With Purpose: Recent Episodes
Madeleine Onstwedder
With Purpose is a podcast for people who want to show up for themselves as much as they do for the people and causes they care about. You’ll learn tools and tips around self-care, boundaries, and work-life blend so that you can live a life full of purpose on your own terms. Hosted by Madeleine Onstwedder, a certified life and somatic coach, self-care enthusiast, and serial sock-knitter.
Today’s episode is about avoiding burnout when your job involves talking about your own marginalizations. Obviously this looks different for everyone depending on your own marginalizations and privileges and experiences, but this is a really important topic to talk about because it directly relates to burnout and the sustainability of the important work you’re doing.
Topics covered in today’s episode:
- What is burnout and why does it affect people doing purposeful work so much?
- How can you spot the warning signs of burnout?
- 5 tips and tools you can use to prevent burnout when your work is directly related to your own identity and marginalizations
Read the full show notes here
Get in touch about the group coaching program I mentioned
Connect with me on Instagram
Links mentioned:
- 2019 Gorski & Erakat article: "Racism, whiteness, and burnout in antiracism movements"
- "Burnout and the Brain", Alexandra Michel
- Kat Cuthbert, accessibility mentor for small businesses
Feeling your feelings sounds like really simple advice, but it really isn’t. We’re taught from a young age that certain feelings are good and acceptable, and others are not. We’re often told that our feelings are inconvenient for others to deal with, that expressing our feelings is unprofessional, or that having emotions makes us irrational and unreliable.
Today’s podcast episode is all about why feeling your feelings is so important, why it’s difficult, and how you can start doing it. This is a topic I’ve struggled with myself and so I’m hoping that I can share a bit about my experiences and that it’ll be helpful for you and you’ll realise that you are not alone in this.
Topics covered in this episode:
- How (and why) we’re taught not to feel or express our feelings
- How the patriarchy and white supremacy teach us that feeling and expressing feelings is bad
- What you can do to start feeling and expressing your feelings in a safe and healthy way
Read the full show notes here
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Connect with me on Instagram
In this episode I interview Astrid Bracke, a mentor for small business owners who want to do work they care about on their own terms. We talk about following your energy in your work, setting boundaries, conditioning around productivity, and what balance really means. If you want to learn how to start taking steps toward looking after yourself more at work, this is the episode for you.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Societal conditioning around productivity
- What balance really means and why it’s fluid
- How practical shifts and mindset strategies go hand in hand to support yourself at work
- The importance of cultivating awareness around your needs and boundaries
Links mentioned:
Astrid's Instagram
Astrid's Website
Sign up for Astrid's newsletter
What to do when your boundaries are tested blog post
Follow Astrid on Pinterest
Hobbies are awesome. They’re one of the best ways to improve your work-life blend and foster an identity outside of your work. But if you struggle with perfectionism in your work, this can make your hobbies less enjoyable, and even stressful.
Topics covered in today’s episode:
- How does perfectionism make your hobbies less fun?
- My experiences with hobbies and perfectionism
- The 6 things I did to tackle my perfectionism and start enjoying my hobbies again
In this episode, you'll learn how perfectionism and toxic productivity can stop you from enjoying your hobbies and what to do about this.
Links mentioned:
6 Reasons to Get a Hobby - Psychology Today
Life Coach Directory: Hobbies
4 Mindful Crafting Activities - Happiful Magazine
What is the Underlying Psychology of Having Fun? - Psychology Today
Get in touch with me!
Show notes
Website
Rest and productivity have a complicated relationship, to say the least. This week’s episode of With Purpose is all about exploring and untangling that relationship so that you can have a healthier attitude towards rest. You'll learn why the relationship between rest and productivity is so complicated and how you can change to have a healthier attitude towards rest.
Topics covered in this episode: - My rocky relationship with rest & productivity and how I changed it - Why seeing rest as a way to be more productive is dangerous - What toxic productivity is and why it’s so widespread - 6 techniques you can use to redefine your relationship with rest and productivity
This week’s episode of With Purpose is all about defining work-life blend on your own terms. You’ll get some really actionable steps about how to let go of all the ‘shoulds’ and expectations and define work-life blend in a way that really resonates with you.
What’s your intuition telling you? What feels right to you? Those are the questions we’re going to be exploring today.
With a big topic like work-life blend, it’s especially important to create a definition that resonates deeply with you. It provides you with an anchor to keep you grounded and focused on what’s really right for you. When the sea around you is choppy and rough and there are loads of other people’s opinions floating around, you’ll have this point of calm to return to.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Defining work-life blend
- Figuring out your big-picture vision for what you want work-life blend to look like
- Knowing what to focus on in the present
Show notes
Website
This week's episode is an interview with business mentor Jo Hooper. Jo helps people run businesses in a way that supports their health and wellbeing and today we're talking about boundaries and corporate conditioning.
Topics covered in this week's episode:
- What are boundaries?
- Why are boundaries so important?
- What challenges arise when starting to set boundaries, and how can you deal with these?
- Why boundary setting is so difficult, and how embracing our inner rebel can help us
Jo's Instagram
Jo's website
Show notes
My website
My instagram
The pandemic has had a drastic effect on work-life blend for so many of us. It’s impossible to talk about work-life blend without discussing working from home and the impacts of the pandemic, so that’s what this episode is all about.
Where I am in the US, it looks like working from home is going to stick around for a lot of people in some shape or form, so I think it’s really important to learn what the challenges of this are and how we can deal with them.
Topics covered in this episode:
- How COVID and working from home has impacted work-life blend
- My experiences working from home
- Common challenges about working from home
- Strategies to make working from home easier
Show notes
Website
In this coaching episode with Katya, we talk about the challenges of work-life blend. We dive into feeling disheartened about not getting enough done, the importance of having plenty of time to relax, and the power of setting intentions throughout your day.
Topics covered:
- Why going at your own pace is important, even though it feels hard
- Why it’s important to celebrate your wins instead of minimizing them
- How doubt and fear show up - and are a normal part of the process
- The pros and cons of really specific goals, and what to do when your goal feels restrictive rather than helpful
- The importance of showing kindness to yourself and how this can help you make progress towards your goals
- The benefits of affirmations and gratitude and how to fit them into your days
- How to set intentions throughout the day that are based on emotions, not actions
- Why being busy is overrated and giving yourself permission to rest is key
Follow Katya on Instagram
My Instagram
Show notes
I use planning to approach my work-life blend with greater intention, and this week’s episode is all about some ways you can do that too. It’s not about my specific planning system - click here for a whole blog post just about that - but rather to show you an example of how using planning as a tool for work-life blend can look in practice.
Topics covered in this episode:
- How I use planning to approach my work-life blend more intentionally
- How to run planning experiments to figure out what works for you
- A 4-step framework for figuring out a planning system that supports your work-life blend
Show notes
Website
Welcome to this interview with Jocelyn Auyeung, a teacher of 40 years and a life coach for teachers! In this interview, we're covering so many topics, ranging from Jocelyn's own experience as a teacher facing burnout all the way to how mindfulness can help you reconnect to yourself. We talk about the challenges that can come up when you're a purpose-driven person who cares deeply about showing up for others - and how important it is to show up fully for yourself.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Jocelyn's 5 pillars for helping teachers reconnect with themselves
- The importance of putting your own emotional needs front and center
- The challenges that purpose-driven people face around work-life blend
- How to use mindfulness to reconnect with yourself
Jocelyn's Instagram
Jocelyn's website
My instagram
My website
Show notes
This week we're talking about Stories about work-life blend. I'll be diving into what Stories are, 5 prompts to help you uncover your beliefs, and how to identify your work-life blend Stories.
Show notes
Website
To kick off season 2, I'm diving into what work-life blend is, why it matters, and what we can learn from its history. I'll also be talking about why I don't like the word balance, and how to find a term that really resonates with you.
Show notes
Website
Welcome to the final episode of season 1 of With Purpose! In this episode, we're tying together everything we've learned about self-care over the season and learning how to make a personal self-care kit.
Self-care is incredibly personal. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. By building your own personal self-care kit, you can make sure your self-care is totally unique - and really works for you. This will make sure that your self-care is enjoyable, easy, and effective.
I’ve created a guide to accompany this post and guide you through each step of making your own personal self-care kit. You can get this by subscribing to my newsletter and downloading it from the Free Resources Library.
Topics covered in this episode:
- What is a personal self-care kit?
- What are the benefits of having this?
- What should go into a self-care kit?
- 4 steps for creating a personal self-care kit
- Extra tips to make your kit (and your self-care) work for you
Website
Sometimes, you’re going to feel like your self-care just isn’t working. If you’ve been trying out loads of self-care activities, but you’re still feeling stressed out, then this post is for you.
I want to show you that you can switch up your self-care so that it’s really right for you, because your self-care should be helping you to feel better. And if it’s not doing that, you can absolutely switch it up.
So whether you’re just getting started with exploring self-care options, or you’ve been practicing self-care for years, this episode will have something for you.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Possible reasons your self-care might not be working
- What to do about that
- The limitations of self-care and other forms of support
Website
Newsletter
This episode is a coaching episode where I share a 30-minute coaching session with you. In this session, I coached Brianna around how to practice self-care in a way that's meaningful and actually helpful as she prepares for and recovers from major surgery.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Practicing self-care when you face big challenges and changes
- Learning to trust yourself and your body
- Practicing and acknowledging your own resilience
- Letting go of self-care 'shoulds' and just doing what feels good
Website
Newsletter
Brianna's website
Brianna's Instagram
In this week’s episode of With Purpose, I talk about some common Stories about self-care, why they’re harmful, and how to work through them. This process allows you to let go of the beliefs and Stories that are no longer serving you so that you can make sure your self-care is really working for you.
Topics covered in this episode:
- What are Stories and why do we have them?
- Common self-care Stories
- How to unpack and reframe Stories that aren’t helping you
Website
Newsletter
This episode is an interview with Kat Cuthbert, who you probably know as @booksofnotes over on Instagram. Books of notes is an online hub where Kat helps fellow messy-brained humans with planning, wellbeing, and figuring out their purpose through workbooks, workshops, and online courses.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Working with varying energy levels
- The commodification of self-care (and why that’s a bad thing)
- Why it’s important to unlink self-care and self-worth from productivity
- What is radical acceptance and how it can help you
- Bullet journaling, habit tracking, and energy mapping
- How flexible planning can help you practice self-care
- How to set feelings-based goals
Kat's Instagram
Kat's website
Kat's newsletter
Website
Newsletter
There’s so much information out there about self-care that it can be overwhelming to sort through. How do you figure out what kind of self-care is right for you in what situation?
Different types of self-care are better for certain situations. It’s really helpful to have a framework to use so that you can figure out what type of self-care will be best for you at any given time. Knowing what the different types of self-care are (and how to use them) helps you to make your self-care more relevant, personalised, and effective.
Topics covered in this episode:
- The three types of self-care (comfort, foundational, and stretch)
- Figuring out what type of self-care you need
- How to practice each type
Website
Newsletter
There’s a lot of advice out there about self-care. Some of it’s good and some of it’s questionable, to say the least.
In this episode, I’m diving into what self-care is and why it’s so important, as well as doing a little bit of myth-busting about some dangerous self-care myths I often see.
When you’re passionate about what you do, it can be really tempting to make self-care an afterthought. In this post I want to show you why self-care is so important, no matter how much you love and care about your work in the world
Topics covered in this episode:
- What is self-care?
- How did self-care evolve, and what can we learn from that?
- Dangerous self-care myths, and why they’re not true
- Why is self-care so important and why should it matter to you?
Website
Newsletter
Welcome to the first ever episode of With Purpose! With Purpose is a podcast for people who want to show up for the causes and people they care about - AND themselves. It’s for people who want to make the world a better place and feel content and fulfilled at the same time. I share tools and tips around self-care, boundaries, and work-life blend to help people learn that you don’t need to sacrifice yourself to make the impact that you want to.
In this episode, I'm talking about:
- What you can expect from With Purpose
- What season one will be all about
- Who I am and how I became a life coach
- What life coaching is
- What somatic coaching is
Website
Newsletter
With Purpose is a podcast for people who want to show up for themselves as much as they do for the people and causes they care about. You’ll learn tools and tips around self-care, boundaries, and work-life blend so that you can live a life full of purpose on your own terms. Launching on January 19th, 2020, With Purpose is a podcast hosted by Madeleine Onstwedder, a certified life and somatic coach, self-care enthusiast, and serial sock-knitter.