had seemed like separate parts of his life began to reveal themselves as one path.
6. Pain can contain a question. Vish closes the conversation with a different way of meeting difficult moments: rather than asking only how to make the hurt stop, step back and ask, What is the bigger picture? What is the context of this hurt? What is its purpose? What am I being asked to learn?

About the Guest

Vish Chatterji is an executive coach, Vedic astrology teacher, author, and former business executive whose work bridges ancient wisdom and modern life.

Before moving into coaching and teaching, Vish built a career across engineering, corporate leadership, technology and entrepreneurship. Throughout those years, however, another thread ran alongside his professional life: a longstanding practice of yoga and meditation and an evolving relationship with the wisdom traditions of his Indian heritage.

Today, through his coaching practice, Head & Heart Insights, Vish brings together practical leadership experience with teachings from yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, Vedic philosophy and Jyotish, or Vedic astrology. His work invites leaders and seekers to listen more deeply to their own inner wisdom and to understand the larger patterns unfolding in their lives.

He is the author of The Business Casual Yogi and Astrology Decoded, host of the podcast Bending the Light, and a Faculty Coach and Educator with the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute at UC Berkeley.

Website: https://www.vishchatterji.com/

Personal Karmic Blueprint Reading: https://www.vishchatterji.com/karmic-snapshot

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

“Everything that we think we can hold onto is going to go. And isn't that freeing?” — Jordan Kersten

Jordan Kersten has learned to greet life's interruptions differently than most of us.

Again and again, her body has asked her to stop. A knee that no longer held her. A concussion that slowed her mind. An illness without answers. Another injury that made independence impossible.

None of them were experiences she would have chosen.

Yet each one became a doorway into a deeper way of being alive.

As Jordan shares her story, it becomes clear that this conversation isn't really about injury. It's about what happens after the life we expected gives way to the life that's actually unfolding. The body changes. Certainty disappears. Something familiar is lost. And in the space that's left behind, another way of seeing begins to emerge.

Cari and Jordan wander through questions of mindfulness, vulnerability, safety, expression, and what it means to find your voice when the ground beneath you keeps changing. Together they explore how compassion grows through lived experience, why receiving can be harder than giving, and how even the most painful interruptions can deepen our connection to ourselves and to one another.

There is a quiet wisdom running through this conversation.

Not everything that breaks us is asking to be fixed.

Sometimes it's asking us to become more awake.

• The reliable becomes unreliable. That isn't failure—it's part of being human. Our deepest growth often begins the moment certainty falls away.
• Compassion is rarely learned through ideas. It is learned through lived experience. Our own struggles soften us toward the struggles of others.
• Finding your voice begins with feeling safe. Authentic expression isn't something we force; it's something that naturally emerges when we no longer have to protect ourselves.
• Healing isn't always returning to who we were. Sometimes it's becoming someone we couldn't have become any other way.
• Sometimes the body interrupts us before the soul can. The moments that stop us often become the moments that awaken us.

Every episode of Finding Treasures in the Trash explores the places we'd rather avoid—the losses, disappointments, fears, and moments that seem to break us—and asks a different question:

What if the treasure is already hidden inside the trash?

About the Guest:

Jordan Kersten is a passionate and grounded health coach, voice teacher, and yoga teacher dedicated to helping people reconnect with their innate creativity, resilience, and capacity for healing. She works with individuals from all walks of life, with particular experience supporting those recovering from injury and navigating complex health conditions.

Inspired by the mindfulness traditions of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Plum Village, Jordan brings a deeply compassionate and curious approach to her work. She is endlessly fascinated by the connection between the body, mind, and creative spirit, and believes that even life's greatest challenges can become opportunities for growth, self-discovery, and transformation.

When she's not teaching or coaching, Jordan can often be found backpacking, watching sunsets, or singing.

https://www.jordankersten.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-kersten-b3b3bb24/

https://www.instagram.com/jordanswellnessandperformance/

Interested in exploring work with Jordan, get $135 off her 6 week Summer Jumpstart, and $245 off her Summer Season Reset (3 months)! Email her at [email protected] for more info.

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

"As long as you're still harming yourself, how much kindness can you put out there? How much compassion can you put out there?" — James Rosser

What happens when the life you built no longer feels like your life?

For James Rosser, the question arrived through an unimaginable moment.

In his late twenties, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, James was mistakenly diagnosed with a terminal illness and told he likely had eight months to live. Then, after repeated testing, he learned the diagnosis was wrong.

But something had already shifted.

What began as a confrontation with mortality became something more surprising: a confrontation with exhaustion. Exhaustion from carrying a life that looked successful from the outside but no longer felt true on the inside. Exhaustion from perfection. Performance. Hiding. Becoming someone instead of being someone.

In this deeply personal conversation, Cari and James explore the unexpected ways suffering can become a doorway—not because pain is inherently noble, but because turning toward suffering instead of reacting against it can reveal who we are and what matters most.

Together they unpack the difference between mindfulness and meditation, the hidden aggression inside self-improvement, the origins of the inner critic, and why compassion is not softness—it is courage.

James shares how Buddhist practice, self-compassion, and years of learning to stay with difficult experience transformed his relationship with himself and ultimately changed the direction of his life—from finance to therapy, teaching, healing, and service.

This episode is an invitation to pause long enough to ask:

What if your pain isn’t asking you to become someone else?

What if it’s asking you to become more fully yourself?

The Treasures in the Trash:

1. Suffering can become a doorway — Sometimes the moments we would never choose reveal the values and truths that quietly shape the rest of our lives.
2. Reactivity and response are not the same thing — The space between what we feel and how we respond may be where freedom begins.
3. Self-improvement can hide self-rejection — The drive to become better can sometimes be fueled by the painful belief that we are not enough as we are.
4. Compassion changes everything — When we stop treating suffering as failure and begin meeting it with care, healing becomes possible.
5. The inner critic often began as protection — What feels harsh today may once have been trying to keep us safe.
6. Looking for the good is a practice — Our minds naturally scan for danger, but kindness and awareness help us remember what else is here.
7. Your heart already knows something — Sometimes the most important question isn’t “What should I do?” but “What does my heart need to hear?”

Learn more about the Sacred Pause Retreat at https://www.bravedirections.com/a-sacred-pause

About the Guest:

James Rosser has been meditating since 1987, beginning his journey with Spirit Rock co-founder James Baraz. Today, he serves as a Dharma teacher and Board Member at InsightLA, and co-leads retreats at the Big Bear Retreat Center. His extensive training includes graduations from InsightLA’s Facilitator and Dedicated to the Dharma programs, Spirit Rock's Dedicated Practitioner Program, and the inaugural class of the Kornfield-Brach Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP).

James integrates deep spiritual practice with clinical expertise. He is a Mentor at Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion Institute, a Trained Teacher for the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, and an intensively trained Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) clinician. Currently, he works as an LCSW at UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, designing and growing intensive outpatient programs. He holds a Master’s in Social Welfare from UCLA and a Bachelor’s in Finance from the University of Tennessee.

https://www.instagram.com/bluesuitbuddha/

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

“I think it was that intense sense of not belonging and being alone that actually created this beautiful spark of self-reflection.” — Sylvia LePoidevin

Some people inherit a clear sense of who they are. Others have to build it themselves.

In this conversation, Sylvia LePoidevin shares what it was like growing up between worlds. Raised in remote parts of Africa while never fully belonging there or in the United States, she learned early what it meant to live without a clear mirror reflecting identity back to her. What began as loneliness slowly became something else. Curiosity. Intention. Self-authorship.

As a child, she would climb onto the roof alone and write about the kind of person she wanted to become. Calm. Wise. Grounded. Someone who could not be easily shaken. Years later, after becoming a successful startup executive known for helping companies go from zero to one, she began asking a deeper question: Did she become herself naturally, or did she consciously create herself in response to isolation?

What unfolds is a conversation about identity, conditioning, belonging, reinvention, and the quiet self underneath every role we play. Together, Cari and Sylvia explore what happens when there is no script handed to you, and how loneliness can sometimes become the very thing that teaches you how to come home to yourself.

And maybe the deeper truth is this: when no one tells you who you are, you get the rare chance to listen for yourself.

The Treasures in the Trash:

1. Not belonging can become a form of freedom - When there is no clear script, mirror, or community telling you who to be, there is also space to consciously shape yourself from the inside out.
2. Loneliness can deepen self-awareness - The moments that feel most isolating can also become the moments where reflection, imagination, and inner clarity begin to form.
3. The identity you create may still be deeply real - Even the parts of ourselves we consciously shape often come from something honest and essential underneath. Self-creation and authenticity are not always opposites.
4. Starting over reveals what is stable - Every return to zero strips away what is temporary and brings us back to the part of ourselves that remains unchanged beneath achievement, location, or circumstance.
5. You are more capable of rebuilding than you think - The more connected you become to the deeper self beneath external identity, the less frightening change, reinvention, and uncertainty begin to feel.

About our Guest:

Sylvia LePoidevin has built marketing from zero four times. As the first marketing hire at FloQast ($1.6B) and Kandji ($850M+), she's helped build companies now worth over $2 billion combined. She turned down two CMO roles at $5B+ companies to make her fourth early-stage bet as CMO at Juno, where they've gone from zero to millions in under six months. Raised in remota Africa before moving to the US alone at 17, she writes "The Zero to One Marketer" on LinkedIn and Substack.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvialepoidevin

https://substack.com/@sylvialepoidevin

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

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Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are parts of us that learn to survive before they ever get the chance to live.

In this conversation, Wai Poc invites us into the quiet, complex terrain of identity—where visibility and invisibility coexist, where inherited fear shapes connection, and where the longing to belong meets the courage to be fully seen. From growing up as one of the only Asian students in his school, to navigating life as an “invisibly gay” man, his story is not linear—it’s layered, tender, and deeply human.

What unfolds is not just a story about identity, but about the masks we wear to feel safe… and the moment we realize we can no longer live inside them. Through friendship, self-love, and a willingness to stay curious about others, Wai Poc shows us that connection is not something we find—it’s something we allow.

And maybe the invitation here is simple, but not easy:

to take off the mask… and trust that who we are is enough to be met.

The Treasures in the Trash:

1. Survival isn’t the same as living - What helped you navigate early environments, whether inherited fear, silence, or self-protection, can quietly limit your ability to fully connect, express, and thrive. At some point, survival patterns need to be reexamined so life can actually be lived.
2. The mask that protects you can also confine you - We learn to shape ourselves in ways that feel safe or acceptable, but over time that version of ourselves can become the very thing that keeps us from being fully known and expressed.
3. Self-love expands your capacity to connect - As you begin to accept the parts of yourself you once hid or rejected, your ability to understand, relate to, and genuinely connect with others deepens.
4. Needing people is part of being human - The belief that we should be completely independent can keep us isolated, when in reality connection, support, and understanding are essential to a full and meaningful life.
5. There is more space for you than you think - The idea that you need to shrink to belong is often internalized, and while not everyone will understand you, there is far more room for your full self than you’ve been led to believe.

About the Guest:

Wai Poc is an Executive Coach in the high-tech, biotech, and finance sectors, including for VPs at companies like Google, Facebook, Genentech, Gilead as well as for C-levels in pre and post IPO Series A to D companies where he is based in Silicon Valley. His expertise includes strategic influence, leadership development, and organizational dynamics. Many moons ago, Wai studied cultural anthropology at Stanford University before moving onto a MBA and into business. He is part of the teaching and coaching team on EQ at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. A sabbatical field expedition to Madagascar led Wai to meet Patricia Wright, with whom he is now writing a book on power and politics in the workplace. Their goal is to decode the primate roots of human competition and collaboration with Unleashed: A Field Guide to Power and Politics at Work.

About Cari:

Cari Jacobs-Crovetto is an executive and leadership coach and the founder of Brave Directions, where she works with senior leaders and C-suite executives to strengthen interpersonal and team relationships, navigate conflict skillfully, and deepen self-awareness, influence, and confidence.

Before becoming a coach, Cari spent three decades in marketing and product leadership roles across Fortune 100 companies, media networks, consulting firms, and venture-backed startups. In 2019, she was named one of Forbes’ Top 50 Chief Marketing Officers.

Cari brings together decades of operating experience with more than 45 years of Buddhist meditation study and practice, integrating deep inner work with practical leadership development.

She facilitates the renowned Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”) course at Stanford Graduate School of Business where she also coaches grad school students, leads meditation classes and leadership workshops, and hosts the podcast Finding Treasures in the Trash.

Her mantra: Fierce Heart — where compassion meets bold, badass leadership.

https://www.bravedirections.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carisf/

https://www.instagram.com/cari_bravedirections/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/