The North Star

Changing careers can come with losing an identity that meant a lot to you.

As well as not knowing what comes next—and money stress.

Carla Contreras joins Mackenzie Belcastro to talk about starting over.

She shares what happened when a major career opportunity disappeared, leaving her with no money—and how that forced her to confront denial, grieve her identity as a food stylist, and recognize the gifts she had been overlooking.

This is a conversation on trusting your intuition, combining intuition with strategy, navigating major life transitions, and inviting in abundance.

Connect with Carla:

Substack

Podcast

Website

IG

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⁠⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — graceful digestion, come home to yourself, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Program "The Art of Working Well"⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to reduce stress so you can actually enjoy the career and life you've worked so hard to create

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

If you've been feeling burnt out, or close to it, this ep. is all about coming ALIVE again.

You may also like...

⁠⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — graceful digestion, come home to yourself, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Program "The Art of Working Well"⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to reduce stress so you can actually enjoy the career and life you've worked so hard to create

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

A gentle reminder for when the going gets tough / you're in a flare (physically or mentally).

PS. Apologies for the quieter sound/hair brushing sounds. This was very impromptu, but I felt the call to share asap.

You may also like...

⁠⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — graceful digestion, come home to yourself, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Program "The Art of Working Well"⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to reduce stress so you can actually enjoy the career and life you've worked so hard to create

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

It's hard to believe reducing stress levels is possible when it feels like you've tried everything.

We talk about navigating this difficult situation in this episode, as well as enjoying the upcoming Fall season, and not letting life pass you by due to overwhelm from work (and other facets of life).

You may also like...

⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — graceful digestion, come home to yourself, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Program "The Art of Working Well"⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to reduce stress so you can actually enjoy the career and life you've worked so hard to create

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

There are seasons when everything seems to be happening at once: more opportunities, more change, more responsibility, more difficult relationships, more uncertainty. And when there's a lot going on, it's easy to tip into feeling overcome by overwhelm.

But this is the year of the Fire Horse. We're being initiated into a faster energy, and we're meant to learn how to finally hold it. The truth is, you can. Regardless of your past, you can learn to move through a fuller season of life while staying well.

In this episode, I’m talking about super accessible nervous system regulation you can pull on to navigate daily stress. This isn't just about upping physical rest. This is about totally changing your relationship with your thoughts and your perception.

Because your circumstances matter. Your body matters. Rest matters. But so does the lens through which you experience your life.

We explore:

• Why doing more doesn’t automatically have to mean burning out

• How the mind and body influence one another

• How habitual thought patterns can contribute to stress and overwhelm

• Why changing your perspective isn’t the same as bypassing reality

• How to interrupt anxious thoughts and stop the mental spiral

• The connection between mindset and nervous system regulation

• Why mental rest can be just as important as physical rest

• How difficult experiences can become opportunities for growth and inner strength

• Why highly self-aware people may need more self-compassion—not more self-analysis

• What nervous system regulation actually means in everyday life

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, anxious, burned out, or like there’s simply too much happening at once, this episode is an invitation to consider a different possibility:

You're not here to shrink your life down so that it's super easy. You have drive and passion for a reason. You're here to meet your life with greater capacity, so that you can do the big things you're here to do.

What if the life you’ve spent years building no longer feels like yours? In this conversation, I sit down with Marloes Halmans—former coach, entrepreneur, and creator behind French Country Life—to explore what it means to live in alignment across multiple chapters of your life.

After building a thriving coaching business, Marloes began noticing signs that she'd outgrown the life she'd created and that something new was calling to her. That eventually led her and her family to move to the French countryside, close down her business, experiment anew with her creativity, and embrace a new way of living.

Together, we explore the nature of intuition, how it arrives in very down-to-earth everyday ways you’ve likely experienced plenty of times, how to start trusting its guidance, manage the discomfort that is bound to arise, and why pushing harder isn't always the answer.

If you've ever felt successful on paper but disconnected inside, this episode is for you.

In this episode we discuss:

• Common subtle signs of misalignment
• Learning to trust intuition and desire in the midst of uncertainty
• Maintaining a healthy balance of feminine and masculine energy — and why that matters when it comes to living into your dreams
• How to stop forcing life and begin responding to it
• Creating success that actually feels like yours
• The lifelong practice of tuning out the noise and returning to yourself

Connect with Marloes:

YouTube

Website

Instagram

Cookbook: A Taste of French Country Life

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⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — come home to yourself, clarity, money, graceful digestion, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Coaching⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to create spaciousness in your body and life, to become who you came here to be

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The answers you're looking for don't often come from doing more, but from creating more space. In this episode, Mackenzie reflects on the importance of slowing down, the spiral nature of healing, and why periods of uncertainty are often invitations to reconnect with yourself. She also shares a few practices that help process emotions, quiet the mind, and clarify the guidance of your own inner wisdom.

You may also like...

⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — come home to yourself, clarity, money, graceful digestion, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Coaching⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to create spaciousness in your body and life, to become who you came here to be

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

This is a conversation about how to go about "living the questions," rather than giving into the mind’s proclivity to spiral into fear. There's a pressure to have everything figured out, and there's also available to us the choice to detach from this pressure, to practice returning to the present moment instead.

This ep. is a reflection on resilience, intuition, nervous system regulation, and what it means to trust that clarity can unfold one step at a time. It's a gentle reminder for anyone navigating the unknown and learning to live more peacefully alongside uncertainty.

You may also like...

⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — come home to yourself, clarity, money, graceful digestion, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Coaching⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to create spaciousness in your body and life, to become who you came here to be

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Listen to Mackenzie Belcastro in conversation with the writer behind Delicate Hibiscus. Julia has shared her work online since 2019 through a daily writing practice. In this episode, she reflects on the role of devotion in her creative life, from early diary entries to her public work, and considers the relationship between consistency, self-trust, and expression. 

As the conversation unfolds, she speaks to periods of withdrawal and renewal, the balance between structure and softness, and the experience of approaching completion on a long-term project.

She also addresses the identity shift involved in bringing creative work into the public sphere and assigning monetary value to it, as well as maintaining an authentic voice within an evolving creative landscape.

Connect with Julia:

@DelicateHibiscus

You may also like...

⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — come home to yourself, clarity, money, graceful digestion, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Coaching⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to create spaciousness in your body and life, to become who you came here to be

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Hi angels, in this episode we talk about a few ways to navigate intrusive thoughts (with the help of principles found in ACT). We also talk about expanding our capacity through slowing down and healing — and integrating more of our masculine/yang energy into our lives after a period of leaning mostly into our softness/yin energy.

You may also like...

⁠⁠Meditations⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — come home to yourself, clarity, money, graceful digestion, etc.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠1:1 Coaching⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — to create spaciousness in your body and life, to become who you came here to be

⁠Reiki⁠ - distance energy healing

Find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mackbelcastro⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.