Your Inner Advocate

Kimen Petersen

Welcome to Your Inner Advocate, a podcast by Kimen Petersen — formerly Conversations with Kimen. This podcast is a space for inspiration, soulful insights, and meaningful life lessons. Your host, Kimen Petersen, draws from personal stories and powerful conversations with remarkable people to help illuminate your path. These episodes reflect his lived experiences and thoughtful perspectives, all aimed at encouraging you to live with greater authenticity, joy, and ease. Your Inner Advocate is here to help you tune in, trust your inner wisdom, and move through life with more clarity, flow, and fulfillment. All wisdom shared are Kimen’s personal opinions, not his professional opinions

  1. 2d ago

    Episode 223: You Can't Go Back. But, You Can Go Forward Wiser.

    Episode 223: You Can't Go Back. But, You Can Go Forward Wiser.   If you could go back — knowing what you know now — what would you do differently? In this episode, Kimen Petersen explores the weight of regret and the difference between wishing you'd made different choices and wishing you'd lived a different life. He argues that every mistake, wrong turn, and painful lesson helped shape the person you are today, and that attacking your younger self is attacking the very person who got you here. Kimen introduces the "Story, Not the Sentence" framework — a five-step process for reframing your past: Tell the truth — acknowledge what happened without sugarcoating or spiralling into regret. Separate the event from your identity — "I made a mistake" is not "I am a mistake." Ask what it gave you — what strength, boundary, or wisdom came from what you went through? Turn the lesson forward — don't just understand the past; use it to change your future behaviour. Release the punishment — stop sentencing yourself for a lesson you've already learned. The episode closes with a powerful meditation: imagine sitting beside your younger self, not to judge or correct them, but to thank them for getting you here. Kimen paints the image of dropping armour along a cobblestone road — letting go of the protective weight of past pain — and reminds listeners that the next page of their story hasn't been written yet. You are the author now.

  2. Oct 15

    Episode 221: Want an Extraordinary Life? Get Comfortable Being Misunderstood.

    Episode 221: Want an Extraordinary Life? Get Comfortable Being Misunderstood. What if the life you're trying to build requires you to be misunderstood — not for a day, but for years? In this episode of Your Inner Advocate, Kimen Petersen unpacks the uncomfortable truth behind pursuing something extraordinary: you cannot build an extraordinary life while requiring ordinary levels of approval. Kimen explores why our innate need to be understood can become the very thing that holds us back, how the pursuit of validation disguised as goal-chasing keeps people stuck, and why the work that matters most often produces almost no immediate reward. He shares a personal story about going back to school despite a chorus of "reasonable" objections, and breaks down the psychology of applause — how dependence on external reinforcement quietly shifts you from chasing a goal to chasing the feeling of being validated for chasing it. The episode introduces a practical five-part "Keep Going" framework: Know your why — your reason carries you when excitement fades Expect to be misunderstood — build doubt and silence into the journey Detach from applause — celebrate yourself and track your own progress Redefine failure — ask what it taught you, not what it says about you Keep your enthusiasm alive — protect your curiosity and maximize recovery Throughout, Kimen challenges listeners to stop treating setbacks as verdicts, stop confusing silence with failure, and stop waiting for permission. The core message: you don't need everyone to believe in you — you need to stop abandoning yourself when you don't. Your story continues every time you choose to take another step.

  3. Oct 10

    Episode 220: Resilience - The Quiet Trust That Gets You Through Anything

    Episode 220: Resilience - The Quiet Trust That Gets You Through Anything We've been sold a myth about resilience — that it belongs to the unbreakable, the people who never stumble, never cry, and never ask for help. In this episode, Kimen Petersen dismantles that myth and offers a radically different definition: resilience isn't about being unbreakable. It's about knowing that when you do break, you're not finished. Drawing from his own experience working in the remote oil and exploration industry — where isolation slowly eroded his friendships, relationships, and sense of self — Kimen shares the turning point that taught him you can't carry everything alone. He introduces a powerful reframe: resilience as trust. Not trust that everything will work out, but trust that you will keep meeting life as it unfolds and refuse to abandon yourself in the process. The episode walks through the Five Rs of Rising Again — a practical resilience framework: Recognize — tell the truth about what's happening without shame Regulate — calm your nervous system before making decisions Reframe — ask what this experience is teaching you Rebuild — one small, ordinary, faithful action at a time Rise — eventually, you notice you're dreaming again Kimen also challenges the popular phrase "bounce back," arguing that healing doesn't mean returning to who you were. Sometimes it means becoming someone you couldn't have imagined without the experience you went through. He explores why resilience is never isolation — that community, connection, and the willingness to say "Can you sit with me?" are not signs of weakness but of humanity. The episode closes with a message for anyone in the middle of something hard right now: you don't need to be fearless, positive, or unbreakable. You just need to stay connected to the part of you that knows, "This will not be the end of me."

  4. Oct 6

    Episode 219: Be Kind: It Matters More Than You Think!

    Episode 219: Be Kind: It Matters More Than You Think! In this episode of Your Inner Advocate, Kimen Petersen makes a passionate case that kindness is not a soft, optional add-on to life — it's one of the most powerful things we can offer another human being. Drawing on a deeply personal story of feeling invisible at a party and being tracked down by someone who noticed his absence, Kimen illustrates how the smallest gesture — a compliment, a smile, a "keep going" — can be priceless to the person receiving it. He explores the inner world people hide behind their everyday composure, reminding us that we never truly know what someone is carrying. From there, he challenges listeners to stop keeping kind thoughts inside their heads and start saying them out loud, introducing the practical "Say It Challenge" — notice something good, say it specifically, expect nothing in return, and repeat it daily. The episode also weaves in a short story called The Smile, about how a single act of morning kindness rippled through the day and returned right when it was needed most. Kimen extends the message to supporting other people's dreams — not by understanding or sharing them, but by simply saying, "What if it does work?" — and closes with an invitation to be intentional: walk into rooms asking not what you can get, but what you can give. A moving, practical, and deeply human episode about choosing kindness — not out of weakness, but out of strength.

About

Welcome to Your Inner Advocate, a podcast by Kimen Petersen — formerly Conversations with Kimen. This podcast is a space for inspiration, soulful insights, and meaningful life lessons. Your host, Kimen Petersen, draws from personal stories and powerful conversations with remarkable people to help illuminate your path. These episodes reflect his lived experiences and thoughtful perspectives, all aimed at encouraging you to live with greater authenticity, joy, and ease. Your Inner Advocate is here to help you tune in, trust your inner wisdom, and move through life with more clarity, flow, and fulfillment. All wisdom shared are Kimen’s personal opinions, not his professional opinions