Bloom Your Mind

A group of entrepreneurs presented their ideas to a panel of angel investors to be rated, and eventually chosen or rejected. While both groups poured over the content of reports, and bantered over the words spoken, the real investment decision was happening on an entirely subconscious level. Scientists who study non verbal communication were able to predict with perfect accuracy which entrepreneur...

As I spoke at multiple events for hundreds of people this past week, I had a moments of deep gratitude for the tools available for us to use to practice presence. Some of what I teach on the podcast is content that I’ve invented and created, and other tools and concepts are things I’ve collected over time from brilliant thought leaders, authors, theorists and changemakers.  In this episode, I’ll s...

We’re all thinking of ideas to make real all day every day, though we often don’t realize it. Ideas for what we want to do with an afternoon, how to theme a party, what relationship or health habits we want to tweak, or the big obvious ones like what career change we want to make, where we want to travel, or what we want a creative project to be based on. And then…we get stuck.  Ever get stuck fin...

A friend of mine told a story a few months ago that has stuck with me in that way that a story does. I keep seeing echoes of it everywhere. I see expressions and examples of the point he was making in the coaching that my clients need, in my own life and mindset, and in the stories I hear from the people around me.  He told a story about a family who came to him and said that another family had a...

Zoe is in the middle of a conversation with her partner. She’s annoyed and frustrated and is reminded of a series of other things that she feels annoyed and frustrated about in her relationship. They’re all connected by the feeling of annoyance…like pulling on a string and finding all the examples connected to it. She wants to tell him about each and every one until… All of the sudden she realizes...

Have you ever needed a fresh perspective so badly, that you just started over instead? Maybe it was by getting a fresh relationship going, or getting into a fresh job or home setting, or starting your life over in a fresh new place.  No matter how many times we change our external setting, we know that eventually we’ll meet the same challenges there, too.  In today’s episode, we’ll learn the idea...

We were camping in the mountains with a group of 20 kids and their parents, when the ground began to shake. The first things I noticed were quivering leaves on the trees around us, followed by a soft rumbling that can only mean one thing in SoCal….there’s an earthquake. The children had all kinds of reactions. Some were excited, some were curious. Some screamed and asked to be picked up. We soothe...

Have you ever stood behind someone in the grocery store thinking they should put the divider between your groceries and theirs?  Or thought someone should turn off their fanny pack music blasting down the hiking trail right behind you?  Have you ever thought someone was watching too much TV? Not spending enough time with the kids? Following too closely behind your car on the freeway? Yeah, me too....

Let’s go back to emotions 101. Your emotions ARE your superpower.   There are three ways that we naturally deal with them; we stuff them down, we act them out, and we buffer (put something else on top of them like work, sex, tv or scrolling, food or booze, or even thinking a lot!). All of those things make our feelings expand and deepen- like pushing a beach ball down underwater, so that eventuall...

When I thought of time management, I used to feel and think… ’Blahhh.’ ‘That is NOT sexy.’ ‘I am not wasting my time on that. I want to be here in the present.’ ‘It’s so boring. It’ll melt my face off. I just won’t do it.’   Ironically, all of those things proved to be the opposite of what’s true.  As I became a time whisperer…I had time to do sexy stuff, like take care of myself and literally act...

Have you ever gotten roasted or teased for things you were kind of surprised about?  Or what about this…have you ever been teased for saying something that you didn’t know was unique to you?  I’ve recently been told multiple times that a certain word that I say is a “Marie-ism”, and I had no idea. In friend groups, family text threads, the Bloom Room and more I’ve had people say “As Marie would sa...

A client recently asked how I get up at 5am in a house with squeaky floorboards and a husband who’s a night owl. The answer to this, and to so many other things comes from knowing my priorities.  While the 5am wake up call might ring just so I can get some exercise and some alone time before the chaos of the world wakes up…there’s something else that’s even more important to me than either of thos...

There are two ways of looking at the world. We can think that there is one truth to everything; “one thing is true”…OR we can realize that many things are true at the same time. We call this “two things are true” thinking.   Recently, I was working with a collaborator on something who was consistently letting me down by not meeting their commitments. When I was just trying to understand the hard t...

Two things stop people from taking action on the ideas that they have to make their own lives, their communities, their workplaces, families, and the world a better place.  They think that they’re not special enough…or  They think they’re too special to work hard for it.   Both of these beliefs are just as harmful, because both of them rob the world of what what we have to give.  Both of them are...

Grace was sitting across from me, with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea. Our session was first thing in the morning for both of us, and I could imagine that the rain that I could see falling so consistently in gentle waves outside my office window was falling just outside the window in her office too.  “It’s disorienting” she was saying. “This new feeling is disorienting.”  She was describing...

Did you know being an excellent listener is a way to practice great boundaries? It’s hard as hell to do, with a human ego standing right in the way…but it’s also the skill with the single biggest payoff.   Listening as a boundary tool always surprises people when they hear it for the first time. Until a few seconds later…when they have a lightbulb moment.  Great listening makes the space between t...

Bekah Salazar and Marie McDonald are lifetime sister-friends. We are also all about becoming EXPERTS at loving ourselves so that we can give our best to the world...and even more importantly than that, because we deserve it.  And so do you.  We see the people around us giving everything to families and work and communities, and we want to help our people to slow down; say no to everyone else a lit...

Ever feel like stress just piles on stress? We all know stress is a part of life, but are we handling it right? For most of us, we tend to get stuck in a cycle of feeling stressed, instead of finishing the cycle by shaking it off and actually resolving the issue. In this episode, leaning into one of the two stress experts, the Nagoski sisters, I'll break down what stress is and our modern day...

Do you want your big idea to stop being just an idea? Or are you constantly starting and stopping, never actually reaching your goals? In this episode, I dive head first into the second main ingredient for you to reach your goals. Consistency. Whether it's starting a business or building healthy habits, they rarely become reality overnight. It happens bit by bit, by just getting better and be...

This year, I decided to live a "Year of Zero Lies." Everything that I do or say, I commit to being 100% authentic. In this process  of personal discovery, I have learned five simple, but incredibly powerful questions that have helped me gain a clear blueprint for what to focus on and what to change. The clarity questions I offer will help you uncover hidden desires, find areas for growth...

Recently, we celebrated my parents' 50th anniversary, which means they've been together for half a century! If you think about it, their relationship is an idea they made real and stayed committed to it for 50 years and counting.  Those lovebirds made me ask the question: what is it really that makes our ideas a reality? Is it luck? Is it talent?  In this episode, I talk about the most c...

Do you ever make New Year's resolutions? This episode isn't about if you should or shouldn't. Instead, it's about a great way to make any idea – big or small – happen. We'll talk about three month goals,  a framework for achieving your big goals by breaking them down into manageable chunks.  This creates a clear path with actionable steps, enabling our brain to visualize a...

Before the end of the year, we usually spend this time to make up a list of things that we want to do or change. We call that our New Year's resolution. Today we're going to be more specific on that.  In this episode, we're going to talk more about designing your life for the coming year and making your choices based on a regenerative reasoning. That means that you're going to...

Have you ever noticed how we often approach new things with a fixed idea of how they should be? Whether it’s a trip, a project, or even a conversation, we tend to follow familiar patterns. But why?  In today's episode, I'll share with you a perfect experience last weekend to illustrate that when we let things flow and let go of expectations, our experiences become more magical. I'll...

Imagine puffing a dandelion into the air. As you blow on the dandelion, all its little feather-like flowers go out into the world. When we put our ideas out, they spread like a dandelion and other people get to experience and build off of them. In this episode, I want to talk about our wonderful and magical experience in Vancouver and how this experience exemplify that sharing our thoughts into th...