What If the Life You Worked So Hard to Build Isn’t the Life You Actually Want? With Keren Eldad

Do you have the success, the ambition, and the life you thought you wanted, but something still doesn’t feel right? In this episode, I’m joined by Keren Eldad to talk about breaking free from perfectionism, overachievement, and the expectations that keep you living a life that looks good but doesn’t feel good. We break down how to recognize your own “gilded cage,” why letting go doesn’t mean giving up your ambition, and how fear, obligation, and shame can keep you from taking the next step. Keren also shares the questions she uses to challenge fear, create perspective, and move toward a more authentic life while still honoring your responsibilities. Get ready to question what you’re holding onto and start choosing a life that actually feels like yours. Check out our Sponsors: Shopify - Try the ecommerce platform I trust for Glōci. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at http://Shopify.com/happy. Monarch Money - Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at http://Monarch.com with code EYH. Northwest Registered Agent - Visit http://northwestregisteredagent.com/EarnFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Indeed - Indeed is giving Earn Your Happy listeners a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to help get your job the premium status it deserves. Just go to http://Indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on Earn Your Happy. Momentous - If you want to try Momentous Signature Spec Creatine, head to http://livemomentous.com and use code EARN for up to 35% off your entire first order. SmileSet - Listeners of our show get an additional 35% discount when they go to http://SMILESET.com/earn. Faire - Sign up today and get 50% off your first wholesale order, up to $100 at https://faire.com/happy50. Terms may apply. Life at the Speed of Play - Go to http://getmarksbook.com/earn to get two copies for the price of one—one for you and one for a friend. HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 What it really takes to break free and become who you know you can be. 03:30 How perfectionism can create a life that looks good but feels wrong. 07:45 The “gilded cage” that appears after you think you’ve already broken free. 09:45 How do you know when your drive to achieve has gotten out of control? 13:45 The “good enough” mindset that makes rest and freedom possible. 15:00 The pause principle for responding to fear without spiraling. 17:00 How to shift from reacting to fear to finding the opportunity in it. 23:30 Why breaking free can require you to redefine your relationships and expectations. 26:45 What does it take to have the courage to become who you know you can be? 33:15 The question to ask when you feel stuck at your next level. 37:00 The obligation that can become a hidden upper limit for high-achieving women. 39:00 Two questions to help you pursue growth without abandoning your responsibilities. 43:45 What happens when you let go and surrender to the journey? 46:00 The mindfulness tools that help you stop taking the bait of shame. 50:15 How reparenting yourself can help you respond from your wiser self. 54:00 How choosing what’s real can create more meaningful relationships. RESOURCES Get your copy of Keren’s book Gilded HERE! Learn more and work with Keren Eldad HERE! Get on the waitlist for Mentor Collective Mastermind HERE! Try glōci for 40% off your first order with code HAPPY at checkout - head to getgloci.com FOLLOW Follow me: @loriharder Follow glōci: @getgloci Follow Keren: @coachkeren

• 0:01Speaker 00

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  They're giving Earn Your Happy a $75 sponsored job credit. Go to Indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Life at the Speed of Play, Mark is offering our listeners two books for the price of one. Go to GetMark'sBook.com/earn. Sequencing, sequencing.com is offering our listeners up to 10% off your full genome test plus free shipping. Go to sequencing.com and use promo code EARN for 10% off. If you are thinking differently, if you want to actually be able to think different and have a different outcome than everything you've ever seen, sometimes it's extreme. And people do not like that answer.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  And I'm not telling everybody that they have to leave, but there are scenarios that I could have never been who I knew I could be in that environment.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  My version with Breaking Free was not just divorcing a guy that looked good on paper, but burning everything to the ground, leaving my job, leaving my industry, starting over, and starting to publish videos on YouTube in my SoulCycle clothes about coaching and happiness. But you have to have that audacity, you have to have that courage, because especially in this game, no courage, no success.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  Karen, welcome to the Earn Your Happy Podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Thank you, Lori. This is, as I already said to you, just such a treat.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Ah, I was like, we have to hit record because you guys, we had started talking. Yeah, no, we're starting to talk about some really good stuff, so we have to hit record. And something that I love, whenever I have authors on here, because that is such a journey in and of itself. And you've written two books. What was the times, tell me the names of the titles so everyone can hear. And then what was the time span between those two? And then we're going to dig into that, too.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  They're my Irish twins. They are a year and a half apart.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  I did not set out, like most women who get pregnant by accident very quickly. The same thing happened to me as Gilded was going to press, literally as it's going to press. I start noticing a very interesting evolutionary pattern in my clients that made me think, the work is not complete, we are going to go back to the drawing board and we're going to create the supplemental work to this. And so I'm literally on book tour, creating Guilt Free, the second book in the interim. Think about it as I was going through a pregnancy while I was on book tour. And the result is that now before us.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  My second baby.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Wow. I mean, for someone who has written a book, the first one must have just shown so much too, that it was flowing out, because I know I had to take a hot second. That did not happen for me. I was like, this one book, we're done for a while. But I love that. I love when I hear that, because it's just like, sometimes you get those, you get the big message and then this other even bigger message comes because you realize that was just like the very beginning, that cracked open something even bigger. And I'm sure that was revealed to you once you started having this conversation, which is so fun, because we're going to have it today.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  And it's literally what you and I were chit chatting about. We're clearly not casual conversation people, we just go straight deep. It's like when you're dismantling humanity or your identity, that's where all this stuff really happens. And so there's almost like a lag in the really profound download. And so that's just what naturally happened for me. I just decided to put it in a second book. That's the only difference.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Okay, I love this because that is what happens as you realize you're like, maybe that wasn't just it. Or wow, this unearthed the actual root now that I'm really talking and getting to see what this is like out in the world, which is so cool about ideas is, yeah, you think the idea is one thing and then you give it to other people and it completely morphs into something else, which is amazing. Can you give me a story or two?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Maybe from your childhood or for whatever period in your life that opened up the message of the first book. So what was the message of the first book? And what would you say were some of the stories that led you to be the person who wrote that?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  So my books are about the dismantling of the systems of oppression of our modern life. Ambition, perfectionism, the relentless pursuit of more. I'm not saying that any of these things are inherently bad. I am saying they can get out of control. And that's why I think so many people, this audience, myself included, as you know, I'm a very big fan, are all essentially junkies of these particular themes. And so I hope that my story will be very, very useful to them. The story that gave birth to Gilded, they gave birth to my business, to my coaching practices, focus on overachievers, is that I was raised as, became, and remained for a very long time,

• 7:08Speaker 01

  a hyper achieving person, meaning a person intensely wired to work just a little too obsessively. You know, like the difference between Christian, regular, and Jehovah's Witness? That's the difference between regular person wired for work and perfectionist wired for work.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Good example.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  I know, and I knew it would resonate. I don't know what made me think of that. And so I'm basically one of those kids who got praised enormously for achieving good grades, for working really hard, for showing discipline. And so I become little by little, more and more in my life, a dancing bear, a person who performs successfully really, really well, who looks like they have it all together, who looks like they can hit the grades. Then the 90s era begins and all of the supermodels are being fed to me via Vogue and MTV. And Karen doesn't eat anymore either. In other words, I start getting praise also for my looks. And so that starts to become very contained and very curated as well. In all, this creates a persona that is tremendously impressive.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  And it's wired to continue to be impressive, to try to look good, to try to hit the mark, to try to be the best. And it was, it evolved Lori into a life that looked very good, but didn't feel very good. I did marry a tall guy, which is what you're supposed to do when you run overachiever. He was abusive. I did have a C-suite job. It was killing me. It was so exhausting. And plus, I did not feel any connection to it, like it wasn't my life's work, you know? And I lived in a city that looked very glamorous, Zurich. But as I like to say, Zurich is like, if you actually live there, is the city that never stops stopping.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Like the most awful place ever for a New Yorker, who is, you know, interested in fun and happiness. And so.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Basically, I've hit all the marks, but they have missed the mark. And so I wrote Gilded to help people identify that perhaps the life that they've built feels wrong, because it is wrong. And it helped them to dismantle that life. Then, as Gilded is going to press, Lori, I start noticing, because I always test my material out on my clans, they're my guinea pigs, before I start moving into the general audience. I started testing these materials at retreats and in coaching, and I realized that many people do look like they've broken free from the gilded cage. But they just built themselves, and this is going to resonate with you so much, another shinier cage. They built a bigger business.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  A bigger cage.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  This time it looks freer, and this time it's even more hustly, even more hard work, even more hard to maintain. It just looks freer. It isn't freer. And so for most of us who are, you know, really trying to strive for success, what we want is freedom. None of us has built a business to become trapped by it. None of us builds a marriage to become trapped by it. We're actually trying to create these systems for freedom. And so I realized that there was a second level of the work that was needed, and that I needed to address what people were so afraid to really let go of. And that's what guilt-free is about.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Hmm. Have you found that some of the first questions when you're working with ambitious people are around, that they are afraid to lose that initial, or that feeling of ambition? Because they're like, I still want the big life, but I don't want these feelings that come with it. What do you, what do you say to that?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  So the first order of resistance is, is this work going to make me less ambitious? Is giving up the ambitious pursuit and the perfectionism going to make me have no standards and become lazy and useless? The answer is, the only reason you even consider this a possibility is because you are a binary thinker. That there are 10,000 shades of gray between loosen your grip and completely let go and become a vegetable. And what we're not considering is that when we do loosen up a little bit, and we do let go a bit, we gain perspective, and we can also gain tremendous leverage. When we gain tremendous leverage, we actually do gain tremendous freedom.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  It's not necessarily that you removing yourself from the overwork in your marriage, or in your health, or in your career, will lessen the business's efficacy. It will actually allow you to think a little bit more about how to create more leverage to make the systems that make it ultimately easier. Nobody considers that. They think, I let go, the whole thing falls apart. And this is the Faustian bargain. This is the deal with the devil we're all making. We're essentially saying, if I ever remove myself, ever relax for five seconds, it all goes to poop. And what can I tell you?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  That's a, I've heard our mutual friend Natalie Ellis say that, that's a stress test. If that's how you feel about your business, technically speaking, it will collapse without you, and that means it's built on a deck of cards.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Hmm. So how do we know if we're, you know, there's going to be people listening who are, even just the thought of letting go, but being able to get better feels so far. Like that gap feels so big. How do we first know that we're in a gilded cage? Like, how's that start showing up in our life to even start, you know, approaching this and being like, could I start making a change with this?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  The first thing that's going to happen is you're going to notice feelings and patterns come up. Feelings and patterns are much harder to notice than results. The first, I mean, if you're very lucky, you'll have lackluster results, like I did, and you'll realize, this isn't working, so I better try something new. However, for most people, it comes through feelings like aimlessness, restlessness, and then patterns that are similar to numbing, alcoholism, barbiturates, scrolling for a very long time, anxious thought, rumination, patterns that are really just exhausting to the self. I can always, by the way, tell that I'm a little out of whack, Lori, when I shop.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  If it's a lot of shopping, Karen's not feeling very happy right now, and she doesn't know what to do with the unhappiness, so she's trying to channel it through my favorite hobby of all, which is the purchasing of beloved and beautiful things. And so this

• 13:28Speaker 00

  I share the same interest.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  You are a wonderful person. I mean, listen, we all have our drug of choice, and mine is Prada. And so the most important thing to understand is, that means something is off, and you should pay attention to it. The second thing that people need to do, they're not paying attention to it, that's the first thing, pay attention to it, there is a problem. It's not something to gloss over, it's not something to kill with more shopping, or more distraction, or more TikTok. It is something to address, something is off. The second thing to do is to admit that something is wrong. This is something I say to all addicts, and for workaholics, by the way, overachievers, we're all an addict, is to say, you must admit that you do have a problem, because most of us, like all other forms of addiction, say, I got this out of, under control, I

• 14:15Speaker 01

  can stop whenever I want. But then, my question is, can you? To all of the overachievers who come through my practice, you sure about that? You sure you don't want to really, really answer that email that's come through at 5:00 AM? You sure you can curb that impulse to answer at 12:00 PM? You sure you can take days off and actually be off? Because if you can't, then it is out of control. And then we do want to address this. And that's when we can do really, really deep work, that will begin to deconstruct this identity, and help you to build the next level that will allow you, by the way, to also get next level results.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Okay, I love this. I'm, I'm literally actively working on this right now, because I do obviously know that I have an addiction, which is great.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  I told you that you would resonate with this, and by the way, it's the same thing with me. We're simply wired for this. And so you really have to start becoming a little bit more vigilant.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's definitely something that I find so much around days off. Like, it's, I'm, I can be like uncomfortable, or bored, or like, what is my problem? Why can't I just sit here and enjoy this? And that's how that obviously shows up for me, is I'm like, okay, is there hope that I could just sit and be bored and enjoy it without wanting to create something?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so what needs to happen is just a redefinition, and I'm sure you're already actively in this, Lori, of your relationship to yourself. That usually, that kink comes from some lack in childhood, that made you feel that you're not okay, or not enough. For me, it was probably some, I don't know, patriarchal comparison stuff, or the fact that I had to stop eating completely in order to feel like I was valuable enough when I was in my teen years. For you, it's the story of dropping out, it's the story of your parents and their unusual relationship and unusual religion, right? And so, we need to address these things. And we don't need to address these things in a therapeutic, or in a traumatic, or

• 16:14Speaker 01

  trauma-oriented manner, we just need to say, am I still not okay? Am I still not okay? Is there a way that I can acknowledge that I've come a long way, baby? And I actually am, I'm more than okay? And then really bring yourself into a zone of the first bastion of release, which is again, why I created the second book, which is good enough. The framework that is housed, guilt-free is a manual, gilded is a book, guilt-free is a manual, for behavior change. The framework I surround this on is GOLD, G-O-L-D. G is the first letter, and it's good enough.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  You gotta find a place where you feel good enough, if you can even begin to consider rest, Lori. And so we have to kind of work our way to it, because again, we're wired to not feel good enough, and therefore to not rest.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Are you finding right now, because we're in such an interesting time in the world, where I know you've been on, talking to so many different people on podcasts, and you know that things are changing in the world and the industry, and I think there's a lot of fear around, am I going to be okay? And we're being told now is the time to make all of the money that you possibly can, and it just is kind of like, obviously, that, those conversations are dependent upon who you're talking to, what circles you're in, but that's very much a circle

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yes, it is happening.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  That I'm in, and it's happening. And so, how, in a time where there feels like there's a lot of truth within those statements, can you still work on calming down? And within the calming down kind of know, I'm just using calming down, because that's how I'm kind of like, desperate to feel, to know that that can also give you leverage? Like, where does one start with that?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  So I've found that panic and reactivity are the opposite of success. And panic and reactivity cannot possibly coexist with success. And I live by, of course, I've learned this, Lori, from my grandfather, Warren Buffett, who is a man who never pulls out of the market when times are bad, and who reminds himself that 1987, there was an enormous collapse, and he was still not wiped out. Because ultimately, as he likes to say, life goes on, and the market always comes back up. I feel the same way about life, that's my first premise. But in order to work through this, I just do the work. I teach the pause principle, a mindfulness tool, in my first book, Gilded, I'm going to teach it to you right now.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  The first question, very similar to Byron Katie's, is that true? My first question is, is the problem the problem, or is how you're about to react to it a bigger problem? If how you're about to react to, we've got three more years to make as much money as possible, and we're probably all going to die by the end of the decade, which, I'm sorry to say, listeners, I have actually heard at dinner parties recently. Your question, your first question is, is this an actual, real problem? Or is the way I'm about to spiral into hyper vigilance and hyper control more likely to cause a bigger problem? What is always the answer to that question?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Two.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  Second.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Me starting to freak out is a bigger problem. Second question. What else might be going on here? Is there any other way to see this? Those are two versions of the same question. And I always say like, yeah, there are five other ways to see this. Number one, I personally think that coaching, my particular industry, will become more valuable. Not only will in real life experiences become really valuable, but I think what AI is ultimately messing up is not the coach. It's the client. Because they're coming with so much self diagnosis. It's just giving the coach probably much more artillery with which to work and to obliterate this. You cannot actually foster consciousness with unconsciousness. The second way to see this is maybe it's not three years, maybe it's four. That's not so bad.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  I could do a lot in four years. Also, number three. What if it is three years and we're all gonna die? In that case, genuinely, who cares?

• 20:21Speaker 00

  That's so true.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Genuinely, who cares? What is the problem? Go to Prada immediately. Enjoy the entire collection and get another cat. Have fun. And so there are many other ways to see this. And what I'm doing is I become playful with myself. I become more relaxed and I start moving to the third and last question, which is, what's the opportunity here? The real opportunity here is Lori, deepen your work, deepen your connection, elevate yourself, rise to the occasion. Find a real through line here of what people need. Answer their pain and their fear. Do not respond to your pain and to your fear. Rise to serve. It will probably produce a better outcome for yourself.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And again, like I said, even if that outcome is only for three years, is better than going down screaming.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  And blowing everything up.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. You're just bringing me back to so many places where it's like anything that I've created out of massive fear or lack. While it did produce income, I can look back at those things. It, it didn't feel sustainable and it kind of like fell apart on its own after a certain point. And it felt very not sustainable for me. It was like dragging yourself to the thing, you know, trying to through it.

• 21:45Speaker 00

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• 25:48Speaker 01

  And so I don't know if you're into human design, but

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I'm a projector. Like for me, anything that I do that is just like solicitous is a hard no.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh my God. Well, for me, I'm a, I'm a manifesting generator and I'm supposed to like, things are supposed to just come to me by way of my network. And yeah, things can kind of flow easily to me. And that's funny because I forget that all the time because

• 26:17Speaker 01

  I know, but your superpower as a man then is discernment. You guys need to start learning how to tame that energy a little bit. And the first order of business is to not take the bait. Don't be freaked out by every Tom, Dick and Harry. Like, I mean, again, we might. There is a 10% chance that it all goes awry, but there's a 90% chance that's okay.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. I mean, historically.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Why not play those odds? Why not play the Warren Buffett odds of the market will ultimately rebalance?

• 26:51Speaker 00

  For people listening, when they have, I find that so many of us struggle with our environment, AKA the people in our, our lives. How have you been able to, if somebody's listening right now and they're like, okay, I really am getting better at managing my own emotion. But I have this person, my mom always calls me this, you know, I, I have to go to work. I have to be around this person. They don't believe these things. What would you say to that person?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  And it's technically one of the things that you are using to resist change. The, so the real reason I wrote guilt free Lori was because the reason people were creating shinier cages for themselves was they were actually not willing to go through the real fire. And the real fire is cutting themselves off from their societies or disrupting the relationships that they've established with the world and with their lives. When you read Gilded and the promise is huge, right? Like it's break free and build big and be as free and awesome as can be. Everyone's like, yay, I'll take that. However, not if it means that I have to rupture my marriage. Not if it means that I need to redefine my relationship to my children.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Not if I need to somehow disappoint my parents or break with the traditions with which I was raised. Or break with my society and do something that's really contrary to what the dominant culture is telling me. And so in guilt free, I take you through what is a mandatory part of the breaking free. And that's the enlightenment detour. You will have to willingly. Not cross people, not cut them out. Nobody needs to do such radical things unless like that's funsies for you. It's really much more about just being strong enough to say, this is who I am. This is what I care about. And this is what I'm doing. I am choosing it

• 28:41Speaker 01

  of my own volition. I'm no longer doing it from obligation, or FOMO, or for approval. And as we all learned, it's actually my book too. I was stunned when I read this in Natalie's last book, The Freedom-Based Business Method. Until we do that, we are not really running a business. We are certainly not equipped to rise as entrepreneurs. So yeah, it's gonna cost you. Go willingly. Hugs, Karen.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  I literally, this has been such a big conversation for me throughout my life. That is like a through line in all of my work. And it's kind of like the when, when people come into your world, it's like the, I know this is what you came for, and I know this is what you want. And I'm gonna tell you how it really happens, and you're not gonna like it. Because I think one of the, you know, early on, when you leave a religion, and you leave your family, and they don't like it, and they're not talking to you, and they're gonna cut you out, and everything you've ever grew up with has been cut off, which is for those of you listening, if you're new, that's how I was raised. It was a decision between staying in the religion, and if not, letting go of all my family, all my friends,

• 29:50Speaker 00

  anyone I'd ever known, because I've, I'd never hung out with anyone outside of my religion. And so I learned that lesson early on, that it's like, if you, if you are thinking differently, if you want to actually be able to think different, and have a different outcome than everything you've ever seen, sometimes it's extreme. And people do not like that answer. And I'm not telling everybody that they have to leave. But there are scenarios that I could have never been who I knew I could be in that environment. There was nothing around me supporting it whatsoever. And so while that was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and it wasn't like, I was like, I'm out of here. I kind of like lied and lived a separate life for two to three years, and slowly started letting the truth come

• 30:32Speaker 00

  out. And sometimes that's how you have to do it. But it is, it is like, you think you're going to die, and you think you're not going to make it through. So can we talk about?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Let's talk about that.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Let's talk about the transition, because like-

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Listen, I'm glad that you're telling them like, this is like it is. The truth about rising is that the only way to do that is to break out of the clutches of approval. And there's really no other way to do that. You don't even have to have something as radical as having to be excommunicated from the Jehovah's Witness community. In my case, I was breaking free from a very, very solid corporate life, and from a rather closed society. And I decided that my version of breaking free was not just divorcing a guy that looked good on paper, but burning everything to the ground, leaving my job, leaving my industry, starting over, and starting to publish videos on YouTube in my SoulCycle clothes about coaching and happiness. And what do you think happened, Lori? I mean,

• 31:31Speaker 01

  it was exactly as if I had left a church. My friends started to say things like, are you crazy? And you look terrible. And this is a really, really bad look. And do you need any money? And would you like your old job back? My literal, my former boss called me and asked me, with pity, have I lost my mind? And by the way, do you need to come back home? In other words, they're not really supportive of the evolution of you, because you are now showing up as something different. But you have to have that audacity, you have to have that courage. Because especially in this game, no courage, no success.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  No. How did you, were you building relationships that were supportive of you during that time? How were you getting support? Were you diving into faith? Were you, tell me all the modalities that you were doing to get your brain into that new place?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  So I started to lose my friends first. I, the beginning was a just nice slip slide. So after the divorce, and after losing all my stuff in a fire, I started to also lose all my friends, or the vast majority of my friends.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  You just got all that.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Everything, like biblical stripping down. I talk about it in Gilded. I became very, very sad, very depressed, suicidal even. And then I started, by coincidence, picking up a book after book. The, it began with The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Arkovy. And then I just became more and more open to it. A friend dragged me to a Kabbalah class, which became three years of Kabbalah. And another friend invited me to a Tony Robbins conference, and I went to that. I essentially start reading book after book after book. And within a span of a couple of years, 2012 to about 2015, I am drinking the Kool-Aid more and more heavily incrementally every single year. By

• 33:18Speaker 01

  2016, I just feel completely differently. It's not that anything had changed in my life yet, Lori, but at that point, I'd consumed literally hundreds of books, and I had imbibed or used what little money I had at the time, all for coaching, and all in investing in myself. And this is when it started to come to me that the reason it was taking me a lot longer than other people, and that it was a lot harder for me to basically kind of rewire, was probably because I was so overachieving. We are intellectually gifted, but unfortunately, emotionally, inept. And so I started to create a method that I thought might work on me. I created it for myself in 2017, launched it in January of 2017, and

• 34:02Speaker 01

  my business took off almost immediately with one email I sent to my 500 LinkedIn contacts, saying, I have a program. I'd like to be your coach. Would you like to work with me? No joke. That's how it all started.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. So was that method part of?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  That was Live with Enthusiasm, which is to this day, the spine through which I coach.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  And what, so, so for the person who wants to take a leap like that, you have to tell me how they, which I, I've never actually, some people don't believe this, but I've never, I've suffered with a million things. Perfectionism has not been one of them. Like, I'll send an email and-

• 34:39Speaker 01

  And I know that about you. I know that about you because of your, the latest episode of your podcast, where you said, you literally opened by saying, if you think that you have to wait to be ready, don't. There's no such thing. That's exactly it. The problem with perfectionism is, as Reid Hoffman from Salesforce says, if you launch perfect, you launch too late. There's literally no way to do it. And so what I'm trying to describe is, I really did go down a rabbit hole. I already felt the tremendous effects that it was having on me emotionally, because I was no longer, I used to land on people like a sumo wrestler, Lori. Like, you even just, just didn't invite me to a dinner. I was like, Lori is dead

• 35:19Speaker 01

  to me forever. And now I'm like, I'm becoming much more of a relaxed person who's like, oh, my God, I hope Lori has a nice dinner. So I started to understand that the transformation had occurred, and I bottled it up, and I just went for it. I did not know if I would pull it off. But I did. There's only one way to find out, and it's in the work.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  And they started, they started signing up?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Okay. And you just started coaching. You showed up to your first coaching, and you're like, okay.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  I said I had, I had six spots, and six spots sold out within 24 hours. And then I coached those people responsibly. I already acquired certification, et cetera, because it was part of my rabbit hole, was just to become obsessed with the training. And I did a good job. And then they told other people, and those people told other people. And within a year, I'm on the speaking circuit, and I'm coaching people. And I went back, I started coaching my former company, the one who said that they felt really sad for me. Yeah. They were my first corporate client, and it just took off from there. And it's been amazing, amazing 10 years. Best years of my life.

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Okay, so Karen, you talk about, you know, after the upper limits. It's almost like what's after the upper limits? How do we, so how do we start finding out, like, what is capping us? Because even me right now, I'm very much like, very deeply in this work, especially now that I've kind of had this beautiful clearing in my life that wasn't beautiful when it was happening. It was very much I wanted, felt like I wanted to die. But now that I'm getting on the other side of the realization of, of how incredibly amazing those things can be, how do we start uncovering what the capping is, and how we can be the most, like, just the most authentic, I guess, biggest versions of ourself to feel

• 37:10Speaker 00

  the best we can feel?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Whenever we feel capped, or we feel stuck. What's really happening usually is you're just kind of wishing that your inner knowing wasn't true. You're basically working against what you know you need to do to go next and level. And I'll, I'll give you a concrete example in just a second. Because you're scared of what it will cost you to go to the next level, because you're aware of what you will lose, you are simply, your ego is playing a trick on you. It's deceiving you into thinking that you cannot go to the next level. And so the very vast majority of the mental agitation that keeps you stuck here is just the result of fear. And so I always say that in order to start breaking out of this, instead of asking yourself, what

• 37:55Speaker 01

  should I do? And woe is me? And why am I here? And what is this upper limit? Start focusing on the real question, which is, what feels dishonest about how I'm living right now? What is out of congruence with how I'm living right now? Let me give you an example. Let's say that you're an entrepreneur, like the many, many people who are listening to this podcast, and you really want to break past seven figures. Come on. What's up? Can I do it? I want to do it. I really want to do it. Why can't I do it? Oh, I'm going to blame the marketing. I'm going to blame my visibility again. It's not your visibility. What's happening is you're usually just afraid that going next level will require a greater

• 38:36Speaker 01

  investment, probably more work, probably a different level of work. You will probably have to let go of almost everything that you're doing now and trade it for leverage in order to become the next level. For example, Karen coaching personally doesn't work anymore. She has to move to group. She has to move to maybe even hiring other coaches to support her. She has to move into intellectual property. It's always a big uncertain chasm that also means that the people who are used to me as Coach Karen that they work with privately are going to be upset and they're going to rally and they're going to accuse her of not being the loving and wonderful person ever again. And so my point is, exactly as Gay Hendricks describes it so well in his book, The Big Leap, the upper limit has many

• 39:19Speaker 01

  culprits. You're breaking free from your family. You're about to outshine your partner. You're about to outshine your society, et cetera, et cetera. But I think in just basic terms, you're just really, really scared to give up what you're still clinging to because you're really, really afraid of the uncertainty. If you can become really honest about that, you can possibly let it go. We're all afraid of something at every level because we're all getting really comfortable, right? And so when we get comfortable, we don't want to let go of what's making us so comfortable. I, my, my advocacy in, in Guilt Free is go willingly. Let go. Like you said in that last episode that I loved so much, faith is

• 39:59Speaker 01

  not faith until it's real surrender. It's only surrender that is true faith.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  The hard, fun, unfortunate and awesome thing.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  It is.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  We all have to become Lieutenant Dan in the storm. Call this a storm.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  What would you say you see over and over again in high achieving women? That is one of the things that you coach them through?

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Obligation. I would love to say that it's FOMO and comparison and all of that stuff. It's obligation. Women above all creatures and men, I, 50% of my clients are men. They do not suffer from this to the same degree, are truly thinking about other people before themselves. They use their children as a shield, as an excuse not to grow. They use their, what people need from me and what people need me to be as their upper limit. It's very, very hard to break through that. It takes time. But once you realize that it's just like you're not giving up your ambition, you're not giving up the responsibilities.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  This isn't Gone Girl, the Coach Karen Edition. It's literally a way to live with both honoring your responsibilities and yourself. You start going more willingly.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  What questions should someone start asking themselves around the realization that maybe they have built this life that a lot of people that they love rely on them? So maybe it's a, I mean, it could be anything. It could be maybe they started a company. Maybe they started, maybe they're a big part of what they do at their kid's school. I don't, just like these massive obligations that all of a sudden you wake up in the middle and go, I, I know I can't continue on in that way. And it's going to be like, I'm going to have to blow things up. People are not going to like it. And it's probably going to be really hard for a while. What is the beginning process or the questions they should

• 42:09Speaker 00

  be asking to kind of make sure they don't? It's so easy to tap out, right? To be like, no, it's just easier to stay in it, even though that's not the truth at all.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  No, it's not. So I ask two questions usually. The first is, what would it cost me if I didn't go? And that's the calculation people are not making. They're usually calculating, what will it cost me to go? But they're not calculating the cost of not going. And the cost of not going is your health, your success, your freedom and your joy. And for me, that's too big a price. You do you. The second question is, how can I have both? I know this is super radical, but I believe you can have your cake and eat it too. I actually wasn't in a position, Laurie, to just start a business and burn everything and have funsies because I was quite broke. My divorce was nasty and very, very irresponsible

• 43:02Speaker 01

  too. And I hadn't the money to just burn everything to the ground and hang out. I needed to take care of myself and I needed to honor some obligations, which meant that I could actually do this in a more hedging your bets type of way. So I asked myself, how can I both indulge my desire for freedom, my desire for growth, my desire for expansion, and still be a responsible adult who honors the following commitments that she needs to honor in order to eat and to stay safe and to continue to be a decent and upstanding citizen? And I did both at the same time. The bad news is that does require extra effort

• 43:42Speaker 01

  for a time. However, it dissipates. As everybody knows, getting a plane off the ground is when you burn the most fuel. I am sorry for everybody who's trying to launch something and has to keep everything afloat at the same time. It is a haul. But you do eventually reach cruising altitude. It does end. And so if you're willing to say, all right, first of all, I'm not willing to pay the price of not going there. It's too big. And so number two, I'm going to try to figure out how to engineer this and do them co-curricularly or at the same time, you're, you're home free. You're at least going to make a couple of steps that will change your life.

• 44:22Speaker 00

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• 45:04Speaker 00

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• 48:26Speaker 00

  So when you, you keep saying go willingly, which I love, like lean in, like just.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, I'm a God person, so.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, truly. It's, it's one of the only things that is, that has helped me.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Look, at the end of the day, here's how I've learned to play, Lori, like I'm not in control. I'm just not. And so I can make this hard or I can make this easy. And the only way to make this easy is go down the slide. Let go. It'll be over before you know it. That's why I say go willingly and really allow your desire to, to, to take you. That's what your soul came here for. Stop repressing it. The words of Madonna, express yourself, don't repress yourself.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  And I'm not sorry.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  I think the music video flashed in my face.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  I know. I love that one.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  That I was secretly watching because I wasn't allowed to watch MTV. Okay.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  That's so funny.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  But I watched it all day long.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Of course you did. I mean, if you recognize the supermodel comment, that was from MTV, from the George Michael Freedom video.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Which I was obsessed with.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  The greatest video of all time.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Truly. I was literally just telling someone who was much younger than me about it. And I was like, you'll never understand. You'll just never understand the era. Okay. It was the best.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  It breaks my heart for them. My heart goes out. So all of you who are under the age of 35, look up Freedom with George Michael, the video and enjoy.

• 49:54Speaker 00

  You'll never be the same. You'll never be the same. So go willingly. Here's, here's the thing for people that I, I think they start collapsing under when their friends and family start really pushing on their character. Or, you know, for me, some, a really challenging thing, which I thought I'd been through a lot of different, like character judgments and things like that. But this last year I had some nice ones hit pretty close to home in a major way. And that's still, even after all these years of like knowing what to do and having the tools, is really the thing that can make you want to control things, clean up messes,

• 50:35Speaker 00

  call people, text people, get things, make sure that you're saving your reputation. And what I've learned is that does nothing, number one. But for somebody who doesn't have those tools yet, how do we start managing what feels like absolute chaos and like, you know, it starts unravel, it feels like it's unraveling your life and taking you down emotionally.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Well, you're gonna need some tools.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  The, the answer unfortunately to this question is deep work. It's not a shortcut, but if we are asking for a shortcut is you're gonna need a couple of tools. And the tools are the, the tools of self-worth or mindfulness. You have to bring yourself to a place of greater perspective so that you don't take the bait of shame. In other words, and by the way, shame controls all of us. It is the master emotion. So most of us are ultimately responding to, I don't want them to think that I'm bad and I don't want to be accused of being bad. So I will try my best to be good. Trying my best to be good is already a false premise because it makes the presumption

• 51:42Speaker 01

  that you can be bad. You can't be bad unless you have been malicious. If you have not been malicious, why on earth would you issue statements to try to convince people that you are not malicious? And so the first thing to do is to ask yourself, should I be accepting this shame? Meaning the insult that's being hurled my way, is it true? Is it true? I was recently accused by a client who wanted two extra sessions with me of being egregious for not agreeing to it as I work within defined times. And then I thought, is that true? Am I a bad person? Am I not a good coach? Am I selfish? Am I greedy? Am I any of the things that this person might be thinking?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  The answer is no. I'm actually just structured. You're projecting something onto me. I'm structured. This is the way to, I am giving you an option. If it works for you, that's great. If it doesn't work for you, that's great. I have to work within a disciplined structure. And so I didn't take the shame and I didn't feel the need to justify or say anything further and just move on. This one question, is it true? Should I feel bad about this? Will at least encourage you to literally broaden your horizons. And if you did do something bad, it will convert shame into guilt. Shame is an unmanageable emotion. It's gonna drag you down, drag everything down. But guilt is an emotion with which you can do something. It is a pro-social emotion. Guilt is, I did something bad.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  So let's say I did do something bad. I made a mistake. I missed one of the sessions. I do need to make up for it. I can now make up for it and I can apologize. The end. Guilt is something that's easily resolvable with, with acknowledgement, admission, apology, acceptance. The latter, shame, you can't do anything with. So you gotta first start with that basic tool. Is it true? Should I be taking this bait? Challenging the shame and then asking yourself to metabolize it properly so that your response will be a proper response. I hope that's helpful. And there's a lot more, by the way, especially in that first section, good enough,

• 53:55Speaker 01

  the, the worth work in guilt free to really help you work through this stuff so that you can develop real boundaries around what you, what you should respond to and what is absolutely none of your business.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  I think that's the interesting part with, with women that I see, especially being, meaning women myself, all of the women that I get to work with in comparison to the men that I work with. Cause you know, I have, I work with my husband. We work with his brother. I work with my brother. It's like we've got a balance of women and men. And I, I find how much faster they can move through different things, especially like customer service related issues where, you know, when you said, ask, is this true? Sometimes I think that we're running it through an old lens of, well, I don't know. Did I do something wrong? Should I have been nicer? Should I have had those boundaries? Is that, so we're almost like running it through a double lens of trying to figure out what should even the boundary have looked like?

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so I'm, I'm just asking, even before that happens, to ask yourself, should I even be concerned with this? It will literally, it will start to relax you. Should I even be concerned with this? This is also the work of reparenting. It's part of the work that I do in coaching. You gotta switch roles here. Like I know that there's a little kid in there who feels bad and who does not want to be chastised. But there's also right now in my body, there's a late 40-year-old lady who knows what's up and who knows how to deal with this. And I'd, I'd rather have her driving the car.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  For me, that's actually been one of the most helpful things that I've done is to reparent myself, go back and talk to whatever age that was or, you know, talk myself through a situation. Is that something that you do for yourself a lot?

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. I, I know my inner child, her name is Monica from Friends. And every time she starts to panic a little bit, she starts cleaning and barking orders at people. And there has to be a light switch that goes off in my head that literally goes, what's going on, buddy? You need something? I got this. I got this. Because it's, it's, it's otherwise gonna spiral out of control.

• 56:06Speaker 00

  So like

• 56:06Speaker 01

  It's been a tremendous tool. Again, it's a wonderful mindfulness tool. With parenting is a longer form of the pause principle. It's a longer form of work. And it's really worth people's while to learn these modalities.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it was super helpful. And I remember thinking it was so many years ago, but I was like, this is so weird. And then I loved it.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same with me.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Kabbalah was so weird. Abraham Hicks was so weird. And at the end of the day, they changed my life. So now I'm

• 56:36Speaker 00

  Oh, God, yes.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Forever. All of it.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  So your story reminds me of my story. It was like, once I opened a book, I was like, I could not get enough. And I I was brainwashing myself positively into the way that is the only sustainable way to be living. And so I'm so grateful. I kept finding all of those different tools. Lots of similar tools. Okay, why, why is it so important that we meet? This version of ourselves who were here to be like, why do you truly know that this everyone has the capability to meet that version? Because sometimes our life can get so far from it that we're like, I don't even know who's in there anymore. If they're, if that person's there or gone. Um, why do you think that's so important?

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Because it's the only way to live a life that is authentically yours. The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you are so that you can live a life that is genuinely yours. Everybody knows the book, The Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. And the top regret of the dying was, I wish I had lived more in accordance to my own terms. If you are living in any way that is gilded, in other words, covered with fake gold, you are living on other people's terms. If you are subsuming your sexuality, if you are subsuming your desire, if you are subsuming your ambition, if you are subordinating your actual preferences in this life in order to acquiesce to the terms that were created by other people. You are paying an enormous price. Your soul is paying an enormous price.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  And so it's living in oppression. It's living in a situation that is muted. This is a very, very tough way to live. That's why so much of the content, like the Mrs. Maisel final skit breaks through to people because so many people want to break free. They want to have a big life. They want to live on their own terms. They want that little slice of heaven. When you actually do even get a glimpse of that touching the sky, you never want to go back. That's what this is worth. It's to get to do that in this lifetime.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  Hmm. A hundred percent agree. Have you found with your clients and with yourself, and I know I've found this for me. My life has kind of, it's like it's recalibrated. And a lot of those people I thought that I had lost or that I would lose or that I was so concerned with. It's like they all, it all kind of shakes out decently, better than expected.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  I told people at the end of the segment about the enlightenment detour, Lori, that you shouldn't worry too much. The bridges, enlightenment detours does not bird bridges. It creates bridges. It just allows you to meet them again on a much more authentic footing. They get to meet you. They get to meet the real you. And the people who are truly destined to be in your life would find that even more compelling than before, not compelling. The only things we ever lose are fake. The only things we ever want to attract are real. And that's sort of the argument for an authentic life. If you're living a life that is fake, what is it even worth? It's nonsense. It doesn't belong to you.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  And it's nonsense. People who keep up marriages that look good on Instagram, but feel terrible. It's horse shit. People who are in businesses that are slowly sucking the life out of them and that are not lighting them up. And they keep thinking about this fictitious time when they'll get to do what they really want to do. This is terrible. And I think that, uh, once you get even just a tiny taste of what's real. You know, like people who are in a bad marriage, getting a yummy yummy taste of a good affair. You can't go back. You can't go back because it's real and the soul wants what's real.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  Hmm. That is like the best thing that I have ever found is, is that things are never as bad, never even remotely as bad as you think they're going to be when you're thinking of following what you know you want. And, you know, even in absolute shit storms of my life, it's turned out so much better than I could have ever imagined. And now I can actually look back on those moments and be grateful for them, which feels like you'll never be grateful. During the time you wouldn't worship, wish it upon your worst enemy. But that's like, that's the hope that I want to give people who, if they're at the beginning of quote unquote, blowing their life up, that it truly has, all of that has been so worth it to me. And I'm still uncovering, you know?

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  I'm still in, still in scary parts.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Well, that's life, sweetheart. We're going to be in this together for much longer time. Exactly. You're reminding me of a great song lyric that you obviously also enjoyed in the nineties, watching MTV, which was Roxette's Listen to Your Heart when it's calling to you. And then she said, listen to your heart. Exactly. There's nothing else you can do. And so go willingly.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  I love it. I'm so grateful for you. Thank you so much for this. It also feels really timely in my life. So this was so fun. And hopefully we'll get to hang out. Um, soon, maybe up in LA.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  Where can we get your book? How can we work with you?

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Thank you. So gilded and guilt free are offered wherever books are sold. And obviously 99% of those sales are going through Amazon. I did want to mention gilded is spelled G I L D E D. And guilt free is a play on words. It's G I L T free. Get it? Good. And anybody can check me out on K E R E N E L D A D dot com, Karen Eldad dot com and grab a consultation. Or really, I mean, you'll find me on the other side. It'll be an awesome chat. And my favorite place to interact with people, of course, because I'm an elderly cat person is Instagram, where the cat videos abound.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  I love it. Well, I'm an, I'm a dog person, so we can

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  We have dogs too.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  Well, thank you so much for coming on. You guys go check it out. I have everything in the show notes. And until next time, earn your happy.