The Liberated Life - Hard Conversations Worth Your Courage

"It's not your personality. It's your nervous system."Dr. Alena Čandová has worked with the body and nervous system for more than 20 years as a doctor of chiropractic and a trauma-informed coach. She's the author of Grace Over Grit: The Neuroscience of Claiming Your Inner Authority.For years she told herself she was just an easygoing person. The truth was she had no boundaries. She said yes when her body said no, and she'd lived that way so long she mistook the pattern for who she was.In this conversation, we get into why the hard conversation isn't really a courage problem. You can rehearse it, find the courage, and walk in, and still lose every word you planned to say. Alena explains what's happening in your body when that happens, and what to do about it.We talk about:— Resilience that's really endurance, and how we mistake patterns for personality— Where your body tells you you're out of alignment (the knot, the clenched jaw, the tight chest)— Why you rehearse a conversation 100 times and still lose the words when you get there— "Little Robin is running the show": the younger you who shows up in hard moments— Breathing into the tension instead of breathing it away— Practicing a hard conversation, and the moment the simulator made me cry— Why being hard on yourself makes it impossible to learn— Why we do great at work and struggle at home— Resentment as a messenger, not a flaw— Performing peace vs. real peace— One small thing you can do today to help your body feel safe enough to say the true thingMORE FROM DR. ALENA ČANDOVÁWebsite, book, and booking: sattvaintegralhealth.comBook: Grace Over Grit: The Neuroscience of Claiming Your Inner Authority—🗓️ FREE LIVE WORKSHOPClose One Loop — Live: "How to Go Home for the Holidays Without Becoming Who You Used to Be"Tuesday, November 17, 7:30 pm Mountain (6:30 PT / 8:30 CT / 9:30 ET) on Zoom.Old roles, old rooms, old conversations, and how to show up as who you are now. You'll leave with the role named and your first sentence ready.Register free: closetheloopsnow.com/livePrefer to start on your own? My free Close One Loop tool is at closetheloopsnow.com.Want to practice the conversation first? Try the Difficult Conversation Simulator: try.pplskillz.comThe Liberated Life is hosted by Robin Quinn Keehn, Human Dynamics Specialist, Certified Mediator, and author of Stop Stealing From Yourself.What conversation is worth your courage? If this resonated, there's probably an open loop of your own worth closing. My free Close the Loop tool walks you through it in about 15 minutes — a gentle place to start. 💛 → closetheloopsnow.com

"Sometimes we fail to give people feedback because we're scared of their reaction."Omar L. Harris spent 22 years running businesses before he ever consulted on one, much of it as a senior pharma executive. Along the way he noticed something he couldn't unsee: companies paying six figures for culture programs that quietly disappeared by fall. Today he calls himself a culture systems architect, and he's the author of nine books.In high school, Omar was first-chair oboe when his band director told him the truth: a freshman phenom was coming, and he was about to lose his seat. Instead of letting it happen quietly, the director challenged him to switch to bassoon. By senior year, Omar was all-state.That's the heart of this conversation. Staying quiet is the easy thing. Telling someone the truth, for the sake of their growth, takes courage.We talk about:— Why leadership is a vocation, not a location (your title makes you a leader of others; what you do makes you a leader)— The band director who told him the truth, and why it changed everything— Why we avoid hard conversations: fear of rejection, fear of their reaction, fear of changing the relationship— Why friction is necessary, and what productive conflict looks like— Nice vs. kind: the day my seventh-grade grandson stood up in class, and what his teacher said about it— "Calling people up" to a standard instead of meeting them down at their level— Why feedback is a gift, and a requirement for growth— Omar's free WHOM character assessment: work ethic, heart, optimism, maturity— Where character comes from: scarcity vs. abundance, and the idea that you already have enough— Lead with LOVE: listen, understand, validateMORE FROM OMAR L. HARRISFree WHOM character assessment: characterdna.comEverything Omar is doing: growwithwhom.comLinkedIn: Omar L. Harris—If you've been staying quiet to keep the peace, my free workshop is this Tuesday night.🗓️ Close One Loop — Live: "How to Stop Being the Bigger Person"A free 50-minute Zoom — Tuesday, October 27, 7:30pm Mountain (6:30 PT / 8:30 CT / 9:30 ET).Why keeping the peace keeps costing you, and the conversation that changes it. You'll leave with one loop named and your next move on it.Register: closetheloopsnow.com/livePrefer to start on your own? My free Close One Loop tool is at closetheloopsnow.com.The Liberated Life is hosted by Robin Quinn Keehn, Human Dynamics Specialist, Certified Mediator, and author of Stop Stealing From Yourself.What conversation is worth your courage? If this resonated, there's probably an open loop of your own worth closing. My free Close the Loop tool walks you through it in about 15 minutes — a gentle place to start. 💛 → closetheloopsnow.com

"I looked at myself and said, 'Who is this?'"When Ben Barbic was a little boy, a wildfire took his family's home in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Around the same time, a manager embezzled from the family's motorcycle dealership, and the business was gone too. They rebuilt, and two years later an earthquake took the house again.Living in a donated trailer with no running water, Ben found a keyboard. Music became the place he could go.At 28, he hit rock bottom. Then his son and girlfriend gave him a teddy bear that said, in their voices, "We love you, Daddy." He looked in the mirror and didn't recognize who was looking back. That's when the climb began.Eighteen years later, Ben is a signed recording artist and the author of Rise & Climb: Finding Purpose Through Pain, a memoir where every chapter is anchored to a song he wrote at that moment in his life.We talk about:— What losing a home does to a child, and losing an identity along with it— Hiding vs. flipping hard things into fuel— What his mom and dad each modeled about resilience— Rock bottom at 28, and the teddy bear that changed everything— Taking his life one category at a time— Getting clear first: what he gave up so he could see— Being "frozen in progress," making music no one ever heard— A memoir built like an album, and the companion soundtrack— The barbell that survived the fire, and why he still lifts it— The first rung for anyone at rock bottom: do one small thing— Peaks, valleys, and plateaus: why you never stay in the valleyIf you're rebuilding after a loss of your own, or loving someone who is, this one is for you.MORE FROM BEN BARBICBook: Rise & Climb: Finding Purpose Through Pain (Amazon, Audible, wherever books are sold)Website: riseandclimb.comMusic: search "Ben Barbic" on any streaming service—🗓️ Close One Loop — Live: "How to Stop Being the Bigger Person"A free 50-minute Zoom — Tuesday, October 27, 7:30pm Mountain (6:30 PT / 8:30 CT / 9:30 ET).Why keeping the peace keeps costing you, and the conversation that changes it. You'll leave with one loop named and your next move on it.Register: closetheloopsnow.com/livePrefer to start on your own? My free Close One Loop tool is at closetheloopsnow.com.The Liberated Life is hosted by Robin Quinn Keehn, Human Dynamics Specialist, Certified Mediator, and author of Stop Stealing From Yourself.What conversation is worth your courage? If this resonated, there's probably an open loop of your own worth closing. My free Close the Loop tool walks you through it in about 15 minutes — a gentle place to start. 💛 → closetheloopsnow.com

My guest has spent 40 years watching something most of us only feel from the inside: what happens between people when the pressure is on. He's seen it in real time, with half a million people, as trust gets built or quietly broken.David Lengyel's company, Venture Up, runs experiential team training. His teams work with groups ranging from a handful of leaders to more than a thousand people. What he's found applies well beyond work. What breaks down between two executives is the same thing that breaks down between two people who love each other.We talk about:— Why teams (and families) don't fail overnight. They fail in the cracks.— "Being patient" vs. avoiding: what we think we're protecting when we delay the conversation— How silence turns into assumptions, and why those assumptions tend to be the worst-case kind— Listening to respond instead of listening to understand (and the moment I caught myself doing it at about age 10)— "Qualifying the messenger": deciding whether someone has earned the right to be heard before we hear them— The automatic "no," and what it might be protecting— How we teach kids to dream big and then teach them to "be more realistic"— Why giving someone time to answer, without rushing them, can change a conversation— What everyone needs: something to work on, something to believe in, and something to look forward to— The two sentences behind most conflict: "I thought you were going to do this" and "I thought you wanted me to do that"David's bottom line: it will always be easier to prevent a problem by communicating a little more clearly than it will be to fix one.MORE FROM DAVID LENGYELVenture Up: ventureup.comAlso on LinkedIn.—If you've been calling it patience, my next free workshop is for you.🗓️ Close One Loop — Live: "How to Stop Being the Bigger Person"A free 50-minute Zoom — Tuesday, October 27, 7:30pm Mountain (6:30 PT / 8:30 CT / 9:30 ET).Why keeping the peace keeps costing you, and the conversation that changes it. You'll leave with one loop named and your next move on it.Register: closetheloopsnow.com/livePrefer to start on your own? My free Close One Loop tool is at closetheloopsnow.com.The Liberated Life is hosted by Robin Quinn Keehn, Human Dynamics Specialist, Certified Mediator, and author of Stop Stealing From Yourself.What conversation is worth your courage? If this resonated, there's probably an open loop of your own worth closing. My free Close the Loop tool walks you through it in about 15 minutes — a gentle place to start. 💛 → closetheloopsnow.com

Most of the time, I ask the questions. This time I'm the one in the hot seat.Lori Watson defines mindset as the story you're telling yourself. We tell stories about the past and call them memories. We tell stories about the future and call them goals. The words inside those stories shape the lens we see ourselves, other people, and the world through, and most of the time we don't notice.In this episode, Lori walks me through her four-step process live. The story I chose is 32 years old: two babies under two, a sleepless night, a husband heading out to tennis, and one small "no" that ended with me thinking, "Fine. I'll do it myself." I called that independence for a long time. Somewhere in the second read I heard it for what it was.Grab a pen. Pick a story of your own and pause the episode to do each step alongside me.We talk about:— Why the stories in our heads move too fast to observe, and why writing them down slows them enough to see— The four steps: title it, write it, read it slowly, then read it again with a full breath between every sentence— Why we speed up when a story hurts, and why letting the intensity rise for a minute helps you let it go— "It's not the experience that gets us. It's what we made it mean about ourselves."— Facts vs. story: the facts don't change, the story is an opinion, and opinions can be changed— How one ordinary morning can quietly write the script for decades— Helping kids and teens: "just because a thought pops into your head doesn't mean it's true, or that it's you"— Why you shouldn't argue with "nobody cares about me," and how to validate the feeling without validating the storyLori is a mindset coach who works with high-achieving women, busy moms, professionals, and entrepreneurs.MORE FROM LORI WATSONWebsite, free resources, and her free monthly Zoom workshop: loriwatsoncoaching.com(Lori isn't on social media, so her website is where you can find her.)=========This episode is exactly what my next free workshop is about. If "Fine, I'll just do it myself" sounds familiar, come join me live.🗓️ Close One Loop — Live: "How to Stop Being the Bigger Person"A free 50-minute Zoom — Tuesday, October 27, 7:30 pm Mountain (6:30 PT / 8:30 CT / 9:30 ET).Why keeping the peace keeps costing you — and the conversation that changes it. You'll leave with one loop named, and your next move on it.Register for free here: REGISTERPrefer to start on your own? My free Close One Loop tool is at closetheloopsnow.com.The Liberated Life is hosted by Robin Quinn Keehn, Human Dynamics Specialist, Certified Mediator, and author of Stop Stealing From Yourself.What conversation is worth your courage?  If this resonated, there's probably an open loop of your own worth closing. My free Close the Loop tool walks you through it in about 15 minutes — a gentle place to start. 💛 → closetheloopsnow.com