Part 3: Healing and Moving Forward

Episode Overview
In the final installment of her vulnerable three-part series, Kristen continues to unpack the emotional, spiritual, and professional journey she’s been on over the past year. Picking up where she left off—at rock bottom—Kristen shares what happened after taking radical responsibility for her actions and stepping away from the business that made her a household name in social selling.

She explores the deep healing work she’s done through therapy, a transformational retreat, and a season of radical stillness…before realizing that healing often intensifies when we start building again. Kristen discusses the creation of Sondera, her new company focused on nervous system regulation, and how the entrepreneurial process is offering her the most humbling and redemptive growth of all.

This is not a polished comeback. This is the messy middle—where ego dies, faith grows, and identity is rebuilt.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why healing often accelerates in the process of building something new
  
• How nervous system dysregulation can sabotage success
  
• The dangers of attaching self-worth to productivity and platform
  
• Why Kristen walked away from a wildly successful business
  
• The origin story of Sondera and what it’s really about
  
• Why your internal safety matters more than external security
  

Key Takeaways

• Healing is not linear. Kristen thought peace would come from stillness. But it came through risk, exposure, and being seen in a new way.
  
• Burnout is more than overwork. Chronic nervous system dysregulation—not just hours worked—was what broke Kristen down.
  
• Success doesn’t mean alignment. Kristen shares how she knew she was out of alignment even though her business was thriving on the surface.
  
• Redemption is found in transparency. Instead of disappearing and re-emerging perfectly polished, Kristen invites her audience into the real-time journey.
  
• Your body tells the truth. Learning how her stress response (flight) controlled her behavior helped her take back agency and make healthier decisions.
  

Timestamps
00:00 – Intro: “I see you with brand new eyes.”
01:20 – Recapping Part 2: Hitting bottom and coming home
03:00 – The power of bringing your story into the light
05:00 – Deep therapy and emotional healing at Onsite
06:15 – Feeling disillusioned with her former business model
07:10 – Launching “Beyond the Business” coaching calls
08:00 – The agonizing decision to shut down her signature programs
09:45 – Stewarding success well in seasons of plenty
11:00 – Letting go of external validation and facing public perception
12:30 – The fantasy of a “quiet, offline life” vs. the call to rebuild
15:00 – Discovering nervous system regulation as the missing link
17:00 – Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn: how they show up in your business
20:00 – Why she mistook her chronic stress for ambition
23:30 – Understanding burnout through the lens of dysregulation
25:10 – Building Sondera: from idea to messy execution
26:30 – Why healing happened through building, not before it
29:00 – Learning to express vulnerability to her husband
31:00 – Letting go of ego, hustle, and performance-driven identity
33:00 – Creating Sondera as a redemptive act
34:30 – Reconnecting with her story and reclaiming her voice
36:00 – An invitation to listeners: look for the growth in your own build
39:00 – Next up: nervous system regulation and what it means in daily life

Resources & Mentions

• Kristen’s New Company: Sondera
  
• Previous Episodes: [Part One & Two of Kristen’s Story]
  

Call to Action
If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who might be in their own “messy middle.” And if you haven’t yet, leave a review—it helps others find the show and gives Kristen fuel to keep showing up authentically.

Let’s Connect

• Instagram: @thekristenboss
  
• Website: www.kristenboss.com
  
• Join the List: Subscribe for future updates, resources, and offers

“If all of the time and the energy and the money that we have put into the startup… if the only thing I get out of it was all the healing it brought in my life—then I guess it’s worth it.” – Kristen Boss

Transcript for episode 232 “Part 3: Healing and Moving Forward”

Kristen Boss (00:03):

I see you with brand new eyes. So you are listening to the Kristen Boss Podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning. Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for tuning in for another episode, especially after the last one, that one, when the day aired, I was under a blanket most of the day. I had to do a webinar earlier in the day, and then I just told my husband, I was like, I’m done.

(01:19):

I think I need to have a nap and be under a blanket. I will say your outreach, your kind messages, your reviews, thank you. Thank you for every single one of them. Your kindness, your grace, your empathy. I am truly humbled by it. So if you’re just catching this episode, this is part three of a three part story of my story of I would say the last year. But I feel like the last year is really kind of part two, three. It’s really kind of a shortened summary of my life 2019 up until present day. And so we’re going to continue the conversation. We left off in a pretty hard spot last episode where I shared that I was found out that I came home to own the mess I made, to take full responsibility and accountability to understand how did I get here, what repairs need to be made. And I think down the road someday, I think there will be maybe a joint podcast where Scott and I will talk about our healing together. But this is still just sharing my story, my part, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is also the week that, I don’t know if you follow Jen Hatmaker, but she released her memoir about what happened in her marriage five years ago. And I’m like, oh gosh, how interesting. It was the same week I decided to share kind my story.

(03:02):

So yeah. Anyways, I’m just thankful for many of you. Some of you even sent me messages saying, Hey, your story is my story and thank you. And I think what’s interesting is when we hold onto our stories, when the stories stay in the dark, it can tend to be isolating. We tend to think, I am the only one. I am the failure. I’m the problem. Shame lives in the dark. But when we bring our stories to light, it allows for healing and empathy and dare I say, connection and community with others in a much more fulfilling and deep way. Not a superficial way is people saying, yeah, I still choose to be connected to you and in community with you even knowing these parts of your story. And I wonder if we’re able to offer that to more people. And I will say nothing has taught me empathy more so than my own shortcomings.

(03:54):

And maybe that’s part of, I turned 40 this year, and maybe that’s part of turning 40. I’ve heard that the first 40 years of life is all practice and lessons, and then the second half of life is living it out. And I’m like, man, that feels very true. So anyways, just to kind of bring you up to speed. So I come home and I knew that I had a lot of work ahead of me. A lot of I know, I was like, all right, therapy’s going to, we’re do a lot of intensive therapy. And I eventually went away for a week long intensive. Actually it wasn’t even a week, it was like four days. And I went to a place, I can’t say speak enough highly enough about, it’s called the onsite experiences. And that’s where I went and did a lot of deep intensive work for four days to understand myself, understand my story, understand the parts of me that I needed to understand, and really understanding how I ignored the warning signs and making peace with some things, forgiving myself.

(05:07):

And it was really messy. I’m not going to sit here and say, yeah, and then I blew up, and then everything was better. No, it was really painful. And I knew that I needed to go into a season of introspective and quiet. And this was in the fall of last year. And mind you, I had mentioned this in the first two episodes where there was this kind of thought in the background about starting to question if I was still meant to serve the industry I had been serving. And it was starting to, I was getting very weary talking just about the things that were related to that industry, that model of business, making more sales, growing your revenue, growing your teams. And I felt very exhausted and depleted with my messaging being about how to grow your Instagram following how to write a post. And my soul felt very dry talking about those things.

(06:14):

And all I wanted to talk about was I wanted to talk about the person. And so what filled my cup at the time was I decided inside of our programs, I had the social selling academy, but for all of our students, we offered something called Beyond the Business. And I think we started this maybe I think maybe October. We were doing beyond the business calls. And Scott came on those calls with me and we just said, Hey, we’re going to open up the calls to coaching on anything. It doesn’t have to be about your business, it could be about your life. And it was one of the biggest calls I had seen as far as attendance in years. We had a certain number of attendees in it, more than five x what our normal attendance was when we said, Hey, we want to coach you around your life because business isn’t done in a vacuum.

(07:07):

It’s done. Your life and your business do touch. They bleed together. It all impacts each other. And oftentimes what’s going on in our personal life impacts what’s happening in our business and vice versa. And so what was happening in that is that was becoming deeply, deeply fulfilling for me. And that’s where I knew, I was like, there’s something here, but I don’t know what that is and what that looks like. So that is when I had the agonizing, and I mean truly agonizing decision of deciding to close the doors of our programs, knowing it was time. I also felt like it would be a disservice to stay for the wrong reasons, staying because you never want somebody to serve you out of obligation. I want to be served from a place of joy and service, and it was starting to feel like obligation. It was starting to not feel as aligned, and I knew it wouldn’t be fair and to stay in the industry just because it was working for me.

(08:13):

And I had a lot of respect and accolades, and it was easy for me to get stages and all those things that staying for all the wrong reasons. And I knew that. I knew it was time, but I didn’t know what I was going to do next. And to be honest with you, I really thought I was going to be kind of doing paint by number. And by the way, in this season when I kind of took a step back in my healing really starting last fall is I was doing so much paint by number. That was my therapy. I was doing a ton of paint by number, a lot of just listening to music, a lot of walking, whatever I could do to start to be okay with myself as I was processing a lot of things. And also at this time, I think there was being found out in my inner circle and in my private life. And then there was also the deep fear of being found out in my public life and what happens if people find out or if they know. And thankfully, obviously I’ve worked through that because I’m here telling my story now, but I just felt not out of integrity, but it also felt like I don’t feel right continuing to show up when I’m doing this deep, deep healing work in my life.

(09:40):

So the healing looked like therapy. I went to an intensive, an intensive, my husband and I both went and did that actually. And really beautiful healing began, and I thought, again, the plan was, okay, we’ll close our doors, and I’m going to say this in your seasons of plenty, be sure you are stewarding. Well, even in seasons where it feels like the harvest is never ending, prepare for a rainy day, prepare, prepare for times when it’s not like that because, and thankfully, that is what we did. We were wise with our investments and how we stewarded our income and our revenue and our company, and also wanting to give our employees plenty of notice so that they had other places to go. We wanted to give them ample time to find other job opportunities and those things. And so we wanted to do it well.

(10:49):

And it feels hard to be like, how do you do it? Well, when no matter what you do, there’s going to be people that are deeply disappointed with you that aren’t going to understand, that are going to demand an explanation. At the time, I didn’t have a great one other than I’m stepping away, I’m feeling called to something else. It might’ve been abrupt, but also being willing to be okay with myself, with people being like, what are you doing? Why? And even having some abandonment, some anger, some frustration, and people let us know, thankfully, I don’t look at our support box. I hire somebody for that. So I didn’t have to see a lot of the negativity. And that’s what my team kind of protects me from, and that’s important and healthy. And of course, they ask me questions if there’s like, Hey, what do we do with this customer?

(11:39):

It’s not like we write people off, but it’s like, Hey, what is absolutely important for me to know in order to help my decision making and the company and those things? So we had made that decision, and I think there was oftentimes when we go through an experience, we tend to, and I talked about this in episode one or part one where we make agreements or we swing the pendulum so far in the opposite direction because we’re so afraid of repeating our past. And I think part of what happened for me was like, okay, we’re going to close these doors. And how I had pictured my healing was is I had pictured a year of quietness, a year of being completely offline, and I had committed to being off of Instagram from I think January to April. So I was off for a good 90 days if not longer.

(12:33):

And it was really interesting, even in that break, there was oftentimes where I’m like, oh, I had to contend with my story, the story I shared in the last episode that I was a fear of being left behind, a fear of becoming irrelevant. Well, when you let your Instagram go for 90 days and you don’t post anything, the algorithm does make you irrelevant. You do become forgotten. You don’t show up on the feeds. And so I was having to make peace with my own fear and be okay with that and sit with, okay, what is my worth apart from an algorithm, apart from that feedback? And my algorithm still hasn’t recovered, and that’s been all kinds of fun, but also we’ll get to that. And so I had this picture in my head of what I thought healing was going to look like. I wasn’t in a hurry to build anything else.

(13:25):

I was tired, depleted, not in the sense of burnout of I worked myself too hard, but in the sense of burnout, where I was like, I wasn’t in alignment anymore and I knew I needed to go on a self-discovery journey for lack of a better term. And so my picture was, okay, I’m going to be off of social media, I’m going to go off grid. And we even talked about, okay, do we even go back to an online business? Do we even have those things? Do we buy up a bunch of laundromats? Do we buy Airbnbs? There’s a lot of ways to make money out there, and I am familiar with a lot of them, and thankfully we’re well networked with a lot of people where we could have done a lot of things. And I was like, nah. I was really convinced for a little bit where I was like, no, we’re not going to ever have an online business again.

(14:16):

Mostly I think I, I equated with what happened to me as like, this is the cost of having a public platform, therefore I will never have a public platform again. Or I need to step away from having a personal brand. I can’t be trusted with one. I don’t think I realized that story had formed until much later, but I think that is kind of what subconsciously was running through my mind. And so there we go. I have this picture of what our healing’s going to look like, and my husband’s like, Hey, let’s just at least start brainstorming. And so here’s the things knew. I knew from my five years of working with tens of thousands of students, no matter what, I knew that there were patterns I always saw. And regardless of what was being taught, when you serve that many people, you notice patterns.

(15:09):

And so one of the patterns I noticed was I saw two groups of people. People could be handed the same strategy, the same how-tos, the same information, but not everybody would be able to thrive or flourish in the same way. And so I’m like, well, what does cause people to stall in an action or to quit on themselves all the time or those things? And I started to unpack that when I launched the leadership school and talking about essentially neuroscience and human behavior. But then I really started to be like, okay, what broke for me and what do I see breaking down for others? And that’s when I started really, I knew about the nervous system. I knew about nervous system regulation. I knew how important it was to regulate your nervous system about being in a fight flight state. But it wasn’t until I really sat with it and looked at the patterns of the people I had been serving and realized, oh my gosh, I could see when people were in an activated or dysregulated state and that part of them was running their business and calling the shots.

(16:16):

Because when we have stimuli or circumstances that we come up against, we have a nervous system or we perceive or we read the circumstance a certain way. And oftentimes our body perceives anything like these, I’m going to call ’em micro stressors or micro aggressors. And those things would be like oftentimes when we think of fight flight or being in a fight flight state, we think of being in a car accident or they’re being a crisis or they’re being violence or all those things. But we don’t think of micro aggressors or micro triggers like getting an email that’s marked urgent at the end of your day from your boss or your kid acting out in the grocery store, or maybe your spouse making a comment or somebody else making this, or somebody sending you a message or leaving a comment on your feed like your nervous system, even though you’re not being chased by a bear and no one is actually holding up a weapon to your face, it doesn’t matter.

(17:17):

Your nervous system still is activated. It goes into a fight flight state, and then you behave from that place and you react to the external stimulus. And so this is what I was noticing for people is I was noticing people were having these, so many people were operating in their life chronically dysregulated in a chronic fight flight, freeze orphan state. And so I’m like, what if we could help people make better decisions by helping them regulate nervous system so that they’re not operating from a survival state and they’re able to access a different part of their brain, have better critical thinking, they’re able to execute better decisions, prioritize their tasks. Because guys, even your time management, your ability to prioritize tasks, your critical thinking, that all happens in your frontal lobe, in your prefrontal cortex. And when you’re in a fight flight state, I want you to think of that having a wifi signal that goes offline and the back of your brain, your amygdala is on fire saying, we need to be safe.

(18:23):

We need to get to security as quickly as possible. And every person seeks safety and security differently. So like your fight types, the way that they regains a feeling of safety and security is to regain control of the situation. So that might be micromanaging or taking a project back from somebody or gaining control of something or a person with a flight response, their way of establishing safety. We’ll, think of it a bear, they run away. So they’re avoidant behaviors. And then you have your freeze where when they see the bear, they just deer in the headlights. They just stare at the bear. Maybe if I don’t move like Jurassic Park facing a T-Rex, maybe if I don’t move, it won’t attack me. And then there’s the fond where maybe if I give the bear a snack, it won’t eat me. Maybe if I compliment it, it won’t attack me.

(19:19):

So noticing that everyone has a different way of how they are seeking safety and security. And that was a direct reflection of my story in how I was seeking safety and security. I am a flight type through and through, which is kind of shocking because if you had asked me, I probably would’ve told you no way. I am a fight type. I am a go-getter. I’m those things. However, how I channel my avoidance is through work is like I’m going to throw myself into productivity because stillness feels deeply unsafe for me. And that was something I had to work through. Why do I feel unworthy when I rest? Why do all of these stories come up about me? Why do I feel useless unless I’m doing something or producing something? And so when I understood that, when I understood, oh my gosh, it wasn’t that I was working too much hours wise, it was that I was chronically and consistently dysregulated.

(20:23):

I had a nervous system that was constantly on fire seeking safety and security, and I had no idea how to regulate it from what I’m going to call the micro aggressors in my day to day, I fell apart. And eventually we are not made to run away from a grizzly bear 24 7. Actually, how it’s meant to be is you perceive a threat. Your body floods with adrenaline and cortisol to mobilize you or have you run away or get away from the threat depending on your stress response if you’re fight flight, fa or freeze, but fight flight flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, outrun the bear, get to safety. And then once you’re in safety, the adrenaline and cortisol and all your stress hormones are meant to leave your body so that your body’s like, cool, we’re safe now, which actually brings your body into a rest and digest state.

(21:21):

So by the way, when you’re in fight flight, your body’s like, we don’t have time to think about fertility and digestion and sleep and rest. It’s like, Nope, everything is about surviving. And so of course, if you are always out running a bear and your body is never offloading the stress hormones, what do you think happens? There’s a lot of research behind this, and I’m not going to sit here and say, I’ve gone to school for all these things, but there’s plenty of resources out there that do say when chronic stress, stress is the number one killer. And so it’s just like, what is prolonged stress due to our bodies? And what’s so interesting, if you had asked me in the height of my invincibility, like, Kristen, are you stressed? I would never have told you I’m stressed. I would never have complained. I’m so stressed.

(22:12):

I would’ve said, I have a lot going on right now. I might’ve even said, I’m overwhelmed. I would’ve said, there’s big, big projects, big stories, but I never would’ve told you I’m stressed because stress for me, I thought stressed out was like I pictured somebody who was in collapse, somebody who was hiding under a blanket, unable to do things. I misread my own stress response, not realizing, oh no, I’m stressed. I I’m moving a million miles an hour. And my body is always saying, we’re not safe, we’re not secure. We don’t have enough resources. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And I had no idea that there, I was just constantly dysregulated. And so of course, that dysregulation showed up in every area of my life, not just my business, but look at when I talked about, when I escaped to my book, to my Kindle, like the escapism, my flight, even abandoning myself, dehumanizing myself, avoiding myself, avoiding the healthy things that I had available to me, resourced in my marriage and self-destructing at that level.

(23:14):

And so that is when I realized it was like, hold up. What if the nervous system is really the key to everything? What if teaching people to regulate before they respond to external stimuli is the answer? Whether that’s, and by the way, procrastination, time management, the way you pursue your goals, your consistency, your productivity, it all is related to how your body regulates itself under pressure, how you respond to pressure, what your default stress response is. And so it makes so much sense. Once I understood that, once I saw that, I’m like, I think this is where I want to go. And so in that, so Scott and I started building this thing, we’re like, okay, we’re going to build a startup. But again, I had written down all these things I didn’t want, but I wrote it down from a place from my wounding of like, I don’t want to be online.

(24:14):

I don’t want to do challenges. I don’t want to podcast. I don’t, essentially, I was like, how do I erase myself? I didn’t realize I was doing this, but this was kind of the positioning that I made. How do I erase myself or almost become non-existent in this new business so that, because what I was trying to understand, remember I talked about it like an addiction. So I thought being sober meant erasing myself meant, Kristen, you can never be on a stage. You can never have those things because you cannot be trusted. And I operated that way for so long. And so we built this startup. We knew, okay, this is where we want to go. This is how we want to help people. And I will tell you, anytime you go to a new market with a new message, you have to be willing to test a million different things.

(25:08):

And part of the things that we’ve been doing is, and I think actually this can be another podcast episode, I do want to share with you the valuable lessons I’ve been learning in the build. But here’s the thing that’s shocking. I thought stillness was going to be the main thing to bring about my healing. And I was shocked that so much healing had to come about through building. And what I mean is in the building, in stillness, in watercolors and paint by numbers and gem art and books and sourdough baking, that was a respite, but it wasn’t bringing up all of my stuff the way that doing a rebuild has. And I’ve realized our healing happens when we are put in the same circumstance and we choose differently and we operate differently. And that’s when I knew, it took me probably two weeks ago, I realized, wait, I told my husband, I was like, gosh, did I jump into the thing too soon?

(26:14):

Did I rush? Did I exit my healing and go into a build too fast? Was that wrong? Did I just hustle into the next thing? And I will tell you again, I’m a person of faith. So a lot of prayerful consideration and thought and really sitting down to reflect and making sure I wasn’t just running to the next and having a spouse who loved me to know he knows when I’m running. What’s so great now is he now knows my signs too. And I didn’t realize for so long that I was holding everything in and never allowing him to carry me emotionally. I think I had become so hyper independent boss, babe, that I forgot how to lean in to my spouse to let him carry me and let him hold me emotionally and allow myself to soften. I had become so rigid, I didn’t know how to be soft.

(27:20):

And so I will tell you this time around this year, what he’s hearing from me all the time is like I am now saying I feel tired. I feel weary. I feel like it’s heavy. It is a hard day. I don’t think I have it in me. I have never been so vocal about my feelings of vulnerability, of inadequacy, of smallness as I have in my healing. But what’s been amazing for that is it’s been letting somebody into that part of me that I never let before because I was usually like, I didn’t acknowledge those parts of myself, those parts of myself that felt like where the thought was, I feel small, vulnerable, and unworthy. Well, that part of me was like, let’s just go work more. Where now this version of me that’s been doing the healing, she’s like, oh, let’s pause and sit with that.

(28:12):

Let’s talk to somebody you love and trust and feel safe and secure with. And that’s my spouse and voicing that and processing that and not running to my drugs, not running to the substance that normally numbed those things. And I will also tell you, my goodness, this is, and I think there’s another episode here too, I think I’ll bring a special guest on for it. But what’s happened is because I went into a mandatory detox of the thing that gave me the high, which is a business that was very successful going into a startup, and not only it being the opposite of my last business in the sense of money’s not coming in, money’s going out a lot of it, and being able to be okay with myself and learning to build safety and security within myself and within my relationships instead of in this external thing like my business.

(29:12):

Because right now, I will tell you, my business is not offering safety and security. It is incredibly risky. It is a liability. It’s nothing sexy. But I knew that going into a startup. And so the thing is, the healing had to happen in the build in the parts of me where I’m like, am I willing to put myself back out there? What if people see me? They saw me that with this one really successful thing. What if they see me launch this thing and it isn’t as successful? My ego hates that so much. I want to die a million deaths over. But then I realized, okay, wait, hold on. Some of the most successful people in the world have multiple ventures and not all of them win. Why would I think I’m the exception to the rule? And so I will tell you, in bringing our new thing to market, and it’s called Sondera, this new thing to market is we’ve had to test it a million times, realizing we started with one and we’ve made a lot of micro shifts, and then we’re shifting again, and then we’re shifting our messaging again and again and again and again.

(30:16):

And it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Because for me, when I first started my first business, I had nothing to lose. No one knew who I was. There wasn’t a reputation on the line and in the reputation, the stakes in my reputation were relatively low. It was just people in my circle, this here, this. I’m like, this is way worse. I’m like, I’m putting this out there for people to judge and have thoughts about and to be like, well, let’s see what she does. At least that’s the story I have in my head. Like, oh my gosh, everyone’s just going to watch me do this thing. I feel like there’s a lot more at stake here. And I will say, because it’s a startup and it’s a company, and it’s not just this little personal brand that where it’s just me, myself working with a couple people, there’s expenses from the very beginning and I’m like, oh my gosh, this feels insane. And I question myself most days I’m like, was this stupid? I guess we’ll find out, but I will say, oh, I can’t believe I’m saying this.

(31:20):

If all of the time and the energy and the money that we have put into the startup, if the only thing I get out of it was all the healing it brought in my life, I guess it’s worth it because nothing has brought up more for me than building the next thing. And that feels like a really big price tag. Oh my God, did my healing have to have that big of a price tag? Did it really have to look like that? Maybe, I don’t know. I’m still in the middle of the book. I’m still in the middle of the story. I’m in this really messy middle that I’m inviting you into. But here’s the thing.

(32:04):

I’m surprised that the healing had to happen in the building. I thought it was going to happen in quietness, and for some people it does. And I did have a season of quiet, but I think the work that needed to be done was all the things that the build was going to bring out in me and God, I just didn’t realize how much pride had to die. I was telling my friend the other day, I was like, I just feel like I wake up every day and light my ego on fire, and just when I think there’s none left, I wake up the next day and what’s left of my ego gets bruised, and then I light it on fire again.

(32:44):

And so goodness, it’s been a lesson in so many things. But here’s what happened is because I swung the pendulum so far and felt like I had to erase myself, it was finally about a month ago now where I felt like I was beating my head against the wall. I was like, why isn’t this working? And I had a friend that said, Kristen said, Kristen, like your offer, what you’re doing, it’s so good. It’s missing the human story. Why did you build Sondera? Why do you have this offer? You have to tell it. And I was like, I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if I’m ready to tell the why of this company. I don’t know if I’m ready to tell people, Hey, the reason why I built this thing is because I blew my life up. And if I could create an intervention for people to live a more centered whole life where they do not self-destruct in harmful ways, however that looks to people, but for me, it was quite harmful.

(33:46):

I want to build the lifeline. I want to build the lifeline specifically. I think for, it could be for anybody, but I really felt it for high achievers. People who wake up every day with a go, get ’em, go hard, super gritty. And I’m like, God, I know they’re hurting and they don’t even know it. I didn’t know it. I was too busy going. I had no idea how much I was suffering until hindsight. And I’m like, nobody talks about that. And so I was like, want to? If I could save one person from destroying the thing they love most, it’s worth it. And they’re like, then you have to tell the story. I’m like, oh God, I think I’m going to die. And then I realized, and we had built this faceless Sondera account, and it just wasn’t landing, and I can see it.

(34:39):

I get it. I know why. There was just no human element to it. And so finally, I just told my social media manager, I was like, time out. This is what we’re doing. I was like, I think I’m meant to. I have this story that there isn’t a sober version of success, that there isn’t a whole and purposeful and aligned version of success. I think I had made this story of you can have success or you can have sobriety, but you don’t get both. At least in my world, I was like that Kristen can never have a space, have a brand, and maybe I felt undeserving of it. I felt like, no, I don’t deserve a brand. Look at what I did. And I had a moment where it’s like, what good is a story if it’s not a redeemed story? Everyone loves a great character arc of a story that’s like, okay, a hero that maybe goes villain, that maybe becomes hero Again, we want to know that change is possible.

(35:35):

So what better way than to invite people into the story, into the mission, into the healing, into what’s going on? And so the healing has been brutal. It has been hard. I have never cried so much as I have this year, but also I have a strange amount of peace in the height of the most uncertainty I’ve ever had in my life and making some of the hardest decisions. But I’m like, okay, at the very end of the day, if the build was only meant to facilitate the healing, it was worth it. It was worth it. And so I want to turn this around to you and ask you whatever you are building, the hard you are in, instead of, trust me, I also want to just offer, I have plenty of days where I resent. I resent the process. I want out. I cry, I beat my head against the wall, all those things.

(36:44):

And it’s easy for me to look at this build as the worst thing ever. But I want to offer to you. Maybe you are in a thing where you are in the hard work of building or growing or nurturing something, and it is brutal. And maybe you are not seeing the byproduct of success that you had hoped to see at this point. First of all, I want you to know I hear you. I’m with you. I deeply, deeply empathize with you. Okay, but could you look at this build and look at, okay, but how is the building of this, the nurturing of this? How is the shaping and changing who I am in a positive way? Am I a better partner, friend, spouse, member of my community, a better servant of people? Like, am I a better person for having done this thing? And I will tell you yes, because for me, the person that would’ve gone off grid and bought land and raised chickens, my world would’ve been entirely insular and honestly self-serving. It would’ve been about me. And I did this crazy thing. We could have just taken our startup money and literally just gone off grid and raised chickens and lived a quiet life. But for some reason, I did the crazy thing. I’m like, you know what? No, let’s just invest it into a startup, because I guess I’m an entrepreneur through and through.

(38:28):

I guess I want to sign up for growth again. I guess I’m willing to do all the messy parts again. But the wiser part of me gets to run this show. And I truly believe that my story is getting redeemed. The stage is getting redeemed. My brand is getting redeemed, however you want to call it. You can call it a rebrand. I’m calling it my redemption arc. This is my redemption arc and it is messy. And trust me, my pride would’ve so much rather have disappeared for a year and then come back out with a fancy best seller, my face all over a billboard, and with a big story of how I overcame everything. And now I’m the bestseller, and now I’ve seen more success than ever. I really would’ve loved that. But alas, that is not what I’m walking. I guess. I’m just like, alright, everybody, welcome to the really messy middle where I’m on to the next chapter, and you’re a part of it with me.

(39:41):

So I’m excited about next episode. We’ll talk a little bit more about nervous system regulation, how that impacts your day-to-day life. We’ve got some great guests coming up ahead. I’m excited. I’m so glad to be back. I’m so glad that we’re in this together. And hey, do me a favor. If you haven’t left a review, please do so. But also, don’t be afraid to send us an email. If you’re on our email list and you want to hear a certain topic on something, let me know. I’d love to hear or tell me on Instagram, send me a dm. Say, Hey, Kristen, I’d love if you could talk about this, or How can you share a little bit more about this? I want to hear from you. I’d love to do that. Again, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for listening, and here’s to The Messy Middle and the next chapter. That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristinboss.com. It starts right here.