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She had a small organizing business back in high school, because it’s a talent of hers. After she graduated with a behavioral health degree, she felt called to start it up again, more formally this time. LLC, structure, all of it. So she launched her company - Live Light Organization.

Important context: we (David, Taylor, and I) haven’t lived together since she graduated high school. When she’d come home during the different breaks in college, we were living in our newly renovated condo downtown, and it never really felt like home for her. She has two dogs, and it wasn’t conducive to stay there, having to take them in an elevator, all her choice. So she and her boyfriend and the dogs would always stay with his parents. They’d come see us, but they wouldn’t sleep over. So this is the first time in years she’s actually living under our roof again, building her business while she’s learning to adult.

Here’s another piece of context that’s important to this. My adaptive behavior, my coping strategy was control. If you’ve been hanging out here at all, you know I talk about adaptive behaviors, the survival strategies we build when we’re young to stay safe. Mine was: I have to control everything to be loved. I have to control everything to have value. To my system, control was safety.

From when I started my growth journey, I have evolved out of that control pattern being relevant or necessary. It rarely shows up, which is exactly why what I’m about to share next matters so much.

We’re sitting on the couch in the family room and Taylor starts telling us she’s stressed. Overwhelmed. Feeling a lot of pressure, which is atypical for her. It was intense.

She asks us: “Is anybody gonna be mad at me if I wake up at nine instead of seven?”

David looks at her and says, “Of course not. You’re responsible for your life and your success. Why are you even asking us that?”

And then it happened.

Tears start coming down Taylor’s face. She sits in silence, letting the tears roll, places her hand on her heart, looks at me and says:

We paused, because she was SPOT ON.

I said, “Oh my god. You’re right. You’re right. Thank you.” And then I went silent, hand on my heart, breathing, letting my body catch up to what my daughter had just named.

And what I arrived at was: one, she’s one million percent correct. Two, my body had bounced right back into the past. Small, but it was there. Checking in on her. Asking what she was doing that day. Sending tight, concerned energy when she would be relaxing or starting her day “late.” Seeing if she was on top of the x’s and y’s of her business.

Controlling. Not aggressively. Not in a way that looks like control from the outside. It could have looked like care. Which is the thing about control. It’s so insidious.

So I owned it out loud again. “This is totally me. I was starting to take responsibility for your success.”

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I need you to understand what happened in that moment.

There was no resistance. No defensiveness. No visceral reaction. Nothing but stunning, unadulterated ownership. Radical personal responsibility. Gratitude. A twenty-two-year-old who understood the attunement between us enough to know what was hers and what wasn’t. Courageous enough to look me in the face and say it. Sovereign enough to not take on how I was going to respond, because taking responsibility for my reaction was never hers to carry either.

And I was able to receive it. Just, “Yes, you’re right.” Excited, even, because when we grow, we love growing. We love to see the unseen. We love the moments someone shows us something we couldn’t see ourselves.

The two of us are having this gorgeous, highly conscious exchange, and my husband is sitting there, nodding, smiling. I stop and ask him, “What’s happening for you over there?”

He chuckles and says, “It’s like watching Tiger Woods shank a shot. You know he does it sometimes, but it doesn’t really happen, because he’s such a master.” He goes, “And I’m watching you, the master, the leader in this space, unpack the experience and be in your fallibility and be in your ownership. It’s just really fucking cool to watch.”

This story has a lot of gifts in it, if you’re paying attention.

Gift one: there’s a reason every word we use here at the school ends in ING. Growing. Healing. Expanding. Becoming. Evolving. You’re never done. The fact that my old adaptation, control, started to rear its head without me even being aware of it, that’s not a failure. That’s the work still working. You’re never done, so get rid of the idea that you should be.

Gift two: the best thing you can do for your children is lean all the way into your own evolution. The reason my daughter could sit there and know what was hers and what was mine, the reason she was bold enough to say it and take no responsibility for how I’d respond, is because of who I be. Because of what I’ve modeled for her through my own growth. What I’ve dripped into her without ever teaching it directly. She picked it up. It’s in her now.

Gift three: ownership is the coolest, most liberating, most sovereign thing you will ever have. Get excited when you notice something in yourself. Be grateful when someone loves themselves enough to hold up a mirror for you. Meet it with grace and appreciation. Then action it.

Since that moment, my awareness became curative. We established a new flow, a new boundary where Taylor is the initiator, she comes to me for support, guidance, coaching whatever she needs.

And in that, she gets to stay sovereign. More and more in her power. Which was always the point. And I get to practice letting go.

Do you worship at the altar of imposter syndrome?

Have you talked about it with a friend? Posted about it on social? Spoken about it on stage?

If your answer is “yes,” I want to tell you something:

IMPOSTER SYNDROME IS NOT REAL.

Imposter syndrome is not real. And our persistent attachment to the lie of imposter syndrome is keeping women stuck, powerless, and perpetually playing small.

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We worship this false idol as though women “have” or “suffer from” some contagious condition. As though women need to be “fixed.”

We need to stop.

You are not an imposter. There is nothing wrong with you. You are a spiritual being having a human experience with a nervous system that is wired to keep you safe.

Taking your absolutely biologically appropriate doubts and fears and labeling them as “imposter syndrome” actually believes it into being.

In fact, labeling your experience as “imposter syndrome” has become this misery-loves-company, socially-reinforced justification women love to hate. We use it to avoid setting boundaries, making strong offers, letting go of people-pleasing, and taking our seat at the table - or making our own table.

So how did we get here? Let me break it down…

The imposter syndrome lie grew out of a perfectly innocent 1978 paper, The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention, by psychotherapist Pauline Clance and psychologist Suzanne Imes. In it they identify a trend: despite excellent qualifications, some high-achieving women doubt their ability to live up to expectations and fear other people overestimate their skills.

I want to highlight a few key points here: what the researchers describe are beliefs or thoughts of fear and doubt. Remember that, we’re coming back to it.

What started as interesting research has metastasized in the four decades since. Now it’s a syndrome. Now it’s an identity that women embrace and commiserate over in the entrepreneurial and personal development worlds.

Imposter syndrome is a detrimental construct and our perpetuation of it causes two massive problems.

For one, our obsession with imposter syndrome is holding women back from making a massive impact, building wealth, and enjoying our lives right now. But that’s not it: it’s also interfering with our ability to create the generational change we’re all here to make.

Imposter syndrome is fundamentally a fallacy because you’re NOT an imposter. What you are is a human being with wiring that is intended to keep you the same.

Your wiring - AKA your brain and nervous system - evolved over millennia to keep you safe. In the cavewoman era, when human beings were prey to saber-tooth tigers, sameness was survival. Novelty was risk. So your nervous system learned one job: stop her from doing anything new.

That wiring never got the memo that the tigers are gone.

Here’s the best news: no one is making you believe your fears and doubts. You have agency. As in, you get to choose. Embracing your agency is how you realize the depth and breadth of your personal power. Like actual, unfuckwithable power.

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(I know you’ve heard this before. Spiritual teachers from the Buddha to Byron Katie have been speaking this truth for centuries. Yet still, here we are. And I am not here for it, enough is enough.)

Until you shove your beliefs and feelings into a bottle, label it Imposter Syndrome, and drink it like Kool-Aid, it doesn’t exist.

YOU are not your thoughts. You are the woman HAVING the thoughts. You are the consciousness that holds space for the thoughts. And every time you drink the Kool-Aid that you bottled and labeled in your own mind, you are denying and dishonoring your power to create the opposite reality.

I’m talking about the reality where you are exactly where you are showing up as the fullest expression of yourself, being held and supported by the Universe, generating the next level of your success into the physical world, again and again and again.

When you embrace your agency, you realize that your thoughts are yours to choose. So when thoughts of limitation arise, (which is what doubt is) you don’t attach to the thoughts. You know that your mind works for your nervous system in an effort to keep you the same. You know that when thoughts of limitation (doubt and fraudulence) get offered to you by your mind, it’s in an effort to get you to believe those thoughts, and stay the same. And the reason those thoughts are firing is because you are doing something you haven’t done before.

Most leaders aren’t awake to this truth. Most leaders spend their whole lives swimming in the Kool-Aid of low-level consciousness, drinking up their mind’s every fear and doubt as though it were incontrovertible truth.

Imagine a world where the notion of imposter syndrome is nowhere to be found because you finally leaned in to understanding your neuro-biology and embodying what you know…

Ahhhh, that’s the new world and I’m here for it.

I was pinch hitting in a group coaching call this week. One of my soul sister’s communities, because that’s what we do for each other. We show up as the substitute teacher when it’s needed, no questions asked.

A powerhouse woman unmuted for hot seat coaching.

When she came out the other side, she said, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I thought you were just gonna tell me to reframe it, to just think about it differently. But instead, we went somewhere entirely new. I had no idea where you were taking me, and now I feel lighter, clearer, and I know what I need to do for myself.”

What did I do?

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I had her start by closing her eyes. You cannot imagine the magic of what happens when you close your eyes, when you shut off your visual cortex, and what that does for your ability to connect to your body and go deeper within yourself. That’s where the truth is. And more often than not, it changes what the initial coaching question was in the first place.

We then used breath, silence, and stress processing.

(Yes we have an epic certification, and yes I can train you in this and so much more.)

The reframe is dead. Enough already. I don’t love reframes and here’s why.

A reframe is asking you to choose a new thought while you’re still standing inside the exact box of consciousness that created the issue in the first place. Same frame. Same paradigm. It functions like an affirmation. It feels lovely in the moment, gives you a hit of relief, and then it’s gone, because it was never designed to help you embody something different. It was designed to help you feel differently for a minute.

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So the next time you’re moving through something, which might even be right now, take a pause. Don’t go running and talking to people about it just yet.

And if you’re reading this as a fellow coach, facilitator, or practitioner like me, I’m telling you now, you need to expand your coaching prowess. It’s not sufficient, and it’s not helpful, to keep working only at the level of the mind. You have to understand how sustainable transformation happens and where it actually takes place.

More love,
Tracy

David and I (David is my phenomenal husband) just started working with a new wealth advisory firm. We are committed to taking our money and our legacy to the next level, not just glancing at bank statements, actually intentionally planning, building and expanding our relationship with wealth.

Yesterday was our third session and after we were done, I knew I needed to come share this with you. Important understanding - David has carried money fear and scarcity for most of his life. So as a result, I intentionally start these meetings grounding us, and signaling safety to our nervous systems before we start diving into the numbers, because money conversations do not land anywhere useful in a dysregulated body.

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At the end of this particular session, we’re still on Zoom, and David says to me, in the presence of our wealth advisor, “Tray, there’s something I want to talk to you about. I’m actually starting to feel better and safer with all of this. I see the numbers. I see the evidence. It’s indisputable. But now my mind is offering me the craziest thing, this new thought that sounds like, when’s the other shoe gonna drop.”

Now, queen, I have heard that exact fear based thought, that exact flavor of it, from more women than I can count.

Here’s what I walked David through when he shared that. (And yes the same applies to you)

“Babe, remember, in your old identity, you have emotional addictions. We all do. For you, fear was one, insecurity was another. As you evolve, as your nervous system reimprints, the old identity is not going to go quietly. It dies hard. So now, as you’re starting to feel safer, as you’re feeling closer to ease around money and wealth and feeling safe in being rich, your system is only going to tolerate that new feeling for so long before it tries to pull you back and reaffirm what has always been more familiar to it. And one of the ways your system does that is by using your mind to drive limited thinking, thinking that pulls you back into familiarity, that pulls you back and reaffirms the old identity, that affirms the emotional addictions of who you used to be.

So, isn’t it convenient that your mind is offering you ‘when’s the other shoe gonna drop’, right when things start to feel good, when it hasn’t felt that fear and insecurity in a while.”

As soon as David’s system realized, oh shit, we haven’t felt fear and insecurity in a little while, it then realized it’s in the unknown, and unknown means imminent threat. Which means, oh no, he might die. I’ve got to do something to get him to feed that addiction, I need to feel the familiar again. So it offered him that thought. And it’s offering you that thought too.

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Phew - yeah I know - all of that from one little electrical impulse, one little thought.

Here’s the other fascinating thing about the mind. It does what it thinks you want it to do, which is why you can never leave your thoughts unattended.

If David wasn’t married to me and had he not brought this up to be coached, he would have attached to that thought. He would have believed that thought. (In believing that thought, that’s the directive his mind uses) Then the mind goes, oh great, I know the direction we’re thinking in, and it offers the next thought that affirms the same emotion. So the next thought becomes, “see, I told you it was too good to be true.” Then, “ugh, are we gonna be able to sustain this?” “The tax bill’s gonna be too big next year, are we gonna be able to afford it?” And boom, just like that, he’s affirming the old identity and swimming in fear, insecurity, and scarcity.

It is so important to become the version of yourself who doesn’t believe a thought she thinks, who knows she is not her mind. You’re the being with the mind. Thoughts are options, not facts.

The ultimate truth about that particular fear-based thought, “When is the other shoe going to drop?” is that it’s an absolute lie.

The shoe is not going to drop, because you are the shoe. When you recognize that you’re the common denominator, the creator, the cause of the effect, you realize you have all the power. You realize you are the shoe.

More love,
Tracy

I was on the Pilates reformer this morning, a whole different world from my usual HIIT training and weighted vest beach walks. (Side note: I’m about to run a 30-day experiment of Pilates and weighted vest beach walks only, just to see what it does to my body, my energy, my strength. I love to try shit on. Everything’s an experiment, including success in your business, but we’ll talk about that another day.)

As I was on the reformer, the instructor kept saying it. Slow. Move slower. Move even slower.

And as she said it, I kept thinking about you.

Because I know that despite your best efforts and intentions, you're still moving way too fast, being way too constant, carrying way too many things. And I don’t think you realize what that way of being is costing you, how much energy it actually takes to move through the world like that, how much energy it takes to create more success from that constriction.

I appreciate that slowing down will likely bring something up in you, something like, “wait a minute, do I deserve this?” or “if I slow down will the other shoe drop?”

Because slowing down, for a high achieving leader like you, resembles rest, and somewhere in your current programming, rest feels like something you have to earn instead of something that’s already yours (for the record, rest is a strategic business activity, and a requirement for enjoying your life).

And yes, even the resistance you feel to slowing down right now is the indication that slowing down is exactly what needs to happen next. It’s exactly what you get to do for yourself.

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Here’s what’s interesting about so much of what’s circulating in the world about nervous system regulation. It actually misses the piece that matters most, which is the pace of how you do the things you’re already doing. The pace and energy with which you move through the day.

Even when you’re meditating in the morning and doing nervous system practices, but then in the predominance of your day, you’re moving fast, being constant, running a million miles a minute, talking fast, standing and eating your lunch, not going to the bathroom when you have to pee - I see you girl - scheduling yourself back to back even though you keep telling yourself you’re gonna take breaks, I’m here to tell you it is fucking your nervous system royally.

Slowing down is the yummiest part. Slowing down is what lets things land. Slowing down is the part that becomes the signal to your nervous system, the thing that tells it “we’re safe, babe.”

When you move slower, when you slow it down, you’re communicating and massaging that to your nervous system. Like a whisper inside your body - “We’re safe, babe. We’re safe”

Let that land for a second.

Slowing down brings an inherent state of regulation and the ability to enjoy your life. You’re more present. You’re more available. You’re more open. Therefore, you’re more creative. You’re more innovative. You are operating at a higher level of consciousness. And all of this is part and parcel to what it means to be an embodied leader.

Moving slow, taking it in, taking your time, taking up space. This is the place where your power lives. This is where you start to experience the present moment, which is the only thing we actually have.

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To be clear, and as a reminder, because the other thing I know about you is you know, but just because you know doesn’t mean you do anything with that awareness: when you’re dysregulated, your prefrontal cortex goes offline. Your fear based brain, your amygdala, takes over. And now fear, lack, scarcity, and separation are running the show.

So even though this instructor was telling me to slow down purely so she could create crazy amounts of tension in my quads, as they were shaking for dear life, I’m bringing this message to you now so you can take it into how you lead yourself, your team, your family, your relationships.

More love,
Tracy

Let’s talk about the part of you that has been running the show for a very long time.

You know this part. It’s the one with its head on a swivel, scanning every room, every relationship, every interaction for what might go wrong.

It’s the one that over-prepares, over-explains, over-delivers, and over-functions because somewhere along the way it learned that staying ahead of everything was the only way to stay safe. It’s exhausting. It’s relentless. And it has been working so, so hard on your behalf.

That part of you is called hypervigilance. And we are not mad at it, we are appreciative.

Here’s what I’d love you to understand, because so many women I work with want to shame this part, fix it, or will it away the moment they realize it’s there. But that is not how this works, and that is not what it deserves.

Hypervigilance is not a character flaw. It is not a weakness. It is not something that is wrong with you. It is a survival response that your nervous system developed, very early on, because something in your environment required it. Maybe it was the unpredictability of a parent. Maybe it was a relationship where staying attuned to someone else’s mood was the price of peace. Maybe it was decades of receiving the message, in a thousand subtle and not so subtle ways, that your worth was conditional on your performance, your productivity, your perfection.

So your system did what brilliant nervous systems do. It adapted. And in honor of protecting you, it built a watchtower, and stationed a guard.

And that guard has been on duty ever since, keeping you poised to pounce, keeping you braced, keeping you safe, or at least keeping you feeling like you were safe, which is not the same thing at all.

The cost of living from hypervigilance is something most high-achieving women don’t even realize they’re paying, because they’ve been paying it for so long it just feels like who they are. The inability to be fully present, because your attention is always slightly somewhere else, scanning.

And then there is the exhaustion, the burnout, the resentment that so many women are desperately trying to solve by doing less, delegating more, taking a vacation, optimizing their schedule.

But did you know that burnout is not primarily caused by how much you’re doing?

When my high-achieving, incredible clients begin to understand this, really understand it, not just intellectually - but in their bodies, the next thing that usually shows up is grief.

Because when you realize how long this part of you has been running things, how much energy has been spent, how many moments you’ve been only half inside of, that sadness is real and it deserves to be witnessed, felt, processed, and experienced.

Because here’s what becomes available on the other side of hypervigilance, when your nervous system starts to regulate and re-imprint, when safety stops being something you have to manufacture through control and over-functioning and starts being something you can actually feel from the inside: you become present. Actually present, grounded, open hearted, available.

You notice things. The texture of fabric against your skin, the bitterness of your first sip of coffee, the clouds, the way your kid laughs, the ordinary stunning details of a life that has been happening around you while you were busy managing it.

The path from hypervigilance to presence is not a straight line and it is not fast, and anyone who tells you otherwise is bullshitting you.

It is a practice, made of micro moments, of noticing when the watchtower activates and choosing, again and again, to signal safety to your system instead of surrendering to the scan.

I invite you to see grace as the practice, regulation as the result, and presence as the reward.

If this is landing for you, I want you to do one thing right now. Put your left hand on your chest, take a slow breath in through your nose, hold it, then exhale however it feels good for you. Then repeat to yourself: What’s real is, I am safe right now. It’s safe to feel safe. My feet are planted, all is well, and I am here.

More love, Tracy

One of the most powerful things I get to do inside this space is take the real, live, in the trenches work that I am doing with extraordinary leaders, whether that is inside our Becoming program, inside certification, or inside my one to one relationships with some of the most remarkable women I know, and bring it directly to you. No filter, no packaging. Just the real thing.

And this is one of those moments.

What I am about to share came through a series of Voxers with one of my epic clients, a leader navigating a genuinely complex team dynamic. She needed advisement on how to lead through it, and what came through me in real time for her is something that belongs here with you too. Because this is not just her situation. This is every leader’s situation at some point. And the way through it is the same every single time.

It is called conscious communication. And it does not look like what most people think it looks like.

Here is the first thing I need you to understand, and this is foundational.

And the moment you understand that, the entire goal of a hard conversation changes.

You are no longer trying to figure out who is right. You are trying to understand what each person is actually experiencing and what they actually need. That is a completely different conversation.

So before you ever pick up the phone, before you ever send the calendar invite, before you ever open your mouth, the first act of conscious communication is getting yourself regulated.

Because you cannot create the conditions for truth to surface if you are activated. You cannot hear someone clearly if your nervous system is already in a story about what they did and what it means.

The conversation will only ever be as good, and as effective, as the internal state you bring to it.

That is not a suggestion. That is the entire game.

Then, there is the invitation itself.

Because how you call someone into a conversation is the first act of leadership. The energy of the invitation sets the tone for everything that follows. So instead of “we need to talk,” which activates every nervous system within a ten mile radius, the invitation sounds more like this:

I would love to create some space to really hear what is going on for you and talk about what support is needed, because we are doing meaningful, game-changing work together and we all deserve to be heard, to work in a harmonious environment, and to keep becoming great leaders.

That is the invitation. That is how you call someone into a conversation from your highest self rather than from your frustration, or dysregulation.

On the call, you do not rush. You do not come in with an agenda or a resolution already mapped out in your head.

You open with something simple like, “What is present for you right now?” “How are you feeling coming into our call?”, because you never know what just happened in someone’s life before they showed up to talk to you. You invite the other person to take a few breaths with you, creating the conditions for a real conversation before you try to have one.

You ask them what is really going on and what she really needs.

Then you listen. You actually listen.

And if they starts to spiral into a bitch fest, into complaining, into gossip energy, that is where you stop it, and lead. Not harshly, not reactively, but cleanly and directly. Something like:

I hear that you are frustrated and disappointed, and we are not going to roll like that here. We are not going to complain, we are not going to gossip, because this is about the culture we are all building together and we all have a responsibility for the energy we contribute to it.

That is not harsh. That is leadership. And the moment you tolerate that energy, you become a co-creator of it.

Here is something equally important to understand about why someone shows up as a petulant child in a professional dynamic. It is never really about what it looks like on the surface.

The conscious leader gets curious about what is underneath, not reactive to what is on the surface. That curiosity is what creates the opening for something to actually shift.

And here is the piece most leaders miss: you do not need closure. You do not need to resolve anything in the conversation itself. The moment you start trying to force resolution, you are no longer in a conscious conversation.

Then you, the leader, can sit with all of it, reconcile it, and then make whatever decisions need to be made from a clear and grounded place.

So it is okay, and actually it is ideal, to close a hard conversation with:

I heard you, thank you for this time, I am going to sit with everything we talked about and I will be back.

That is it. That is the whole thing. Be where your feet are, let the conversation be what it is, and trust that once you have heard everyone out, the next move will present itself.

Because it always does.

You do not have to have all the answers. You do not have to know exactly what to do before you pick up the phone or get on the zoom.

What you have to be is regulated, open, curious, and willing to let truth surface on its own timeline. That is what conscious communication actually looks like. And it is one of the most powerful things you will ever practice as an embodied leader.

More love, Tracy

As you may know, we recently renovated a gorgeous 1938 cottage on our property in downtown Delray Beach and transformed her into the Becoming House, a physical, in-person sanctuary for this work. In the original footprint of the house, there was an archway dividing what would become the main gathering space. I wanted it gone. I wanted one open, expansive, unobstructed space that could hold more of you, more magic, more of what we do together. And before we started demo, two separate contractors told me the same thing: that the archway is not load bearing. Take it out. You should be good.

So we did. Or so I thought.

One morning I walked in and the archway was gone, but in its place were thick beams running across the ceiling and two more protruding out of the walls on either side, which, for those of you paying close attention, almost completely defeats the purpose of removing the archway in the first place. I’m standing in the middle of this cottage, no floors yet, just beams, with my GC, his project manager, and the lead guy, and I say something about it. And they tell me “it’s structural, it’s load bearing, it has to stay”, cementing in the work they’d already done and kind of fighting for their cause.

And then came the line, delivered with that particular energy, that flip, dismissive, fast energy designed to make you feel like you shouldn’t have questioned anything in the first place: “If you want us to take it out, that’s fine, but that’s going to be on you.” Oof.

And this is where it gets really good. Because this is where the work of practicing your power, shows up in real life.

While they were talking, I was having a completely different internal experience. I knew in my bones that archway was not load bearing. My power knew it. And at the same time, I was noticing something else happening inside me, something I want to name for you because I know you have felt it too.

There was a flutteriness. A fawning sensation. That old familiar pull that sounded like, Tracy, don’t make this a thing. You don’t want to be difficult. They already did the work. Is it really that big of a deal?

I heard that voice, and because of the evolution I have been in, I heard it and I made a different choice.

(To be clear, using your full power is not actually bitchy at all. I use that term because we have been influenced to perceive that if we are in our full power, if we are direct, if we are actually sovereign, others will perceive us as bitchy. So we fear being “that bitch”. But queen, nothing feels better than being that bitch and not caring about whether you are perceived that way or not. Let people think whatever they way. What people think of you is none of your business)

Back to the story - There is a profound difference between knowing your power and actually practicing it. Most women that are leading the way you are, you have the knowing. You feel the truth in your body. The gap isn’t the awareness. It’s the practice. It’s choosing to act from your power when every old part of your identity is pulling you toward what’s more familiar, which is typically either shrinking or over-asserting, and neither of those is her.

There will always be people in the room who sound more certain than you feel. People who use authority or volume or that particular dismissive energy to try to override what you know. The question is how much you trust yourself, and how willing you are to practice the power you damn well know you have.

So here is what I actually did in that moment, because I want you to see what this looks like in real life.

While they were still talking, I was working with my body. I was taking slow, deep, intentional breaths, nothing dramatic, just being with myself, creating the safety my nervous system was asking for so the fawn response could get quieter. I was leaning into one foot a little heavier than the other, pressing it intentionally down through the beam I was standing on, moving energy, coming back into my body, creating safety so I could step up into my full power and let her lead.

And from that place, I simply said, calmly, clearly, directly, unapologetically: okay, guys, I hear you. Stop what you’re doing. Someone get a ladder. I’d like two of you to go up separately, look above where this archway was, and come down and confirm to me in no uncertain terms whether or not this is load bearing.

They went up. One at a time. And they came back down, looked me in the eyes, and said: you’re right. It’s not structural. It’s not load bearing.

To which I said, thank you. Now please undo the work, take the beams down, and redo the walls.

And they did. And now we have a luscious, open, unobstructed space that you are going to come enjoy.

So let me give you what I want you to walk away with, because I’m a teacher and that’s what I do.

Lesson one: there is a profound difference between claiming your power and practicing it. You have claimed your power a thousand times. But claiming it and being in practice of it are not the same thing. Practicing it means choosing to act from it when every old part of your identity is louder than your knowing. That is the work.

Lesson two: regulate first, lead second. Safety in the body first, being her second. You cannot lead from a dysregulated nervous system, and I want to be clear that dysregulation doesn’t always look like stress or chaos. Sometimes it looks like quiet. The slight shoulder curl. The slow fade back. The I’ll just let this one go. That is also dysregulation. And you cannot lead from it. Regulation feels like expansiveness, open chest, shoulders back, heart up, breath full. When you commit to being a highly conscious leader, you get so good at noticing the moment you move from that open state into the first flutter of contraction, and that noticing is what gives you the choice.

Lesson three: your survival responses are not your enemy. Your fawn response, your freeze, your fight, your flight, all of it is your old identity trying to protect you from the full depth and breadth of your power. Read that again. It is trying to protect you from how powerful you actually are. And you don’t get to have both. If the patterns of the old identity continue to reign supreme, no matter how much you want it, no matter how well-intentioned you are, the woman you are capable of becoming will never fully make manifest.

And the last thing I will leave you with is this: you have to be in practice. You cannot post about it. You cannot simply have the awareness of it. Practicing who you’re becoming is not fluff. It is the work. It is the moment to moment, breath by breath, micro by micro occurrence that is writing your future in every single moment.

You are always practicing something.

More love, Tracy 🤍

I was on the phone with a friend recently.

She’s in the middle of something real. Her business is in a season of transition, some rocky ground, some uncertainty, and she was sharing what was coming through for her as she navigated it.

I asked her what she truly desired.

She said: I want to feel stable.

And what I shared with her, I want to share with you. Because you deserve to hear it too.

Stability is available to you right now.

Not when the revenue stabilizes. Not when the relationship clarifies. Not when the launch converts or the team gets it together or the thing you’ve been waiting on finally moves.

Right now.

Here’s what most people miss: stability is a feeling. And feelings don’t come from circumstances. They come from you.

I know that sounds simple. It is simple. It’s just not easy, because we have been deeply, socially, culturally conditioned to believe the opposite. We’ve been taught that the outside world is responsible for our inside world. That when things look a certain way, we’ll feel a certain way. That safety, certainty, and stability are things we earn or arrive at, not things we choose.

So we wait. We hustle toward stability as if it’s a destination. We white-knuckle every single day, over-attach to every outcome, and wait for stability to arrive like it’s something being shipped to us.

And all the while, stability is already inside of you, going: hey. I’m right here.

But we can’t hear it. We can’t feel it. Because we’ve made it contingent on the outcome.

This is the part I need you to really feel.

Because a woman who doesn’t get this is caught in one of the most painful loops that exists: she is working tirelessly for something she already has access to, guaranteeing she never actually experiences it. The destination keeps moving. The goalpost keeps shifting. And she keeps running, convinced that this next thing, this next milestone, this next proof point, will finally be the one that makes her feel okay.

It won’t.

Not because success isn’t real, fabulous, earned, or worth celebrating. But because feelings don’t live in outcomes. They never did. Stability isn’t waiting for you on the other side of the thing. It is here. It has always been here. Inside of you, patient and present, waiting for you to stop looking out there long enough to come home to it.

(If you notice your body responding to what I just said, pause and take a moment with that before you keep reading.)

Here’s what makes this so sneaky for women like you: most high-achieving, successful, established women do not recognize the slow leak of victimhood that’s still present. Because look how fast I’m running. Look how much I’ve accomplished. Look how successful I am. Look how big my team is. Look at the revenue, the impact, the proof. And love it, yay, all day, truly. But those external successes have nothing to do with how much abdication of power is still taking place in the micro moments of your life.

Let me say this again because it is that important, and you can never overhear it. Waiting for something outside of you to change how you feel is abdicating your power. It’s victimhood. And this is a big deal. Because once you get this, once you actually see all the little places and spaces where you’ve been leaking your power, it stops leaking. It comes rushing back into you.

Imagine your spine straightening. Shoulders of a queen. And you go, oh shit. Like Glinda the Good Witch: “You’ve always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”

You are not waiting to become a stable woman. You already are her.

So here’s what’s actually available to you. You can decide that stability is what you desire. You can recognize that you are it, and it is you. And make the internal choices that allow you to feel stability in your body as a real, true, sensory experience now, before the external thing shifts, changes, or happens.

This is not bypassing. This is not pretending. This is the most advanced thing a human being can do: choose a feeling in the absence of external evidence.

And here’s what becomes possible when you do.

You become magnetic. Because you are no longer operating from lack or urgency or fear. You are a woman who already feels what she used to make contingent on the outcome, and that frequency calls everything in faster.

You start to surrender. Because when you already have the feeling, the grip loosens. You stop white-knuckling the result. You move into genuine detachment, not the kind where you don’t care, but the kind where you’re not afraid. There’s a difference.

You finally start to live. Right now, in the life you’re actually in, not the life you’re waiting to earn.

The feeling you are working so hard to create externally? You can feel it now. And in feeling it now, you make everything else you’re working so hard for follow and flow with ease and trust.

You’re welcome.

Love your face.

It was early morning, and I was enjoying my second cup of coffee on my comfy outdoor couch when a Voxer came in from a client. (Side note, I love going to sleep at night knowing I get to wake up and enjoy my delicious morning coffee. You too?)

My client is a brilliant, high-achieving woman, committed to herself, committed to the work, a mother, a wife, and leader of a team that’s responsible for millions in monthly revenue. Let’s just say, this is not her first rodeo.

She came in spiraling hard. A name was brought up related to a situation she thought she had already ‘moved through’, and suddenly she was back inside of it as if no time had passed at all.

I listened to her message and got right into the heart of what we actually needed to address, because it wasn’t the story she was telling or the content she was sharing. What I immediately picked up on was this, “I should be better than this. I should be past this by now.”

That sentence right there. That was what this moment was about, and that is the gift I am now bringing here to you. Because that sentence - I should be past this by now - is one of the most dangerous things a high-achieving woman can say to herself. And you might not even notice when you’re saying it.

How did I know it was shame? Number one when I hold you, I know your emotional addictions and patterns and because of the word should.

Anytime the word should leaves your lips, or you think it, that’s the old identity rooting shame in a little bit deeper. Not because it’s ever true, but because it’s what’s familiar.

Things from your past lived experience don’t just take up real estate in your mind, they live in your body.

Your body gets pulled back into the past and replays it as if it’s happening right then and there in that moment. Every emotion, every thought, every sensation, fresh, alive, and present, as if your body is literally being pulled back in time; because it is.

Getting triggered, yes even if it’s a trigger you’ve experienced before, is not evidence that you haven’t grown, and it’s not evidence that the beautiful internal work you’ve been committed to isn’t working. It’s actually the opposite.

This is your biology working exactly as it’s designed. And the most unhelpful, unloving thing you can do in that moment is to shame yourself for having a beautiful, biologically appropriate human experience.

The other thing to highlight here is that when we feel shame, when we feel wrong, when we feel like we’re not enough, when we feel like we should be more or past or better, we go straight back into proving energy, as in operating from the lie that we need to prove ourselves. Which is what lives underneath the hustle - so we push, we override our bodies, we contort, we perform “everything is great.” And that proving energy? That is the loop, the pattern. That is the thing that keeps you “stuck” - not the original wound, but the shame response to the wound that sends you spinning in the same pattern again and again, affirming the old identity.

And no, you cannot think your way out of a shame spiral, you can’t logic your way back to regulation, you need to move it through your body.

Here’s what I said to her:

Full fucking stop, queen. That is not how a goddess speaks to herself.

Because the language we use with ourselves is the same thing as the thoughts we think about ourselves, and when those thoughts are shame based, they are dysregulating.

So we slowed down, held the space for her to name what was actually happening, in her body, we took the shame goggles off, and then through her connection to her body, she identified what her body actually needed.

It wanted to process and be witnessed. So that’s exactly what she did…her body wanted to do some wall pushing, a little bit of screaming and grunting, a self-love hug and within a short window of time, she felt the intensity dissolve and she arrived elegantly back to the present moment, back to a regulated, available state. Ahhhhhhhh…this work is so fucking beautiful, every time.

In my own proven experience of becoming, and in the thousands of other journeys I have guided in women just like you and me, the body has to move.

You cannot talk your way through what has been stored in your body and in your system. It has to be expressed. It has to be released. That is not optional. End of story.

So the next time you notice yourself saying or thinking, I should be past this by now, why am I still working on this, I should be further along by now, I invite you to simply pause. Pause and continue to notice. Notice where you feel it in your body. Notice the rabbit hole of hell that your mind starts to run you down.

Stay away from judgement, stay with yourself and simply notice.

Growth is not linear. Healing is not linear. Expansion is not linear.

Your nervous system is brilliant and layered, and it will bring things back up when it’s ready to go deeper, when it needs a little bit more dissolving. And that is actually because you have done the work. You are feeling safer and safer inside yourself. You have expanded your window of tolerance. Your nervous system imprint is starting to change. And every time you meet the trigger at the level of your body, witness it and metabolize it a little bit more, it dissolves more and more and more. The charge lessens more and more.

That is not regression, baby. That’s evolution.

Until next time. Remember, there’s always more love.

Good morning, good morning, good morning.

I’m sitting outside in the stunning sacred vortex that is the property of our new home, the same property where we are about to open the doors to The Becoming House, listening to the sound of the waterfall coming off of the jacuzzi going into the pool, watching the beautiful trees sway in the wind. And I am struck with the most outrageous amount of gratitude and appreciation for this world, this life, sitting in awe of who I have become at every step of this journey.

This moment marks the beginning of something new, a new portal where I get to bring you the depth and breadth of every piece of wisdom, every lesson, every insight, every perspective that I have learned in this journey of becoming the woman that I am, the woman that I continue to become.

I have been serving women leaders, founders, and entrepreneurs for nine years, with a previous career leading people inside organizations, and the journey has been extraordinary. Whether you’ve been here from the beginning or you’re just finding me now, I want to take a moment to introduce myself, because if we’re going to be in this together, you deserve to know who I am and why I am here.

I am Tracy Litt, founder of The School of Becoming®, certified coach, neuro-somatics expert, and hypnotherapist. My work lives at the intersection of neuroscience and spirituality. It is grounded in the body, rooted in truth, and built on one unshakeable belief, that the most powerful thing a woman can do, for her business, her leadership, her relationships, and the world, is become the most regulated, expressed, and fully alive version of herself. This is not personal growth in the traditional sense, and there are no hacks here, no performance strategies, no tips for doing more.

This is identity evolution, nervous system work, the real thing.

Before I founded The School of Becoming®, I spent twelve years as a VP of Human Resources in the eldercare industry, sitting in every boardroom conversation about retention crises, engagement challenges, and failed change initiatives, watching organizations pour resources into solutions that never moved the needle in any lasting way. I understood why, because despite the title Human Resources, most organizations treat their people as anything but human. They focus on processes, policies, and productivity metrics while completely ignoring the biological reality of how humans actually function, adapt, and thrive. That realization changed the entire direction of my life. After 2 years of being paralyzed by fear, (so much more on that later) I left the executive track, went back to school at 38 years old, and earned certifications in professional coaching, master energy practitioner, neuro-somatics, and hypnotherapy, not as professional development, but as a complete reimagining of what leadership could actually be. And the full evolution of myself.

I created The School of Becoming® because I kept witnessing the same pattern in brilliant, successful women everywhere, women who had built extraordinary things and still felt a ceiling they could not name, a gap between who they were being and who they knew they were capable of becoming, women who were succeeding by every external measure and quietly exhausted by being the cost of that success.

That gap is where my work lives, and closing it is what I am here for.

My work has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and Success Magazine. I am the author of the international bestseller Worthy Human and a TEDx speaker.

I am a wife to an extraordinary man who is a true partner in every sense of the word, and a mother to three remarkable college-age daughters. We are a blended family, which has contributed greatly to the becoming of who I am, allowing me more opportunities to practice regulated presence, conscious relationships, forgiveness, and the ripple effect of a woman who is committed to her own evolution.

Throughout the course of our relationship here inside the Embodied Leader, I am going to be sharing all of it.

I’ve been craving a new space where I can speak to you, where I can share things with you that are direct transmissions from me, a space free from algorithms and making content reels. And I appreciate there’s a place for that, but at the stage I’m at and the depth of what I have to offer you, social media is not the place for it.

The Embodied Leader is that space, where I am going to share everything from multimillion dollar business growth and lessons, conscious communication, what it really means to practice and embody your next level, emotional expression, the ripple effect into your motherhood and your marriage, insights from sessions and proprietary teachings, elevated conversations with iconic leaders, and the kind of truth you deserve, the kind of truth that shifts you when you hear it.

This space is the one source of Tracy truth.

So welcome, my beauty, to the Embodied Leader, where once a week, I will deliver you a powerful piece that helps you embody the woman you’re becoming. Sometimes it’ll be written, sometimes it’ll be audio, sometimes it’ll be video, and I’m giving myself that complete flexibility so that it comes in the cleanest and truest and completely unfiltered, unmanaged form so that it can hit you in your heart, your soul, your mind, your body.

For now, I leave you with this truth - you are the common denominator. You are the generator. You are the cause of the effect of everything in your lived experience, yes, in your business, in your family, in your motherhood, in your leadership, in your marriage, in your relationships, in your impact, in your visibility, in your money.

And when you hear that let it land, let yourself feel how fucking exhilarating that is. And sometimes a little like, ugh, really? Yes, queen. Really.

You have all the power. You always have, and you always will.

Until next time. Remember, there’s always more love.