I used to tell myself I was going to put away the laundry before I went to sleep. And I knew, even as I was saying it, that I wasn't going to. That small comfortable story — repeated in hundreds of tiny private moments — was costing me more than I realized.

Martha Beck writes in The Way of Integrity: "To be in integrity is to be one thing, whole and undivided. Know what you really know, feel what you really feel, say what you really mean, and do what you really want."

This is an episode about the quiet, unsexy foundation of real power — and why it starts with telling yourself the truth, especially the truth you don't want to hear.

Question to carry into your day: What are you telling yourself that you know, if you're honest, isn't quite true?

Ready to do this work with real support? Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

If this one landed somewhere specific, write me at [email protected]. I want to hear about it. I read every one.

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I was on my way to Lourdes, sitting next to a man who coughed the entire flight, and I was catastrophizing at altitude in a way that was decidedly not my wise mind. My friend Karen said five words to me in the airplane aisle that I have not stopped thinking about since.

Viktor Frankl writes in Man's Search for Meaning: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

This is an episode about the space between what happens and how you respond — and the freedom that lives there.

Question to carry into your day: What have you decided about a situation in your life that you might not have to keep deciding?

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The night before I left for Lourdes, I was depleted in a way I hadn't fully admitted to myself. I went to my women's circle and I did something I don't always do easily. I asked to be held. And what happened on the way to the airport the next morning reminded me of something I thought I already knew.

Bell Hooks writes in All About Love: "Loving friendships allow us the chance to revel in community joy, navigate challenges, and remain connected amidst differences and disputes. Friendship is where many of us first encounter the redemptive power of love and community."

This is an episode about the difference between waiting to feel connected and actually asking for connection — and why the asking is the whole move.

Question to carry into your day: What are you carrying alone right now that you haven't let your people know about?

Ready to do this work with real support? Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

If this one is sitting with you, write me at [email protected]. Tell me what you need. I read every one.

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I did something recently that was genuinely hard for me — not complicated, just vulnerable. I needed to ask about ten people for something, and every single ask was nerve-wracking. And then the universe made me ask again. And again. And what happened on the other side of all that asking was not what I expected.

Kate Bowler writes in No Cure for Being Human: "We are as fragile as the day we were born, and we will need each other if we're going to tell the truth: Life is beautiful and terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between, but there's no cure for being human." Needing people is not a design flaw. It is the design. And the silence around the need costs everyone more than the ask ever would.

Question to carry into your day: What are you protecting someone from needing, that they might actually want to give?

Ready to do this work with real support? Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

If this one is sitting with you, write me at [email protected]. I want to hear about it. I read every one.

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Last week I sat in coaching session after coaching session hearing people make declarations about their lives with complete certainty — certainty that came not from experience but from fear. A business coach I worked with years ago had a question he would stop me with every time I did the same thing. Nine words.

It stopped me cold then and it stops me now. Pema Chödrön writes in When Things Fall Apart: "When we think something is going to give us misery, we don't know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all."

Fear and knowing are not the same thing. But they feel identical from the inside — and that is the whole problem.

Question to carry into your day: What are you treating as a fact that is actually a fear?

Ready to do this work with real support? Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

If this one is sitting with you — if you recognize the declaration, if you know exactly which fear you've been treating as a fact — write me at [email protected]. Tell me what you thought you knew. I read every one.

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I have been saying the same thing to people for twenty-five years — in treatment rooms, on retreats, seventeen miles deep in the forest with someone who desperately wants to be out of it.

And last week my social media coach said it back to me, and my mouth dropped open.

Urgency is never wisdom unless there is a lion chasing you. Everything else is your fear of trying to speed up the process.

Question to carry into your day: What are you trying to rush that is quietly asking you to stay in the process a little longer?

Ready to do this work with real support? Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

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• Questions or want to share your story? Email me at [email protected]

An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

Last week Danny, my seventy-five-pound lab mix, accidentally ran a little experiment for me. I had been giving him these yak milk bones and then taking them away before he overdid it, and every single time I gave him one, he went at it so frantically he would sometimes make himself sick.

So I tried something. I put five or six of them out on the floor at once, just to see what would happen. And the frenzy stopped. He picked one up, chewed for a while, put it down, wandered off. Because he finally felt secure in the supply.

Today's episode is about what Danny showed me about the places we grab and can't stop, and why the answer almost never turns out to be more discipline.

Question to carry into your day: What are you grabbing at, that you might be able to put down, if some part of you actually believed the supply was secure?

Ready to do this work with real support? Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

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An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

In today's episode, I'm sharing a conversation I had with my best friend during her surgery recovery week, when the house unexpectedly went quiet and she started running through a list of hobbies to pick up to fill the silence.

Tricia Hersey writes in Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto that we don't have to be everything, that we don't have to know everything, that we don't have to do everything, that there is space for the unknown and space for curiosity and mystery, and that we are allowed to stay here for a while.

Today's episode is about the cultural script that says empty time is a problem to solve, the spiritual alternative of being human beings instead of human doings, and what becomes possible when we stop filling the quiet and start living inside of it.

Question to carry into your day: Where in your life is the quiet asking you to stay a little longer before you fill it back up?

If the loop with food, your weight, your body, dieting, and the whole starting-over cycle is at least partly about not knowing how to be in your own quiet, the Stop Starting Over System was built for you. Book a discovery call and let's talk. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

Let's Stay Connected:

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An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

In today's episode, I'm sharing something I have been carrying for a long time and have not really known how to talk about, the loss of a friendship that was a main character in my life for decades, and the strange, unnamed ache of grieving someone who has not gone away in a way our culture knows how to recognize.

Francis Weller writes in The Wild Edge of Sorrow that grief was his gateway back into the breathing and animate world, that it was through the dark waters of grief that he came to touch his unlived life, and that there is some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive.

Today's episode is about the quiet grief of friendships that have ended, the language and ritual we have never been given for that kind of loss, and the spiritual practice of giving it the full place it deserves.

Question to carry into your day: What friendship grief have you been carrying without permission to mourn?

If this episode reached you, I would so love to hear from you. Write me at [email protected] and tell me about the friendship grief you have been carrying. I read every one.

Let's Stay Connected:

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An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

In today's episode, I'm sharing the trip I almost didn't take, the inner voice that told me I had to go anyway, and what was actually waiting for me on the other side.

Melody Beattie writes in The Language of Letting Go that courage and strength, ability and resourcefulness are never lacking when we follow the guidance within and trust in its direction, and that all doors will open and our steps will be guided, when the desire is spiritually sound.

Today's episode is about the quiet inner pull toward something your rational mind says no to, the spiritual practice of going anyway, and the truth that the why often does not show up until you arrive.

Question to carry into your day: What nudge from your innermost self have you been ignoring because it doesn't yet make sense?

Ready to do this work with real support? Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.allyone.io/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall-organic

Let's Stay Connected:

• Subscribe on YouTube
• Instagram: @mollycarmel
• Check out my Pocket Sages on my Amazon Storefront
• Questions or want to share your story? Email me at [email protected]

An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast