Let Out Your Inner Child

My husband’s phone buzzed. It was a message from his boss, Jason. The set list for their rock school's anniversary concert was confirmed.


Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Beastie Boys’ Fight For Your Right on the roster.

My inner child screamed “That’s my song, I want to sing it!” 

Before I could think twice, I asked my husband if Jason would let me sing the song of my pre-teen years in front of 200 strangers.

“I don’t know, I’ll ask,” he smiled. 

Within minutes we got an enthusiastic yes, but then I immediately regretted it. “What the hell did you just get yourself into, Zeva?” I thought to myself. 

But I didn’t give in to that voice. Instead, I spent the next few weeks preparing my performance by shouting, jumping and nailing every bit of Brooklyn affect I had in my DNA. 

Days before the concert, I did a run-through for my husband. As I finished the song, breathless, he gently said “you know, you don’t need to overdo it?” 

Let’s just say his advice went in one ear, and out the other. 

When I got on stage wearing my custom-made Beastie Boys shirt, my heart racing, the crowd going nuts, the spotlight shining on my face and the thermostat all of the sudden on high, there was nothing holding me back. I OVERDID IT BIG TIME!

And guess what? It was one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had in my life. 

Where am I going with this,? 

In addition to wanting to share this personal triumph with you, I realized there’s more to it than I first understood:
 

1. I was a very shy girl growing up. And when Fight For Your Right came out in 1986 I was at the height of my awkward pre-teens. I was chubby, and had a curtain of 80s bangs over my forehead that served as a shield. So when the anthem from that exact period appeared on the set list, I think it was that self-conscious little girl in me that perked up. She finally felt ready be seen, and get her groove on. My performance was a rush, a release, and a reparation. I think I made her extremely proud. 
    

2. We’re often worried about having the right qualifications, or being legitimate, to say something, or try something new. But just showing up in an enthusiastic, joyful, positive, way, can be the gift that’s needed at that very moment. I made a ton of mistakes on stage, but it didn’t matter. The excitement I communicated was contagious. I even got another gig out of it! Could this be the beginning of my Beastie Boys cover band career? Stay tuned...
    

3. The day after my performance I spoke with a friend who signed up to do something she’s always dreamed of doing but was terrified to try: stand-up comedy. She said, “I challenged myself this year to do scary things that I knew I could handle, and I’ve always wanted to try stand-up.” As the words came out of her mouth, I knew she was speaking a truth much larger than her own. I think we’re living in a post-pandemic age where we've learned to discern paralysing fear (aka, we might die if we catch an airborne virus) to I-can-handle-this-kind-of-fear, fear (aka, daring ourselves to do something thrilling and new).
    

4. Tying this all together in a neat little bow, what I’m sensing is that we're craving experiences that remind us that we're alive. We want to feel new things. We want to laugh. We want to rejoice. We want to connect. We want vitality. And that might mean we need to move past our manageable fears, and come out wide-eyed and wind-swept, on the other side of it.
    

So, here’s a little challenge for you. What’s something you’ve always wanted to try that scares you, but that you know you’d have an absolute blast trying? Something that maybe your inner child craves? 

Is it singing? Writing sonnets? Tap dancing? Joining a theatre group? Going on a wild trip? Learning a new sport? 

Book a free call and let’s discuss what that inner child inside of you is curious to finally try. 

Cultivating Self-Trust

Camille I were in the middle of our session when she causally said, "When something feels off in my body, I now know that it's because I'm believing something that just isn't true."

We looked at each other and laughed. Because Camille and her body weren’t always humming to the same tune. 

Earlier on in our coaching, her body was like a racehorse designed for efficiency, duty and productivity.

It had the potential to sense and intuit, to switch lanes and directions when it felt the need, but its blinders were so thick and tight that it was on a toxic auto-pilot track headed for imminent burnout. 

I love a good visual metaphor. So what could the blinders represent in this story you think?

What prevents a woman from being able to trust the signals that her body sends her about what feels good or bad?

So many of my clients come to me because they’re trying to get to a place that feels better for them professionally, but they’re terrified by what they might discover in themselves with their blinders off. 

Why? Because they've been taught to believe that those blinders provide control and security. 

Control and security over what? 

Our careers? 

Our social status? 

Our families? 

All of those make sense.

But when you realize that it’s impossible to control anything outside of ourselves 100%, we get to something a bit more complex. 

As women in a patriarcal society, we’ve been brilliantly taught to mistrust what happens inside of us. We’ve been taught to mistrust:
 

• Our emotions. 

• Our resilience.

• Our power.

• Our opinions. 

• Our needs. 

How did we get to a place where we are so distrusting of ourselves? 

How did we get to a place where we’re better at controlling and numbing our needs and desires than becoming curious about what they might be telling us?

And, more importantly, how can we build a bridge into ourselves, into our self trust that doesn’t also freak us out and halt us in our tracks?

That goal, the one above, is what my clients and I strive to achieve in our journey together. 

To get them to a place, like Camille, where they can gradually loosen the blinders, see what they're falsely protecting us from, and learn to listen to and trust the power and potential deep within in order to guide them forward. 

PS.If you want to learn how to build self trust and self knowing so you can feel your way to your next career move, book a call with me here.

The Z Hive Giving Guide

Welcome to the first ever Z Hive Giving Guide!

What's the Z Hive, you ask? It's the community of current and former clients I've had the immense pleasure of coaching. A vast sorority of 100+ women who have transformed their careers in one way or another during our coaching journey together.

There are so many extraordinarily talented women in this community that I've decided to create a holiday guide to highlight some of their unique work, while also helping you, << Test First Name >>, navigate the wild, tumultuous sport of end-of-year gift giving. 

So, without further ado, click over to grab The Z Hive Giving Guide to 2022.

And if you’d like to learn more about my coaching program, which gives you instant access to Z Hive, just book a discovery call here.

"Don't Get Great At The Thing You Don't Want To Be"

It was an annual summer visit back home and my High School Brooklyn buddy Paul and I were catching up. 

At the time, I was working at Yelp. I had a prestigious position and the perks to go with it: great salary, business trips, stock options, a supportive boss and inspiring team. 

I was explaining my work situation to Paul when I started to feel my stomach tense up. Even with the dirty vodka martini and upstate small town tavern vibe, the conversation was tilting into 360-degree performance review territory. 

“It’s all going well," I explained, taking a nervous sip of my cocktail. "But when I'm honest with myself I’m not sure how much longer I want to do this. What’s scary is that I think I’m in line for a "keys-to-the-castle" promotion that I won’t be able to refuse, but ultimately don’t want.” 

Then Paul said something that made me put down my glass and break into a small sweat. “Don’t get great at the thing you don’t want to be.” 

Since he uttered that phrase it's been ingrained in my soul. It hit a nerve, and gave language to what I was hiding from everyone, including myself. 

By going above and beyond, by being hyper invested, by feeling like I was the best-qualified heir to the throne, I was pretending not to feel stuck in the golden prison of my "perfect" job.

Do you know what that feels like,? A lot of the women I’ve speak with about my coaching program, do.

They’ve become so good at masking their doubts by overachieving at their job, surpassing every one else’s expectations, that feeling stuck has starting to feel, well, normal.  

When they ask me, "Doesn’t everyone feel stuck?” My response is “No, you’ve just gotten used to feeling that way.”

If that sounds like you,  I highly encourage you to reach out for a free discovery call to discuss how my coaching program can help you:

• Feel aligned with what you’re doing

• Feel stimulated and in flow again

• Take concrete steps to bring that feeling back into your life

One shift sets them free

Anne had a safe and successful career as Head of Strategy and Development at a prestigious not-for-profit. But she was bored and desperate for something more.

At 45-years-old, retirement was far away, but not that far away. What else could she do professionally between now and then that was worth risking it all?

Even though a close friend in the same industry radically shifted tracks after working with me, Anne signed up for coaching despite believing she was a "lost cause." 

Anne was experiencing classic “stuckness”:

• One part fear. 

• One part fuzziness. 

• One part disbelieving.

Does that recipe sound familiar to you,?

Most people believe clarity comes by thinking problems to death. By engineering a perfect, grand master plan before daring to take any action. 

That strategy never works (it just makes you more anxious). 

In my experience coaching hundreds of women, the recipe for getting unstuck isn’t macro, but micro.


First, you need to make a move, even the slightest, seemingly-insignificant one, to prove to yourself that: 

1. You’re capable of keeping promises to yourself. 

2. You’re capable of change.

3. Change isn’t so scary. 

4. You can trust yourself to move at your own pace. 

So what's Anne up to now? 

In our time working together Anne discovered her passion, and skill, for writing people’s stories. She took a short writing program that confirmed what she intuited, that she wanted to become a biographer. She got the endorsement from her beloved manager of 15 years to move ahead with her new career. She researched the best programs, and was accepted into a comprehensive course for biographers that started this Fall. She already has former clients and friends who have commissioned her services. 

And do you know what set the ball in motion? What got her unstuck? It was putting her running gear on before taking the kids to school. 
 

Yup, I'm totally serious. 

One small shift set her in motion. A freedom action. A self-love proclamation. A mini-identify shift. 

This mini-identity shift is part of a transformation process that I witness over and over and over again with my clients. One shift sets them free. 

I’m sharing this unstuck process in a small cohort class. 

Click here to get on the Getting Unstuck and Easing Into Action waitlist. It’s the first unstuck action you can do today.

Quick Book Review: Remember

I devoured the book Remember by Lisa Genova. It’s completely altered the way I think about and use my memory. Here are my three biggest take-aways:

• Your memory isn't a camcorder. Your brain isn’t objectively recording everything you experience. To remember something, you need to be paying attention to it. And what you pay attention to most are meaningful, emotionally-charged experiences that stand out from the pack. (This is why you don’t remember what you ate for lunch three Thursdays ago, but you do remember your first kiss). 

• Your memory is wrong. As someone who prides herself on remembering “right,” this one was a doozy. Basically, every time you take a memory file out of your brain bank, you alter it just a little bit. It’s like playing a vinyl record. Every time you slide the record out of the sleeve, place it on the turntable, and let the needle spin through the grooves, the record changes every so slightly. (This is why reframing a memory based on new information about yourself shifts the memory itself.)

• What you remember creates your life story: I found this fascinating. We tend to remember the memories that support our identity and outlook. Do you think you’re a feisty, unspoken women,? If so, you’ll more likely remember, and therefore reinforce, the memories of moments you stood up for yourself and others. What if you think you're always the unlucky one? Well your autobiographical highlight reel will feature an endless stream of painful disappointments. (This is why it’s important to examine which memories you’re holding on to and whether they’re reinforcing the type of identity you want to have?)

Speaking Truth To Power

My dad always kept a stash of nails inside the glove compartment of his car. 

Whenever we got doubled-parked in (which happened whenever we scored a prized spot outside of my grandparents' high rise apartment complex) my dad would calmly grab a nail and sneak around to the back of the incriminating car. 

He’d carefully wedge his nail in-between the tire and the pavement so that when the car owner eventually came running out to move his car forward, the nail would quietly pierce through the tire’s rubber, creating a gash in the grooves. 

My dad was very satisfied each time he got to “stick it” to a schmucky car owner who had blocked us in. 

We never had to witness the fallout of the tire going flat minutes or hours later. There was no trace, or even suspicion that it could have been my dad. I mean, he didn’t shout at the owner, or even honk his rage into the loud NYC air. He just kept his hands on the wheel and barely blinked an eye, all emotions erased from his face. 

I tell this story because confrontation is not really in my DNA. 

I come from a “grin, bear and complain about it later” or “take your feelings out passive aggressively” kind of clan. 
 

So you could say it was out of character for me to write a letter condemning the doctor who said sexist, misogynistic things about my body, my choice of undergarments, my marriage and my weight during a medical appointment to zap my varicose veins. 

And that it was even more out of character for me to actually look into the eyes of the doctor during an official hearing last week, and explain to him in my own heated and well-prepared words why he couldn’t and shouldn’t ever openly degrade and critique a women’s body, especially a woman who is paying for his medical expertise. 

Where did this outspokenness, this courage and bravery to confront my aggressor come from? To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure.

But I know it has something to do with you.

When I was lying on the doctor’s examining table listening to him casually judge my body, I said to myself “I am a women’s empowerment coach, this won’t work on me.” 

That statement wasn’t 100% accurate, because my professional role didn’t save me from the tsunami of painful emotions that came up after the experience. 

But my mission did give me strength to make my voice heard, to speak truth to power. It washed out any non-confrontational DNA lurking in my system because it became about something much larger than me. 

James Clear in his book Atomic Habits says that the most effective way to change habits is to make them identity-based. “To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself. You need to build identity-based habits.” 

He boils sustained success, in any domain, down two main ingredients: 

1. Decide the type of person you want to be.

2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

I think I decided in the doctor’s office that I was the type of person who would use my voice, my resources, my experience and my privilege to shed light on the continual way that women, and their personal choices, are disrespected and disparaged by people in power, not only publicly, but behind closed medical doors.


Because I believed that about myself I was able to set the ball in motion, without thinking so much about the consequences. In a way, I'm happy I didn't know that my letter would lead to a face-off with a 68-year-old man who has been living under an unethical rock and getting away with it for most of his existence. 


Looking him squarely in the eyes and explaining exactly why his words were inappropriate and unacceptable was cathartic and healing as well as intensely surreal, exhausting and sad. I don't think I've ever sweated that much without doing an ounce of exercise. 


It’s only now that I realize what a brave move I made, but it didn’t feel like I was being brave at the time, it just felt like I was being the person I want to become even more. 

And that felt empowering. 

Our Genes Have Emotional Memories Too

An old newspaper clipping posted in our family’s Facebook group made every cell in my body tingle. 

Published in the Humboldt, Iowa, local newspaper in 1921, the article described my great grandmother’s epic exodus from her war-torn Russian village to her safe arrival in her new American town. 

Here's an excerpt:

“Finally Mrs. Serber secured aid and six months ago succeeded in reaching Roumania. One of her daughters died, and Mrs. Serber and the remaining child finally reached Paris. Snuggling on their way, mother and daughter were helped to Belgium. She arrived in Antwerp and sailed on the steamer Lapland. After ten days at sea the mother and daughter were landed at Ellis Island.”

I already knew about my great grandmother’s horrific loss of her two-year-old daughter, Myala, who fell fatally ill during their treacherous journey over. But what I didn’t know, yet viscerally felt, was that my great grandmother had passed through Paris on her way to America. 

For as long as I’ve been irrationally obsessed with France I’ve wondered what hidden forces drew me to this culture, this country, and more specifically, Paris. 

Discovering that my great grandmother had once walked the City of Light's cobblestoned streets felt like a small clue. 

Maybe she loved the city, and wished she could return under different circumstances. 

Maybe she felt at home, but had to push on. 

Maybe something magical, or mysterious happened to her here. 

Maybe she saw the bustling boulevards filled with cafes and escaped her misery for a moment over coffee with some locals. 

In any case, I feel like she passed a Parisian seed through the family gene pool that germinated and blossomed inside of me.  

Often in my coaching a client is deeply attached to an emotion, narrative or system of beliefs that feels so entrenched that it could well be ancient history. 

In our exploration, we sometimes find that these feelings and thoughts have been transmitted invisibly over generations, like familiar hand-me-downs you’ve been wearing for years, but whose original owners are long gone. 

The latest research in epigenetics reveals that our genes have a “memory” and that unprocessed emotions and experiences can be transmitted from one generation to another. 

If you're curious like me  about the provenance of certain longings, behaviors and emotions, I highly recommend the riveting new non-fiction book, Emotional Inheritance. 

Written by Dr. Galit Atlas, an Israeli psychoanalyst who lives in New York, the book is presented as a fascinating series of therapy vignettes. In each chapter we go behind-the-scenes as Atlas and her patients unravel present-day problems by uncovering and processing emotional material that sometimes goes back generations. As Atlas explains "when we heal ourselves, we also begin to heal the generations that came before us: our parents; our grandparents; our great grandparents and beyond."

Run, don’t walk to pick up your copy.  It's one of the most thrilling, and mind-bending books I've read in years and I’m sure it will be made into a Netflix series! 

What Happened At The Doctor's

I sat in the doctor’s office waiting to get my varicose veins zapped. 

Notebook open, pen in hand, I was listening to a course about entrepreneurial expertise and had to answer the inevitable “why” question. Why do I coach? What’s my mission?

In that moment this is what I jotted down: 

“I empower women to hear, trust and share their unique gifts because the world needs them now more than ever.”

Minutes later, the door flung open, and my name was called. I unplugged my earbuds, put away my notebook and followed the doctor into his office. 

I had been to this doctor a few times already and knew he was chatty.

I took off my pants, laid down on my back, and he started asking me what I do for a living, what my husband does, etc. 

I gave him the same info as during my last two appointments, then for flair, mentioned that in addition to my husband’s job, he was very passionate about tennis. 

“Passionate about tennis? Why isn’t your husband passionate about you?” the doctor quipped. 

I laughed, uncomfortably.  

And then out of the blue he added. “If you want him to be passionate about you you’ll need to lose this,” and he gestured to the little bulge of skin sticking out between my panties and my t-shirt and pinched my belly between his fingers. 

My heart stopped. My pulse quickened. I looked down and felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. “Did he just say what I think he said?” “Is that my belly?” “Yes, that’s my belly.” “What’s it doing here?” 

As he injected chemicals into my legs, he continued on with his unsolicited commentary. “You need to wear sexier underwear,” he said, flicking the waistband of my panties disapprovingly, “you should do butt and ab exercises,” and “don’t forget to wax and get your nails done.” 

He concluded, triumphantly, that this protocol would ensure that “at the end of the day, your husband desires you more than his tennis.”

I kept silent throughout most of this rant, thinking to myself, “This can’t be happening!” “Is this a joke?” “Does he know we’re in 2022?” “I’m a women's empowerment coach, this garbage won’t work on me.”

But it wasn’t a joke. And even though I am a women’s empowerment coach who has the solid support of family, friends, a therapist, a coach and a battalion of personal development tools, I found myself ugly crying on the phone to my husband as soon as I got out of that office.

The doctor’s words hit a nerve. They ignited millennia of self-doubting, shaming feelings and thoughts about a woman’s body that I thought I was immune to. 

They made me feel self-conscious, ashamed, embarrassed, exposed and weak. 

They made me doubt my inherent beauty. My femininity. 

His words, despite their almost comically Mad Men sexism, were an overt attempt to convince me that there was something terrible wrong with me that needed fixing.


That my full-time job as a woman was to keep my body pleasing and desirable, and that I was failing at that job. 

And, as a result of my shortcomings, I should use my precious resources— my time, my energy, my money, my thoughts, my actions—not on my own choices, relationships, convictions, or aspirations, but on the impossible task of living up to an unachievable ideal of feminine perfection! 

No, doctor, I’m not buying your sexist, patriarchal bullshit. 

Even though I wish I had jumped off the table screaming profanities into his smug face, months later, << Test First Name >>, I appreciate the experience the way it did go down. 

It’s helped me have some really honest, powerful, and healing conversations, like my heart-to-heart with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence (which you’re invited to listen to if you speak French). 

But the true gift of this experience is the heightened urgency and clarity I feel today around my mission as a coach. More than ever I feel like my place is to help women release the grip of limiting beliefs and feelings in order to step into their full professional potential, whatever that means for them. 

It’s the only way we can reverse course and dismantle a system that continues to subjugate a woman’s self-value, agency and dignity in order to strip her of her precious power. 

If that mission speaks to you, I'd be thrilled to chat with you during a free discovery call. 


PS. In case you missed my intimate chat in French with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence, you can listen to it over here.