Hey there. I’m Kari.
I’m a former medical malpractice defense paralegal turned mindset coach, and I spent most of my life harboring the biggest secret — that I was pretty much worthless.
This is what I told myself.
This is what I believed.
I lived in constant fear that when people really got to know me, they’d see this, too, and say, “I’m out” and move on.
When you believe that you’re worthless, it shows up in different ways.
Some hustle for their worthiness, feeling if they could just produce certain results, then they could finally feel okay.
Some shut down and move through life without hope or aspiration because they can’t imagine a future in which they’re different enough to be happy.
Some cling to relationships, constantly looking for affirmation from others that they’re worthy and valued, that they’re being chosen, and that their existence matters to people, because if others believe, even when we don’t, there’s still a glimmer of hope that maybe we are worthy.
Unfortunately, when we’re convinced of our own unworthiness, we need constant validation to soothe our anxiety. Validation is like a drug for emotional pain. It gives us a hit of relief from the pervasive feeling that something’s gone wrong (or that we’re wrong), but the relief is temporary. We require more and more validation and bids of affirmation to get that same feeling, and like any drug we overuse, it loses effectiveness over time. We need more and more to feel okay about ourselves, and yet, the more we receive, the more fragile we become, because even if others may believe what they’re saying, we don’t, and because we don’t, we realize we distrust anyone who tries to tell us otherwise.
All three of these were me.
Because I so strongly believed the worst about myself, I could not imagine a life that didn’t include me feeling terrible about myself all the time. When feeling too much becomes too much, depression can take the scary turn to apathy — we just don’t want to feel anymore.
That was me at rock bottom.
I felt like I had only ever let people down, and I was exhausted by my inner critic incessantly reminding me what a f*ckup I was.
And so after over 20 years together I asked my husband for a divorce.
“You deserve to be happy,” I said.
I thought I was being selfless and setting him free.
I thought setting him free would give him a chance at the happiness, love, peace, and stability he deserved. I harbored the hope that through that freedom my girls would have a second chance to experience life without tiptoeing around a mom who couldn’t seem to pull herself together.
I had asked him for a divorce before. This time was different. He knew I was serious. He had rallied us before. This time, though, he was also tired.
“Give me one year,” he said.
One year to get some counseling (him). One year to think things through. One year to look within himself to see what it was he wanted as well.
“Give me one year, and if at the end of that year you still want a divorce, this time I’ll walk away.”
There was something in the way he looked that day. I believed him when he said he’d let me go. I wanted him to let me go. I think I felt relief, that there was going to be an endpoint to the crushing guilt I felt about being the reason for an entire family’s unhappiness.
I could hang on for a year, and then they could start over. And then, maybe I could, too.
I said okay.
In the weeks and months following that conversation, my husband went to therapy. He needed someone to talk to. I continued to do my own inner work. We talked, but not about staying together. We moved through the year as if we were likely going to divorce. There was no pressure to “save the marriage” and this was tremendously freeing. This wasn’t the first time I asked for a divorce, and all the other times ended in “saving the marriage”. I needed him to know this wasn’t like all the other times.
As the months passed, I found myself observing my husband. He worked hard every day, providing for the family. He was the stability when my mental health deteriorated. Depression doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it touches everyone. The hardest part of depression is seeing the impact on those closest to you. But my husband kept showing up — at work, at home, for me, for our girls. He leaned into his friends and back into his faith. I saw him doing the work to make peace with this possible new reality.
It dawned on me that when the year was up, it was possible that he’d feel relieved. He’d given his best effort, and there was some solace there. Maybe there was even some interest at what life could look like outside the haze and history of depression.
Seeing my husband do this work made me take a look at myself.
If I left the marriage, could I say that I gave it my all?
If I loved him deeply, did I show it in a way he could feel it? If I respected him, did he know this? Had I ever treated him like he was the greatest, strongest person I knew? Had I ever shown him by my actions that I’m his biggest champion, in good times and bad? Did I ever take care to stand firmly alongside him, or did I leave him to shoulder everything alone?
My answers were telling. I had never given us a chance. I had never given myself a chance.
I started wondering, “What would happen if I started showing up to my marriage differently? What would happen if I started showing up for my kids differently? What would happen if I started showing up for myself and my life differently?”
There was a time when I thought I had nothing to offer, that my family would be better if I wasn’t around.
But asking those questions helped me to see I could still leave my children a gift: the gift of never-too-late mentality. I could show them by my actions that their mom never gave up looking for ways to help herself turn things around.
That’s when I stumbled on a life coaching podcast that changed my life. That’s when I learned that negative self-talk is a habit, not a personality trait, and like all habits, can be broken. That’s when I learned that thoughts really do become things, but when we know this we can use them for us instead of against us.
That’s when I learned that every single one of us can live a very different life, if we commit to the daily practice of noticing and directing our own minds.
Fast foward to present and my husband and I are together. Our love for each other is stronger than ever. I’ve been repairing and strengthening my relationship with my girls, and slowly working to do the same with family and friends. All of this started, though, when I gave myself permission to repair and strengthen my relationship with myself.
I started by drawing the line on how I would let myself talk to myself, including the stories I told myself about my worth and value as a human.
I started challenging everything I’ve ever believed about myself, others, and what’s possible.
In short, because I started to think differently, I started to live differently.
That’s why I do what I do.
We all have negative, self-defeating thoughts and emotions.
How we manage those thoughts and emotions is everything.
If we’re riddled with insecurity and think we’re not good enough, we feel anxious, depressed or hopeless.
We start avoiding or hiding in our personal or professional lives and stop showing up for ourselves.
We keep doing what we’ve always done because the effort to change feels too overwhelming.
We don’t want to spend time and energy going down a path only to have it not work out.
We tell ourselves we’d be all in if we could guarantee our effort would lead to the change or success we desperately want.
But we also want to be practical and realistic. We’ve always been this way. What makes us think this time would be different? We don’t want to delude ourselves.
Why bother then, right?
And with no answer to this question, we shut down our goals and dreams (again) and go back to moving through our days on autopilot, numbing our feelings with our buffering activity of choice:
…zoning out in front of the TV, overeating, overworking, overconsuming more personal development and self-improvement content without committing to any action steps…
In an effort to protect ourselves from pain and disappointment, we unwittingly choose to disappoint ourselves ahead of time.
I spent so many years unaware that I had the power to stop my own mind drama.
I felt at the mercy of my own thoughts.
Some days my thoughts were nicer to me, and I felt happier, relieved, more confident, but most days my inner critic was in full force.
The constant inner battle was exhausting.
But then I heard about mindset work, and how much biology and evolution play a role in how humans live their lives.
I learned that what we think, consciously or subconsciously, creates physiological responses in our bodies (“feelings”) and that these feelings are what drive us to do or not do anything in life.
Bottom line, I learned that if I wanted to change my life, I needed to first understand the biology behind our thought processes, and then use that knowledge to question everything I previously believed about the mind.
Most of us are unaware we have the ability to choose or discard our thoughts. We just think they appear, and when they do, we treat them as simply the way things are, rather than habits to break, social conditioning up for questioning, byproducts of our family systems, nervous system responses to trauma, or anything else.
This is where we get stuck and where we create so much of our emotional suffering.
I gave decades of my life to depression, anxiety, hopelessness, because I did not know I had the power to help myself out of my own suffering.
But once I realized tools were available, I got to work.
The work of unlearning, relearning, choosing, deciding, forgetting, remembering hasn’t always been easy. Some parts have been incredibly frustrating and painful, but the difference is this time I know my thoughts are optional.
That knowledge is life-changing.
If you do this work, you will not be spared from experiencing negative, uncomfortable, sometimes painful emotions.
But this time, you’ll know there are tools and concepts to help you face them, process them, acknowledge them.
You will learn how to loosen their hold over your mind and body so instead of being hijacked by them you become stronger each time you allow yourself to work through them.
The more we lean into our fears instead of running from them, the faster we grow our belief in our ability to do “hard” things and to bounce back when setbacks inevitably occur.
Ultimately, we learn that emotions are survivable.
When we know this and do the daily work to truly see and feel this, our lives become exponentially bigger.
This is the type of work I help my clients with as a mindset coach.
Mindset work is like developing any important skill — it takes time, intentional effort, and consistent, daily practice, but even the smallest of mindset shifts can lead to real and lasting change.
And, at the end of the day, that is my passion — helping people to see that change is possible for them, too.
It all starts with understanding why we do what we do, and using that knowledge to create more of what we want in life, and less of what we don’t.
When my clients learn these tools, life starts to look different. Change seems possible.
Because it absolutely is.
I’d love to help you change your life, too.
If this resonates, the first step is an initial coaching call with me.
I conduct my coaching sessions over the phone, audio only. My clients sometimes come to me with elements of shame and self-loathing. Unearthing and processing such negative thoughts and emotions can feel intensely vulnerable. Audio-only calls help to remove some of the pressure and anxiety.
To schedule a free 90-minute coaching call, click the Contact form on the website.
For more details on my coaching philosophy and what it means to do this life-changing work:
— Click the Mindset + Self-Accountability Coaching tab
— Follow me on Instagram (@_thisonelife) for mindset tips, tools, resources and inspiration— Listen to my podcast, The End of the Day: A Mindset Podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, and more. You can also access the podcast episodes via the ‘Podcast’ tab on the footer of this website.