Do you find yourself stuck in the trap of trying to figure out how to get the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect love and the perfect life? Trusting that once you do, then you'll be happy. Yeah, me too.

Many of us high-achievers spend ungodly amounts of time planning, scheduling, and trying to control our lives, bodies, careers, and love lives.

The truth is there is no future reality where you are perfect, have everything figured out and get all the things you want. Sorry, babe.

Consider this your official permission slip to stop obsessing over your schedule, perfecting your diet and trying to control your life to get to this mythical future reality – because – It. Does. Not. Exist.

Instead, focus on what is possible today.

Repeat after me

Perfect does not exist

There is only now

I get to choose how I feel

I get to choose how I act

Here's a simple process to start living in the present and release your inner perfectionist:

1 What is my vision for my life?...

When you see a woman growing, glowing and sharing her full self with the world have you had the thought – how dare she!?

I have that thought All.The.Freaking.Time.

‍ When I see a peer post a risque photo
‍ When I hear how much she's making
‍ When I see friends grow and succeed

Here's what that voice says

How dare she show off her body
How dare she express that part of her
How dare she get so loud and powerful

If I'm reeeally honest, this is actually more like what it says:

That's so inappropriate. She needs to lose weight. She looks like a slut. Omg no one is going to take her seriously. She's not even that smart. Who does she think she is!?

Ooooof, yeah.

Who does she think she is!? is a good one too.

These pesky, pernicious, patriarchal remnants

Ways we've internalized patriarchy and suffer the consequences internally

It's a way we self-police ourselves and others to keep everyone in check

If we don't feel free, she sure as hell shouldn't!

What if we noticed that...

Have you thought about what gives your life meaning recently?

Most people believe that your job has to be the thing that gives you meaning and purpose.

I believe meaning and purpose is accessible to everyone, anywhere at any time, regardless of what they do.

This should be obvious.

We're human beings.

We have a fundamental right to feel a sense of meaning and experience a sense of purpose in our lives, no matter what we do, no matter the phases and changes we go through in life.

But it's one of those insidious beliefs that so many of us have taken on, especially in the United States, that we have to find this through work.

We're programmed from a young age to search for this, a la...

What am I going to be when I grow up??

What's gonna be THE thing that gives me meaning, that gives me purpose, that gives me a sense of self, a sense of identity.

That's how our whole system is set up.

It sucks that so many of us are taught that this is the path to a fulfilling life.

At the end of the...

Do you love your body?

If you’re like most of us, the answer is probably uhhh, no...does anyone actually love their body?

I don’t know, but I think it’s worth trying, even if it feels overwhelming and very far away.

It takes so much energy to criticize yourself. Do you even realize how much energy you waste fighting with yourself everyday?

This month in Radiance Collective we are engaging in deep conversation and embodied practice around loving, celebrating and reclaiming our bodies.

Why? So we have more energy to live our lives! Love our people! And care about way more important things!

Here are some questions we pondered last night:

• Why don’t you love your body?
• Who benefits from this?
• What would happen if you stopped fighting with yourself?

I invite you to take a few breaths with each of these questions or a few minutes journaling on them.

I want to acknowledge that there are a million reasons why you don't love your body. You’ve been told and...

Can you relate to this?

You’re going along doing the things – maybe that’s a job you’re good at, a relationship you love or a family you care for and everything feels great – that is, until it doesn’t.

In 2018 I finished my master’s program, quit my full-time job, and took a sabbatical to travel and be with myself. In 2019 I started my 1.5 year deep dive into coaching and completed my certifications.

And in 2020 I started my coaching business. I coached my first low-fee client, got my first full-fee client, launched my group course Pleasure as Medicine and things kept growing from there!

As I’ve hit this one year milestone of running my business I’m taking time to evaluate.

And here’s what I noticed:

I have only ever run a coaching business during a global pandemic, the worst fire season in California history and the racial justice reckoning of our generation.

Needless to say, it’s been a lot.

It’s been hard...

I have a question for you today. Here it is:

Do you know who you are without work?

Before you keep reading, notice what happens for you when I ask that. Check in with your body. What do you feel? Is there disbelief, anger, confusion, tension or constriction? If so, it’s all welcome.

Many of us have carefully honed strategies we’ve been practicing since we were kids to feel safe, secure and loved in this wild world. Some of these – like working (a lot) – are so normalized in our culture that we don’t even realize that something feels off.

The strategies I see most often in my clients are the achiever, giver, people pleaser and perfectionist.

For me, working is a big one. The time I took off in 2018 was the scariest and most liberating thing I’ve ever done. It was the first time in my entire life I had given myself space from working, being in school or doing some other extracurricular activity. And it rocked my sense of self and identity.

...

Have you ever considered how much you actually like not feeling good?

I know it’s a bizarre question, but trust me it’s one worth investigating.

Humans are neurologically wired to focus on the negative, what's not working, what needs to be fixed (google negativity bias.) In fact, we spend inordinate amounts of time trying to solve problems that don't even exist!

This is partly what it is to be human and have this big ‘ole brain that's designed for SURVIVAL (aka problem solving and scanning for threats) vs THRIVING (aka actually enjoying life).

But this doesn't have to be your reality.

There are very practical strategies you can use to see the good, feel the good and actually let yourself take in the good.

Here's what I mean by taking in the good (or rather what I DON'T mean)...

Do you know someone who is rich but miserable?

Do you know someone who lives in the most beautiful place on earth but doesn't enjoy it?

Do you know someone or are you that someone who has...

Last week I was hosting a three-day live workshop called Alive Again and we had dozens of amazing women signed up! The first two days were amazing, but you’ll never guess what happened.

The worst case scenario...and I had to reach for all the pleasure and self-care tools that I teach my clients to take care of myself, work through my emotions, and make a decision to pivot the event!

If you identify with being a perfectionist and being very aware of how you are perceived by others, watch the video to hear how I worked my way through this one.

This is what taking radical responsibility looks like – even when you didn’t do something wrong!!

Curious? Catch the live video replay here

When do you find yourself performing and not showing up authentically? Where do you get stuck in perfectionism and the injustice of things going wrong even when you did everything “right”?

XO Alyssa

P.S. Want to learn the self-care and pleasure tools that help me move through...

Do you find yourself feeling exhausted and overwhelmed about everything on your plate?

In the spirit of undoing the burnout-inducing patterns of overworking and overgiving, I'm always asking myself how I can do less, while having more fun and creating a bigger impact.

I have a pink post-it on my desk that I look at everyday that asks me how I need to care for myself and how I need to show up for work that day. After I map that out, I ask myself:

How can I make this all feel more fun, safe, and pleasurable?

So many of us overachievers are driven by deep feelings of unworthiness, fear, doubt and complex emotional trauma that drives us to work harder because we learned early on that achievement was a way we could earn love.

It's healing to interrupt this pattern by creating a sense of safety, ease and pleasure as you work.

Curious how this works? Intrigued that I talk about pleasure and burnout in the same sentence?

Join us for the free workshop series Alive Again I’m leading next...

Let my people go surfing is the name of a book by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. It’s also a great summation of my biggest insight from this week!

Monday morning I woke up and found a reminder on my calendar for work I was scheduled to start this week and no part of me felt excited to do it.

I could have forced myself through but thankfully, I had a call with my coach that day and she told me to go surfing instead of working. All of my good-girl hard-working programming wanted to protest and defend why this thing HAD to get done today...but I knew she was right.

Instead, I finished what needed to get done and I went to the beach. I gave myself full permission to be in play instead of work mode and the next day I felt so lit up, energized and full of creative ideas. I was even able to finish the behind the scenes work to get my latest free offering ready for you in record time!

And since I know you’re dying to hear, the idea that came to me was for Alive Again...