Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

Go looking for help with how you're feeling and it's all the same promise: get rid of the anxiety. Stop the overthinking. Build the confidence. Find the motivation.
Sit with what that's actually teaching us - that the feeling is the problem. That something's gone wrong. That you have to fix yourself before you're allowed to get on with your life.
I don't think that's true. And I think believing it is costing us a lot.
Because the nerves before the presentation? The overwhelm when your boss is away and you're carrying double? The complete absence of desire to get out of a warm bed and go to the gym? None of that is a sign you're broken. It's a brain doing exactly what it was built to do.
What actually creates the problem is the second layer — the judging, the resisting, the story you build on top. I should be past this. Everyone else copes better. I'm just not disciplined enough. That's where the spiral lives. Not in the feeling.
In this episode I'm sharing the four words I've been saying to myself for years without ever realising it, and the question I ask straight after — the one that gets you moving without waiting to feel ready.
It won't make the nerves disappear. It's not meant to.
Come for the reframe. Stay for the bit about my massage chair.
Stuck circling something you want to build — or just stuck full stop? I do free 30-minute Direction Calls. Bring me the thing you keep going round in circles on and we'll work out what's really in the way. → kategladdin.com/coaching

Jay Abasi spent over a year preparing for his TEDx talk. He walked on stage, delivered it, and the crowd loved every second of it.
Then came the part nobody plans for.
In this episode, Jay takes us back to the night everything changed — and the hour he spent on his office floor the next day, not reframing, not positive-thinking his way out of it, just sitting with it. From there, we talk about why the need to win drains your power, what high performers get wrong about detachment, and the three things Jay reckons we all need to get better at tolerating (one of them might surprise you).
We also go back to 2014 — the phone call that changed the entire trajectory of Jay's life — and what it actually takes to move toward something meaningful after loss, instead of away from it.
This one's for anyone who's ever put everything into something and had it not go the way they expected.

Connect with Jay on Linkedin, Instagram or learn more on his website: https://jayabbasi.me/


Ready to stop waiting for later?
That's exactly what a Direction Call is for. Thirty minutes, free, no pitch. You'll leave knowing what's actually been stopping you and the one step to take this week.
Book yours → kategladdin.com/coaching

Confidence has become the thing everyone's waiting for to deliver their 'dream' life.
Once I'm more confident, I'll launch it. Once I'm more confident, I'll speak up. Once I'm more confident, I'll apply, I'll move, I'll ask.
And so we wait...
Here's the problem with confidence - it's fragile. It goes up when things go well and falls flat the second they don't. Which means the one time you need it most is the exact moment it abandons you.
In this episode I'm sharing three qualities I think are wildly underrated - and far better to build your life on than confidence. They're not feelings you have to wait for. They're choices you can make right now, today, before you've achieved a single thing or proven you're any good at it.
I'll walk you through what each one actually means (the first one especially - most people get it completely wrong), why they work hardest precisely when things are going badly, and the one question that unlocks each of them in the moment you need it.
I also tell you about the time I walked on stage having realised something about my lapel mic that I'd very much prefer to forget. You'll cringe. I've made peace with it.
In this episode:
— Why "once I'm more confident" is the sentence keeping you stuck
— The quality most people mistake for playing small (it's the opposite)
— How to survive something going badly without it meaning anything about you
— The two answers you have to every important question — and why you only ever say one out loud
— What's really sitting underneath "I don't know" (in ten years of coaching, it's almost always one of four things)
— Take yourself less seriously. Take your life more seriously.
If something stirred while you were listening — a whisper of what you actually want, and the reason you've been telling yourself you can't go after it yet — let's talk about it.
I open a limited number of free 30-minute Direction Calls each week. It's not a sales call. It's a working session, just you and me, and you'll leave knowing what's actually been stopping you and the one next step to take.
Book yours: kategladdin.com/coaching

Nobody likes being wrong. It feels like losing. So we defend our thoughts - even the ones quietly costing us the most.
In this episode I'm making the case that your willingness to be wrong is one of the most underrated skills you can build. Not positive thinking. Not slapping a nice feeling on top of a real fear. Something far more useful - and far more accurate.
I share the thought that nearly stopped this podcast from existing at all, what the research says about how badly we predict our own futures, and the one line you can say back to your brain when it hands you a worst-case scenario.
Plus a small experiment to run this week. Fair warning: you might be right. But my money's on you being wrong.
Been sitting on something you want to build from what you've been through — a podcast, a book, a speaking career, a nonprofit? Book a free 30-minute Direction Call at kategladdin.com/coaching. Not a sales call. A working session with a real outcome.

Nobody teaches you how to feel anxious. They teach you how to make it stop.
And that's the problem — because most of us aren't actually struggling with anxiety. We're struggling with our resistance to it.
This isn't another anxiety toolkit. I've done the breathing episodes, and all of that still stands. These are the few things I actually use on myself and with my coaching clients that I rarely hear anyone talk about.
Inside this episode:
Why the answer isn't more positivity — and why your brain knows when you're lying to it. Why your body on a treadmill and your body mid-spiral are doing exactly the same thing, and why you'll happily pay a gym for one and panic about the other. The three words I use instead of arguing with my brain's predictions. And the question that tells you instantly whether you're in a real emergency or just watching a very creative film your brain wrote about your future.
Anxiety doesn't need to be fixed. It needs to be felt. Get better at that, and you get better at everything downstream of it.
Also in this episode: the launch of the Julie Fitzsimons Library and History Scholarship — $1,500 towards study for a young person in Sydney's Bayside Council area, created in honour of my beautiful mum and the library she walked into at 18 and never really left. Apply or pass it on → nicoleandjulie.com
Book a free 30-minute Direction Call
Been sitting on something? The book, the podcast, the coaching business, the nonprofit - the thing that won't leave you alone. We'll spend 30 minutes getting clear on what you actually want to build and what's been stopping you, and you'll leave with one specific next step. That's yours whether we ever work together or not. I only hold 3 of these a week → kategladdin.com/coaching