Paul Fishman is a top 100 podcast host of The Road to Self-Love and the creator of The Self-Love Diet. He joined me on today’s episode and we had such a good conversation about self-love, self-acceptance, and healing from trauma. Let’s dive in!

In this episode Allie  and Paul discuss: 

• Self-Love 

• Owning and communicating your feelings

• Self-Acceptance 

• Healing Childhood Trauma 

• Self-Sabotage

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Mentioned in this Episode:

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Your Uncluttered Home

Declutter Like A Mother Book

Paul Fishman

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Paul Fishman | Self Love Diet

Paul Fishman | How to Communicate Without Conflict

Mom life. We’re surrounded by the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. We’re supposed to get through it. Survive. Cling on by the last little thread. And at the same time, Carpe Diem—enjoy every moment because it’s going to go by so fast. The typical mom culture that sends us all kinds of mixed, typically negative messages. We shouldn’t take care of ourselves; it’s selfish. The more ragged you run yourself, the bigger your badge of honor. But also, ditch your mom bod and work out. Don’t yell. Make more money. Show up. Be better, but not at the expense of time with your kids. I am putting a hard stop to all of this. While being a mom, running a business, and whatever else you might have going on is hard, it is a lot and there’s lots of giving of yourself, the idea that motherhood means living a joyless, nonstop-hustle-with-zero-balance kind of life, where you give and give and give and never take, needs to stop. 

I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime (at least most days). Stop the mom guilt and shame game. Stop cleaning up after your kids’ childhood and start being present for it. I want to help you thrive in work, home and life. I believe in John 10:10 that we are called to living an abundant life and I know moms are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, some business and life hacks, spirituality and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.

Hi friend! Welcome to The Purpose Show podcast. I’m Allie and I’m so glad that you’re here with me today! 

I’ve got a stellar guest for us today. My good friend Paul Fishman is here to talk all about self-love, self-acceptance, healing from trauma, and all kinds of good things. It’s such a good conversation. 

Paul is a self-love coach and a you-do-you activist on a mission to help you love you so others can love you too. He believes that our purpose in life is to simply be ourselves and without self-love that is not possible. 

He’s the host of a top 100 podcast, The Road To Self-Love, and the creator of The Self-Love Diet. Paul is committed to living his life with vulnerability, authenticity, and compassion so that you can receive the permission to do the same. 

This man is healing to be around. He is such a light, such a gem. He’s actually been working with my husband, Brian, for the last month and a half or so. He’s currently his life coach and he’s been walking Brian through so much inner work, so much healing. I can see such a huge difference in Brian and I’m so proud of him for doing this work. 

I love Paul so much. Please enjoy this conversation. Take notes, listen closely, and make sure you can receive everything he’s giving in this interview. 

I’ll link in the show notes to how you can get on a discovery call with him to see if you want to work with him. I’ll also link to all the good stuff he has going on and to his amazing podcast, which is so, so good. So welcome my friend, Paul!

ALLIE: Thank you for being here with me, my friend! I would love for you to just dive into your story. Start wherever you want. Share whatever you’re comfortable sharing, because you’re an amazing human and I would love for everyone to hear about you.

PAUL: My name is Paul Fishman and I have been on a journey of conscious self-love for nearly a decade. Before we hop into my full blown story, I think it’s really important to define self-love. If you look at both words, the word “self” is the individual and “love” is devotion. 

So when we’re operating from a place of self-love, we’re operating from a place of devotion to our individuality. What makes you Allie? What makes me Paul? And what are all those things packed up into one beautiful human? You’re the only you on this planet. 

A lot of my suffering was trying to fit my Paul puzzle piece with a puzzle piece that didn’t align, which was basically what society was telling me that I needed to do to belong and be normal or whatever it is. For the first 25 years of my life that was my journey. I was a people-pleaser through and through, doing everything for everyone else and sacrificing myself. 

I remember when I was graduating high school I told myself, “Well, as long as my parents are happy and my friends are happy, I will hopefully be able to live vicariously through their happiness.” 

That’s how much I was suffering—a lot. I realized as I continued to tell my story that so many people can relate because we’ve been conditioned to believe that fitting in and other people’s happiness is way more important than ours. 

Over this journey of releasing those stories, I started to say ‘yes’ to the things I want to say ‘yes’ to and ‘no’ to the things that I want to say ‘no’ to, instead of vice versa (which most people say ‘yes’ to the things they want to say ‘no’ to and ‘no’ to the things they want to say ‘yes’ to). As I started saying ‘yes’ to myself, the universe was opening up in this beautiful way. 

There’s a lot of trauma, a lot of wounding, a lot of trials and tribulations, and all this stuff that we’ve been going through just to be better humans. However, it’s been so beautiful for me to witness how saying ‘yes’ to myself has brought so much more magic, possibility, and beauty into my life.

ALLIE: The thing you just said a moment ago about most people say ‘yes’ to the things they want to say ‘no’ to and ‘no’ to the things they want to say ‘yes’ to. Why is that so true? I’m processing it. I’m just sitting here staring at you, processing this. 

It’s so true. Why? And then, we are not happy. We’re miserable and we project that onto the people closest to us. It’s just this cycle of misery. How do we stop that when it’s what everyone is doing? 

PAUL: Here’s the ‘why’ behind it, or at least my personal feelings about it. And this might resonate with you or it might not. It’s all good. 

The reality is that we don’t want to take radical responsibility for our lives. Because if I’m taking full blown responsibility for every single action, then I’m the only one at fault for my suffering. I am the only one to blame when I get hurt. 

Let’s use an hypothetical example. Your best friend wants to go out to dinner and you think, “I’m so exhausted.” 

But you’re a people pleaser and you’re going to say yes to your best friend because you don’t want to let them down. Well, what are you doing while you’re not letting them down? You’re letting yourself down because you’re exhausted. You just need to rest.

But we neglect those parts of ourselves. And then the next day you’re even more tired all because you are protecting someone else’s emotions. Then it’s easy for you to sit and blame your friend for dragging you out to dinner for why you’re so tired instead of saying, “Wow, I made the conscious decision to say yes to my friend because I’m not capable of setting boundaries or saying no to other people because I’m scared of how they’re going to react.” 

And therefore the cycle continues to process over and over and over again because you are deciding it’s easier to blame everyone else for the issues that you are actually creating. Doing this people-pleasing thing puts up this veil and this false facade of, “Oh, I’m perfectly fine. I’m not the one to blame.” In actuality, it’s time to take radical responsibility. 

ALLIE: So if someone is caught in this cycle so much that even just them listening to this they’re having a light bulb moment that this is them, what are the steps? Because I feel like if you’re really deep in that, you may not even know. 

How do you know if you should say yes or no to something when you’re so disconnected from your body and true self? How do you even become aware? 

PAUL: If you’re having a light bulb moment right now, welcome to the other side. I’m so excited to welcome you to this journey of saying yes to yourself. And really I’m going to ask you to just sit with that and notice it. That is the first step. 

I’m doing part two, what I like to call ‘the Amazon prime era,’ where we can go onto our phone and order almost anything and have it delivered within 24 to 48 hours. Fortunately, but also unfortunately, self-love is not one of those things that you can order on Amazon. 

Ultimately I just want you to start to notice and witness when you are actively saying no to yourself and saying yes to others and how it makes you feel. Because a lot of us—and 2020 really brought this out for a lot of people—are running along on our avoidance journeys, avoiding all of the things that make us not feel good because we’re on to the next trip, the next project, the next this or that. 

But in 2020, we hit a wall, and we had to sit with all that stuff. So a lot of us are picking up the pieces of a life that actually had to slow down. And I’m noticing as the world starts to open up and things start to pick back up where I’m able to travel again, that when I’m sitting with myself, witnessing what’s going on in my body, it is so frickin hard. 

It’s so hard because then you have to admit that there’s something that needs fixing. And we like to avoid this whole idea that we aren’t these perfect, immortal beings.

ALLIE: I’m thinking through this conversation and hearing the voices of the women in my audience in my head and thinking what they need next. It’s so raw when this is new for you. You’re like a scared little baby bird, trying to go out in the whole world for the first time and flex that self-love muscle.

What about when there’s another person involved? The best friend who is asking you to dinner or the parent asking you to come and help with something, which I think is really common. I’d love to dive into parental trauma later as well. 

When that other person has been benefiting from you not prioritizing yourself, not having any boundaries, and there’s anger, what do you do? I have experienced this myself. I’ve even been bullied and told, “You’re not going to do this. You’re not going to be assertive because you’re the weak one in this relationship and I need you to stay that way.” 

There’s that reaction, that projection of that control. When it’s so new and you’re already feeling weak about it, how can you stand your ground? What is the response? What do you do with the anxiety that comes up in your body?

PAUL: This is a great question. I’d love to take you through a pretty step-by-step process of communicating with your friends. I also have an entire episode on my show, The Road To Self Love, entitled How To Communicate Without Conflict. If you really want to deep dive with me going through each step and how to do it, that’s a great place to listen for some added bonus stuff. 

Basically, what you’re going to do on this road to radical responsibility is you’re going to completely own your emotions, your feelings and your fears when you’re stepping into this conversation. You’re not going to project how you’re feeling onto them, looking for validation from them that it’s okay that you don’t hang out with them tonight.  We’re not looking for that. 

We walk in without any expectation that they’re going to do anything, because even that story that you’re telling yourself—that they’re going to freak out on you—is doing you a disservice. What I mean when I say “this story I’m telling myself” is that it’s a mental kind of journey. More often than not, it’s a fictional narrative around what’s going on for the other people you’re communicating with. 

If you can’t do Saturday night girls night, which has been a weekly tradition with you and your best friends for years, because you have a family and you want to spend time with them and you’re really scared of what your friends are going to say, you get on the phone and you say, “Hey, I’d really love to talk to you about something. I want to talk to you about girls’ night this weekend. I’m taking full ownership that I’m really, really scared to bring this up. The story that I’m telling myself is that you’re going to be angry at me. You’re going to unfriend me and we’re not going to ever hang out again and you’re going to be really disappointed. I just wanted to share those things that are going on for me right now, so that you can understand where I’m coming from.”

What you’re doing is you’re owning all of your feelings because you have really no idea how they’re going to react. Nine times out of ten, when we come from a place of love and personal boundaries, our friends are like, “Wow, thank you so much for actually showing up as a human and communicating what you need.” And the friends who are going to blow up on you and make you feel like crap, it might be time to reevaluate if they’re the best friend. 

When you own all of that stuff, then what you get to do is step in and be like, “This weekend I’d really love to spend time with my parents or my kids. I know that we have this long withstanding thing and it’s really hard for me to ask for this. I hope that you understand that this has nothing to do with you. I really just want to spend time with my family this weekend.” 

It’s very plain and simple. We get really scared to communicate because we worry about what people are going to think. But if we put it all out there and own that this is the story I’m telling myself about how they are going to react to me asking for some time away from the girls’ group, then they can also validate if that story is true or not.

So after you communicate, say, “So I just wanted to check in and see if there is truth to this story I’m telling myself about you being upset. And it’s on your friend to communicate how they’re feeling, which is a whole other ball game because they could be listening to this as well and be doing the work at the same time. However, you’ve got to be the leader. 

If they say, “Yeah, you know, I am really hurt,” then, okay, good, we got that out and their feelings can be validated from you. You can say, “I understand why you’d be hurt. We’ve been doing this for what feels like years together. I’m asking for one weekend off. I know it’s going to impact the entire group, so I understand that. It also means so much to me that you’re willing to allow me to go and do this. Maybe we can create more structure and boundaries around it so it’s not every week, but every other weekend so that we can all feel good about committing to this and I won’t feel scared asking for time away, because I don’t want to be scared of my best friends.”

ALLIE: I love this because it’s so good for those close relationships to give an explanation and really share. It’s vulnerable. You’re opening up and sharing, “This is where I’m at and this is what I’ve been struggling with.”

Then I’m imagining other situations where it’s something you volunteer for or something at work. Do you just state what you want, state your boundary, and keep it? Is it different for that?

PAUL: For me, it’s a ‘what do you have to lose, but more importantly, what do you have to gain’ moment? Everyone’s experience is different at work. And we’re coming up on this thing that’s never been managed before where a lot of people who have been working from home for a year are being asked to come back into the office. 

And there’s a really clear disconnect between why we have to go back into the office; I’ve been getting my job done, probably more. I know I can only speak for my husband, whose entire team has been more productive working from home. His mental health is better. He gets to spend more time with his family. 

It’s really hard to have to feel like you’re being ripped away from something that has been feeling really good. Instead of getting really emotional about it, we breathe into it. We notice how it makes us feel and we communicate in that sense of like, “Hey, you know, I want you to know that I understand why it’s important that we come back to the office. I would be curious if we could have a conversation about the fact that I’ve been really productive. I’m more productive than ever.” 

Just putting it all out there. We’re so scared of rejection. We’re so scared that what we’re saying is going to offend someone else. Or we’re so scared we’re going to get punished because of stuff that happened from the ages of 0 to 7 years olds that we don’t ever express what we need from others. 

This is a big pillar of my work. If you end up working with me, we work on self-expression because expressing yourself and your needs, not only to others but to yourself, is one of the hardest things that you’ll ever do. It’s also very valuable.

Okay, friends. My first book, Declutter Like A Mother is officially available for pre-order. It releases on September 7th! I am so excited to call you in and ask you to be a part of this journey with me, to really join in, celebrate, and let’s have a friggin party! 

Let’s declutter your spaces and get your environment to align with the version of yourself you really want to call out, because as Marshall Goldsmith says in his book, Triggers, “If you do not control and create your environment, it creates and controls you.” So, let’s get that aligned. Let’s get this area of your life fully supporting you. You’re paying for the space you live in, right? Let’s get it aligned and supporting you. 

Declutter Like A Mother is written for the mom who really has unconsciously subscribed to the way that our culture describes motherhood to us. She thinks that this is just the way it is. It’s always going to be kind of a mess. It’s just always going to be a struggle and there’s just really no other way to do things. You can try to get organized and you can try to create more balance, but really it’s always going to be really hard. It’s always going to mean you are just serving everyone else and you’re kind of running breathlessly through life. 

I can’t wait to get this book to every single mom that resonates with that, into their hands and show them that there is another way! There is another reality you can subscribe to that’s better and lighter. It’s not perfect, but it is so much better for you as a human. 

Then you can show up as your best self as a mom, as a wife, as a friend, as a sister, as all the different roles that you’re in.

This book is huge! It’s way beyond clutter. This is a book about life. This is a book about how to do motherhood a different way. And yes, we are going to start at Step One, which is shifting your environment. 

So please, go pre-order it. When you do pre-order a copy, you get some really amazing gifts for free from me. 

The first and possibly best (I’m very excited about this!) is the Mom Life Reset. This is a brand new crash course, designed by me, to help you uncomplicate things. This is literally unheard before, brand new content that I recorded just a couple of weeks ago that is only for those who pre-order the Declutter Like A Mother book. 

You also get five lock screens, professionally designed by my designer, for your phone with affirmations on them, because your phone is a part of your environment and I really want to help you align that in a way that’s going to encourage you, lift you up, and support you every time you tap your screen. 

The other thing you get is a sneak peek at a chapter from the book that I handpicked for you. 

So go to DeclutterLikeAMother.com. Pre-order your book. Save that confirmation page. Share your confirmation number with me, so I know you pre-ordered and you can unlock the crash course, the lock screens, the free chapter. 

I can’t wait to see what you think! I can’t wait for you to get this book in your hands. I can’t wait for this to be out in the world! 

Thank you so much for your pre-order. It changes my world when you pre-order my book. Pre-orders are everything for authors, especially a first-time author like myself. So thank you!

I appreciate you. I can’t wait for you to pre-order it. I can’t wait for you to get the book. And I can’t wait for you to get your hands on these amazing gifts that I’ve curated just for you as a thank you for pre-ordering. 

I love you so much. I can’t wait to keep supporting you. Thank you for being here!

ALLIE: I would love for the women who are listening to this who were taught, not even directly but indirectly, to sit quiet and look pretty. To not be too much. To not be too loud. 

For me, the “too muchness” was often actually tied to, I feel like ‘masculinity’ is the wrong word, but I’m a go-getter. I will make things happen. I will push. I will fight for what I want. I will speak up. I will not let injustice pass in front of me. It was always, “Shh. Be more of a lady. Be quiet. Don’t ruffle feathers.” 

And so, when you’re taught that, whether directly, indirectly, or both, it is terrifying to speak your mind. Or to not just be like, “Okay, I have to go back to work. I’ve got to figure out the kids. I’ve got to go back to the office now because they’re saying I do,” without even asserting anything about this, saying anything, asking anything, or for a more flexible out, because we’re fricking terrified of what’s going to happen to us if we are not just quiet and complacent, you know? 

I just want to validate everyone listening that I fully get that it can be a real fear that you will not be loved. That you will not be accepted. That you are not going to survive if you are not quiet and complacent. 

It doesn’t need to be that way. You don’t need to be out of your personality to assert yourself, but do it because you honor yourself. You are valid. You are worthy. Not just the person saying, “It’s time to do this thing. It’s time to go back to work,” or whatever it is.

PAUL: Yes. And because I’m a man, I haven’t suffered from that as much as women. So I can’t jump in and be like, “I know what it’s like.” 

I do know what it’s like to personally silence myself. I do know what it’s like being a gay man, being made to feel wrong for being the way that I am, and being silenced because of that. So I can relate on a certain level. 

But what I know to be true about communicating your wants, needs, and desires, especially when we’ve been told that we are inherently wrong for wanting to be different, to speak our mind, or just show up, what I know right here and now is that if there’s a voice inside of you that is dying to speak up, notice that. 

Witness that there’s a part of you that wants to say something. Because when you decide to actually speak up to your boss, or ask your partner for support with the kids so that you can take five minutes alone to yourself to just go to the bathroom without anyone knocking on the door or coming in (I know that this is a big thing for moms), it’s ultimately really important to witness how you are silencing your own self. 

Because those things have happened to you and they’re all valid—the trauma, the wounding, that conditioning of having to sit there and look pretty. Hearing, “Don’t speak up. Don’t use your mind. Women aren’t meant to do any of that stuff.” That’s all valid. 

However, as an adult who’s capable of listening to a podcast, I want to challenge you. I really want to challenge you to take ownership that you are the only one who is now perpetuating those stories, because no one is telling you those things anymore. 

But it’s a very gentle process. And this is one of my specialties, being really gentle with the cold hard truth that you’re the only one who’s silencing you now. And that’s really, really, really, really hard to hear. You might feel like you are completely silenced by your workplace. You might feel like you’re completely silenced by your partner or your parents. 

And yes, there is validity to those things. However, what can you do differently right here and now to start using your voice? Even if it’s just looking in the mirror and saying words to yourself? Start using your voice for you. Get comfortable. 

It can be really uncomfortable to look in the mirror and say, “Hi Joe! I don’t want to come back into the office full time. I really have felt my mental health has been a hundred percent better since we’ve been at home. And this is something that I really want to have a conversation about.” 

Saying that to yourself, how does it feel to ask for what you want? Some of us don’t know what it feels like to ask for what we want because we’ve been living in the story that you shared before this. 

There are lots of layers. It’s not going to happen overnight. Patience is a virtue when it comes to speaking your truth and being the radical responsibility-loving person that you are for you.

ALLIE: I love that so much. Thank you. 

I would love to touch on healing. You were mentioning from the ages of 0 to 7, and who we are raised by, what we are around, and the messaging that we take in both directly and indirectly, and then just being an adult and trying to figure this out. Especially for those of us who have come into this thinking, “Oh, I’m supposed to love myself, not actually hate myself and call it humility,” or whatever BS conditioning we’ve picked up along the way. 

And as you’re healing, no matter what your history or how you were raised, something is usually going to come up from who raised us. I feel like healing from trauma and healing from things that wouldn’t typically be called trauma. I’ve talked to a lot of women that feel like, “Well, I can’t call it that,” and then they go on to explain emotional trauma. That is trauma. You can call it something different if you want to, but that is what it is. 

With your experience either in yourself or with coaching, what has been the benefit of dealing with your parents? I feel like it’s a very complicated relationship, even if it was typically good. What does it look like? It’s so hard. Can you just talk about that?

PAUL: Absolutely. The best way for me to do this is to share my own personal journey and then dive into any particular points that feel really valuable to highlight. 

I grew up with a father who had a lot of anger issues. He was very, very angry. He was also quite a narcissist, if I’ve ever met one before. I also recently discovered that he has deep seated addictions. With all of this put together, let’s look at my childhood. 

It was so important for my mom, myself, my brother, and my sister to stay safe. We had to walk on eggshells because if we brought up anything that would trigger my father or upset him, it was like World War III in the home—throwing things, yelling, screaming, saying the worst types of things, lighting my homework on fire, dumping water on my head, humiliating me.

All of this stuff I went through as a kid, all because I was speaking my mind. All because I wanted to show up as myself. There were some deeper trauma and woundings, or him really, really not validating or acknowledging who I truly was as a human when it comes to expressing my sexuality and all these types of things. 

I was made fun of from a very young age, being gay and overweight. And my dad would just say, “Don’t listen to them. You’re not gay.” And then I’d think, “But I actually think that I am. But if my dad is saying that I’m not, then who’s right?” 

A lot of the time, we look to our parents for validation about who we are. And the first thing that really helped me heal is realizing that my parents are just humans and they are working with the trauma that has been passed down to them.  

My father was physically beaten and abused as a little boy, so he thinks he’s doing a good job as a parent because he’s never laid a hand on his kids. But he’s verbally and emotionally abusing us. It might not look the same way, but it feels a hell of a lot similar. 

We take this tiny piece of me and my family having to walk around on eggshells to stay safe, and this can show up in life. For instance, my husband and I have an agreement that I always unload the dishwasher and he loads it. Sometimes I forget because it’s not my favorite thing to do, but I do it because we’re a family and that’s an agreement that we made. Sometimes also I’m just so busy that I don’t have time.

And literally, there would be years where I would be terrified to tell him that I couldn’t take care of it. I would just not say anything and be like, “Oh, I’m not going to bring it up that I can’t do it because what if he blows up?” 

He’s the sweetest, most gentle human ever. He would never blow up on me, but I’m projecting my childhood fears of my dad flipping out because the dishwasher wasn’t unloaded. It’s connecting the dots between what happened as a child to what you’re doing now to stay safe. All of the stories we tell ourselves, all of the things, the coping mechanisms, it’s all to keep ourselves safe. 

Now here’s the wild thing, though—because I lived so long in that cycle of being made wrong by just speaking up for myself, that is safety for me—feeling wrong for speaking up for myself. This is where self-sabotage comes in. And this is where a lot of the stuff that we run into as humans, we are the full reason why it’s happening, because it’s safer for me to have someone to be mad at me for me not picking up after myself–because I know what it’s going to feel like—than for me having a clean and tidy office and unloading the dishwasher as soon as the dishwasher is done.

It’s easier for me to live in that chaos because I know what it feels like. And this is really the hardest part to look at because you’re like, “Oh wow, I’m actually creating the toxic relationship with my boss because it feels safer for me. Because I know what it feels like to get written up all the time. I know what it feels like to not speak my truth. I know what it feels like to not ask for what I want, because that’s been my entire life. So I’m going to stay that way because I’m happier and more comfortable being miserable.” 

Then what does the unknown look like? It looks like speaking up for yourself, having a healthy relationship with your boss, your partner, or your parents. 

There are so many different ways that we can see how we’re protecting ourselves from actually getting the things that we want because it’s safer and less scary to live in the stories and the cycles that we’ve already been living in.

ALLIE: That is so well said, broken down in a way that I’ve never heard it broken down, and interesting. When we talk about self-sabotage and we talk about what that looks like and what we do, it’s like, “Yeah, I do do those things, but why?” Nobody ever really explained why or where. 

I think this comes from the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks where it’s like things get too good and then you self-sabotage to even things out, which I have done, and I do see that. But there’s this other part, this other type of self-sabotage that’s not that, and you just hit it on the head. It’s so perfect. 

It’s safer to go through what is familiar than to go where you’ve never been and see what happens. It’s terrifying and we’re just unconsciously acting out of fear.

PAUL: And a perfect example of this is for my Sex In The City fans when Carrie had the dreamboat that is Aiden Beyonce’d up in that one episode where she was like, “Oh, everything’s too easy. It’s too easy.” 

No, no! Girlfriend, stick with him. He’s got you, boo. But then she sabotages the whole thing and runs back to Mr. Big. And granted, I think that they lived happily ever after, but he didn’t even show up to the wedding or who knows. 

Just notice how this is a bigger way to look at how do you take radical responsibility? How can you get yourself out of that sabotage moment? Because I guarantee you, there’s something that you can do differently. 

We don’t like to take ownership of these things. It’s a lot easier to blame our boss and the toxic masculinity and all of the stuff that goes into (eye roll it) men at the workplace than to say, “Wow, how am I playing into this by not speaking my truth and staying small just because it feels easier, because I know I can be safe, even if it doesn’t feel good?”

ALLIE: This is so helpful for breaking these cycles. I love that you put the ownership where it belongs and you’re teaching us how to do that for ourselves. This is so good.

I feel like we could talk for hours, but I want to pause and stop here because I want them to digest this. We need to do this again. I can feel a follow-up episode. 

I know you do one-on-ones. Do you still do group coaching? Are you ending that? 

PAUL: I’m ending the group coaching. I really want to focus deeply on my podcast. I love the group so much. I also know that I get to release it because it causes a lot of anxiety for me, filling it and getting people to sign up. 

I’m more excited about working with people who are all in. I have the pleasure of working with your husband and he DM’d me to say, “I want to work with you. Let’s do this.” Those are the types of people I want to work with, you know?

ALLIE: Yeah, absolutely. So where can people find you? Where do you prefer to send them to connect? Is it Instagram for you? 

PAUL: Instagram is the best place. @paulfishman. 

ALLIE: You are such a bright follow on Instagram. You’re funny and real. And I love seeing Richard every once in a while. You guys are just amazing. I just love you so much. 

I see so much light in you. I appreciate you, your authenticity, and your vulnerability so much. 

PAUL: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Thanks so much for hanging out with me! In case you didn’t know, there’s actually an exclusive community that’s been created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions around The Purpose Show episodes. It’s designed to get you to actually take action and make the positive changes that we talk about here. I want you to go and be a part of it. To do that, go to alliecasazza.com/facebookgroup. 

Thank you so much for tuning in! If you’d like to learn more about me, how I can help you, how you can implement all these things and more into your life to make it simpler, better, and more abundant, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, online courses, programs, and other resources to help you create the life you really want. 

I am always rooting for you, friend! See you next time! I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.

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