Guts & Grace

Having earned two Harvard master’s degrees, Courtney imagined herself shooting like a firework into the sky, raining down amazing ideas and enjoying a life full of delightful colleagues and meaningful contributions. Instead, she says, her work flame had flickered brightly and died.

When she looks back at a photo from this season of her life, she barely recognizes herself. The strain of three children under five and a demanding nonprofit leadership job left her depleted.

What she most wanted was for someone to hand her a magic elixir – a formula that would free her to both discover and release her unique gifts to the world and to flourish in her personal life.

In this episode of Guts & Grace, we ask some big questions.

What does a woman who longs to make a contribution to the world while having her needs fulfilled need in order to flourish?

Where do we get caught up along the way? 

Many women have a deep knowing that the world needs us now - whether that means parenting really consciously, sharing our art or unique gifts, building a business, creating or contributing something. And they're feeling how Courtney felt - depleted and unsatisfied. What's one thing women can focus on to move beyond burnout and become well-resourced revolutionaries?

Courtney Pinkerton is a certified holistic life coach and the author of the Amazon bestseller, The Flourish Formula: An Overachiever’s Guide to Slowing Down & Accomplishing More. Courtney is a student and a teacher of the Enneagram who has helped hundreds of busy women slow down and accomplish and enjoy more in their life. She holds dual master’s degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Kennedy School, is the creator of the eight-step Flourish Formula Coaching program, and hosts international retreats for women. After selling their house and all their belongings and spending a year adventuring in Nicaragua, Courtney and her husband Richard Amory and their three children are making a new home in a co-housing community in Asheville, North Carolina.

Get a free digital copy of her book here: www.courtneypinkerton.com/freebook

Connect with her here:

Facebook: CourtneyPinkertonCoach

Instagram: courtneypinkerton

Mandy Wintink is a revelation. She is brilliant, insightful, wise, deeply human, down to earth and willing to be vulnerable. She is an Educator. Author. Speaker. Life Coach, CEO, Social Entrepreneur, Provocateur, Mother, Woman, Athlete, Yogi, and Body Monologer. She is a self-described Self-Reflection Instigator.

In this convo, we take a deep dive into (brace yourself!) FAILURE.

Let's be honest. We're all afraid of it. It happens to all of us. And it sucks.

So come along as Mandy shares her big, ironic failure story and the lessons she learned through the experience.

Mandy also shares what the science tells us about failure so that we can feel empowered rather than deflated about it.

Take a listen, and if you're feeling brave, share one of your failures with me in the comments.

Connect with Mandy here:

Podcast - www.mandyland.ca/the-podcast

Website - www.mandywintink.com

Facebook - www.facebook.com/CANCoaching

Life Coaching School - www.knowyourbrain.ca

When I read Lindsay Johnson's blog post called "Finding the Love of My Life," I KNEW we had much to discuss about self-love.

In it, she says, "I was great at listing my characteristics and my skills. I was great at defending my right to be here by listing my value to other people or my contribution to the world. I was great and valuing my worth based on what I did for others or on how others felt around me.

Do you know what I wasn't great at?

Loving myself."

I had a similar awakening many moons ago, and I think it's something that affects many of us. The truth is that we're often confused about what self-love actually is and exactly how it's done.

In this episode, Lindsay and I dive deep into the delight of learning to love yourself.

Lindsay Johnson is passionate about building strong communities, while helping you connect more deeply to yourself, your business, and the world around you. She's on a mission to move people into a place of radical self-acceptance and self-love. She does that by helping people become rockstar entrepreneurs.

Check out her Radical Biz Retreat, happening in September 2018:

Bring your big ideas to life and learn how to grow your business at the Radical Biz Retreat this September. Connect with a diverse community of entrepreneurs for a jam-packed weekend full of business growth strategies, guest experts in growing your brand visibility loud and proud in the world, and big-thinking discussions on how you can build a business, and a life, you love. Get ready to dig in! You’ll be coming home with new entrepreneurial friends, your own unique road map and action plan for success, and a three month mastermind group to keep you growing and shining all year long! Guts & Grace listeners will save $79 off their registration with code: gutsandgrace.

Get more info & sign up here: radicalbizretreats.com

Biz Accelerator Program: theradicalconnector.com/coaching

Don't forget your discount code: gutsandgrace

Do you ever feel like, in order to succeed, you've got to push hard, sacrifice a lot, and just suck things up? I feel you. This message is big in our culture.

That's why I'm so happy to share this conversation with you. Dawn Kotzer gives us an alternative and shows us that it's possible to find meaningful success without sandblasting our souls.

Long time Creative Entrepreneur, Designer, Field Scale Organic farmer, now Martha Beck Certified Coach/ Business Coach-Mentor, Master Creativity Coach, Dream Planter...she’s recently added caregiver/primary support person for her spouse to her life-list.

In this episode, Dawn invites us to dream small, dream without doing anything about it, and put some boundaries around our dreams. So many metaphors come up in this convo, and if you're anything like me, you'll absolutely LOVE hearing about how canoes, wasps, and gardening are fertile ground for life lessons.

Connect with Dawn here:

www.dawnkotzer.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InnerWildernessGuideDawnKotzer

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innerwildernessguide/ & https://www.instagram.com/dawnkotzerart/

Dawn's art: https://www.instagram.com/dawnkotzerart/

What if your inner critic is just the patriarchy in disguise?

In this episode, Jen Pavich and I take a deep dive into internalized oppression - what it is, how it shows up, and how to let that shit go!

If you believe you need to be more perfect before you really start to show up for your life & your dreams, you won't want to miss this. We connect the dots between what our culture tells us, what we tell ourselves, and the reality we're creating as a result.

Jen asks us to consider what we've been taught about what it means to be a "good woman," and then ask ourselves whether or not we truly believe those things. Simple, and yet so powerful.

Jen Pavich is a feminist life coach who helps women overcome all of the bullshit they've been taught about how to be a perfect woman so that they can unleash their inner badass, thrive in their lives, and smash the patriarchy.

Connect with Jen here:

www.jenpavich.com

Sustain class on July 25th: https://www.jenpavich.com/sustain

Daring Way group starting 8/22: https://www.jenpavich.com/group-programs

Kelly Covert is an inner voice coach with a passion for helping visionary women believe and achieve their big vision by connecting deeply with the wisdom that is inside of them all while owning their worthiness each and every day. Through her intuitive, heart-centered approach she helps women awaken to their true power as creators and world-changers.

She is the creator and host of the In Her Voice, a podcast that empowers women to listen and live by their inner voice so they can change the world. Her work has been featured on The Huffington Post, The Elephant Journal, YourTango.com, and she has been a featured guest on many podcasts.

In this episode of Guts & Grace, Kelly and I take a deep dive into perfectionism - where it comes from, how to spot it, what happens when we embrace imperfection, and how to get started.

Kelly shares powerful insights about her own journey as a recovering perfectionist, and how parenting her son (who is on the spectrum) required that she loved and accepted herself just as she is.

She says, "If I didn't figure out how to love myself, I was not going to be able to figure out how to be his mom in the way that I was meant to be his mom."

Check out Kelly's Overcoming Perfectionism Course - Use code GUTSANDGRACE for $10 off!! https://www.kellycovert.com/perfectionism/

In Her Voice https://www.kellycovert.com/podcast

instagram.com/kellyjcovert

facebook.com/kellyjcovert

Sara Exley defines self-care as, "Holding space and being wiling to do what feels right for me as often as I can." Brilliant.

In this episode, we touch on:

-trusting the process

-re-parenting yourself (you're going to want to hear this one!)

-what happens when you think you've figured it all out

-creating safety so you can grow

-saying yes when you mean it

-saying no when you mean it

-everyday self-care, and the not-every-day kind

-dealing with isolation and learning to ask for help

Ultimately, Sara and I both see self-care as a piece of the puzzle that leads to building a better world - one in which, as Sara says, "it's safe for us to need each other."

Sara is the internet's most unlikely hypnotherapist. She's flunked out of most wellness practices, including meditation and yoga. She's not particularly zen. And even the word "calm" used to make her cringe. (Is that like being really tired?)

In October of 2016, on a wild intuitive hair, she enrolled in Grace Smith's Hypnotherapy School. While she fully expected to gain a wonderful new skill set, what she didn't expect was that hypnotherapy would give her back to herself. Sara discovered she didn't really need to "transform" who she was.

"Nothing was ever wrong with me and I was never broken."

Hypnotherapy helped her let go of the subconscious crap that wasn't hers, reparent her heart, and feel safe trust herself on a deep, visceral level.

Interested in getting to know Sara and experiencing hypnotherapy? Join her facebook group here: www.bit.ly/saraexleyhypnosisgroup

In this episode, I chat with Or Har-Gil, an Art Therapist who guides you to embrace your whole, imperfect, human self. Through one-on-one sessions and workshops, she facilitates full-spectrum self-expression by creating safe, playful containers to show up exactly as you are, create from your inner self, and find the beauty in your messy enough-ness.

We took a deep dive into creativity, and the role it plays in our wellbeing and happiness. Many of us shy away from creativity, believing that we're not good at it. But amazing things happen when we immerse ourselves in the playful process, focusing not on skill and output, but self-expression and felt experience. Come on a journey with us, and get inspired to embrace creativity! (We even invented a new word!)

Or shares some awesome resources in the podcast, listed here:

Books - The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe; Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert; Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff

Instagram - Claire Laraine (Creative journaling prompts)

You can find out more about Or's work and connect with her here:

Website: www.orhargil.com

Instagram: @orhargil

Facebook: @orhargilarttherapy

Intuition Card workshop: https://www.orhargil.com/workshops/

I met Sarah a few years back through the magic of the internet and discovered that we're almost neighbours. I was immediately smitten with her, as well as with her business name: Careergasm. So sassy! So bold!

Sarah describes a careergasm as follows:

"A careergasm happens when your work feels good. Like, really good. Like you and your work belong together.

And you can bet your ass it feels as good as it sounds.

A careergasm leaves you feeling happy and satisfied and fulfilled in your work. Not every second, but most of the time. You’ve got a hot date every Monday morning, and you show up over and over and over again because it just feels right. Mmmhmm. #slowjams"

Who doesn't want that? 

In this episode, Sarah gives us the goods on:

-who gets to have a careergasm

-whether or not you need to up-end your whole life to make it happen

-her best advice for a woman who's feeling pretty ho-hum about her job...we're talking specific baby steps

Oh, and the story of Sarah's own careergasm? Will completely inspire you.

Sarah Vermunt is the Founder of Careergasm and the author of Careergasm: Find Your Way To Feel-Good Work. She helps people figure out what the heck they want so they can quit jobs they hate and do work they love. She writes about careers for Forbes, Fortune, Inc., and Entrepreneur. She lives in Toronto and online at Careergasm.com.

Sharon Stokes is a Life Coach and the creator of the Life Map and #theyearofme programs. Through these programs she helps people develop their confidence by working through fears and limiting beliefs, so they can go after anything they want in life.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into choosing adventure to shape your life. Sharon reminds us that adventures can be any size - even trying a new coffee shop counts! When we open ourselves up to new experiences, we always grow a little and take one step closer to life fulfillment.

Take a listen, and learn how:

-Choosing adventure has shaped Sharon's life

-To know when it's time to embrace adventure in your life

-Sharon's signature metaphor, The Life Map, can help you lead your life

-To deal with backseat drivers in your life

Find out more about Sharon and connect with her here:

Retreats: http://www.sharonstokes.ca/soul-adventure-retreat/

Free Life Map Guide: http://www.sharonstokes.ca/free-4-step-life-map-guide

Instagram: sharon.stokes

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/sharonstokescoaching

Twitter: @sharonjstokes

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharonstokescoaching