Grounded Wildness

The Grounded Wildness podcast is taking a break over the summer - and possibly beyond. I wanted to make this episode to talk through why I'm taking this break because the reasons apply to everything in your life as well, from how to spend your free time to the job you have to the friendships you maintain.  We'll get into: How to take your life of autopilot Clues to determine if you want...

What do you do when fear, worry, and discomfort get in the way of you doing the thing you really want to do? That could be something big, like a career change, or something little, like going to an event where you don't know anyone. How do you take action even when fear is there? It's not about getting rid of the fear. It's also not about trying to force yourself to be 100% confiden...

We're diving into two topics on the podcast today: How to stop apologizing when you have nothing to apologize for AND getting unstuck in your work and life. Shira Miller is an expert on both! She's also a TedX speaker, certified coach, author and the Chief Communications Officer at National DCP. Let's be clear - there are reasons you apologize ALL THE TIME. And there are also conseq...

Today's episode is an inspirational lesson in how to be a positive force for change in your workplace – and in our world as a whole. Carliss Miller, our guest today, is an organizational transformation architect, changemaker, and dedicated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) leader on a mission to drive positive change in organizations powered by employee engagement. She wants to bring peo...

Big emotions. We all have them. Sometimes they're hard, sometimes joyful, sometimes just plain overwhelming. So what can you do with them? In today's episode we dive into just that, including: The rules and feedback that can get in the way of feeling and showing our emotions, like being told you're too emotional or that you need to be polite and not show anger How to create space fo...

How do you get heard in meetings? And how do you do that in a way that is both authentic AND effective? Because, let's be honest, a lot of advice given to women about how to get heard is based in bias and discrimination. It emphasizes all the ways you are "supposed to" show up vs. what is authentic to you. The same holds true for meetings and I know you are most likely in A LOT of m...

Today we're diving into how to design your life with certified Design Your Life coach, Katie Selby! This is a great episode if you're considering a big change in your career or life -- or if you simply want to evolve in small ways. Katie will show you how to design a life aligned to your values, energy, and what works for you at this particular point in your life. We discuss: What does i...

This is a POWERFUL conversation about unhiding. If you've ever felt the need to hide parts of yourself or your story, whether it's related to your family background, education, finances, relationship status, or anything else, then this episode is  specifically for you. Ruth Rathblott, an esteemed TEDx speaker, author, and former leader in the non-profit sector, bravely recounts her twent...

How often do you do something because it's "good?" Do you avoid the cookie or cocktail because you're being "good?" Do you stay quiet when you're angry, hold back your feelings to protect someone else's feelings, save money, get up at 5:00am to work out, or are just generally polite and responsible all because it's "good?" And here's the...

It's the new year! Like many people, you might be evaluating what you want and thinking about making a change. In that spirit, the episode is all about the exact moment I knew my job had to change (which also happened on my birthday!) - and what I did next to figure out the right path forward for me. We dive into: How to recognize your full-body no (you've probably heard about a full-bod...

I hosted three Grounded Wildness book launch events last month and got the BEST questions at all of them! I'm taking the top questions from those launch events and answering them all in the episode today! Some are about Grounded Wildness - and some have nothing to do with the book. Here they are, in order: What's the difference between An Overachiever's Guide To Breaking The Rules a...

Sara Letourneau is our next guest on the pod! Sara is the book editor, writing coach, and workshop instructor at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services. She's also publishing her first collection of poetry, Wild Gardens , in 2024. We talk about WAY more than just writing in this episode! We dive into: Sara's journey to let go of perfectionism How Sara learned to recognize h...

This is one of my favorite podcast episodes we've ever done! Part One in this series was all about identifying the barriers that get in the way of asking for (and even knowing!) what you want and how to ask for the little things. Part Two is about the big things. Asking for a compensation increase. Asking a partner (or parent, child, friend, etc.) for what you really want and need. Asking a m...

Do you struggle to ask for what you want and need? Or to simply state it directly, even without asking?!? You're not alone. So many women have a hard time asking for what they want in their career, in relationships, even requesting a unique order for something as small as a coffee! Your wants can feel selfish, burdensome, annoying – or a whole slew of adjectives that typically aren't tru...

Today's episode marks a totally new series for the podcast – interviews with women living in grounded wildness! In each episode, we'll be discussing the rules different women have unraveled, how they've dealt with the challenges that have come up along their journey, and how they've created their own rules for life. These are going to be real conversations with real women. No p...

Grounded Wildness is coming your way on October 17 - woo-hoo! You can pre-order your copy at www.heatherwhelpley.com/groundedwildness . Because we're getting so close to YOU getting your hands on Grounded Wildness and feeling its freedom, today's episode is all about the single key to freedom from proving, pleasing, and perfecting. You might hear different tactics and strategies out ther...

Do you ever have a bigger reaction than the situation calls for?  Like your level of emotion is out of proportion with what is actually happening?  Or maybe you realize that logic has completely left the building and you're just all reaction and emotion?  That happened to me last week.  A small error (in an admittedly big thing - my upcoming book, Grounded Wildness), sent me into a tailspin. ...

We've covered proving, pleasing, and perfecting in the last three weeks and now we're down to the final way we perform in our lives: Rebelling. That might not sound like performing. Rebelling might sound a lot like wildness, which is part of what I preach! But rebelling isn't GROUNDED wildness - it's just wildness. It's breaking the rules ON purpose; not WITH purpose. It&a...

Today's episode is all about perfectionism! It's the third way we perform in our lives - and definitely the one I hear the most about.  You know the feeling of perfectionism. It's those unrealistically high standards and expectations that you feel like you MUST reach – and the inevitable stress, anxiety, shame, and worry that shows up when you don't. That's when the inner...

Today is the second in our four-part series on the ways we perform in our lives - and we're digging straight into people-pleasing. It's SO common. People-pleasing rules make you feel like you can't disappoint anyone, have to say yes to everything, and must take care of everything and keep everyone happy. They make you worry about what other people will think and can hold you back fr...

Today's episode is the first of a four-part series to help you uncover where you are performing in your life. We'll talk about how you move from your youthful wildness where you aren't impacted by the rules into the years of performing, where you feel the weight of "should" and "supposed-to" and all the rules and expectations that make you feel behind, like you a...

What do you need to give yourself permission for? To slow down? Do less? Say no? Change jobs? Say a thing that needs to be said even though it’s going to make someone uncomfortable? Or maybe it’s something super tiny, but not tiny at all, like take a nap or eat exactly what you want to eat for dinner.  Whatever it is, you can’t do anything you want to do without giving yourself permission first. A...

Uff-da. I got a ROUGH review of An Overachiever's Guide To Breaking The Rules on Amazon. Like a completely scathing, take-you-by-surprise, punch-in-the-gut kind of review.  While you may not get reviews of your work on Amazon, you still get criticism. That one negative thing on your performance review or comment from a colleague can swim around in your head for days, weeks, even months (or ye...

Your intuition is a force guiding you towards the best decisions for you -- and most of us aren't taught how to even listen to it. And if you are connected to your intuition, a million rules and "shoulds" can get in the way of actually following it, like worrying you might disappoint people if you do what your intuition is telling you or thinking you already made a commitment so eve...

Today's podcast topic is a surprising one: Our clothes. In particular, being afraid to wear bright colors and patterns, especially at work. I'm no fashionista, but when this topic came up in MULTIPLE conversations in just the last few weeks, I knew we had to talk about it on the podcast. Because it's about so much more than your clothes. It's about shrinking yourself to fit in...