Ep 214: Somewhere to Practice

What happens when you step away from your everyday responsibilities, give yourself permission to focus on your own growth, and spend five days surrounded by women doing the same?Today, I'm bringing back one of my favorite episodes from 2025, featuring five of the incredible women who joined me for my very first retreat in Tulum. As I prepare to take another group of women to Tulum in 2027, I wanted to revisit their experiences and share them with you again.From powerful coaching sessions to impactful experiences we're still reminiscing about, you'll hear what each woman took away from the retreat. You'll also hear about their hesitations before coming and how they moved past them to say yes to themselves. A retreat can be transformational, and this kind of experience is possible for you, too.Click HERE to get the full show notes.Register for Coach Week: melissaparsonscoaching.com/coachweek

If you’ve been to therapy, read self-help books, or listened to podcasts (maybe even this one) and still find yourself saying yes when you mean no, staying quiet when you want to speak up, or overexplaining yourself, you don’t need more information. You need practice.Insight is not the hard part. You may already know what you want to change and understand what doing things differently looks like on paper. But actually doing something different when a hard situation comes up? That doesn't come as easily. In this episode, I’m talking about where the practice actually happens and what you can do today to stop falling into old patterns.You already know so much about what you want to change. Now, you need a place to practice becoming your favorite you.Click HERE to get the full show notes.Register for Coach Week: melissaparsonscoaching.com/coachweek

What have you written off as something you hate or just can’t do, even though you only try it in your most depleted window?Maybe it’s the difficult conversation you keep putting off until the end of a draining day or the exercise you attempt after work when you're exhausted. In this episode, we’re talking about how sometimes it’s not the task itself, but the timing, that keeps you stuck in the same pattern.When you approach something with more energy, at a time that actually works for you, you may find you start to succeed at it. With enough repetitions, your relationship to the task can change—not through willpower, but through repeated experiences under conditions where it feels genuinely doable.Click HERE to get the full show notes.Register for Coach Week: melissaparsonscoaching.com/coachweek

How bad does something have to get before the pain of dealing with it finally outweighs the pain of just living with it?I had to think about this question recently after spending hours taking care of a fruit fly infestation, to the point of doing full-on science experiments in my kitchen. In hindsight, it would have been easier to take care of the first two flies I saw days before it became a bigger problem.A small issue can be surprisingly easy to ignore when addressing it feels more inconvenient than tolerating it. But even if nothing seems to be changing, it can quietly grow until fixing it takes much more time and effort. In this episode, we’re talking about that invisible threshold and how it shows up in our relationships, careers, and everyday lives because it’s about much more than fruit flies in a kitchen.Click HERE to get the full show notes.

Not every good decision can guarantee a good outcome, and the idea that it can is quietly torturing you over decisions using a measuring stick that was never fair to begin with.In this episode, we’re talking about a trap that’s easy to fall into: judging a decision by how it turns out in the future instead of judging it by what you actually knew and had available when you made it.An outcome is not evidence about the quality of the decision you made. An outcome is just what happened. Those two things are completely different, but we constantly conflate them. You’ll hear why that distinction matters so much, how to make thoughtful decisions in the face of uncertainty, and why all you can do is make the best decision you can with the information and tools you have.Click HERE to get the full show notes.

You don’t need to spend hours sitting in silence to experience the benefits of mindfulness. In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Nirali Dubal, who shares how meditation helped her cultivate a deeper sense of peace in her life and how she now helps others do the same.You’ll hear how small moments of intentional attention can become part of your everyday life, from taking a breath before you enter a room to pausing to notice how you feel in the middle of a busy day. Nirali also guides you through a meditation you can return to anytime you need a moment to slow down and reconnect with your favorite version of yourself.Dr. Nirali Dubal is a board-certified pediatrician, ICF-credentialed life coach, and MMTCP-certified meditation teacher. After 25 years in primary care, she stepped beyond clinical practice to pursue her passion for helping people slow down, reconnect with themselves, and live with greater intention. Through mindfulness, meditation, and coaching, Dr. Nirali helps people find greater clarity, inner peace, and purpose, so they can create lives that feel more aligned with who they truly are.Click HERE to get the full show notes.

What if you could find the places where your personal energy is quietly leaking away? Just like a drafty window can go unnoticed because you’ve lived with it for years, emotional and energetic drains can become so familiar that they fade into the background.In this episode, we explore how doing an energy audit can help you identify the leaks in your own life. We’ll walk through five common energy leaks that may be costing you more than you realize, from reluctant yeses and unmade decisions to relationships that leave you depleted.You don’t have to wait until you’re completely depleted to ask what’s costing you your energy. When you start addressing even one small leak at a time, you may be surprised by how much lighter you feel and the energy you have for the life you actually want to live.Click HERE to get the full show notes.

It can be exhausting to try to make a decision about your own life when everyone around you has an opinion about what you should do instead. How do you trust yourself in the middle of all that noise?The opinions aren’t going to stop. Your family will keep having them, strangers will keep sharing them, and the internet will keep contradicting itself about the “right” answer. You can’t always turn off the noise, but you can build a relationship with your own knowing that’s sturdy enough to hold steady in the middle of it.When you finally start giving your own voice the same weight as everyone else’s, you can stop changing your decisions to fit someone else’s idea of your life and start choosing your path based on the version of you that you want to become.Click HERE to get the full show notes.

Resentment. It’s a feeling that can be hard to admit to, especially when you’ve been taught to be ashamed of it, talk yourself out of it, or convince yourself that you shouldn’t feel it in the first place.But resentment is not a character flaw. It is not proof that you’re petty, ungrateful, or a bad friend, partner, or mom. Resentment is a messenger. It can show up uninvited to tell you something you haven’t yet let yourself hear. The problem is, it tends to get shot down before you read the message.In this episode, we’re taking a closer look at what resentment might actually be trying to tell you. We talk about resentment toward the people in your life and toward yourself, why so many of us were taught to swallow it instead of speak it, and what can happen when you stop treating resentment as something to be ashamed of and start getting curious about the message it’s carrying.Click HERE to get the full show notes.

What can remodeling your home teach you about remodeling your life? More than you might think. As I’ve been remodeling my home, I’ve noticed all the ways the process mirrors the transformation of becoming your favorite version of yourself. When you remodel your home—or your life—you get to choose the scope. You can make a small change or take it all the way back to the studs. You can uncover things you didn’t know were there, get help from someone who knows what to look for, and make choices simply because you like them.A remodel can be messy, uncertain, and full of surprises, and the same is true when you’re changing your relationship with yourself. At the end of the day, you’re the one who has to live there. And just like your home, you get to decide what you want your life to look and feel like.Click HERE to get the full show notes.