Self-Loathing vs. Self-Love: What Actually Gets Results
Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin
Release Date: 01/14/2026
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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Better Than Confident - The 3 H's
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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Why Being Wrong Helps You Get More Out of Life
Okay, Now What? - With Kate Gladdin
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....
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Get Good at Feeling Anxious (The Most Underrated Life Skill)
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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Stuck Between Two Choices? Why Hardest Decisions Often Matter The Least
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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You're Not Undisciplined. You're Unfenced. (How to Stop Almost-Starting)
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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Are You Falling for One of These 7 Excuses? (Spoiler: They're All Fear)
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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Why Being Bad At It Means You're Doing It Right
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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When Life Feels Out of Your Control, Ask This
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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When I Thought I Was Going to Get Kicked Out of the Country (a "what if" vs "what is" story)
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...
info_outlineFor the high achievers who think they need to be harder on themselves.
You're holding yourself accountable, chasing your goals, refusing to waste time. But somewhere along the way, self-discipline turned into self-loathing. And now you're wondering: if I stop being so hard on myself, will I just... stop trying?
This episode breaks down why hating yourself into change is like taking a 36-hour flight with unnecessary layovers. You'll eventually get there, but you'll be exhausted, depleted, and resentful. There's a direct flight available.
In this episode:
- Why shame triggers your nervous system into protection mode (and kills your follow-through)
- The cycle that keeps you stuck: shame → avoidance → more shame
- Why loving your body BEFORE it changes is what actually creates change
- Four mantras to redirect your brain when the shame spiral starts
- The difference between self-discipline and self-attack (and which one actually works)
You don't need more discipline. You need to stop taking the long way around.
Ready to stop self sabotaging? If you need someone to help you push through (not just give you another pep talk), I've got limited one-on-one coaching consult spots available each week. Visit https://www.kategladdin.com/coaching to book your call.