Individuality is one of the greatest freedoms of our culture—and also one of its biggest traps.

The beauty of individuality is that it allows us to hear our own desires, define our own values, and express our unique contribution to the world. It fuels creativity, innovation, and self-discovery. But when the desire to be original stops us from taking action, it becomes an Achilles’ heel.

In this episode, we talk about the tension between wanting to be original and wanting to be effective—and why the world needs you focused on the latter. Because when we obsess over originality, we make our ideas about us. But the truth is, it’s not about us. It’s about helping, contributing, and using our unique voices to make the world better.

You’ll hear stories, metaphors, and examples—from surgeons to songwriters, from small community groups to global change movements—that illustrate this truth: the fact that you do the thing matters infinitely more than it being one of a kind.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• The difference between originality (ego) and effectiveness (impact).
• Why your contribution matters more than how “unique” it is.
  How chasing originality can paralyze creativity and delay action.
• Why it’s more powerful to focus on helping, healing, and building than standing out.
• A metaphor for how our individual actions can collectively turn the tide of humanity—like a flock of birds shifting direction together.

Right now, the world feels heavy to many people. That’s exactly why your contribution matters. Every positive action you take—every group you start, every song you write, every piece of art, blog, class, or community you build—helps counterbalance the negative.

Your voice will land with someone that no one else’s can. Your work will reach people that no one else could reach. And when each of us focuses on being effective, we turn the whole flock toward something better—one small action at a time.

Be one of the birds that turns the flock. Get your idea going. The world needs what you have to give.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 1: You’re the one we want
• The Moxie Mastermind — for women turning their ideas into real, world-changing projects.
• Harvard Happiness Study — the link between contribution, connection, and well-being.

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Most of us were taught that failure is bad. That if we fall short, it means something about who we are—our worth, our capability, our potential. But what if failure isn’t a problem at all? What if it’s the path to everything we want?

In this episode, we unpack what I call failure tolerance—the skill of building your capacity to try, fall short, feel the feelings that come with it, and keep going anyway. Because here’s the truth: when we avoid failure, we actually fail on purpose. We choose inaction to dodge discomfort, and that turns a 50% chance of failing into a 100% guarantee.

You’ll learn how to flip that pattern—how to stop avoiding failure and instead get good at it. When you do, everything changes. You stop seeing failure as evidence of your worth and start seeing it as iteration. Each “failure” becomes a puzzle piece in building something extraordinary.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why avoiding failure is actually a form of guaranteed failure.
• How to expand your failure tolerance so you can take bigger risks with more freedom.
• The two key skills that make iteration possible (and fun):
  1. Evaluating what worked, what didn’t, and what you’ll tweak next time.
  2. Learning to feel your emotions when things don’t go as planned.
• Why mastering these two skills opens every door—to creativity, impact, and possibility.
• A behind-the-scenes look at how I do a live “retro” (retrospective) on one of my own recent attempts, breaking it down step by step so you can apply it to your own projects.
  
  

We’ll also celebrate an exciting milestone: the first few women joining the Moxie Mastermind before enrollment even opened! This six-month experience is for women ready to turn one powerful idea into something real—with community, coaching, and deep transformation along the way.

Because when you build failure tolerance, you stop being afraid of getting it wrong—and start building the life, business, and legacy that’s been waiting for you all along.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Moxie Mastermind — 6-month group program starting in January for women ready to bring their big ideas to life.
• Retros are Everything — for a deeper dive into the reflection skill that powers iteration.
• The Practice — for building your emotional capacity to feel and process failure.

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

So many of my students reach a point in life where they’ve checked all the boxes: career, marriage, kids, home, stability. They’ve climbed every rung of the ladder they were told to climb. And then one day, they look up and think—now what?

In this episode, we explore that moment of disorientation that comes after meeting all of life’s early milestones. You’ll hear why so many of us feel stuck once the path runs out, and how we can begin to build our own ladders, guided by passion, purpose, and authentic desire rather than social expectation.

I’ll share how I discovered the concept of chrononormativity—the belief that our lives should follow a standard, linear timeline of education, work, marriage, kids, and retirement—and how this subtle cultural force can keep us trapped in patterns that look “successful,” but feel hollow.

You’ll hear stories from my own life—dropping out of college to heal, having kids before marriage, walking away from a prestigious leadership role—to illustrate what it looks like to step outside of the “normal” timeline and into a life designed from the inside out.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• What chrononormativity is and how it quietly shapes our decisions and expectations.
• Why so many high achievers feel lost or bored once they’ve met society’s milestones.
• How to recognize when you’re living by someone else’s timeline instead of your own.
• A powerful exercise to create your next vision from a place of wild, authentic possibility.
• How allowing yourself to imagine something “ridiculous” can lead to your most fulfilled and aligned life.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be invited to question the rules you’ve been following—and to ask yourself where the “acceptable” timeline might be limiting what’s possible for you. Because when you trade expectation for imagination, you unlock the kind of freedom that makes your life feel worth every moment.

Write your vision. Let it feel bold, maybe even a little ridiculous. Because all great ideas do—until they become real.

Mentioned in this episode:

Chrononormativity — a term originally coined by Elizabeth Freeman

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

This week’s episode dives into something we all experience but rarely talk about— embracing all of our weird social reactions. The feelings that rise up when we’re around other people: self-doubt, comparison, superiority, inferiority, grasping, withdrawing, fixing, or trying to prove ourselves.

The idea for this episode came to me at a women’s retreat I attended with my daughter, led by facilitator Katie Dove, whose words always stop me in my tracks. Her insights about power dynamics and emotional patterns sparked a question I couldn’t stop thinking about: What if, instead of rejecting our social reactions, we just noticed them?

When we put our ideas out into the world—when we share, create, or contribute—we inevitably encounter others, and in doing so, we also encounter ourselves. When we have an idea we really care about, we can expect our brains to do all kinds of squirmy gymnastics to avoid judgment. Today we’ll think about how to embrace that wiggly brain, and refocus it on what matters

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Where our automatic social reactions—feeling superior, inferior, excluded, or judgmental come from.

• The difference between power over (superiority, condescension, fixing) and power under (people-pleasing, grasping, shutting down).
• Where you can expect power over, power under, and power with to show up in the Regenerative Design Cycle
• Why suppressing or acting out these reactions keeps the power dynamic stuck, looping in our own body and in our interactions with others—and what we can do instead.
• How to pause, notice, and allow your social reactions to move through you, so you can respond with intention instead of habit, and keep putting new ideas out there without fear that someone’s stink eye will make you throw in the towel.
• How this practice leads to regenerative energy—fueling authenticity, empathy, and creativity.

When we stop judging our social power reactions and simply let them move through us, we regain choice. We become more empathetic, more grounded, and more aligned with our true selves. That’s when our relationships strengthen, our ideas flow, and our contributions expand.

Your Invitation This Week

Notice your own social reactions. When do you feel “better than”? When do you feel “less than”? What thoughts create those feelings, and how do you act from them? Just notice—without judgment. Let it all move through you, and then decide how you want to think, feel, and act.

Notice your reactions to putting ideas out there. Are you afraid of what people will think? Nervous they won’t want to be a part of it? Worried they won’t think you can do it?

When you can pause your reaction and steer it where you want it to go, you become unstoppable. The world needs your ideas—and the authentic, grounded you behind them, more than ever.

Mentioned in this episode:
Katie Dove — Women’s facilitator and retreat leader in San Diego

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

The more we put ourselves out into the world, the more people come to know us by the value we add—and the more they begin to depend on us. This is beautiful…until it isn’t. Because over time, the value we add and the strengths we command become commodities people want more and more of. Eventually, we’re faced with a flood of requests: friends needing support, family projects that need a helpful hand, community support requests, work opportunities, and so much more. For many of us, our hearts want to say yes to all of these things, but everything we say yes to means we’re saying no to everything else.

In this episode, I offer a perspective and tools to navigate this tension between wanting to give and needing to protect our capacity. Because hey, we’ve all been there. The month I said yes to too many things and eroded my margins landed me in bed with migraines, a cancelled videographer session, and a good, hard look at the greater contribution I had sacrificed by saying yes to so many small ones.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why every yes is also a no—and every no is a yes to something else, though we often don’t see it in the moment
• How leaning into this concept makes saying no much easier
• The concept of a high-quality no
• Using values, Regenerative Design, and priority thinking to help differentiate your yeses from your no’s
• Examples of the areas my students struggle with the most, and the payoff they experience when they start to use this thinking

We also dive into the truth that saying no with love, clarity, and strength doesn’t create rejection—it creates relief, respect, and space. A “high-quality no” (as Eckhart Tolle would call it) is contagious in the best way: it shows others what’s possible when we live in alignment with our commitments to ourselves.

By the end of this episode, you’ll be challenged to ask yourself: Every time I say no, what yes am I creating space for? It might just be more joy, more peace, and more energy to make your own ideas for how the world can be a better place, real.

Mentioned in this episode: Eckhart Tolle

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Last week, I hit pause. A middle-of-the-night migraine, a body that said “nope,” and—after three straight years of weekly episodes—I let myself skip a week. Not because I didn’t care, but because I chose health over hustle for this week. That tiny, honest shift is exactly what today’s episode is about: thought bridges—the believable steps that carry us from an old, harmful loop to a new, supportive one.

If you haven’t listened to Episode 144: Regenerative Thought Cycles, start there. Awareness comes first: noticing the thoughts running under the surface, the feelings they create, and the way our actions keep “proving” those thoughts true, through the evidence our brain is collecting on repeat. Once you can see the loop, you can change it—without gaslighting yourself, and without pasting sparkly positivity over real experience.

In this episode, Marie walks you through how to build a bridge from that awareness to a new way of thinking; one that your body actually believes.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• A quick, honest story about choosing rest over perfection—and why that counts as a win.
• Why it doesn’t work to just stop thinking a negative thought
• How introducing a new thought can backfire
• How to tell when a new thought is congruent vs incongruent
• How to build a thought bridge that will replace a degenerative loop with a believable, regenerative path.
• How to strengthen that new neural pathway until it becomes your default way of thinking

Try this now (2 minutes)

• Download your degenerative thoughts into the left-hand column of a three column sheet.
• Write: Degenerative thoughts (left column), Ideal thoughts (right column).
• For each pair, create a thought bridge in the middle.
• Say each bridge thought out loud. Circle the one that your body believes.
• Practice those new thoughts until they become your default

If this episode helped, share it with a friend who’s hard on themselves, or leave a quick review so more humans can find this work. And if you’re building bridges this week, tag @BloomYourMind so we can cheer you on. 🌱

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

In this episode of the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, we unpack the cycles of thought that either move us toward the life we want—or pull us away from it.

Just like a garden, our minds are always growing something. Some thoughts regenerate possibility and growth. Others are degenerative—reinforcing old, unhelpful beliefs and keeping us stuck. Today we’ll break down how that happens, how to recognize it, and most importantly, how to change it.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• How regenerative vs. degenerative cycles actually work
• Why most of our thoughts are subconscious and programmed in without our control
• The role compassion plays in effectively changing our thought cycles
• Real-life examples of both degenerative and regenerative cycles
• A simple 5-minute practice to identify, interrupt and change thought cycles from degenerative to regenerative
• A ten second version to use on the fly

Resources & Links:

• Listen to the episode on Regenerative Design (for the full framework)

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Seasons change, and so do we. Sometimes we’ve literally got one foot in the next season, as we change from spring to summer, summer to fall. Other times we’re transition a personal season of life, from one era of ourselves to another. This episode is guides you through a process for transitions. A way to pause, witness what’s good in your life, in your world and in yourself, and design how you want to move into what’s next with intention.

You’ll learn a simple three-step practice to celebrate how far you’ve come, envision where you want to be by year’s end, and reverse-engineer the systems and anchor thoughts that will get you there.

We’ll talk about:

• Why your brain wants to focus on your failures and how to redirect it to joy and growth.
• How a four foot mandalorian taught me to be in the moment before it’s passed by.
• A guided five sense visualization to step into your future self at the end of this year.
• How to reverse engineer your brain to get to the future self
• How to hack your subconscious thinking to wire your brain toward your goal, and work with your conscious mind by designing systems and action steps to get you there
• How to design your own anchor thoughts that keep you consistent and aligned.
• Why systems and habits are just as and sometimes more important than goals.

Each literal and metaphorical season is a chance to recalibrate and choose our direction again and again. To make the tiny tweaks that keep us authentic and keep us on course. This episode is your invitation to use whatever transition you’re in right now, to transition intentionally instead of reactively.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Nostalgia for Now

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!