This week I’ve been cold plunging consistently and making time to self-reflect. I’m creating a powerful week in my life where my priority has been to:

Slow down
Listen to my body
Identify negative thinking and interrupt those thought patterns
Clear old beliefs
Be gentle with myself
Create an unhurried lifestyle
Take a meaningful pause from the usual busy-ness of life

The results have been profound!

Day 1 I reflected on how empowering it is to decondition from the corporate grind, and day 2, I pondered the importance of having a balanced approach rather than forcing discipline and rigidity all the time.

Day 3, I was met with funky energy when I visited the bath house. I felt highly sensitive during my visit— mentally, my thoughts were swirly, and physically I felt a bit spinny too. Sometimes the intensity of the heat and cold can give me a bit of a headrush or dizzy sensation. I knew this wasn’t anything to worry about, but just energy clearing. I gave myself extra time between steps to let my body regulate and relax, which definitely helped.

Day 4, I took a day off from plunging. I was feeling a bit dehydrated having walked 21k steps the day before (quite a bit more than my usual 10-13k), and I just had the sense to be home, relax, and be inward rather than around other people.

Both days 3 and 4 felt like great reminders of how I am right on track doing this week-long plunging experiment.

The theme of rest continues to be the predominant theme. I continually find myself reflecting on times in my life when I haven’t given myself rest and how that leads to burnout. I’m in a season of life where I’m ready to break that pattern for good as well as extend kindness and forgiveness to the younger versions of myself who were still caught in that cycle of over-giving, resentment, frustration, and exhaustion.

A year or so ago, I found the work of Nicola Jane Hobbs online. She is a chartered psychologist, therapist, and author with a beautiful project called The Relaxed Woman.

As soon as I started reading her work, I felt a stirring in me. I felt a strong sense of conviction and waking up when I read the powerful questions she poses in her work:

“When was the last time you fully relaxed?

When was the last time you felt worthy of pleasure, slowness, nourishment and compassion?

When was the last time you felt safe enough to rest?”

She talks about how growing up she never knew a relaxed woman, but she knew she wanted to become one, and help other women do so, too.

That simple idea of a “relaxed woman” really stuck with me.

I am a relaxed woman, I began telling myself.

I sometimes do a sleep meditation called yoga nidra at night, especially on nights when I’m having trouble falling asleep or feel like my mind is running in a thousand directions. During yoga nidra, at the beginning of the guided audio, I’m guided to create what’s called a sankalpa, a resolution or mantra or concept that I want to bring to life and create. For a while, my sankalpa became “I am a relaxed woman.”

This felt empowering.

And continues to feel empowering.

That mantra— I am a relaxed woman— not only has it helped me fall asleep calmly on many nights, but it has also led me to make important decisions over the last year.

It might sound funny, but that little mantra was a key in my decision to quit the MBA I started in 2023. It was at the same time as I was planning my wedding (like when I went wedding dress shopping with my Inner Critic).

Those simple yet profound words— “I am a relaxed woman”— when repeating them felt untrue, like they didn’t fit, as much as I wanted them to, when that happened, I really had to take a breath and step back and look at my life.

I felt like night after night when I would go to do my yoga nidra and say my sankalpa (sometimes I’d repeat it several times, “I am a relaxed woman, I am a relaxed woman, I am a relaxed woman”)— when I’d say those words but felt in my heart that they weren’t ringing true, I knew I needed to make a shift.

I felt like anything but a relaxed woman. Day after day, I was feeling spread thin, like there was too much on my plate, but deeper down I was feeling out of alignment— like the program was leading me down a wrong path.

I realized I had gone into it for the excitement of meeting new people but also for a sense of validation from external accomplishment. Like if I had that fancy degree— if I could say I was not only an MBA but an executive MBA— I’d be more qualified for success in my career, a higher-paying job, and better leadership skills.

Then, every time I’d go spend a weekend on campus, I’d feel this intense anxiety coursing through my body, like alarm bells going off.

You’re just nervous, I’d tell myself. It will get better. It will shift.

Months down the line, it still hadn’t.

I was still finding myself in the bathroom while on breaks, trying to breathe myself away from having panic attacks. I would still end each curriculum day curled up on the couch, totally exhausted, wondering what I was doing there.

I was still having these thoughts in the back of my head pop in: do I really want the kinds of jobs we talk about all the time in the program? How is having an MBA going to qualify me to write more books? I already write books… I already have success with them, on my own terms…

And then two profound things happened:

I bought this book called Design Your Life at the suggestion of one of the career coaches from the EMBA faculty team. It’s a book that leads you to exercises to help you determine what activities light you up versus the ones that deplete you.

As I filled out some of the questions in that book and reflected on my own life, I realized: I’m already on the path I want to be on. Creatively. Professionally. Emotionally. Personally.

All this MBA stuff was leading me away from a path I felt really good about.

And then, a former client of mine passed away unexpectedly.

He was an incredible person, a gym owner, with a huge community and huge sphere of influence to those around him. A true leader in his community. I had ghostwritten his book a few years back and was suddenly shocked thinking about the legacy of that project. I imagined what it would have been like if we hadn’t worked on that book together. I reflected on how his friends, family, colleagues, and members of his gym would be reading the book now, after his death.

It hit me like a ton of bricks, just how important my work on book projects and helping people write their stories is.

And it hit me too, how doing the MBA would be leading away from that, not towards it.

Between those two things happening and the incongruous feeling every time I told myself, I am a relaxed woman, I knew what I had to do. I had to quit the program asap, and re-focus on what truly mattered to me.

So I did.

And you know what? Other people resisted it, the faculty and staff at the program tried to convince me to stay (which I knew they would), some friends and family members and colleagues doubted my decision— but I knew I was doing what’s right for me.

“Oh, you can always take a break and come back later, when the timing is better,” people would tell me. I’d smile and take a deep breath.

Inside, I knew, no thank you, I am not going down that path, not now and not ever again.

I had gotten what I needed from the program.

I just graduated early, I laughed to myself, knowing it was okay that not everyone understood this decision.

I didn’t need everyone else around me to understand my decision.

I needed to feel good about it, and I did.

And I still do.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this past year, it’s that I no longer question decisions that lead me to being more of the relaxed woman that I want to be.

I am capable of building a life where I am a relaxed woman, and I am creating that for myself, right here and now.

And no doubt, there will be seasons of life where burnout creeps back in, and I overload myself with a few too many things, or maybe I spend a bit of time exploring a path that won’t ultimately be right for me.

I do have an adventurous side and an occasional spontaneous kick in me that likes to try new things, and I don’t want to shut down that part of me. I’d rather experiment with something ambitious and new like a graduate program and end up deciding not to finish it than never take the risk of trying it at all.

And I finally feel the peace of knowing that I can always recalibrate my compass and come back to this deeply calm, innate presence within me— the relaxed woman I want to be, which is the legacy I want to leave.

And when I die, whether unexpectedly like my client or after years and years of a beautiful life spent following my dreams, I can rest easy knowing I lived according to the values that matter to me.

I gave myself permission to rest.

I gave myself permission to experiment and fail and quit sometimes.

I gave myself permission to just be me.

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