Most fights don't start with the socks on the floor or the text that went unanswered. They start because you're tired, stressed, or already at your limit - and suddenly, you snap, shut down, or say something you immediately regret.

What if the fastest way to stop this wasn't better communication, but just learning how to pause - to breathe - before you react?

From decades helping people lead themselves first, manage their emotions, and build relationships that actually feel good, Dawnese Openshaw shows how slowing down first can completely change the way you relate to your partner, your kids, your colleagues, or anyone who pushes your buttons.

In this episode, you'll find out why the thing you're upset about is almost never the real problem, how to turn tension into connection, and the one simple practice that can stop arguments before they even start.

1. Welcome Dawnese! Her story and how she came to do this work.
2. Why leadership doesn't start with influence or confidence - it starts with becoming the CEO of your own life
3. The unexpected teenage moment that sparked a lifelong obsession with relationships and leadership
4. Why making people feel valued is more powerful than being right - and how this quietly transforms every relationship
5. The subtle shift from "give and take" to "give and receive" - and why one builds resentment while the other builds trust
6. What 30 years of marriage teaches you about commitment when walking away feels easier
7. Why "never go to bed angry" is actually some of the worst relationship advice out there
8. How pausing at the right moment can prevent words you can't take back
9. The real reason arguments escalate - and why the thing you're fighting about is almost never the thing
10. Reactive vs creative energy: how emotional regulation changes the outcome of every conversation
11. What "space and grace" really means - and how it creates repair instead of distance
12. The difference between emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and relationship intelligence (and why confusing them causes problems)
13. How co-regulation works - and why calming yourself first helps calm everyone else
14. Why validating someone doesn't mean agreeing with them (and how this one distinction saves relationships)
15. How to find the issue underneath the issue - even when someone insists "it's just the socks"
16. Why modern technology increases loneliness instead of connection - and what actually creates oxytocin
17. How to create meaningful human connection in a disconnected world, even if you're introverted
18. Why freedom begins in the nervous system, not in external circumstances
19. Dawnese's #1 way to start unleashing your freedom today

1. Check out Dawnese's website: https://leadthechange.org
2. Connect with Dawnese on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dawnese.openshaw/
3. DM us TRAINING on Instagram to join the leadership training and transform your life in 90 days: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

How many goals have you declared and abandoned? The business revenue target. The dating goal. The fitness transformation you swore would happen this year.

You had the strategy. You took some action. You even told people about it. And yet somehow, you're still exactly where you were, wondering why nothing sticks, why momentum disappears, why it works for everyone else but not for you.

Here's what separates the goals you crush from the ones that end up in the graveyard: commitment. Not the comfortable kind where you do what feels easy. The kind where you close every back door and become whoever you need to be to make it happen.

This episode reveals why dabbling guarantees failure, what actually creates unstoppable momentum, and how to tell if you're truly committed or just lying to yourself about it.

1. The difference between commitment and dabbling - and why taking action doesn't mean you're actually committed
2. Why "trying" is a lie you tell yourself: what Yoda knew about doing versus pretending
3. What closing the back doors means - and why your fear is exactly what you need to face
4. The one thing you're avoiding because it's uncomfortable - and why that's precisely the action that will move the needle
5. What Steve Harvey does daily that manifests his reality
6. The growth moment disguised as despair: what to do when you're crying on your bedroom floor convinced it's not working
7. How to set intentions that create momentum instead of getting hijacked by everyone else's demands
8. Why you can't do this alone - and what kind of support actually keeps you in committed action when it gets hard

1. The Leadership Language Upgrade: 3 Common Words to Replace Today (Part 1)
2. DM us TRAINING on Instagram to join the leadership training and transform your life in 90 days: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

Ever feel trapped? Like you're stuck in a situation you can't control and there's no way out?

Most of us deal with that by waiting. Waiting for circumstances to change. Waiting until we can look back years later and say "okay, I guess that made me stronger."

What if you didn't have to wait years to feel free again?

Isaac Davis found a way to create freedom while sitting in a prison cell. At the time when most people would lose hope, he turned the darkest moment of his life into a transformative experience that changed his life forever - as well as the lives of the people around him now.

In this episode, you'll discover how to stop feeling powerless when life's out of your control, how to find meaning in hard moments instead of just surviving them, and why failing more might actually be what gets you unstuck.

1. Welcome Isaac! From prison to becoming a transformational coach
2. Why helping people the wrong way can get you in as much trouble as not helping at all
3. The "Hindsight Window": the gap between when something bad happens and when you look back and say "I'm glad that happened"
4. How Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz - and why Isaac applied this theory in the back of a prison van
5. The one thing you still have when everything else is taken away that helps you rebuild your life
6. The difference between helping someone and supporting them - and why it matters
7. Why people don't actually know their real problem until someone listens without trying to fix it
8. The "Clarity Horizon" visualization, a powerful tool for finding clarity in dark times
9. Project Failure: the radical idea that we should all fail more to be more successful
10. The difference between growing through a challenge and just going through it
11. Isaac's #1 top to create freedom today

1. Connect with Isaac on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/isaac-davis
2. Check out Isaac's coaching on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/logos-coaching1
3. Check out Isaac's website: www.logoscoaching.co.uk
4. DM us TRAINING on Instagram to join the leadership training and transform your life in 90 days: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

How many opportunities slipped through your fingers because you never opened your mouth? That job. That relationship. The help you needed when everything was falling apart.

You sat there waiting for someone to magically know what you wanted, or you convinced yourself that asking made you pushy, selfish, demanding. And the whole time, the answer stayed no - because you never gave anyone a chance to say yes.

Here's what actually happens when you ask: doors open that you didn't even know existed. A soldier rewrote a decades-old military rule with one letter. A woman moved across the world and built a business without a step-by-step plan. Someone survived a medical crisis because they finally stopped trying to handle it alone.

In this episode, you'll discover why silence guarantees you nothing, what belief is really keeping you from speaking up, and how to make requests that create possibilities instead of shutting them down.

• Why your partner can't read your mind - and what Jordan Peterson means when he says they're "stupid" if you expect them to
• The real fear behind staying silent: what a "no" actually means versus the story you tell yourself about not being important enough
• What "enrollment conversations" are - and why everything you want sits on the other side of one
• The wishy-washy request trap: why women avoid being "that demanding woman" and then wonder why nothing happens the way they wanted
• How unsaid expectations breed resentment - and why "I'll just do it myself" destroys relationships
• Why analytical minds stay paralyzed: the obsession with knowing exactly how before taking a single step
• What "the how is not your business" actually means - and why it's the only way anything actually happens
• Why we reserve asking for the last desperate moment instead of making it the first strategic move
• The belief underneath all the resistance: "I don't deserve to ask for what I want" - and how to figure out what yours actually is

• DM us TRAINING on Instagram to join the leadership training and transform your life in 90 days: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

When you're having a terrible day, your brain tells you to shut down. Close off from people. Focus on yourself until you feel better. It makes sense: how can you support anyone else when you're barely holding it together?

What if we flipped the script and, in the words of our leadership mentor Bogac Ozgen, focused out - on other people, their problems, how we can support them? It sounds insane. But it works because when you stop obsessing over what's broken in you, you stop feeding it.

Bogac Ozgen, a security consultant who worked with Citibank and Vodafone for over 20 years, spent 40 years avoiding people entirely. Then he took a leadership training that shifted the way he saw people, taught him to focus out, and create supportive, connected communities all over the world. So many people transformed their lives because he had the courage to transform himself and focus out.

In this episode, you'll discover why focusing out during struggles works when focusing in keeps you trapped, how "listening to the listening" changes every conversation, and why 5-6 person micro-communities anchor you when everything's changing.

• Welcome Bogac! His story and how he become a leadership mentor (and a powerful influence on our lives)
• Why hiding from people when you're struggling keeps you stuck for decades
• What "focusing out" actually means - and why it works when focusing in fails
• The practice that rebuilt a broken father-son relationship completely
• The micro-community strategy: why 5-6 people anchor you better than trying to do it alone
• "Listening to the listening:" the little known-skills that resolves conflicts and transforms relationships
• The decision that separates real leaders from "complete Hoover" leaders
• How to hold people high in their potential when they can't see their own dreams yet
• Why leadership's changing right now - and why collaboration is the only way through
• Bogac's advice to start unleashing your freedom today

• Connect with Bogac by sending him an email to [email protected]
• DM us TRAINING on Instagram to join the leadership training and transform your life in 90 days: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

You know that thing you've been wanting for years? The promotion. The relationship. The move. The business. The life that feels like you.

Time keeps passing. You keep trying harder, learning more strategies, pushing through... and somehow you're still stuck in the exact same patterns, same frustration, hitting the exact same walls.

What if the problem was never your strategy? What if everything you've been told about success, growth, and transformation has been keeping you exactly where you are?

Three coaches discovered the answer when they went through transformational leadership training: a 4-month experiential program that finally broke them free from decades of self-sabotage, toxic patterns, and invisible limits. The results were so profound that they're now launching their own leadership center to bring this work to everyone who's tired of being stuck.

You'll discover what actually happens inside the 4-month experiential program that creates what seem impossible results in 90 days, why this work is radically different from every personal development program you've tried, and how to join their first class launching in January.

• The big announcement: Legacy Vision Leadership Center is officially launching its first class starts late January 2025
• What transformational leadership actually is (hint: it has nothing to do with being in charge or having a title)
• How people find this work when everything else has failed
• Why your strategy is never the problem and what really needs to shift to create different results in your life
• What life looks like before leadership training: a decade of blaming others, the same relationship ending on repeat, too shy to speak in public, working yourself to death with an alcoholic partner and no friends
• The "chains and bricks" metaphor: why the same situations keep showing up in your life over and over
• The actual results after 4 months: what becomes possible in under a year when the invisible blocks finally drop
• Why LIFE IS NOW - and why you don't have to wait for a crisis to finally make the change you know you need
• What happens inside the programme and how you go from understanding your wiring to breaking your identity to declaring goals you crush in 90 days instead of struggling for years
• What "experiential training" actually means - and why it's different from programs that send you home to figure it out alone
• The difference between "doing" and "being" - and why being comes first
• Why having hundreds of people refuse to buy your excuses changes everything
• How to book a call to join the January 2025 class

• DM us TRAINING on Instagram to join the leadership training and transform your life in 90 days: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

Most people think you have to fight through depression, push past trauma, resist the darkness. But what if that's the exact thing keeping you stuck for months or years?

There's a radically different approach that collapsed months-long depressive episodes down to two days. And it's not about positive thinking or pushing through. It's about acceptance. 

From co-founding a top 50 goth band to walking away at peak success, getting canceled for speaking truth, and rebuilding through VR and mentorship, Gopal Metro's story proves that what we resist persists, but what we accept transforms us.

In this episode, you'll discover why what we resist persists, how goth music became a healing tool for unprocessed trauma, and the meditation practice that stabilizes your life when everything goes sideways.

• Welcome Gopal! From yoga prodigy at Yogaville to co-founding a top 50 goth band
• Why goths find beauty in sorrow - and what that teaches about processing pain
• How fighting depression made it last months and accepting it reduced episodes to two days
• How stillness meditation actually works: from spaghetti thoughts to complete silence
• What happens when you witness the space between your thoughts
• The narcissistic best friend who turned a dream band into a toxic nightmare
• Walking away from Bella Morte at its peak to save your own life
• What happened when speaking truth about predatory behavior got him canceled too
• How leadership training woke Gopal up after living in a shell of trauma
• The VR Chat discovery that reignited the same passion as founding a band in the 1990s
• Starting The Conclave and mentoring artists to 400,000 plays, million visits, and professional gigs
• Launching Main Quest Music during an MBA in entrepreneurship
• Why "done is better than perfect" isn't a cliché. It's how you actually create freedom
• Gopal's two ways to unleash your freedom

• https://MainQuest.io - $500 off our 6-month Group Coaching program with code UNLEASH
• DM us GRADUATES at @freedomwithgiorgiaanddawn to join the Graduates Leadership Circle
• Connect with Dawn and Giorgia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

How long have you been thinking about that decision? You know the one. Maybe it's pivoting your business without losing everything you've built. Maybe it's finally leaving that relationship that's just... fine. Maybe it's the move, the career change, the thing that keeps you up at night because you can't stop weighing the options.

Here's what's actually happening: you're not stuck because you don't know what to do. You're stuck because you've never been taught how to make a decision that actually sticks.

And the difference between people who create the lives they want and people who stay trapped in analysis? They've mastered the power of decision.

In this episode, you'll discover why making a decision is your ultimate superpower, how it's completely different from choosing between options, and why the moment you truly decide is the moment everything shifts - your energy, your clarity, and your entire future.

• What the word "decision" actually means—and why most people have never truly made one
• Why unlimited options don't create freedom - they create paralysis (and what actually sets you free)
• The hidden pattern keeping high achievers trapped: you can see exactly what everyone else should do, so why can't you see it for yourself?
• The real reason you're avoiding the decision you know you need to make (hint: it's not fear of failure)
• How to know if you're stuck in "choice mode" - and why this keeps you spinning in circles instead of moving forward
• Why your brain keeps running the pros and cons list on repeat (and what it's really trying to protect you from)
• The uncomfortable question that reveals who you're still trying not to disappoint- and why that's costing you your freedom
• Why clarity doesn't come before the decision (and what actually happens the second you commit)
• The fear that stops more people than failure ever could - and why you might be more afraid of things going RIGHT
• What changes the instant you make a decision based on vision instead of fear (even when you have no idea how you'll make it happen)
• The one question that cuts through every excuse and reveals the decision your soul made a long time ago

• DM us GRADUATES at @freedomwithgiorgiaanddawn to join the Graduates Leadership Circle
• Connect with Dawn and Giorgia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

Ever have one of those moments where you realize you've been living someone else's life? Like you wake up one day and think, wait - whose dream am I actually chasing here?

Most of us are running on autopilot, building what our parents wanted, what makes sense financially, what looks good from the outside. And then we wonder why it all feels so heavy. Why success doesn't feel like we thought it would. Why we're exhausted even when things are "working."

Your soul has a purpose. And when you ignore it, everything becomes a fight. But when you actually align with it? That's where real freedom lives. Not the hustle-harder, grind-it-out kind of success. The kind where things flow because you're finally building what's actually yours.

Janika's been through all of it: rejecting her gifts, getting sick, building businesses that weren't hers, and then finding her way back. This conversation goes deep on what it really means to find your purpose, how to tell if you're on your path or someone else's, and what changes when you finally choose yourself.

• Welcome Janika! Her story and how she started pursuing her calling.
• The cost of rejecting who you really are to fit in
• Why meditation is the key to getting back to yourself after years of being lost
• What your soul's birth frequency is and how it brings you home
• The moment her guides told her: accept it or heal it
• Why inheriting your parents' business dream can literally make you sick
• The hard conversation when you choose yourself over family expectations
• Why so many entrepreneurs build businesses that feel like shit to run
• The 70-year-old woman who'd never once asked herself "what do I want?"
• How your beliefs from childhood are running your life (and they're not even yours)
• The difference between being and doing - and why one keeps you stuck
• Why feeling stuck is actually your soul telling you you're off path
• How to witness your thoughts instead of letting them control you
• The simple gratitude shift that changes how you see everything
• Choosing from love vs choosing from lack (and how to tell the difference)
• How to work with Janika and what programs she offers
• Janika's #1 way to unleash freedom

• Follow Janika on Facebook
• DM us GRADUATES at @freedomwithgiorgiaanddawn to join the Graduates Leadership Circle
• Connect with Dawn and Giorgia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn

Ever caught yourself lying to "protect" someone's feelings, only to watch it blow up in your face anyway? Yeah, we've all been there.

This episode is about why those "harmless" white lies are actually destroying your relationships, your business, and probably your sanity.

We're breaking down how to give feedback and be honest without being harsh, why your team member who's "doing their best" might just need you to be real with them, and the exact phrase that can turn a fight into an actual conversation.

If you've ever avoided a hard conversation because it felt too uncomfortable, this one's gonna sting a little - in the best way possible.

• The friendship-ending mistake Giorgia made by trying to "protect" someone she loved (and how radical honesty saved it after years of tension)
• Why your controlling friend/partner/coworker acts that way - and it's not what you think (spoiler: it's about safety, not dominance)
• What to do when your employee is failing but you're too uncomfortable to say it (hint: you're probably making it worse for everyone)
• The Italian massage therapist story that shows how to give feedback without getting your head bitten off
• Why feedback feels like an attack (and how your childhood programming is sabotaging your adult relationships)
• The magic phrase that stops defensiveness in its tracks - works even if the other person has never done "the work"
• How to know if you're giving feedback from love or manipulation - because your intention leaks out no matter how perfect your words are
• When someone refuses to hear your feedback - the real reason they're closed off and how to open that door
• The vomit-dumping problem most people don't realize they're doing (and the simple question that fixes it)

• DM us GRADUATES at @freedomwithgiorgiaanddawn to join the Graduates Leadership Circle
• Connect with Dawn and Giorgia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freedomwithgiorgiaandawn