It's my birthday week, and birthdays make me honest. I lost a lot of my life, years of it, to my eating disorder, to addiction, to depression, long stretches where I was here but stuck behind a glass wall, unable to feel any of it.

What put the first crack in that wall was realizing I could think differently, though at the start choosing a new thought felt like pushing a boulder uphill. With practice it became a pebble.

I'm not behind the glass anymore and I love my life now. But the old thinking still drifts back, and this year's intention is to keep catching it and reclaiming the life I fought for.

This is an episode about recovery, guarding the good you fought for, and reclaiming appreciation for your life on purpose.

Question to carry into your day: Where has the old thinking quietly drifted back in, that it's time for you to reclaim?

Want to work together? Me too! Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.mollycarmel.com/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall

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An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

Two years ago I was completely sure I hated hot yoga. My best friend Josh twisted my arm, I went, and I hated every single minute of it.

And then I had one small thought: what if I could teach myself to love it? Not tolerate it. Not white-knuckle through it. Actually love it.

So I got a two-week pass and went every single day. Whether I felt good or terrible. Whether I wanted to or not. Just showed up.

This episode is about what happened next, and why commitment will always carry you further than motivation ever could.

Question to carry into your day: What's something you've written off as "I just don't like that," and what would it look like to commit to showing up for it and see what changes?

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

Let's Stay Connected:

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• 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

A friend of mine was apartment hunting with an agent who kept insisting there was nothing good out there, and this genuinely positive woman started to catch his hopelessness.

So I stopped her. You don't need fifty apartments, you need one, and there's always one good one, so don't make his belief your belief. And I told her what my spiritual advisor used to tell me: God is the ultimate real estate broker. She shifted her belief, and found the top floor of a two-family home with everything on her list.

This is an episode about how belief shapes perception, why the brain shows you what you expect to find, and how spirituality is really a shift in how you choose to see.

Question to carry into your day: Where have you decided there's nothing, before you've actually looked with hopeful eyes?

Want to work together? Me too! Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.mollycarmel.com/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall

Let's Stay Connected:

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An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

A client and I came up with an analogy years ago: she's the unicorn in a family of horses. And if you've ever felt like the different one, the too-sensitive one, the one who just doesn't quite fit, you already know exactly what that feels like.

A unicorn is still a horse. Just a magical one.

This episode is about how to love your family without expecting them to be something they're not, and how to stop punishing people for limits they can't help, while still getting your own needs met.

Question to carry into your day: Where are you asking someone to give you something they simply don't have, and what might shift if you let them be who they are while giving yourself permission to find the people who truly see you?

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

Let's Stay Connected:

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

An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

I hadn't cut my hair in eight months and had convinced myself that perimenopause had hijacked it. I finally went in and stood there complaining to my stylist about my dry, unruly hair, when a stranger came over and told me it was beautiful.

I brushed off the compliment. And she said, I'm losing my hair, I'd do anything for hair like that. Every single thing I was complaining about was something she was praying for. My problem was her prayer. It gave me real perspective, right there in the chair, not guilt, just a second pair of eyes on my own life.

This is an episode about why we can't see what we have, how spirituality is really a shift in perspective, and how to give yourself that shift instead of waiting for a stranger to hand it to you.

Question to carry into your day: What are you complaining about today that someone else would give anything to have?

Want to work together? Me too! Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.mollycarmel.com/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall

Let's Stay Connected:

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

An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

I'm out in Long Island with my dearest friends, where I go to my meetings a few times a week and everyone knows it. One Sunday night at dinner, I said I had to leave early for a second meeting, and as I got up, my best friend Jason quietly pulled me aside.

He asked if everything was okay, said he'd noticed that was two meetings that day, and put his hand on his heart: I just wanted to check in with you. I didn't feel judged for a second. I felt loved. It turned out I was the speaker that night, so he was wrong, and it didn't matter at all. It was a masterclass in how to check on someone you love.

This is an episode about the difference between checking up on someone and getting curious, why silence and confrontation both miss, and how to ask the real question with an open hand.

Question to carry into your day: Who in your life could you get curious about today, not because you've decided something's wrong, but because you love them and you want to know?

Want to work together? Me too! Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.mollycarmel.com/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall

Let's Stay Connected:

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• 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

I started a podcast with two dear friends. It was magic. And then slowly, it wasn't. But I kept pushing through, telling myself good friends and good projects deserve endurance.

Then one of them sent an email saying it was time to come to a natural close. My stomach dropped. And after a long walk with Danny, I realized the truth: I'd just been too scared to say it first.

This episode is about the quiet endings that sneak up gently and whisper, this has run its course, and how to meet them with grace instead of grief.

Question to carry into your day: Where in your life might you be gripping too tightly or cutting too quickly, and what would completion look like if you met it with grace instead of fear?

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

Let's Stay Connected:

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

An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

I've been collecting rituals for years, from different teachers and traditions. Full moon ceremonies, burns where I write out what I'm carrying and set the paper on fire, nights with friends where we say our intentions out loud.

I don't do all of them and I skip whole seasons. But every time I do one, I get calm and I get connected. I had a boyfriend once who thought it was bizarre and asked why I did this, and I said, what's the downside?

I've thought about that for years. His question is the question. Not why do I do it. Why did he need a reason.

Today's reading is from Wintering by Katherine May, quoting D.H. Lawrence: "We must get back into relation: vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe."

This is an episode about what rituals actually do for us, why a culture that measures everything quietly cut them, and what moved into the empty slot where they used to be.

Question to carry into your day: What are you not doing because you can't explain what it's for?

Want to work together? Me too! Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.mollycarmel.com/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall

Let's Stay Connected:

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• 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

My friend Michelle pulled up to teach our class together holding her laptop, completely fried, planning to keep working in the car. And I said, put it down. Let's just talk.

By the time we got to class, I could see it. So I told her, let me teach the whole thing. Just rest. She cried in the closing circle. She said she didn't realize how badly she needed to not be in charge for a minute.

This episode is your permission slip.

Question to carry into your day: Where in your life could you give yourself permission to pause, ask for help, and stop holding everything together on your own?

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

Let's Stay Connected:

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

An Operation Podcast production | @OperationPodcast

I was staying with friends in North Carolina, and every morning I took all three dogs on a walk. It was my contribution, lifting a real thing off my friends' plates. And at first it was chaos: three dogs, tangled leashes, wet dogs climbing all over the car. But almost a month in,

I noticed it had become the most peaceful part of my day. I even took all three to a roadside coffee shop on the trail and they sat there like little angels. It didn't get easy, I got fluent, and the only thing that made me fluent was doing it over and over when it was still hard.

This is an episode about the clumsy beginning of every worthwhile thing, why we quit right before it gets good, and how repetition quietly turns chaos into intuition.

Today's reading is from Kathleen Norris's The Quotidian Mysteries, on how the thing we think we're only getting through has the power to change us.

This is an episode about staying through the hard beginning.

Question to carry into your day: What are you thinking about quitting, that might just be in the clumsy beginning part, not the wrong part?

Want to work together? Me too! Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether the Stop Starting Over System is right for you. https://link.mollycarmel.com/widget/bookings/mc-discoverycall

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