Nov 14, 2018 | Your Relationships

Catherine A. Wood

The Power of Community

What strikes me the most about our coaching retreats is the power of community—not only in making people feel seen, heard, and open-hearted, but also as an opportunity for being each others’ teachers and students.

When you’re in college, or when you participate in something like my two years with the Peace Corps in the Dominican, it’s easy to create a close community because like-minded people who share a lot of your own life experiences surround you.

But as you grow older, it’s harder to feel like a part of something, to be seen, accepted, and welcomed as you are.

What I really took away from our most recent Reset Retreat to the Dominican Republic (stay tuned for our marketing video!) is the judgment-free zone where ALL parts of you are welcome. Your possibility, hopes, and dreams as well as your fears, everything you’re ashamed of, all of your baggage…

The retreat provides a completely safe space to share and be open with others. For me, being able to share your dirty laundry is absolutely the first step is getting rid of those disempowering stories and replacing them with empowering ones.

In my work with clients, it can sometimes take them months, years, or longer for a client to even be able to say his/her dream out loud. (One woman took a year to tell me that her true dream was to be a full-time entrepreneur—it’s funny how scary it can be just to speak the words that put our goals on loudspeaker!)

But at the retreat, it’s a full-immersion opportunity to express yourself and your dreams—to be fully seen and heard without judgment.

The atmosphere of the retreat provides a community framework for joy, fun, and play around the full expression of self and dreams.

Of course, it’s not the only framework for you to create things in life as you get older. It is, however, one easy access point where not only can you create a tight knit community but also presence yourself to the possibility of choosing empowering stories and being called forth by a whole team of people that want you to win.

I am so excited to share with my community that my coaching partner Megan Taylor Morrison and I will be hosting  2 retreats in the upcoming year. Another trip to the Dominican Republic is planned for next winter, and we are launching our first retreat to India in 2019!

Stay tuned for updates and for amazing sneak peeks from last month’s retreat—we brought an incredible, talented videographer, Leah Beilhart of Behold.Her, with us to memorialize our transformational experience in the Dominican Republic. Keep an eye out for Leah, she is truly gifted and a gift!

With love and excitement for the full expression of you,

Executive leadership coach Catherine Wood's signature

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Mindful Spending & Navigating Lifestyle Creep with Cris Caruso

In this episode of the Prosperous Empath®, I’m sitting down with financial advisor and UNBOUNDED Mastermind Alum, Cris Caruso to talk about a phenomenon that many people have experienced in recent years: lifestyle creep. Cris has been in the financial services industry since 2004 and a financial advisor since 2008. Beyond that, she has pursued additional education in understanding how our behaviors shape financial outcomes by earning the Behavioral Financial Advisor designation from Think2Perform. She also earned the Accredited Domestic Partnership Advisor credential prior to 2015 as a way to support her LGBTQIA+bclients and continues to use this knowledge to work with unmarried couples and non-traditional families. You’ll appreciate her unique experience throughout today’s episode as she speaks on lifestyle creep, or lifestyle inflation, which is overspending on things that you don’t actually need as your income increases. When you’re early in your career, your spending habits focus on must-haves like housing and groceries. But as your income increases, it’s easy to lose track of what is a necessity and what are simply too many luxuries, and to just keep buying more. Cris and I discuss both values-based and practical strategies on how to identify the areas of your life you should spend generously on and where to be more mindful to reach your long-term goals. How do you live in alignment with your money, especially as an entrepreneur and an empath? You’ll get an answer to this question as you listen to our thought provoking conversation on purposeful spending, the importance of allowing yourself to have fun & fabulous experiences, and more.

Visit this episode’s show notes page here.

The Prosperous Empath® Podcast is produced by Heart Centered Podcasting.

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