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Trying to fix something is a way of grabbing the reins back, and the reflex to get a symptom gone right now leaves no room for God, for intuition, or for rest. Healing does not work that way. It is ongoing and uncertain, it has peaks and valleys, and it never actually stops. Health is not an illusion, but the belief that we control the outcome of it is. This one stays in the middle of that rather than talking about it from the other side. 🔥 In This Episode: The difference between fixing and healing, and what fixing is usually protectingWhy control over your health outcome is an illusion, even when the daily choices still matterWhat "normal range" actually measures, and why a dynamic body was never meant to hold still inside oneWhy the thing showing up in your body now may be older than any change you are making todayWhy being honest about how hard it is opens more than pretending you have peace about itFear and peace can both be there at once, and there is no requirement to feel peace right now if you do not. The question at the end is worth sitting with. If none of it got fixed, would you be okay. Life exists inside of all of it, not outside of it. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

Nobody knows what fifty five feels like until they press the pedal, overshoot it, and pull back. That is how you learn to drive, and it is also how you learn to operate as a different version of yourself. This is a theme that has been surfacing with colleagues, friends, and clients lately, and the question underneath it is always the same. Once you can see the pattern you have been running, how do you know whether you are acting from a healthier place or sliding right back into it. The answer running through the whole conversation is that you cannot know from the outside of it. You build the gauge by moving. From there it goes into the exits we take and why we take them, what exhaustion is usually pointing back to, and what happens when the fear of doing it wrong turns into doing nothing at all. 🔥 In This Episode: Why seeing the pattern is not the same as knowing how to operate differently, and what actually closes that gapHow to build the trust that you can catch yourself going too fast and slow downThe question worth asking before you take a new exit, and how to tell whether you are being drawn or toldWhat fatigue is often reporting back about a choice you already knew was offWhy the fear of repeating an old pattern keeps people swinging between a hundred percent and zeroShame is what sits underneath most of this. Every should, every replay of why you did it that way, is shame in tidier clothing, and there is nothing shameful about being in process. You get to paint your own lanes, and nobody else gets to paint them for you. Alignment cannot be assessed from the outside of it. Go touch the thing you have been circling, even for fifteen minutes, and let your body tell you what it is. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

Marcia Erickson is a business and executive coach with ActionCOACH in the Quad Cities, and she spent twenty years in healthcare administration before this. Most of this conversation sits on delegation, and on why so many owners say they want a team that takes ownership and then cannot hand anything over.  Marcia's first answer is practical. She says leaders rarely describe what success actually looks like in a role, so we default to saying we will know it when we see it, and the team is left guessing. Then Sara and Marisa take it underneath the systems, into the beliefs driving the behavior.  Marcia talks about how a belief has no objectivity in it, and how we go collect every piece of evidence we can find to prove it right anyway. She is candid about her own version of that, including the years she could not put her own face on her own marketing. 🔥 In This Episode: What actually blocks delegation, and why it has more to do with what you believe about yourself than what your team can handleWhy "I will know it when I see it" is not a standard, and what it costs your team when nobody says out loud what success looks likeMarcia's test before she hands anything off, and what changes when the question becomes whether you can live with the outcomeWhat real accountability looks like when your people report their own wins and misses instead of you pulling it out of themWhat it took for Marcia, an introvert, to put her own face on her own marketing, and what she still does to get through itMarcia says coaching lands hardest when someone is in transition, because that is when we finally stop and take stock of things. The rest of the time we keep doing the thing. What she wants for people is that they get to be successful on their own terms and actually enjoy what they built. That starts with naming the standard you have never said out loud, and handing off the thing you keep telling yourself only you can do. Connect with Marcia:  Email: [email protected]  Website: https://exceledge.actioncoach.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Bak8WCSPZ/?mibextid=wwXIfr YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@actioncoachmarciaerickson4220 Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

Marisa took Alex to Italy for ten days and it was his first time in Europe. Rome, Florence, the Amalfi Coast, and almost none of it planned, which she says is the whole reason she actually got to be there. What she keeps coming back to isn't the sites. It's that Alex got to see where her grandparents learned to make pasta and where her mom lived, and after a lifetime of her bringing pieces of that culture into their home in little ways, he finally understood her at a deeper level. Their love went deeper because he saw her in a new light. Then they came home to Iowa and she didn't pick her old pace back up. She stopped prepping six days out at the practice, stopped posting to teach anybody lessons, and started letting a priority be a priority when it's actually a priority, herself included. 🔥 In This Episode: What opens up when you stop trying to accomplish something on a trip and let yourself actually be thereThe difference between capturing a moment on your phone and letting it land in your own eyes, and what you give up when you choose the screenWhy being seen by your partner in the place you come from does something no story about it ever couldWhy Marisa stopped preparing six days out in her practice, and what she means when she says a priority is a priority, and so is sheHow to carry your family's culture forward without it becoming something you shoulder aloneWe look to travel for rest or adventure, and then we come home and talk about the views. What actually stays is what your heart got informed in while you were there. For Marisa and Alex, that was him understanding where she comes from and why she loves what she loves, and then wanting to build it into their life together. He's the one at the grocery store now buying mortadella and Italian sourdough. She isn't passing her family's culture down by herself anymore. Take whatever opened up in you somewhere else and let it change your regular week here. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

Sara made a decision this season that looked, on paper, like going backwards. With one of her associate doctors heading into maternity leave, she chose to put herself back into nearly full time adjusting after almost two years of protected CEO time. It was the right call financially, culturally, and for the energy of her practice. And it still stirred up the old story: I'm not moving forward, I'm not good enough, real CEOs don't do this. In this conversation, Sara and Marisa pull apart where that story actually comes from, and it isn't the decision itself. It's comparison, the mastermind metric, the version of success built from everyone else's life but your own. 🔥 In This Episode: Why a decision that looks like a step backwards can be the most aligned move for your finances, your culture, and your energy, and how to tell the difference between retreat and stewardshipThe comparison trap that turns aligned decisions into evidence of failure, and why measuring your season against other CEOs will always make you feel behindMarisa's discernment question for every big decision: are you gathering information so your heart can feel it through, or is your ego collecting approvalHow "we're in a season of transition" quietly becomes a crutch that stalls momentum, and the question that stopped Sara mid sentence when she caught herself using itYour relationship with change is contagious: how Sara realized her team hated change because she was the one saying it out loud, and what that fear cost her practiceThe episode ends with a challenge worth taking seriously. Look back at every season of your life, the winters included, and name one beautiful thing that came from each. If you come up empty, that's not a failure. It's a signal to slow down, because you may be moving through your life without actually living in it. And if that's where you are right now, reach out to us. We're in it and we're here for you. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

This episode starts with a hand on someone's back. Marisa walked into an adjusting room, felt something off in a practice member's energy, and asked her twice, are you okay today? The woman broke down. Fresh off a divorce and a morning masterclass about success, she said the thing so many people are circling right now: I've been living my life by society's metrics of success, and I just want to say F the success and take care of myself. What follows is a short, honest conversation about the difference between satisfaction and joy, why the things we do purely for love lose something the moment we turn them into a project with an outcome, and the strange, splitting feeling of looking at the life you built and not knowing if you still love it. 🔥 In This Episode: Why a life built on achievement can look successful on paper and still leave you living in constant striving with nothing that feels like arrivalThe research on satisfaction, joy, and meaning, and what happens to people who chase only one of the threeHow turning something you loved for free into a source of income can quietly drain the joy out of itThe disorientation of realizing you might not love the thing you built, and why that confusion is part of the journey rather than proof you took a wrong turnThe question Sara was gifted two months ago that reframes everything: what would it look like for you to fall back in love with what you do?This one is short, and it doesn't tie anything up. If you're in a season where you're questioning what you actually love, whether the thing you built still fits, whether the metrics you've been chasing were ever yours, this episode won't hand you the answer. It hands you the question. What would it look like for you to fall back in love with what you do, not because the P&L says you should, but because there's still something in it worth loving? Sit with that one this week. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

This is not a polished episode. Sara is in the middle of something, not on the other side of it, and she shares it in real time. A health crisis that forced her into the hospital after eighteen years of refusing medical intervention. The badge of honor she had been wearing on purpose, the one she used to say "look at me, look at what I have done." The little girl inside her who had been working overtime to keep her safe. And the conversation with God she had in a hospital bed when she heard herself say "I feel like I am being punished" three times in a row.  We sit with what it actually means to do inner child work that does not throw away the version of you who got you here, and why some threads of healing do not tie up in a bow no matter how much work you have already done. 🔥 In This Episode: What an eighteen year badge of honor was quietly costing Sara, even when she knew she was wearing itThe moment in a hospital bed when "I am being punished" came out of her mouth and what it revealed about the God she was actually relating toWhy inner child work is not about getting rid of her, and what it means to start telling her she is safeThe threads of healing that do not tie up neatly even after years of doing the workWhat it sounds like when one friend gets to be a safe person for another to fall apart in front ofWe do not have a clean takeaway for you. Sara is still inside this. What we have is a real conversation between two friends about what it actually looks like to keep doing the work when life forces you to do another layer of it, and the quiet truth that the little girl who got you here is not your enemy. She is the one who has been waiting for you to come back. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

You are moving fast. Most of the people listening to this podcast are. The question we want to sit with is what you are actually moving fast toward, and whether the version of you who gets there will recognize the life she built. This pattern was not invented in your business. It was built somewhere a long time before that, and it has been running you ever since. Marisa is in the middle of a move and a major life transition. Sara is in a season of forced rest that has shown her how tired she actually is underneath all the doing. We talk about the hamster wheel that lives in our nervous systems, why a partner moving at a different speed is rarely just an annoyance, and the question Marisa's 90 year old grandfather could not answer without crying. 🔥 In This Episode: Why the speed you move at is data about something formed in you long before your business existedThe productivity hamster wheel that lives in your nervous system and what forced rest finally exposesWhat becomes possible when you stop seeing your partner's pace as the obstacle and start seeing it as the mirrorThe difference between a rich life and a busy one, and why most of us cannot tell which one we are buildingThe three reflection questions we are leaving you with about pace, partnership, and the days worth relivingYou are allowed to ask why you are in a hurry. You are allowed to wonder what your life is being built for. And you are allowed to be tired in a culture that told you tired was a character flaw instead of your body telling you something true. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

There is a version of leadership that looks like care and runs on something older. The boss who needs to be needed. The leader who quietly built her identity around being the person who holds everyone. The high vibe culture that turned, somewhere along the way, into a room where nobody can step into their own authority because she is already holding all of it. In this episode, we get underneath the language of "holding space" and "checking in" and sit with the actual identity that is often running the show. We talk about what changes the moment you stop performing care and start trusting the people in front of you. 🔥 In This Episode: What practice owners walk away seeing about themselves when they stop calling it leadership and call it what it isThe caretaker identity formed long before you ever owned a business, and how it followed you into the way you leadWhy over-accommodating your team quietly tells them you do not believe they can hold it themselvesHow to recognize the moment a daily ritual you installed for your team has started running you insteadWhat kind and strong actually look like in the same body, and how to stop using kindness as a place to hideYour team did not need you to mother them. They needed you to trust them enough to stop. And underneath all of it, the work is not about your team at all. It is about meeting the part of yourself that learned a long time ago that being needed was the safest place to be. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] Support the show

We thought our cultures were good. And then we started paying attention to what happens when we are the ones on the other side of the counter. The receptionist who looks up chewing gum. The company that goes silent for a week and a half after taking our deposit. The office that has incredible care but no music, no warmth, nothing in the room that meets you. None of these are big breaches. They are small, and they are everything. In this episode, we get into what these moments are actually exposing, and we sit with a deeper question underneath all of it: what does it do to a human being to be seen, and what does it do to a human being to be invisible. 🔥 In This Episode: Why your patients are reading your culture in places you stopped noticing a long time agoWhat identity itself does to a person who has been invisible day after day, and what changes when somebody finally sees themThe difference between a beautiful experience and a beautiful environment, and why one can carry the otherWhy customer care lives in your communication systems just as much as it lives at the front deskWhat it means that your practice might be the one room a person walks into already carrying everything elseYour patients are not only experiencing your services. They are experiencing what it feels like to be a human in your space. That is the work. And it is bigger than any standard or system you can write down. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] the show

Partnership is one of the most beautiful and most humbling places to do inner work. Because the person you chose does not stop evolving. Neither do you. And somewhere between the version of them you fell for and the version of them standing in your kitchen right now, expectations have a way of quietly turning into resentment if you are not paying attention. This episode is a real, unfiltered conversation about love, marriage, and what it actually looks like to release the grip on who you think your partner should be so you can finally see who they are. 🔥 In This Episode: Why expecting your partner to be 100% of everything 100% of the time is a setup for disappointment, and what a more honest and generous expectation actually looks likeHow Marisa's jealousy of her own dog became a portal into something much deeper about love, presence, and what she was really longing forThe moment Sara realized six years into marriage that her expectations had quietly shut her husband's voice completely downWhy two people do not have to grow at the same speed or in the same areas to keep growing together as a coupleWhat shifts when you stop trying to fall back in love with who you married and start falling in love with who they are right nowDoing your own work does not just change you. It changes what you are able to see in the person standing right next to you. And sometimes the most radical act of love is releasing the version of your partner that lives in your head and actually meeting the one who is right there. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] Support the show

At some point, even a life you chose can start to feel like it is just happening to you. The same drive to work, the same chicken in the pan, the same version of yourself showing up on repeat. In this episode, Sara and Marisa get into one of the most quietly radical conversations they have had yet: what it actually looks like to add flavor, fire, and presence to the everyday things, without blowing up your life to do it. From laundry in the basement to a conference room full of thousands of women dancing to a song that made everyone blush, this one is warm, funny, vulnerable, and genuinely useful for anyone who has been craving more aliveness in the life they are already living. 🔥 In This Episode: Why repetitive motion quietly kills your spark and the surprisingly small ways to bring sensation and joy back into ordinary momentsHow Sara and Marisa's first photo shoot brought up real insecurity, and what happened when they showed up anywayThe connection between getting out of your comfort zone and building the kind of self-trust that holds you steady when life gets unpredictableWhy your insecurities will not budge until you create actual evidence in your own life, and how to start doing thatWhat it means to live not just the length of your life but the width of it, and the honest question worth sitting with right nowThe version of you that you have not met yet is waiting on the other side of one uncomfortable, spicy, totally worth it choice. This conversation is your invitation to go find her. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] Support the show

There is a version of you that has been waiting. Not the version that has it together, not the version that performs well in the right rooms, but the one underneath all of that. The one that wants to climb a tree in five inch heels and feel something crack open. In this episode, Sara and Marisa bring you into a weekend that was part brand shoot, part community, part something neither of them can fully put into words. What came through was not a framework or a formula. It was something richer than that. An honest look at self expression, suppression, relational equity, and what becomes possible when you stop trying to earn your place in the room and just let yourself be in it. 🔥 In This Episode: Why Sara hired a stylist for the first time and what it taught her about asking for help in the areas of life that do not come naturallyWhat it actually felt like to walk a catwalk in a room full of entrepreneurs and why that one moment of discomfort unlocked something that had been waiting a long timeThe difference between being in community and having real relational equity, and why that distinction matters more than most people realizeWhy the richness of life does not live in the transaction or the outcome, even when you have spent your whole career chasing bothWhat both Sara and Marisa noticed about the spiritual thread running between people in the room and why that kind of connection cannot be orchestrated, only receivedWhere you are right now is not behind. It is not less than. It is the most honest starting place you have ever had. And if something in this episode is pulling at you, that is not an accident. That is an invitation to get curious about what is trying to come through. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] Support the show

Every practice owner will face these four leadership principles again and again. How to stay calm under pressure. How to have tough conversations. How to hold real accountability. And the art of celebrating your people well. These are not one-time situations. They show up in the daily rhythm of running a practice, in the moment someone drops the ball, in the tension that fills a room when something goes sideways, and in the quiet moments where someone on your team does something extraordinary and needs to know you see it. In this episode, Sara and Marisa get into all four, with real words, real tools, and the honest conversation about what gets in the way of doing any of them well. 🔥 In This Episode: Why reacting in the moment almost always backfires and the more powerful move of coaching after the scenario instead of inside itHow to walk into a tough conversation grounded and kind without losing your authority or undermining your own confidence as a leaderThe question Sara asks her leaders when they are afraid to have a hard conversation, and why worst case scenario is almost never what you thinkWhether you are dealing with a people problem or a process problem, and why getting that answer right changes everything about how you respondPractical ways to celebrate your team with specificity, from group call outs to phone reminders to the personal note that makes someone feel genuinely seenThe leaders who build teams that last are not the ones who have it all figured out. They are the ones who keep showing up to the hard conversations with enough steadiness that the people around them feel safe to grow. That is the work. And if you want to keep doing it alongside other leaders who are in it with you, the HeartWork Collective closes TODAY. Over six months, you and your team will get monthly group coaching calls, private community access, a growing resource library, and real time support from Sara and Marisa as you navigate exactly the kind of leadership moments this episode covers. If you are ready, this is your last chance. Join us here. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] Support the show

Most people walk into a personal development event looking for an answer. A framework, a fix, a clear path forward. What happened at HeartWork Live on March 13th and 14th was something entirely different. In this episode, Sara and Marisa take you inside the weekend, the 13 acres, the art, the movement, the tears, the breakthroughs, and the moment a 60-year-old woman asked herself what she wanted for her life for the very first time. This is not a highlight reel. This is what it actually looks like when people stop outsourcing their direction and start listening to themselves. 🔥 In This Episode: Why chasing the how before you know the what will land you in the exact same place with a brand new problemWhat happened when a room full of leaders, associates, and team members stopped performing growth and actually went there togetherThe moment one breakout session threw out the whole plan because the room needed something more real than the worksheetWhy people who had been in therapy for three years had more movement in one weekend, and what that says about the kind of space Sara and Marisa holdWhat the HeartWork Collective is, who it is for, and why they are intentionally keeping it smallThe inner work is not a detour from building a thriving business and a life you actually love. It is the whole road. If this episode stirred something in you, the HeartWork Collective is where the real work continues. Over six months, you and your team will get monthly group coaching calls, private community access, a growing resource library, and real time support from Sara and Marisa as you navigate the personal and professional work that actually moves the needle. Spots are limited and intentionally so. If you are ready, do not wait. Join us here. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: [email protected] Support the show