Author name: Carrie

Professional Coach and Facilitator

What Makes You Go: How to “Water Yourself” During a Transition

     How can you water yourself?

If you hang out in the in-between place of a transition for a while, it can start to feel like you don’t even know who you are anymore.

A drawn-out period of “figuring it out”—or the even less-empowered period that you may experience before you are taking active steps to figure it out—can get exhausting and draining to the point that it leaves you feeling like a muted, immobile version of yourself.

I’m reminded of a passage in one of my favorite YA books, The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau.

It’s a fantastic and brilliantly written story of a boy and girl growing up in an isolated city that is struggling with dire shortages of food and electricity, and working to find a way to save their city before the lights go out forever.

In this scene, Clary, a greenhouse worker, talks with Lina, a teenager.

“Clary put a hand in her pocket and drew something out. ‘Look,’ she said. In the palm of her hand was a white bean. ‘Something in this seed knows how to make a bean plant. How does it know that?’ …

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Declaring Interdependence

On this fourth of July, I’m thinking a lot about interdependence.

I’ll tell you a little (soon-to-be-former) secret:

I have been dealing with a problematic home situation for some time now.

I won’t go into all the hows and whys of my particular challenges, but suffice it to say it was time to make that sh*t a priority.

My stuff—and my life—just aren’t working optimally in the space I have!!

Instead of feeling warm, cozy, inviting, and open, my home has been feeling cramped, squished, blocked, and totally not aligned with my otherwise thirtyawesome life.

I’ve never been blessed with strong spatial imagination skills.

While I consider myself a very creative person, I am not someone who walks into a physical space and immediately sees the optimal arrangement or the possibilities.

After too long living in this draining environment, it became clear:

I need help. …

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It’s Not You—It’s Everyone

If They Only Knew…

You’ve heard that dirty old dumping line: “It’s not you—it’s me.”

Well, today I’m here to tell you:

It’s not you—it’s everyone.

So many of my clients feel shame about some aspect of how, who, and what they are, or in something they have done.

I call these things the “If They Only Knews,” because many of us fear that if people only knew these things, they would know how mean, bad, selfish, and unlovable we really are. …

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Talking to Yourself: What Would You Say?

Imagine you could go back in time (as the adult you are now) and sit down with your 6- to 18-year-old self. What age would you pick, and what would you say?

Write down your response to this question before reading on.

For real!

Done?

Okay.

A few weeks ago, I asked everyone in our thirtyawesome community to share your answers to this question. I was inspired by your responses, and struck by the common threads that ran through answers that were sent in from so many different people.

Across the board, the responses centered around four main themes: …

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From Lab to Garden to Car Lot to Massage Studio: Carrie Spaulding, CPC Interviews Diane Matkowski

Diane Matkowski
Diane Matkowski, LMT, HHC
Freedom Massage

“I had no idea what I was going to do…I had zero plan… Now I realize what a gift it was.” 

Meet Diane Matkowski. She has been a lab aide, a landscape gardener, a car salesperson, a massage therapist, and a business owner.

Join me as I talk to Diane about her multi-stop hop on a career path that led to opening her own business.

Are you thinking, “I could never do that!”?

Well, Diane had nooooo idea that would ever be possible for her, either. …

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How to Survive an Attack of the Never-Dids

One of the hardest parts of an ending—whether it’s the end of a relationship, a job (or a whole career), or your residence in a home or city—is the knowledge and acceptance that this will have been it.

When you’re going—really going—a particular insidious voice can show up in your head. I call this voice the Never-Dids.

“But I never finished…”

“But I/we never got to…”

“But I haven’t gotten this perfect yet.”

When there’s always a tomorrow in that place, job, or relationship, there’s always a possibility to do better, to complete more, to enjoy or experience more, to perfect and hone.

When tomorrow will find you somewhere new…that’s when the Never-Dids come out to play.

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The Tonsillectomy Technique: How to Get over Getting Over It

When I was 27, I had a tonsillectomy. After years of having horrible throat pain and other complications every time I had so much as a flicker of a cold, I finally saw an ENT who suggested I get the nasty things taken out.

He warned me that as procedures go, an adult tonsillectomy is “not pleasant.”

I nearly screamed, “I don’t care! Take them OUT!!!!!”

I was ready to put the years of tonsil torture behind me.

As it happened, in the couple of weeks before my tonsillectomy, I had fallen—hard—for someone I’d started to date.

This was one of those horse-before-the-cart deals; strongly encouraged by the signals I was seeing—and, yeah, okay, probably by some signals I wanted to see—I let myself fall way too fast. …

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