Punk Rock Personal Development - Sarah Starrs

Today’s interview is with Erin Loechner. Erin has been blogging and speaking for more than a decade on her website Design for Mankind and she’s now released an incredible book called Chasing Slow. Now nestled in a Midwestern town, Erin, her husband, and their toddler strive for less in most areas except three: joy, grace, and goat cheese. Erin is one of the friendliest, most open people I’ve ever spoken to and I loved chatting with her about minimalism, slowing down our lives, finding our golden hours in order to be more creative, and what she learned about herself from writing her new book.

In this special FAQ episode I answer your questions about anything and everything! The topics range from spirituality, rituals, and routines to writing, activism, and moving to a new city. I hope it will give you a chance to get to know me better and learn something new in the process.

Vix Maxwell is an intuitive Tarot + Angel Card Reader + Fairyologist certified by Doreen Virtue, Holy Fire Reiki Level II, Celtic Reiki Mystic Master, Headmistress of Woo Woo School and the creator of New Age Hipster. Phew - that’s a mouthful, innit? That’s because Vix is one awesome lady! Sent here on a divine mission to kick open the musty old spiritual wardrobe, she is all about bringing the new age into the now by making spirituality accessible to whoever wants in! We had a conversation where we embraced all things woo and talk about stuff like learning to recognize our intuitive voice and getting clear on our own spiritual beliefs.

Lucy Pearce is the author of numerous life-changing non-fiction books for women, including: Burning Woman, The Rainbow Way and Moon Time, all #1 Amazon bestsellers. Lucy’s work is dedicated to supporting women’s empowered, embodied expression. She is the founder of Womancraft Publishing. Lucy and I had a really deep conversation about creative cycles, living in tune with our own rhythms, the beauty of working from bed, the difficulty of expressing our voices as women, and what it means to be a burning woman.

Sara Tasker runs the blog Me and Orla. She's a stylist, photographer, writer, and Instagram coach. We're talking about finding community (and making friends! online), curation vs. authenticity online, how Instagram has changed her life, and how she balances motherhood and chronic illness with her work.

Kristen Rogers Anderson wants to help people feel good by entertaining them and inspiring "me too!" moments. She's the co-host of the Book Club Schmook Club podcast and her true crime YouTube show, Guilty Party, launches this month. Kristen recently wrote an article about the positive sides of grief that she unexpectedly experienced after her family suffered a horrible tragedy. We talked about dealing with death, the importance of allowing yourself to grieve - and what that means, and how this experience helped her grow as a person. We also riffed on our love of bullet journaling, Kristen's journey with personal development, and the routines she's developed to take care of herself.

Alexandra Roxo is an intuitive coach, writer, filmmaker and public speaker living in LA. Her film work has garnered millions of hits online and been featured in press from Vogue to the Times. She recently co-founded Moon Club a monthly subscription based mentorship and coaching program. In this episode we talk about her journey to finding her voice as an artist, translating our feelings of overwhelm into activism, and balancing our spiritual and sexual lives.

Kelsey Cronkhite is the Founder and Creative Director at Pinegate Road — a brand strategy agency that specializes in helping creative businesses find their foundation, and build that out beautifully in all that they do. She personally loves bringing the hand-made and hand-lettered into the digital environment. From hand-lettering on websites, to torn paper and shadows, she believes that bringing more of what we love in our tangible lives to our online brands helps us connect with our audience in a deeper, more meaningful way. Kelsey and I talked about her journey to being diagnosed with endometriosis, how it changed her life, managing her life with chronic pain, and how she sustainably built up her business over 5 years before quitting her day job.

Tamara (aka Wolf Sister) is a Shaman, Reiki master, supernatural potion maker and Tarot reader. I’m always so impressed with her grounded approach to personal development and spirituality and it’s such a pleasure to get to share her with you on the show. We talked about her own journey with anxiety and depression, her shaman studies in Bali, how to get started with a tarot practice, and how she balances her business as a healer with her job as a hair dresser.

Sarah Von Bargen is a writer and teacher who believes that everyone and everything is interesting. She helps her people live easier, more intentional, more interesting lives through courses, articles, and incredibly doable suggestions. We had a really fun chat about so many things, including her thoughts on the recent US presidential election, writing a new things list, a simple trick for being more productive, and how we can stop making regrettable purchases once and for all.

Susannah Conway is the author of This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart and LONDONTOWN: A Photographic Tour of the City’s Delights, and co-author of Instant Love: How to Make Magic and Memories with Polaroids. Through her writing and online courses, she helps people reconnect to their true selves through creativity. I’m so excited to share our conversation, where we sat down to chat about harnessing creativity, the healing power of journalling, thriving as an HSP in a big city, and her rituals for preparing for the new year.

Rochelle Schieck is the founder of Qoya. Since its inception in 2009, she has trained hundreds of Qoya teachers, taught thousands of Qoya movement classes, and led dozens of retreats in the most sacred places on earth with one intention in mind: to remember, and to help others do the same. Her work has been featured in outlets like New York Magazine, Oprah.com, The Telegraph, and Psychology Today. Qoya has come up on the podcast many times and it’s had a profound impact on my life, so I’m really excited to share this conversation with you. We talked about learning to trust our bodies, healing from heartache, balancing our masculine and feminine energies, and what you can expect in a Qoya class.

Nancy Levin is the author of Worthy: Boost Your Self-Worth to Grow Your Net Worth, Jump … And Your Life Will Appear, Writing For My Life. She’s a Master Integrative Coach and the creator of the Jump Coaching and Worthy Coaching Programs, working with clients – privately and in groups – to live in alignment with their own truth and desires. She was the Event Director at Hay House for 12 years and hosts her own weekly call-in show Jump Start Your Life on Hay House Radio. Nancy and I will be talking about the fact that most personal finance books don’t work because they don’t address the underlying self-worth issues that lead us to underearn, overspend, and generally self-sabotage with our cash. She’s talking about her own money story, what changed everything for her, and how the approach she uses with herself and her clients is really different.

Dyana Valentine is not for the faint of heart. She’s spent 13+ years teaching leaders to listen to themselves and complete seemingly impossible projects—we’re talking major brand overhauls, six-figure product launches, full-fledged manuscripts. She serves up straight-from-the-hip advice in online magazines and columns all over the ‘net. In a past life, she was an idiot-savant microsurgery tech, worked for the Olympic Games organizing committee, and was personally approached by the FBI with a recruitment invitation—for classified reasons – on two separate occasions. As you can tell, Dyana has such an interesting life story and we had a fantastic conversation about her journey but also about her zone of genius: decision making. We riffed on why decision making is so hard, the Super Conditions game she’s created to make it easier, and why some decision making systems miss the mark.

Emily Nagoski is the New York Times bestselling author of Come As You Are: the surprising new science that will transform your sex life. She has a PhD in Health Behavior with a doctoral concentration in human sexuality from Indiana University (IU), and a master’s degree (also from IU) in Counseling, with a clinical internship at the Kinsey Institute Sexual Health Clinic. She has been a sex educator for over twenty years. Come As You Are absolutely changed my life and my relationship to my sexuality; it’s definitely a must-read. Emily and I talked about so much including the big myths that are damaging so many women’s relationships to their sexuality, why everyone’s sexuality is actually totally normal (yes, even yours) and the thing that really bugged her about 50 Shades of Grey.

Alexis Wolfer is the founder and editor-in-chief of the empowering online women’s lifestyle magazine, TheBeautyBean.com. She's a well-known beauty and lifestyle expert, as seen on the Today Show, E! News, The Doctors, and more; and the author of two books: “The Recipe For Radiance: Discover Beauty’s Best-Kept Secrets In Your Kitchen” and “Radiant Bride: The Beauty, Diet, Fitness, And Fashion Plan For Your Big Day.” I was fascinated to talk with Alexis about the importance of natural beauty, the products she’s loving, the intersection of feminism and beauty, and what her journey to self-love has looked like so far. She’s not afraid to go deep and talk about the big issues!

Caroline van Kimmenade teaches Highly Sensitive People how to work with their sensitivity instead of fighting it, so that they ​stay open and caring, feel lighter and can effectively make use of their sensitivity instead of being burdened by it. We talk about what it means to be a highly sensitive person, the benefits and challenges, learning the language of your sensitivity, as well as our own experiences of burn out and what our healing journeys looked like.

Crowned ‘the defender of female awesomeness’ by Cooler magazine, Lisa Lister is an advocate of the FULL female experience. She’s a writer, a menstrual maven and creatrix of the SHE Flow system – yoga, women’s wisdom and menstrual health + ‘down-there’ care practices – dedicated to helping women crack their lady code, reconnect with their body wisdom + love their lady landscape. We sat down to talk about the societal trauma caused by patriarchy, reclaiming our SHE power, dancing between devotion and spontaneity, and what it means to be a witch.

Amy Kuretsky is a health coach for creatives, licensed acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, and woo-woo as fuck. She helps busy bosses fuel their hustle by honoring their health and their bodies, and helping them heal their digestion. She started following this path after being diagnosed with Crohn's disease - an autoimmune disease of the gut - over 10 years ago and using natural healing therapies to heal her own digestion and become her healthiest self ever. We talked about her journey of healing from Crohn’s, tapping into our intuition, the fact that foods aren’t the enemy but not every food is for every person, and how the elements are connected to our body and can help us live in more harmonious ways.

Gail Shock aka G Love is a Love Revolutionary, a Quantum Meditation Teacher, Coach, Writer and Energy Magician. We talked a lot about what that mega job title even means, the crises that ended up being her soul cures, the new ritual, Gail is using to celebrate the small, wonderful things that happen throughout her daily life, her beautiful spiritual beliefs, living from a place of self-acceptance rather than self-improvement, following the whispers of the feminine throughout our lives, and the experience of “The Voice Thief,” and how we can go about reclaiming our voices.