Dr. Lizette Warner sits down with keynote speaker and leadership coach Edie Kay Stulken to unpack why so many high performers — especially women moving into leadership — manage perception instead of speaking the truth, and what it costs them in trust, energy, and decision-making capacity.

In this episode:

• Why "managing perception" is exhausting work that quietly drains leadership capacity

• The moment Edie realized she couldn't keep performing — and what changed when she stopped

• Why executive women specifically struggle to speak up in meetings, and what it costs them

• The body's physical response to dishonesty, and why the pause matters

• Edie's framework for helping leaders build psychological safety for truth-telling on their teams

Connect with Edie Kay Stulken: Website: ediekay.com

Connect with Dr. Lizette Warner:

Preorder waitlist for ⁠The Capacity Advantage⁠

⁠Book Lizette to Speak⁠

Get email updates here: ⁠https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop⁠

Join me on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠

Become a ⁠member⁠: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations⁠:

Description

Journaling will change your life. Or will it? I have a PhD, I've written a book, and I cannot journal. It turns out that's fine, and for some of you this practice you've been told is unambiguously good might quietly be making things worse. Welcome to Debunked, the segment where I take a piece of the productivity gospel, run it through the capacity science, and tell you what actually holds up. This week I follow up on my conversation with Meg Rentschler about the practices that build resilient leaders, and I go after the biggest wellness prescription of them all. I walk through what the research actually says: why journaling helps people processing a clear story but can deepen the loop for people who ruminate, why there is no right journal no matter what the $47 one with the special pen promises, why gratitude journaling works better occasionally than daily, and the piece almost no one names. Journaling is not a mindset practice at all. It is bottom-up regulation. Get that one thing right and everything about how you use it changes.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why journaling gets sold as one universal cure when it is really three different practices with three different mechanisms
• What 40 years of research keeps saying that the wellness industry keeps ignoring
• Why journaling helps people with a coherent story to process, and can deepen depression and anxiety for people stuck in a rumination loop
• Why there is no right journal, and what actually determines whether it works
• Why gratitude journaling fades and can backfire the moment it becomes a daily checkbox
• The reframe that changes everything: journaling is bottom-up regulation, not a mindset practice
• Your capacity move this week: three breaths before the pen, and why you can journal without writing a single word

Connect with Lizette:

Take the Capacity Code assessment (free, about two minutes): https://capacity.lizettewarner.com

Get on the preorder waitlist for The Capacity Advantage: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/5sAkQLrQuzEalmfBFBvP

Book Lizette to Speak: https://www.site.lizettewarner.com/widget/form/tqUtpLo45tHDTqhi6alT

Get email updates: https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop

Join me on Substack: https://drlizettewarner.substack.com

Become a member: https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations

What happens when you realize the work that once fulfilled you no longer has room to grow? In this episode of Capacity Conversations, I sit down with Meg Rentschler professional-certified coach, host of the STaR Coach Show, founder of Focus on Results Coaching, and UT Dallas faculty member — to talk about the moment she knew her 20-year therapy career had reached its ceiling. Meg walks us through what it actually took to transition from therapist to executive coach: the certifications, the slow rebuild of a practice, and the hard call to walk away from insurance panels she'd spent years fighting to join. We also get into the season she's in now, navigating her husband's retirement and deciding what deserves her energy for the next chapter of her career. This is a conversation about capacity as a signal, not a failure, and what it looks like to actually listen to it.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why Meg's passion for therapy quietly eroded after 20 years — and the specific pattern she noticed in her clients that tipped her off

• The difference between "flipping a switch" and the multi-year, deliberate process Meg used to transition from therapy to coaching

• What it really took logistically: getting certified, relocating her practice, and phasing down her caseload while building the new one

• The turning point that pushed her to give up her therapy license entirely, and why that boundary mattered more than she expected

• How losing the license actually gave her more authority to say no,

• Meg's approach to her current transition and why she's giving herself a full 6 months before deciding anything

• Her advice for anyone in the middle of a professional pivot: how to honor what came before while giving yourself permission to explore what's next

Connect with Meg:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megrentschler/

Meg’s Website: https://afocusonresults.coachesconsole.com/welcome-clients-.html

Star Coach Show:

Connect with Lizette:

Get on the preorder waitlist for ⁠The Capacity Advantage⁠

⁠Book Lizette to Speak⁠

Get email updates here: ⁠https://lizettewarner.com/work-with-me#loop⁠

Join me on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠

Become a ⁠member⁠: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/CapacityConversations⁠: