There’s a creative genius in you; in all of us! This is a remark shared by Izolda Trakhtenberg, this week's guest on Power Up Your Performance. Izolda T. is a speaker, author, podcast host, and innovator who leverages her years of experience as a NASA Master Trainer to help businesses tap and supercharge innovation in their workforce. Her message is all about empowering individuals and promoting collaboration as a way to solve problems at the personal, organizational, and global levels.

What We Explored:

We went over several topics revolving around communication, nurturing creativity, why collaboration is key (and how to go about it), creating a culture of innovation based on Izolda’s “3 Cs of Changing the World,” and more. It’s a conversation with a thing or two for parents, teachers, team leaders, and anyone in the workforce.

Working with NASA

Izolda: I worked for a program called GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the...

“You are worth building a beautiful life beyond just what you do day in and day out…Invest in yourself and your happiness…Do what genuinely makes you feel your best, routinely.”—Emma Ehrenzeller. 

Life is beautiful, but only if you tune your inner lenses to see it as such! You have a choice to either create the happy and purposeful life of your dreams or give in to the barrage of everyday pressures. It all comes down to the mindset you nurture.  

Emma Ehrenzeller is a life coach and the founder of Authenticity Remastered (aka. AuRem), which is a coaching program that offers “the strategy & structure to accelerate (or simply start) your personal growth journey.” She helps people work through negative self-talk, fear of uncertainty, and other internal conflicts that hold so many people back.  

In our conversation, we delve into a wide range of transformative topics—including body positivity, dealing with...

What should you eat? Eating is a basic human need—but one that has been twisted to seem overly complicated amidst the flurry of food misconceptions, contradictory information,  unsustainable fitness goals, and fad diets that are churned faster than you can keep up. The realm of nutrition is just so messy! But what if you could ditch the ever-growing list of diet rules but still eat healthily? Mallory Gonzales believes this is possible and her solution is as simple as, well, making nutrition simple. 

Mallory Gonzales is a registered dietitian with a Master of Science in Nutrition. She is also the head of nutrition at Kencko, which is a plant-based nutrition company that is on a mission is to help people get more organic fruits and vegetables in their everyday routine every single day through shelf-stable smoothies and...

Casey Edward is a Certified Life Coach, a Certified Yoga Instructor, and a firm believer that you can be happy AND successful, calm AND productive. She helps people live in the moment, learn how to say NO and get out of that place where they feel lonely and empty - so they can move on to relationships, work, and activities that allow them to lead their best, most fulfilling lives.

What We Talked About:

We covered lots of topics including: choosing your thoughts and the way you respond to situations, getting out of tough job or relationship situations, toxic positivity (and what that really means), and how to make tough life changes. 

 You Don't Need to Believe Every Thought You Have:

Casey: We think 70,000 thoughts a day, and I was believing every single one of them. And for me, it was, "You're not enough. You should lose weight. You aren't good enough to do that. Who are you to start a business?" And I was believing all of them, but if someone had just said, ...

Who are you? What makes you tick? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What are your core values, and how do they impact your everyday life? Self-discovery is an essential component of personal growth.

Discovering your potential and purpose in life is a key element to thriving, rather than surviving—especially for students transitioning from high school to college, which is a career- and life-defining stage in their lives. This is something that today’s guests, Greg and Beth Langston, discovered the hard way while preparing their kids for college application in a system that paid little attention to the crucial role of self-discovery.

Drawing on their professional and personal experiences, Greg and Beth Langston created the College Flight Plan Self-Discovery Course. According to their website, the program “gives your students everything they need to determine a career course as they confidently apply their unique strengths, values, purpose and goals to their...

Food touches every aspect of our lives, and everyone needs to eat. Because of this, your relationship to food is important, but it doesn’t need to be hard. Rather than worrying about lists of foods you can and can’t eat, today's guest on Power Up Your Performance, Claudia Wilson, encourages her clients to be mindful of why they are eating.

Claudia is a health and lifestyle coach, registered dietitian nutritionist, a board certified specialist in sports nutrition,  a Strength and Conditioning Specialist/Trainer and the author of ONE-TWO-Punch. She created ONE-TWO PUNCH after meeting with thousands of clients and creating a method that is easy, doable and sustainable.   

A few of the things we talked about:

Kim: So let's get one of the big questions out of the way at the very beginning of the show: what is the best diet?

Claudia: Everybody always wants to know. There's so many out there, all the brand name diets. What's the...

Amy Deland knows first hand that it’s not easy to tackle health issues alone, and that navigating the vast world of health and wellness can feel overwhelming. Health issues have run in her family for generations, and she has witnessed how a lack of support and resources can prolong issues to the point of devastating consequences.

Because of her personal experience and perspective, she wakes up every day passionate about creating opportunities for people to create their best life by accessing proper support and resources.

We talked about why resilience is so important, especially as we face continued challenges due to the pandemic:

Amy: On top of some of the things that we're facing globally, like environmental change, there's the need to be resilient and the need to be able to care for ourselves is paramount--not just how we show up in our own lives,  in our family's lives or our community's lives, or the people we work with, but also as a society to equip...

After taking a summer hiatus, we are back for season four of Power Up Your Performance! In this season, I'll share more content and stories that will help you change trajectory of your life, pour love into the world, conquer monumental challenges, and move more and feel better.  

In this episode, I spoke with Maureen Gibbons, MD about how to eliminate overwhelm in our hectic lives. 

Life is stressful, and tends to operate at a hectic pace. How do you remain happy, and eliminate overwhelm while keeping everything in your life running smoothly? How do you find the things that make your soul come alive and actually have time for them?

I spoke with Maureen Gibbons, an emergency physician at a level 2 trauma center, who is also a triathlon coach, sports nutritionist and the bestselling author of "Happy First: How to Win Life in the Moment - at Home, at Work, at the Gym and Even in the Kitchen."

A few snippets from our conversation:

On Sleep...

"If you're only...

Simone Knego has done some pretty remarkable things, but she says it's the small things that have impacted her life the most. She climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds and awareness for the Livestrong Foundation, and she's travelled the world on philanthropic missions with her neurosurgeon husband. She says every choice she's made is a part of her story, but it’s the small things that have impacted her life the most.

The familiar Jewish phrase she learned in her youth, Tikkun Olam—repair the world—has been the driving force of everything she does. It has changed her perspective on life and inspired her to write her book the Extraordinary UnOrdinary You to share the important message that what you do matters. We are—in essence—repairing the world with our small acts of kindness by simply being who we are.

From our interview:

"We all need to look at ourselves and say we're already doing amazing things. We can impact the...

Monica Ortega has led an interesting life. She's a professional on-camera host, speaker, and actress who has had her share of ups and downs. She created the travel show, Monica Goes, in 2014. Four years into a bad marriage, disappointed that her then-husband wouldn't travel with her, depressed, and feeling hopeless, the show helped her fulfill her desire for travel and adventure. 

Monica says she's someone who's afraid of everything, and that she'll put herself through almost anything to show that if an average everyday person like her can do these things, anyone can. (Visit the Monica Goes YouTube Channel to see how she pushes her limits!)

Monica emcees at some of the biggest music festivals in the nation, has been seen in over 20 commercials, and is the co-host on the podcast Stumblin' Forward. She recently published her first book The Power of Pivoting - How to Embrace Change and Create a Life You Love. Her goal is to inspire others to face their fears, break out of...