Author: katiekaufmann

Hey Reader! I'm sure you've heard that phrase before. I've been reflecting a lot lately about how the sheer volume of external information, images, and experiences is affecting how much comparison we have going on these days. Think about it. When we have a "problem" we want to fix, who or what do we turn to? Friends, family, Google? From there we are barraged with advice, opinions, studies, horror stories, people who think they know all the right answers and love to tell you how you are doing...

Hey Reader! Have you ever spent over an hour crafting the perfect newsletter email only to lose all your work when you went to edit a design feature, even though you took the precaution of copying your previous content in case you do, only to accidentally re-copy the filler text from the template instead of paste your carefully crafted content in? Yeah. That just happened! Gah! 😫 "You idiot." I remarked to myself. "You knew this would happen and it did. Why did you have to do that? Now...

Hey Reader! After coaching folks with chronic pain and other stress-induced symptoms for the last two years, one commonality I find is a difficulty with uncertainty or the unknown. And it makes sense! Our brains are prediction machines. They like to know what to expect and be ready with the right response. This prediction and safeguarding mechanism can go into overdrive when we are experiencing uncomfortable symptoms. Our brains become hypervigilant and threats exist all around us at all...

Hey Reader! I'm not going to lie. The first half of January felt pretty bleak for me. My normal optimism and ability to do hard things, even though I didn't want to, was minimal at most. I felt overwhelmed with all I had to do and the lack of energy I had to do them. Ironically, I was also signed up for a challenge in my coaching business group that was all about networking and creating referral partnerships. Needless to say, I was in no place to take on that challenge and even being exposed...

Hey Reader! Today is Day of the Dead. So thinking about our own mortality is not too far of a stretch at this moment, right? In her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, interviewed dozens of people at the end of life about what they most regretted. This was the #1 answer: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. If you were to suddenly find yourself with very little time left, where might you be...

Hey Reader! Are you hard on yourself? Do you pressure yourself to succeed and beat yourself up for any perceived shortcomings, signs of weakness, or vulnerability? How's that working out for you? We often get into the habit of berating ourselves out of a genuine desire to motivate ourselves to do...

Hey Reader! This past week I lost my wallet. Well, more of a pouch from some old sunglasses that held all my credit cards. I was at a concert at the Minnesota State Fair with about 17,000 other people and it must have fallen out of my fanny pack one of the dozen times I took out my phone to snap...

Hey Reader! When I was in theater school, I had a corporeal mime teacher who stressed the importance of practice in a way that really sunk in and I have repeated to many others in the past couple decades. When we start doing an action that we want to improve at or that is supposed to eventually...

Hey Reader! Have you ever looked back at your formal self and cringed or noticed all the things that lead you down a certain path? Have you ever wanted to scoop that younger self up in your arms and guide them towards more skillful ways of seeing themselves in the world? Boogie NIghts had just...

Hey Reader! Happy June! I am late in sending this out because I couldn't pick a subject for this newsletter. There are too many things I want to talk about and share and that was keeping me stuck in a state of overwhelm. Does that feel familiar? I then realized that overwhelm was probably the...