Dayna M. Kurtz, LMSW, CPT, is a leading authority on the subject of women transitioning to motherhood and serves as Director of the Anna Keefe Women's Center at the Training Institute for Mental Health in Manhattan. She is a writer, licensed social worker, and Certified Personal Trainer.
Dayna is the author of The Female Body Fix and a contributor to The Doctor's Book of Natural Remedies. She also serves as a Real Answers expert on TheBump.com. She has written or been consulted on articles for The Huffington Post, The Today Show, Pregnancy & Newborn, Pop Sugar, Big City Moms, Pregnancy Corner, Women's Running and numerous other outlets. A sought-after speaker, Dayna regularly presents on the subject of Mothercare. She lives in New York City with her family.
Dayna and I immediately hit it off in this conversation and I couldn’t be more excited to share her brilliance with you all.
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Who wants to be a millionaire?
[stands up, raises both hands, and jumps up & down] I DO.
Why is there shame for women around desiring massive success and wealth building?
I’ll be honest. I find this really disturbing and frustrating. Are men bashful about success and wanting to get rich?
NO.
In this episode, we are going to dig into reasons women desire wealth and the specific reasons I want to be a millionaire.
I will also share why I refuse to be shy or apologetic about this and how we are doing all women and our children a huge disservice when we keep our ambitions quiet and secretive.
Women openly striving for high levels of success, whether through a job title or a certain income level, do not cultivate a culture of greed. On the contrary, women striving for high levels of success cultivate a culture of ambition, focus, and drive that often comes from a place of brilliant intellect, insight, and compassion that the world desperately needs.
If you have self-doubt and questions of worthiness when it comes to success and wealth this episode is for you.
Tune in to hear the specific steps I’m taking to become a millionaire and the steps you can take to start upleveling to the next level of success you desire in your life.
This episode is jam-packed and super meaty. Be prepared to take some notes.
Please share this episode with the women in your life who want more success and more money!
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Megan Flatt is a Shameless Mom to her son Brady who is 9.5 and her daughter Rylan who is 7. She is also a business growth strategist for female entrepreneurs, specifically mom entrepreneurs, who want to lead thriving businesses while remaining present for all the other important things in their lives. Megan believes women make great business owners because we are mothers, not in spite of it. You can almost always find her with a latte in hand, a stack of post-it notes at the ready and a random lego figure in her pocket.
Like me, Megan had a come-to-Jesus kinda moment when her children were very small and she realized she needed to make some changes in her professional life, as well as get over some long-standing beliefs she held around being a stay at home mom vs working mom.
This conversation is fun and inspiring. I am so delighted to be connected to Megan. I love her mission and message and I think it will resonate strongly with so many of you.
Get ready – Megan is going to get you fired up about your mama superpowers!
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On my recent girls trip to Sedona, a hot topic came up about being a moderator vs an abstainer. This conversation was inspired by two of the women I was with sharing their experiences feeling overwhelmed when trying to moderate alcohol and food in their life.
One woman shared her story of giving up alcohol two years ago because it had become so exhausting to manage her relationship with it. She found herself constantly negotiating with herself about when she would drink, how much she would drink and her struggle to maintain boundaries that felt good to her.
She ultimately gave alcohol up all together – which felt terrifying at the time. She equated it to a breaking up with a boyfriend. Two years later she can see how much freedom she has regained in choosing to be an abstainer when it comes to alcohol.
Another friend shared her struggle with consistently making food choices that support her goals. She talked about the struggles she has when she allows herself to indulge in treats but then finds it taking days, weeks, sometimes months to get back into food routines that support her health goals.
Like the friend who struggled with alcohol, this woman finds her relationship with food to be consuming to the point of often being exhausting and overwhelming. Perhaps abstaining from indulgences would be more liberating??
There is a lot of societal messaging around moderation. But for some people, moderation is actually much harder work that abstaining from something all together.
Often the “treats” we try to enjoy in moderation make us feel worse instead of better – even though we think the indulgence will feel fantastic in the moment. If the aftermath is fraught with regret, remorse, and frustration, then moderation is not really an effective habit, is it?
In this episode, I dive more deeply into this conversation and into some of Gretchen Rubin’s teachings on the topic of moderating vs abstaining. It’s pretty fascinating. I think you’ll find it interesting and helpful if you ever struggle with maintaining habits that best support your goals.
Please share this with other Shameless Moms in your life who might find value in this conversation.
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Gina Fresquez, MS, CHC, Clarity and Confidence coach and #1 international best selling author, is the founder of The Women’s Side Hustle Society, where she is committed to empowering ambitious, soulful side-hustling women to bring their biggest entrepreneurial dreams to life in a way that’s infused with confidence, joy, ease, and freedom—without having to sacrifice their health, sanity, or lifestyle.
After spending many years in corporate sales and nutrition, Gina’s dream of becoming an entrepreneur came true in 2012, when she started her first side hustle. Since then she has enjoyed the journey of strategically and intuitively coaching her clients through mitigating fears, breakthroughs, transitions, and transformations of building a successful business in a way that feels good to them. Gina accomplishes this through one-on-one coaching, masterminds, and women’s retreats. She also loves sharing stories of other amazing, successful side-hustling women on her podcast, Women’s Side Hustle Society.
Gina is also a Shameless Mom to 3-year-old Ezra who was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder 6 months ago. Gina had long wondered why Ezra’s behavior was such a departure from her and her husband’s calm, chill ways. After a powerful conversation with a preschool teacher, Gina took action to learn more about how Ezra learns and experiences the world and it’s changed her as a mom.
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Last weekend I got to spend 4 days with friends from high school. We had not all been together for any length of time in 24 years. It was magic.
A few nights after I returned, I attended a happy hour with a bunch of preschool moms from Vinnie’s class. Also, magic.
These two events, while very different, had a lot of similarities. This got me thinking about the value of friendships and how we can find them and fuel them.
Listen in to hear me share the 3 C’s of friendship:
I address each C and dive into how you can use it to deepen the friendships in your life. I also give you some solid pointers on finding friendships and connections if this is a struggle for you.
This is a good one – one worth sharing. Please share this episode with the other Shameless Moms in your life. If we all have more Connection, Camaraderie, and Curiosity in our relationships, the world would be a better place.
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Kym Campbell is the creator of the free 30 Day PCOS Diet Challenge and The Beat PCOS 10 Week Program where she seeks to help women overcome their PCOS diagnosis by applying evidence-based approaches to food, exercise, and emotional wellness practices.
After having struggled with health issues since her early teens, it wasn’t until her 30’s when she began struggling with infertility that Kym was diagnosed with PCOS. After a long journey of completely transforming her health through diet and lifestyle changes, Kym fell pregnant naturally after years of failed IVF treatments.
When not busy supporting women with PCOS, Kym’s other passions include writing and recording music, surfing, and spending quality time with her husband and her 10-month-old son.
PCOS stands for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It is much more common than you might think and many women go undiagnosed despite their symptoms of irregular periods, unexplained weight gain, hormonal imbalances and more.
One of the great things about a PCOS diagnosis is that it is often very treatable through lifestyle changes, rather than long-term medications (that come with lots of side effects). Kym talks in depth about symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment.
It is very likely that someone close to you struggles with PCOS – perhaps undiagnosed. For those who go undiagnosed, there is often a tremendous amount of shame around their symptoms and their bodies that seem like they are failing them at times. If you think this episode might be helpful to a friend or family member, please share it with them.
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If you struggle with chronic worry or anxiety, it is very likely you go through life spending more time dreading what lies ahead than dreaming about the magic you may be about to encounter. Can you relate?
As someone who has made it my lifelong, full-time job to worry about everything (I mean everrrrrything), I can tell you I have wasted a lot of time and energy dreading, well, life.
And it has been a total waste.
Dread doesn’t serve you.
At all.
Dread doesn’t make your outcomes better. It doesn’t get you to your goals faster. It doesn’t make anything enjoyable.
Dread makes you feel powerless, exhausted and often defeated – before you’ve even tried taking action. Like I said – a TOTAL waste.
On the other hand, dreaming is expansive and promising. It helps you feel optimistic, hopeful, inspired and energized.
Dreaming about your day instead of dreading it can change the way you approach a situation, the way you take action, and the outcomes that you create for yourself.
So, how do we go from dreading to dreaming???
Listen in to this episode to learn how to:
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Kate Swoboda (aka Kate Courageous) is a Shameless Mom to her three and a half year old daughter, the Director of the Courageous Living Coach Certification and creator of YourCourageousLife.com, where she teaches people how to change old patterns of self-doubt and create courageous habits (and courageous lives) using the neuropsychology of habit-formation. She helps individuals who feel stuck start connecting to their most courageous selves, and she helps companies to create more innovative office cultures where teams at every level feel valued for their contribution to the whole.
Kate was deemed one of the top 50 bloggers in health, fitness, and happiness by Greatist. She has contributed to Entrepreneur, USA Today, Forbes, Lifetime Moms, The Intelligent Optimist, MindBodyGreen, Business Insider, and more.
Kate works with companies, teams, and individuals around the topic of courage as it relates to personal development, releasing overwhelm, business and marketing, money mindset, wellness, increasing emotional resilience, and healthy goal-setting using habit-formation techniques.
Her first book, The Courage Habit: How to Accept Your Fears, Release the Past, and Live Your Courageous Life (New Harbinger Publications) has just come out and you’ll definitely want to order it after hearing this interview.
Kate and I dug into a lot of great topics here, but I think I was most delighted by one her response to my final question, “What makes you a Shameless Mom?” Make sure you pay special attention to that!
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Program: The Courageous Living Program
Certification: The Courageous Living Coach Certification
Program: The Coaching Blueprint digital marketing program
Book: The Courage Habit
Free resources for listeners/viewers: Your Courageous Life
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