Last year I started the Soft Power Project. I was on my way to reinventing myself, and I really thought I had nailed it. This year I realized I was judging myself for judging myself.

Ever since I was little, I've had a camera in my head to judge myself and make sure I show up in a way that's acceptable. When I got divorced at 35 and my world got bigger, that conditioning got worse.

This June and July, when I felt my reels weren't getting the likes I wanted, I got really depressed, and I didn't understand why. I had thought healing was black and white. Instead of completely detaching from that conditioning, I just kind of switched audiences.

What I'm experiencing is kind of a messy middle, like being handed Lego pieces with no diagram. I'm still not sure who I am or where this is going. Validation is delicious, but it doesn't nourish us. So I ask myself, am I here?

If you're in your own messy middle, this is your invitation to sit with a cup of coffee, taste it, and keep that moment to yourself.

0:00 - The Camera in My Head
3:02 - Judging Myself for Judging Myself
6:01 - The Messy Middle and Validation
8:43 - Glow-Ups and the Imaginary Audience

#SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #SelfDiscovery #Reinvention
Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.fm/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments

Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

Mia Vivone's measure of a relationship is not the bouquet. It is the man who drove through a parking lot in the pouring rain to help a stranded couple. It was around Valentine's Day, the couple was stalled in the middle of a five lane road, and he happened to be carrying a charging box. She filmed it, posted it, and said: this is the man that I chose.

Sherry and Mia talk about what happens when the beliefs we absorbed as children start choosing our partners for us. Mia is back on the Soft Power Project after their first conversation about trauma and the nervous system, this time to say what emotional availability actually means. Not the absence of conflict. She defines it through conflict.

From dating apps to princess treatment to the fifty three years it took her to go no contact with her own mother.

When a couple tells her they never fight, what she hears is how much has frozen. How long ago the talking went quiet and the flirting stopped. And the women waiting to meet someone already healed are waiting for something she has not found in herself. The more she grows, the more comes for her to grow.

Mia says soft power is a sacred commitment to keep the promises she makes to herself. No matter what, she will honor who she is.

If nobody has ever shown you what repair sounds like, this is a good place to begin.

0:00 - Intro
1:10 - Same song, different partner
2:38 - What the dating apps make harder
11:19 - Can you do the work alone?
16:10 - Emotional availability and conflict
28:26 - Princess treatment and what it costs
33:22 - The beliefs we inherit
45:25 - Stability, not rich
52:44 - Soft power in a relationship

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Mia's first appearance, Episode 102: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVCRNJxuqvM

The UNTRIGGERED Woman Trauma Transformation System: https://miavivone.com/the-untriggered-woman-trauma-transformation-system

Dr. Aaron Beck on cognitive schema: https://beckinstitute.org/about/dr-aaron-t-beck/

ABOUT MIA VIVONE:

Mia Vivone is a relationship and success coach for trauma survivors and the creator of The UNTRIGGERED Woman Trauma Transformation System. She raised two children mostly alone after coming out of an abusive relationship, working two and three jobs across eleven years of college. She hosts The Untriggered Woman Podcast.
https://miavivone.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mia_vivone/

#SoftPowerProject #Relationships #EmotionalAvailability #WomenPodcast

Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments

Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

Putting your healing journey on social media means living in a constant contradiction between authenticity and performance. I don't think anyone ever told me that part.

Late June and early July arrived all at once. The Soft Power Summit in New York had just happened, I hit the 20k mark on Instagram, and my family life was coming apart. I'm working on resetting my relationship with my parents. When you set boundaries, people who don't know this new version of you push back. I let the ugliness come out. Then I spent about a week and a half in bed.

Then came the question of why I do this. I had started asking whether to work the hook better, reorder my own story so it lands harder. I'm not here to be an influencer. I'm here to take away the shame.

I'm still figuring out the balance. It still bothers me when something doesn't perform. On the Soft Power Project I want more unpolished conversations, the ones that aren't success stories. Soft power here looks like telling the story instead of performing it.

I'm here to find my people. If you're struggling with this, start with the why.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:17 - What Happened in June and July
0:51 - Resetting Things With My Parents
1:33 - A Week and a Half in Bed
2:13 - Authenticity Versus Performance
3:33 - I'm Not Here to Be an Influencer
5:04 - A Better Place With Social Media
6:42 - Why I Started, and What I Want Now
9:08 - What Do You Want to Know?

#SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #MentalHealth #SelfDiscovery
Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments

Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

Niamh Devine squatted on a strawberry farm for hours. When she stood, her left foot was dead, and no doctor could tell her why her body had done it.

Their best guess was nerve damage. Their best timeline was probably a year or two. She didn't like the word probably.

Her body had been speaking long before that. Years of sore throats while she swallowed what she actually wanted to say. An infection that arrived mid-broadcast, at the peak of a week she describes as nothing but pressure. She had no language for any of it yet.

Sherry and Niamh talk about what happens when you stop trying to fix your body and start listening to it. Fifteen years in Irish television, a career she reached the top of and felt nothing about, a Buddhist meditation hall she walked into knowing nothing, and a single word that dropped into her head on the fifth day and pointed the way out.

Her answer to what soft power means is one word long. Where she ends up is nowhere she set out for.

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro
1:36 - Fifteen years in Irish television
9:16 - What the sore throats were saying
11:20 - The foot that stopped working
19:41 - Conditioning and the eight week test
28:51 - Know that you're choosing it
34:09 - Compassion, not spiritual superiority
53:30 - Soft power is intuition
1:00:42 - Finally landing home

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Niamh Devine, Devine Mind Body: https://niamhdevine.com/
Listen to your body, Niamh Devine, TEDxTraleeWomen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNFKpMMMyk4
The Language of the Body: https://niamhdevine.com/language-of-the-body
Dr. John E. Sarno: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Sarno
The Beth Israel Deaconess mind-body back pain research Niamh cites: https://bidmc.org/news-stories/all-news-stories/news/2021/09/researchers-mind-body-program-outperforms-other-chronic-back-pain-treatment

ABOUT NIAMH DEVINE:
Niamh Devine is a TEDx speaker, meditation teacher, and somatic and energy practitioner. She spent more than fifteen years in Irish television and media before a health crisis no doctor could explain turned her towards the mind-body connection. She now works in emotional healing through Devine Mind Body, where her course The Language of the Body helps people read what chronic symptoms may be asking of them.

https://niamhdevine.com/ | https://www.instagram.com/devinemindbody/

#SoftPowerProject #MindBodyConnection #Healing #SelfDiscovery
Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments

Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

The week Sarah Tse left her corporate job, Australia went into a national lockdown. A long relationship had ended not long before. Home, alone, unemployed, all at once. She calls it the turning point.

Her heartbeat had surged to 130 on the train into the city, past the Harbour Bridge. She was exhausted at work and lost, and she thought something was wrong with her physically. So when the last round of restructure came, she decided she needed a change.

Sherry and Sarah talk about what happens when the title goes and you have to find out who is underneath it. She is a registered organisational psychologist who knows the power of positive self-talk, and she says that when it happened it was still tough. In the six months that followed she picked up a brush she had not touched since high school, and watched the paintings move from dark navy to something brighter without ever deciding to change the colours. The model she coaches now is be still, explore, act. And the distinction she keeps returning to, between leaders who splash around in the shallow and leaders who go deep before they rise high. Asked what soft power means, she says it is never soft. Handle people with care, she says, and know the difference between gentle and fragile. If you are between who you were and who you are next, this conversation will not rush you.

0:00 - Intro
2:47 - Her name in the grey box
4:50 - She left, then lockdown hit
7:52 - What actually helped her cope
11:30 - Painting and aromatherapy
16:55 - Be still, explore, act
21:39 - Shallow vs deep-dive leaders
36:10 - Why leaders get so lonely
43:34 - Soft power is never soft

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Sarah's TEDx talk, "When I'm fine isn't fine": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcVLJ4CudFI
Shema Coaching: https://linktr.ee/shemacoaching
Sarah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahtse1104/

ABOUT SARAH TSE:

Sarah Tse is a registered organisational psychologist, leadership coach and keynote speaker based in Sydney, and the founder of Shema Coaching. She spent about a decade in product innovation and service design across financial services and government before moving into coaching and speaking full time. She coaches in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

https://www.instagram.com/shema.coaching/ | https://linktr.ee/shemacoaching

#SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #Leadership #CareerTransition

Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments

Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

Anything healthy can become unhealthy if it's driven by fear, control, or self-policing. I'm learning that this year, in my own body.

I grew up in a family obsessed with wellness and longevity: my dad and his heavy medicine books, my mom making kombucha in a hot Taiwan kitchen thirty years ago, before it was popular, Tai Chi lessons at fourteen with fifty and sixty year olds. I loved ballet, and by ten I was watching my arms and stomach in the mirror. For decades after that I often skipped dinner, because it was the easiest way to control my weight.
Making the Soft Power Project finally got me into a gym for the first time in my life. I told my trainer I just wanted to feel strong. What my body asked for instead was dinner.
I'm still adjusting. I've gained weight, my stomach isn't flat, and my old self still comments on it. But soft power here looks like letting my body find its rhythm instead of policing it.
If you've done all the healthy things and still felt like something wasn't right, this one is for you.

What are you giving yourself permission to eat?

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Sherry's Health Journey Begins
5:25 - The Impact of Family on Wellness
9:57 - Self-Policing and Body Image
12:53 - Finding Balance and True Wellness

#SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #WellnessJourney #SelfDiscovery
Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments
Youtube
Instagram

Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

Ysabella Costa was a criminal defense investigator by morning and a stuntwoman by night, for two years, and barely stopped to feel any of it. Ventura County hired her at 23 and handed her homicides and sexual assaults. In 2019 her mom died of liver failure. California gives three days of bereavement. She took the three days, then went back to a nine-week homicide trial and the fifteen or twenty other cases behind it.

Sherry and Bella talk about what happens when a job teaches you to read everybody and never teaches you how to stop. Getting to know her clients humanized them, and for a while she trusted people more, not less. It also left her scanning everyone who came close, sure they were not real and would hurt her. A month in Japan with the first person she ever really loved is where the light came on.

What she built after that is small and physical. She keeps two hours before call time for journaling, a walk, and a workout, and drives home with no music. She broke an arm on a wire starting out and does not fear the work, because she trusts her body and the people around her. When Sherry asks what soft power means to her, Bella describes a punch: stay soft instead of rigid, and when you land it, that is when the power comes in. It is soft power as grace and trust. If you have ever kept your guard up so long you forgot how to lower it, this conversation goes somewhere unexpected.

(then the timestamps above)

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Bella’s essay on the career change: https://criminallychicken.substack.com/p/how-i-went-from-criminal-defense
Bella’s stunt account: https://www.instagram.com/itsysabellacosta/
9-1-1 on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7235466/

ABOUT YSABELLA COSTA:
Ysabella Costa is a SAG-AFTRA stunt performer and actor working in Hollywood, with credits including 9-1-1, Criminal Minds, and Lioness. Before that she spent five years as a certified criminal defense investigator. She is also a certified yoga instructor, and writes about cases, action, and healing on Substack.
https://www.instagram.com/lifeofbellacosta/ |
https://www.instagram.com/itsysabellacosta/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm14066951/

#SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #Stuntwoman #WomenPodcast

Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments
Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

Elisabeth Coleman's body had been sending burnout warnings for years, fatigue no amount of sleep could touch, and she pushed through all of it, until the night she woke up certain she was having a heart attack. The hospital said everything was fine. The next day she went to Washington, DC anyway, to advocate on Capitol Hill. She says she still chose work over her own well-being, when in reality we have only one body.
Sherry and Elisabeth talk about what happens when you've spent years believing your worth is how much you can endure. They sit with the frozen shoulder at 43 and the doctor who said you're too young for this, go to therapy. They follow the guilt to the self-worth underneath it, and the childhood where she learned to be a background character. From going no contact with her father in 2016 to a cocoon phase in Alaska, 4,000 miles away, to a definition of compassion that includes herself.
Elisabeth says she sat with the painful feelings in silence and let them come like waves, each less intense than the last, until it was just low tide, a gentle splash at her feet. By the end, she lands on her own definition of soft power: standing in her own power, sun on her face. It is soft power as calm instead of bold moves. This conversation goes somewhere unexpected.

0:00 - Intro
2:17 - Burnout and compassion fatigue
7:51 - Warning signs and the frozen shoulder
13:01 - Guilt, self-worth, and family roots
21:36 - Redefining compassion
24:11 - Going no contact with her father
29:56 - The cocoon phase in Alaska
38:21 - Why more people choose estrangement
49:44 - Life as a game and soft power

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
LeadHER Dynamics, her coaching and consulting practice: https://leadherdynamics.com/
Elisabeth on Substack: https://substack.com/@elisabethcoleman
Elisabeth on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadHERDynamics
Dr. Joe Dispenza, whose writing on emotion and rumination Elisabeth references: https://drjoedispenza.com/

ABOUT ELISABETH COLEMAN:

Elisabeth Coleman is a certified speech-language pathologist, certified executive coach, and the founder of LeadHER Dynamics, a coaching, consulting, and mentorship practice for women navigating leadership, transitions, and growth. For more than 23 years she has helped people navigate the conversations, decisions, and transitions that shape their careers, leadership, and lives. She writes and speaks about burnout, self-worth, and major life transitions.

https://www.instagram.com/spicymocha/ | https://leadherdynamics.com/

#SoftPowerProject #Burnout #CompassionFatigue #WomenPodcast #nocontact #family

Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments
Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~

Two of my reels about insecure leadership went viral, and it's bittersweet. I'm happy they resonate and sad about why.
Three and a half years ago I joined a startup. A year in, my team and I spent two months running fundraising. Then we were taken off the meeting list. No explanation. A month later we learned the fundraising wasn't even happening. Nobody told us. I kept brushing it off, telling myself I was too sensitive. Research has a name for it: workplace ostracism. Researchers call it cold violence. I call it quiet violence. It's the absence of behavior. It hurts like injury.
I brought the story to the Soft Power Project: the managers who admit they see competent people as threats, why we promote people and hope they'll figure it out, and what secure leadership could look like. To me, a leader's soft power is making it safe to speak, take risks, be honest.
If you've ever been quietly left out at work and wondered if you were imagining it: you're not crazy. This actually happens.
What are the real secure leader behaviors you've observed? Tell me in the comments.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Understanding Insecure Leadership
13:17 - The Impact of Insecure Leadership
17:45 - Defining Secure Leadership

Studies
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312555411_Workplace_Ostracism_A_Review_and_Directions_for_Future_Research

Chang, K., Kuo, C. C., Quinton, S., Lee, I., Cheng, T. C., & Huang, S. K. (2019). "Subordinates' competence: A potential trigger for workplace ostracism." The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 32(8), 1801–1827.
Cho, Y., & Fast, N. J. (2012). "Power, defensive denigration, and the assuaging effect of gratitude expression." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 778–782.
Peter, L. J., & Hull, R. (1969). The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong.
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). SAGE Publications.
https://www.science.org/content/article/rejection-pain-brain

#SoftPowerProject #SoftPower #Leadership #WorkplaceOstracism

Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments
Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?

Please fill out this form. See you there~

Mia Vivone was dropping weights at the gym and thought it was carpal tunnel. It was a broken neck from an old domestic violence injury she never got care for. Three months later she was in an eight and a half hour surgery that ended her career as a fitness instructor and a professional bodybuilder.
Sherry and Mia talk about what happens when the things that kept you alive start costing you. Mia explains why so many capable women who have been through trauma become the high functioning ones, running on what she calls an override switch, and what the mask costs the body when it stays on too long. She walks through exactly what she does in the moment shame arrives, which she says sounds like running into a burning building for a lot of trauma survivors.
From a fused neck to a framework she built out of sheer desperation to a definition of soft power she found in Rosa Parks.
Mia says her control is no longer externally located. It does not depend on anyone changing, or apologizing, or being present. It depends on the promises she keeps to herself.
If you have been holding it together for a long time, this is a Soft Power Project conversation that goes somewhere unexpected.

0:00 - Intro
1:47 - Survival mode has no off-switch
4:35 - A broken neck ends her career
9:37 - Why trauma makes women high-functioning
13:14 - The mask and what it costs the body
27:06 - Oxygen mask first: processing shame
35:51 - Same song, different partners
41:05 - Rosa Parks and where control lives
45:33 - Self-trust is keeping your promises

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
The UNTRIGGERED Woman Trauma Transformation System: https://miavivone.com/the-untriggered-woman-trauma-transformation-system

The Untriggered Woman Academy: https://www.skool.com/the-untriggered-woman-academy-5575/about

The Untriggered Woman Podcast: https://theuntriggeredwomanpodcast.com/

Dr. Gabor Maté, who Mia credits with the term compassionate curiosity: https://drgabormate.com/compassionate-inquiry/

Rosa Parks, Quiet Strength: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/886101.Quiet_Strength

ABOUT MIA VIVONE:

Mia Vivone is a professional trauma recovery coach in California and the creator of The UNTRIGGERED Woman Trauma Transformation System, a framework she built after a spinal injury ended her career as a fitness instructor and professional bodybuilder. She works with professional and entrepreneurial women moving out of survival mode by rebuilding the connection between mind, emotions, and body.

https://www.instagram.com/traumacoachmia/ | https://miavivone.com/

#SoftPowerProject #TraumaRecovery #NervousSystemRegulation #WomenPodcast
Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/cm5etbvm00a1i01sl6k6h99de/comments
Youtube
Instagram
Would you like to share your life stories?
Please fill out this form. See you there~