On her website, Becky Mollenkamp says, "Your thoughts aren't trash. Your feelings aren't toxic. Failing to get rich isn't because you don't push enough or believe enough... You can't just think yourself happy. Stress, fear, and overwhelm aren't mind trash or trolls. Your struggles aren't a personality defect. Your challenges aren't character flaws. Your problems aren't mental or moral shortcomings."

This fresh approach is what made me want to interview Becky. She's an ICF-certified life coach with hundreds of hours of experience who helps people believe in and love themselves, let go of "shoulds" and feel more confident and worthy. She's the host of the Gutsy Boss podcast and has a coaching community by the same name. 

In our interview, we covered "hitting the wall" in running and life, and she suggested a new way to look at the wall. We talked about changing jobs, self care, and about how women and girls are conditioned to believe their needs come second.

From...

Are you a woman who has been passed up for promotions? Are you sick of watching others get the advancement opportunities you deserve? Are you tired of working for bad bosses? Then you'll want to hear what Rochelle Marie has to say in this episode.  We talked about courage, confidence, how bosses should be engaging their staff if they are working virtually, the concept of "embody it until you become it," and more.

Rochelle Marie has worked her way from entry level roles to leadership positions twice (once after a 12 year career gap to raise her children) without pretending to be someone she's not or sacrificing her family.

After one too many stories from career moms who were literally vomiting on the way to work due to toxic managers, and having worked for a few herself, she decided enough was enough.

With her degree Psychology, Post Grad Dip. in Career development and education and her entrepreneurial/intrapreneurial spirit, she now empowers and inspires...

What inspires someone to spend 20 years developing a new running shoe technology? I wanted to get to know the man behind the carbon composite suspension technology in the newest running shoe, Hann Shoes.

Lenn Hann on how he got started: 

I started out running in college, not as part of a track team or anything, but recreationally. And through my early running years, I was like everybody. I was happy. I was enthused. I'm building miles. I'm running races. In 1995, I completed my very first marathon and got a pretty serious injury during the training.  And I had been since college, bread-knifing shoes apart that I thought were really nice -- just to see what's inside. How are they built? Or [shoes] that really offended me...to see what's inside and understand why isn't the shoe working. And the shoe that I got the injury from... I was so upset. It was brand new. I bread-knifed it apart and there was so much structure inside of it that there was no way it wasn't going to...

"I think our running community is made of the absolute best people in the world. They're always trying to do something good for their own health, their community, great causes. And it is a tremendous luxury for me to have the opportunity to make sure everybody feels welcome, wanted, calmed, excited," Fitz Koehler tells me at the start of our interview. "And then I  want every finisher to feel like they won the race. And while  I completely respect the speedsters up in front, I'm going to claim favorites. My favorite people in the course of the back of the packers. I think they're the grittiest, the most surprising... you know, when you look at someone and think how the heck did they get to the start line? And then all of a sudden they're at the finish line. I just, I love them so much. And I'm so blessed to do what I do."

For episode 144 of Power Up Your Performance, I spoke with race announcer, and breast cancer survivor, Fitz Koehler.

We talked about what it was like to...

What does it mean to feel "stuck" in life or in your career? And how does someone get "unstuck"? We hear this phrase a lot when listening to life and transformation coaches, but what does it really mean? I talked to Dagmar Bryant, PhD about life transformation, empowerment, clarity, and finding our life's purpose in Episode 143 of Power Up Your Performance. 

On the podcast she says:

"Even though we call it 'stuck,' they're often feeling really disempowered, so one of the key things for me is trying to understand or help them understand who they are and where they fit into things. Why have things turned out the way they have? What have they tried? What haven't they tried? What is it that they actually want to achieve? 

Sometimes we tell ourselves we want something, but we really need to go into our core to understand. It's coming to that understanding of: do you really want what you think you want? And we have to get to the core of that first."

Next, she says, we need to ...

If I came up to you and said that at midnight tonight, it would be time to run into your dream life and get back to doing the things you love, would you be ready? What would it take to be ready? If it's running or triathlon, you're going to need to start running and cycling and maybe swimming again, if you aren't already doing those things.

Or maybe you've been running, but now it's time to start gradually bumping up the mileage. Or maybe, you know exactly what you need to do--but you need the accountability of a coach. If you're an actor, what's your stamina like right now? If you had the opportunity to start rehearsals for a show tomorrow, would you have the energy and the focus to memorize lines or to sing and dance without feeling like you're going to collapse? Can you sing without feeling breathless?

Whatever your thing is that you want to get back to, let's start by making a list of the things that you know that you need to be able to do successfully so you...

As athletes, we are always pushing our bodies to the limit, trying to see what we are capable of. To compete at the highest levels, it's important to have help with your mindset. You saw a lot of examples of this if you listened to my interviews with Deena Kastor, Nick Symmonds, and Katherine Switzer. In this interview with Lisa Bonta Sumii, LCSW for the Power Up Your Performance Podcast, we talked about mental skills training and how what we learn as athletes can transfer to all the areas of our lives.

Lisa has 21 years experience as a therapist, but started working with athletes over the last two years because her 14 year old daughter began playing softball. In that process, the culture of competition was reintroduced to her. Lisa was a competitive soccer player growing up, so her own identity as an athlete was reignited.

She saw the intensity, the pressure, and the responsibility of being an athlete at a competitive level at such a young age and recalled her own...

Last year, I did a podcast, Fitness Trends for the New Decade, and since 2020 was not the year we expected in any way, I decided to take a look back to see what I said a year ago. Did I hit the mark? Were we headed in this direction before COVID-19 threw our lives into disarray? 

I'll share my predictions for 2021 in a new episode the first week of 2020. But here are a few of the things I predicted last  year as we started the new decade. We might have gotten off to a rocky start, but I think the things I mentioned last year are even more important than I would have imagined a year ago.

If you want to create the life of your dreams, you need to take care of your body, mind, and spirit. Here are five trends I believe have staying power:

1. Meditation. Meditation will become more important as we continue to learn how mindfulness techniques impact health. Meditation helps improve sleep, anxiety, depression, and stress. It promotes happiness, increases pain tolerance, and...

We are in that time of year where we are winding down, and there's pressure to put big goals out there for achieving big things in the coming year. 

The problem with new year's resolutions is that they don't last. In two weeks, the majority of us will forget all about the resolutions we set while sitting in front of the fire with a glass of wine.

Change is HARD, and our bodies and minds naturally resist change. After a year where we faced challenge after challenge, the thought of setting resolutions may seem daunting. (And, I'm not much of a resolution person to begin with.)

Rather than setting resolutions, which feel a lot like a list of things  I can and can't do, I prefer to choose a word of the year, which I think of as a word that guides my decisions. When faced with two compelling opportunities, which one is more in alignment with the word I chose at the beginning of the year? When tempted to go down another rabbit hole, or try yet another new thing, is it...