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The Cure for People Pleasing? One Simple Word Swap

Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

Release Date: 04/10/2025

Why the Need to Win Is Costing You - With Jay Abbasi show art Why the Need to Win Is Costing You - With Jay Abbasi

Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

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...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

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...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

Confidence is overrated — and honestly, it's a trap. "Once I feel more confident, then I'll…" But how do you actually get confident? By doing the thing. Which means waiting to feel confident before you start is a loop with no exit. In this episode, Kate makes the case for three qualities that beat confidence - because unlike confidence, you don't have to wait to earn them first. One takes your worth off the table so you can risk the outcome. One is what gets you through it going badly. And one is the uncomfortable one that tells you whether you're chasing the right thing at all. Three...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

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...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

If you're the kind of person who can spend a week deciding which restaurant to choose or what colour to paint your nails — this one's for you. I'm tight on time this week, so this is a short, punchy one. But it's built around something one of my coaches said that completely flipped how I think about indecision — a single line that turns the usual story about why decisions feel so hard on its head. (It's the opposite of what you'd assume.) I get into why the decisions that torture you the most are often the ones that matter the least, the three questions to run before you flip a coin, and a...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

I nearly fell off the reformer. I was mid-Pilates class listening to David Epstein on Modern Wisdom when he said something so back to front I had to hear it twice: if you want to be more creative, don't give yourself more freedom. Give yourself fewer options. And then he explained why - and it cracked open something I've been teaching for years without ever having the words for it. So I went down a rabbit hole. If that's true, what else is? What else are we doing, with completely good intentions, that's quietly the very thing keeping us stuck? I found three things. They sound wrong. They...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

"I don't have time." "I'm just being realistic." "Now's not the right time." "Who am I to do that?" Here's the uncomfortable truth: every one of those is fear wearing a disguise. Fear rarely shows up with a name tag. It dresses itself up as busyness, as being realistic, as gratitude, as "that's just not me" - sneaky little excuses that sound so responsible you never think to question them. And so it quietly runs the show — picking what you say yes to, what you talk yourself out of, and how small you let yourself stay. In this episode, I hold up the most common excuses I hear from my...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

You had the idea. You were buzzing. "I'm going to launch the podcast / become a speaker / learn Spanish / finally chase the thing." Then you actually went and tried it - and felt like absolute rubbish at it. I know that feeling intimately. I once gave a resilience talk so badly that I sat in my car afterwards and bawled my eyes out, thinking who am I to be doing this? I'm not cut out for it. Turns out, I was just bang in the middle of a stage that every single person moves through when they go after a goal or learn a new skill. There are four of them - and one in particular is where...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

Some seasons of life just happen to you. The trip gets cancelled. The diagnosis lands. The person you love is suddenly gone - and none of it is fair, and none of it is yours to fix. That feeling - like life is happening to you and you've got no say in it - is, to me, the worst feeling of all. So this week I'm sharing one question I've reached for in my hardest, loneliest, most unfair moments. From my first year in America, crying in an empty apartment, through losing my sister - and through this past year, losing Mum. It's not "stay positive." It's not a silver lining. It's something...

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Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin

  For a few weeks earlier this year, I was convinced I was about to lose everything I'd built here in the US — and have to start my whole life over on the other side of the world. This episode is about what happened in my head during those weeks — and the one shift that pulled me back out. I'm getting into why our brains bolt straight to the worst-case scenario (it's not a flaw — it's your brain trying to protect you), why rehearsing the disaster can quietly make it more likely instead of less, and the simple question I kept having to come back to when the what-ifs were at their...

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More Episodes

Ever feel like you’re doing all the right things—yet still feel off? Tired? Resentful? Like you're living life for everyone but you?

Yeah… me too.

In this powerful episode, I pull back the curtain on one sneaky little word that’s silently controlling so many of our choices—and not in a good way. That word? Should.

It seems harmless. Responsible even.
"I should call her back."
"I should go to that dinner."
"I should be happier by now."
But when you really pay attention, you’ll notice how heavy that word feels in your body. How tight your chest gets. How small your world becomes.

Because here’s the truth: “Should” is just fear in disguise.
Fear of disappointing others. Fear of judgment. Fear of not being enough. And when we live from that place, we disconnect from what we actually want. We abandon ourselves to make others comfortable.

In this episode, I walk you through:

  • The emotional cost of people pleasing (even when it seems “nice” on the surface)

  • Why “should” keeps you stuck in guilt, fear, and burnout

  • The neuroscience behind why your nervous system knows when you're betraying yourself

  • A simple 3-step strategy to flip the script on obligation-based decisions

  • How to reconnect with your values and create boundaries without shame

Plus, I’ll share one of my go-to coaching tools to help you finally break free from the invisible pressure of always doing what’s expected—and start living in alignment with your truth.

You don’t need to earn your worth through endless “shoulds.” You already are enough. So let’s stop proving and start choosing.

Ready to reclaim your voice and your choices? Let’s do a “should detox” together.
Tune in now—and if this episode hits home, share it with a friend who needs the same reminder.

Need extra support?

Follow me on IG for daily doses of real talk: @kategladdin