Clarity On Fire

It’s our last podcast episode of the year! So, we figured what better time than now to bring on an expert who can help us predict the future, right?? We sat down with our friend Madeleine—astrologist, tarot reader, and intuitive extraordinaire—and asked her all about… Some astrology 101 – What’s the difference between the sun, moon, and rising signs? Why do some people gel with their sign and others don’t? Tarot – What is it? Where did it come from? And why is it useful? Why are we all so obsessed with predicting the future? And when can that totally backfire on us? How changeable is the future, exactly? What’s the deal with free will? What’s the difference between a real-deal psychic/intuitive and a faker? What’s in store for us in 2019? What can we expect coming around the bend? Plus, she whips out our charts on the episode and gives us a quick compatibility reading! This is a great episode for any of you who’ve always been intrigued by this stuff but, like us, don’t know how to actually use it. After you

Paul knew he was a pretty self-aware person — he’d been on a personal development path for years — but he had no idea just how far he could go on this journey until he became a parent. Having kids, he quickly realized, turned out to be the most intense crash course in personal growth he could have ever signed up for. It’s made him redefine just about everything in his life — his values, his intentions, his concept of success, his sense of purpose, his relationship to his work, his sense of confidence and inner solidarity. Nothing in his life has been untouched by becoming a parent. It’s been a wild ride and nothing like Paul expected, but it’s also put his life into perspective in the most clarifying, fulfilling way. In an effort to become the best person and dad he can be, he’s been on a quest to learn everything he can about conscious parenting, which he explains and gives plenty of examples of in this week’s podcast. Listen in to hear Paul share his journey with us in this week’s interview with a normal pe

A client of mine, Jack, has been entrepreneurially minded for his whole life. He’s an idea machine, and he’s constantly coming up with cool business ideas. He can’t help it — it’s just how his brain works. Naturally, he’ll get excited about a new idea and want to share it with people. As soon as inspiration hits (which is frequently), he’ll text his brother or call his mom or tell the coworker on the other side of his cube. Their reactions aren’t always what he’d hoped for. In fact, they’re usually pretty discouraging. They’ll ask a million questions about how it will work — questions he can’t yet answer, since he’s still working out the idea in his mind — or they’ll jump to all the reasons why it’s risky or impractical or straight-up impossible. Usually, after these deflating conversations, Jack will feel less enthusiastic about the idea, and often he’ll end up abandoning it altogether. When Jack came to coaching, he told me he was afraid he’s all ideas and no action. He was feeling like maybe he wasn’t cut

Quick question—Have you ever said (or thought) something about your career like … “Something feels off, but I can’t figure out why.” “I should like this job, but I just don’t.” “Am I broken? Maybe I’ll never enjoy working.” “Has everyone else figured out something I haven’t?” If you’re nodding along with that, you definitely need to hear this conversation we had about the 4 Passion Profiles. (Make sure you’ve taken the Passion Profile Quiz first!). We talked about how we came up with the quiz, what it measures, the differences between the 4 potential results, and how to use your Profile to find your career direction. After you’ve listened, leave us a comment to let us know your Passion Profile result and how it resonates with you! LAST DAY TO SAVE SOME $$$ Today, December 14, is the LAST day to get $50 off the Passion Profile Short Course with code HOLIDAY. The PPSC is like a recipe for your career path. It’s the “secret sauce” that takes the thought out of trying to plot your career direction and prevents

When I was 7, I told anyone who asked that when I grew up I was going to be a journalist. I loved reading and writing, and sometimes I’d flip my mini indoor trampoline on its end and sit behind it and force a babysitter to “watch me on TV” as I read my version of the evening news. When I was 15, I altered that to “journalist or lawyer” (because my teen years were the ones where I proved, mostly to my poor parents, just how good I was at driving my points home, debating anything and everything, and never backing down from a fight). When I was 19, I decided to major in Public Relations because it was the closest thing to journalism that my school offered. And even though I was far from sold on either public relations or journalism, I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. And when I was 22, I flirted with the idea of becoming an archaeologist, mostly because I’d majored in art history and loved it and had also watched The Mummy a lot as a kid. Since then I’ve played around with the idea of becoming, in no partic

Welcome to another episode of Dear Krachel, a monthly advice segment where we answer audience questions about life, career, relationships, existential angst, and anything that helps you become a more whole, fulfilled version of yourself. On this episode, we’re answering questions from: Amy, a young woman in her late teens who’s ready to quit some childhood hobbies, but whose parents are reluctant to let her. How can she convince them that she’s serious and that it’s time to let go? Erica, who’s eager to quit her job in corporate America and start her own business, but has no idea how to get started. She knows she needs help, but doesn’t know what to ask for. Should she work with a career coach? Or a business coach? Maybe a consultant? Or do an online course? We help her sort through the options. Rebecca, who just got laid off and has no intention of ever working for someone else again … but knows her family will blow a lid when she tells them. Is it OK for her to lie to them over the holidays to avoid a fami

The following is a trick question: Would you rather feel miserable, or would you rather feel neutral? I get it. No one really wakes up in the morning wanting to feel miserable. If you had your choice between feeling misery — you know, the existential angst and the “I can’t do this for one more day” kind of stuff — and feeling indifferent, we all know which one of those sensations sucks less. Feeling neutral about your circumstances may not be fun, but it’s not awful. And honestly … that’s exactly the danger of feeling neutral. Like it or not, misery is motivating. If you feel like crap, you’re more likely to have a fire lit under you. You have nothing left to lose (since you can’t really feel worse), so you’re more willing to take risks and make changes and do something. But when life is "just OK" … there’s practically zero motivation. And without any sort of big incentive to change, you can find yourself stuck in a no man’s land — where life isn’t getting worse, but it’s not getting any better either — for y

Have I ever told you guys about the time I fired my therapist? Well, to cut to the chase—she was god-awful. I left every session with her feeling worse about myself than when I’d walked in. Personal development is hard work, but it probably shouldn’t make you cry for hours after the session is over. Honestly, that experience was part of what cemented my desire to become a coach. I knew I wanted to help people move forward with their lives, rather than continually delve into the past (which is what I perceived therapists as doing, for the most part). But that experience didn’t turn me off of therapy entirely. In any profession (coaching absolutely included) you’re bound to find incredibly talented people and god-awful people. Kristen and I have been dying to talk to a therapist of the “incredibly talented” variety for a long time—we’ve been compiling questions for years! And thankfully, one of my clients recently introduced me to her therapist, Sarah Rossmiller, who came on the podcast to talk to us about: Wh

You know that uneasy feeling you get when you know you’re doing something that’s not good for you … but you keep doing it anyway? Maybe you’re staying in a job or a relationship that isn’t really working, or you keep making excuses for why you don’t have time to go to the gym. Whatever’s causing you to be out-of-alignment, it gives you that awful, knot-in-your-stomach, uncomfortable-in-your-own-skin, shifty kind of feeling. I’ve been feeling that way a bit lately. As a coach who’s trained to intuitively pick up on these inconsistencies in other people, it’s particularly uncomfortable to get this feeling myself. I realized I haven’t been the best at walking my own talk in one major way the past few months, so I’m outing myself in the name of getting back on track. I’m forever telling my clients to pay less attention to what they don’t want, and to focus more on what they do want. In other words, stop complaining about what’s not working and start noticing and appreciating what is working. Why? Because what you

Calling all fellow bookworms, library nerds, and general lovers of literature — it’s time for another book club episode of the podcast! Whenever there are five Fridays in a month, we devote the extra Friday to a book that we can’t get enough of. This time we decided to have a conversation about one of our absolute favorite self-help books of all time, Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver. We talked about: How this book answers the BIG questions, like: “How do I stop worrying?” and “How can I know that things will work out?” How you can start believing that the Universe (or whatever you choose to call it) actually has your back. Why nothing is too small for “divine assistance,” and how to ask for help and signs along your path. Why delays and things not going according to plan are actually a good thing. Why the odds—even when they feel super low and not in your favor—don’t matter at all when you practice outrageous openness. Our personal stories of letting the Universe lead the way, and the crazy/funny synchro

Sailors used to live in fear of the doldrums—when the sea turns placid and the wind disappears, and your ship is left to float and drift as your fresh water and food stores dwindle ever lower. You’d think a terrible storm would be worse, and maybe it is (I’m no sailor, so I can’t speak with authority). But at least in a storm you have no choice but to act; you respond to what’s in front of you and hope you make it through, but there’s not much time for reflection or despair. I have precisely zero experience with either of those situations in a maritime setting, but a lot of experience in the proverbial sense. And I can confirm that, at least when it comes to personal development, it’s way easier to coach someone when they’re miserable and at rock bottom (in the “eye of the storm,” so to speak) than when they’re in the doldrums. Misery is motivating. Being down and out gives you a “what do I have to lose?” attitude. It lights a fire under your butt to make changes, take risks, and let go of crap that’s been ho

I’m unafraid to admit that I am a full-blown escapist. I can’t help it. I was born this way. The places I’ve been in my imagination feel just as real to me as places I’ve actually been—I defy you to tell me that I haven’t ever sat in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room doing homework with my quill and parchment! The truth is, the world in my head is often way more interesting than what’s going on in the real world. And more often than not, I’d rather be in my own fantasy world than dealing with whatever annoyances are popping up in my real life. But is that healthy? Doesn’t that make me (and the rest of us who are prone to escapism) immature, lazy, or irresponsible? In this Side Chat, Kristen and I are going down the rabbit hole and talking about: Who is most prone to escapism, and why. Why we can’t help but do it, even when we feel we shouldn’t. When escapism is normal and healthy, and when it crosses the line and becomes warped. Why most of us escapists aren’t great at, and definitely don’t enj

A client of mine, Erin, feels like she has the same frustrating conversation with her husband on at least a weekly basis. She’s an external processor, so after a stressful day at work, she finds it helpful to come home and talk about all the challenges she’s dealing with. For her, it’s just a way of decompressing and venting out her feelings of the day. Her husband, on the other hand, is a problem-solver. He’s logical by nature, plus his job requires him to be in solution-mode all day long. So the moment she starts talking about her problems at work, he starts offering solutions. The problem is that, when Erin’s in venting-mode, she’s not ready to talk about solutions. She just needs to release some stress without the pressure to DO anything about it just yet. So she gets frustrated by him constantly trying to “fix” the problem, and he gets frustrated that she’s not open to his solutions. Erin has tried to ask him to just listen when she’s venting, and he gives it his best effort. But because he cares about h

In December of 2017 Francisca Hernandez nearly died. She’d spent months feeling unwell, bouncing from doctor to doctor, trying and failing to get to the bottom of her health struggles. It came to a head 11 months ago when she (pretty miraculously) walked into the hospital under her own power, and ended up needing six pints of blood transfused into her body. What followed was a very serious surgery two months later. And, as people often do when they end up on death’s doorstep, she found herself taking a complete inventory of her life. The gratitude of being alive brought sharp clarity and made her admit to the fact that, leading up to her health crisis, she’d spent many years in a numbed-out haze, trying to avoid the despair and pointlessness she felt on a daily basis. Almost a year later, Francisca says she’s the happiest she’s ever been, and only getting happier. In this month’s interview with a normal person, Rachel talks to Francisca about: Why she ignored her intuition for so long, and why she actively t

It doesn’t matter where you’re from or what generation you belong to, I know you know someone who’s actually entitled. I’m not talking about people who are called “entitled” but don’t necessarily deserve it. (A lot of Millennials bear the brunt of this, and it’s an unfair generalization to make about an entire generation of people, considering how hardworking and engaged most of the Millennials I know are.) I’m talking about the person you know who thinks they legitimately should not have to work for anything, and who is sort of dumbfounded by the very idea of struggle. I’m talking about the person who is so deeply deluded that they constantly talk about how spectacular they are, even though they’ve done little that’s brag-worthy. We know this person. We roll our eyes at this person. The vast majority of us are definitely not this person. But here’s the kicker — most of us are still entitled, anyway. How does that work? How can so few of us resemble “that person,” and yet so many of us still be entitled? Well

Welcome to another episode of Dear Krachel, a monthly advice segment where we answer audience questions about life, career, relationships, existential angst, and anything that helps you become a more whole, fulfilled version of yourself. On this episode, we’re answering questions from: Catherine, who’s having some difficulty with a “jackhammer”-type boss. How do you work with someone who inadvertently makes you feel judged or less-than? Isabelle, who doesn’t want a spouse, kids, or a corporate career … which everyone insists she’ll regret not having. Are they right? Is there something she just isn’t seeing? Jasmine, whose boyfriend of 4 years says he wants to get married, but clams up whenever she tries to talk about the timeline. What should she do if she wants to trust his words, but his actions just aren’t lining up? After you’ve listened, leave us a comment to let us know if our advice for these three ladies resonated with you, too. Want to submit a question for our December episode of Dear Krachel? Fil

I think it’s safe to say that I don’t know a single person who hasn’t been through a period of burnout. Some temporary burnout is normal, especially after you’ve expended a big surge of energy. I remember feeling exhausted and lethargic for a couple of days after finals in college or after completing a big project at work. Temporary burnout is bound to happen from time to time, and as long as you give yourself some recovery time after a particularly busy or stressful period, you’ll recalibrate pretty quickly. Long-term burnout, however, is becoming more and more common, and it’s extremely hard on the body and mind. It comes from having too many expectations and putting forth a huge effort over a long span of time.  I had never experienced long-term burnout until I started a business, which is a huge effort and takes years of intense commitment. I love what I do and I’m grateful for this business every day, but that doesn’t negate the fact that building a business from the ground up is a massive undertaking an

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been a couch potato who decided the best way to motivate yourself was to go all out: signing up for a marathon, weightlifting every day, or going to yoga 6 times a week. Or maybe you decided it was time to clean up your diet, so you cut all sugar AND dairy AND wheat AND meat. Or perhaps you wanted to get clear on your career direction, so you bought ten self-help books and signed up for four courses in the space of a month. The obsession with “all or nothing” is REAL. And a lot of us are caught in a never-ending cycle of swinging from one end of the pendulum to the next, without feeling like we’re making any real progress (and driving ourselves crazy, to boot). In this month’s interview with an expert, we had a conversation with our friend and fellow coach Amy Everhart, who has lifelong experience with this pattern and is still a work in progress herself. We talked about: Where the “all or nothing” mentality comes from (we have multiple theories!). When it’s actually OK — and w

One of my clients has a passion and expertise for parrots (yet another reason I love coaching—you meet people with incredibly diverse interests). The other day we were talking about her desire to educate people with pet parrots about how to properly care for them, when she started dropping some facts that made me go, “Wait, hold up. Say that again.” Here’s what she told me: “Parrots are highly sociable animals programmed to live in a group. They’re also meant to fly dozens of miles a day (some species, like Macaws, fly up to 100 miles a day). They spend an enormous amount of physical energy doing this, as well as emotional energy in search of food, foraging, finding appropriate nest sites, and building and carving out those nests, as well as the energy it takes to raise young. They have voices meant to be heard up to 3 miles away so they can keep in constant contact with their flock. Then humans put them in a cage, left alone and fed an inappropriate diet. They’re devoid of those things they are meant to do a

Have you ever heard something that felt so true that it resonated in your very bones? Even if you couldn’t explain why you knew it was true? You just knew. That’s how I felt when I read this passage from the end of Elizabeth Gilbert’s mega-bestselling book Eat, Pray, Love: “The Zen Buddhists say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well—the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.” I mean, damn, right? In this brand new clarity-on-fire-side-chat (…get it?) Kristen and I are putting on our phi