Making Wholeness Possible

Making Wholeness Possible Network
  • 5.0 (8)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

Making Wholeness Possible is a podcast about emotional maturity, real-life leadership, and growing in ways that actually change how we live, work, and relate to others. Hosted by Danae Labocki and Ken Shuman, this podcast creates space for honest, practical conversations about what’s happening beneath the surface of our lives, especially for leaders, professionals, and people who care deeply about showing up well. Whether you’re navigating leadership, relationships, or personal growth, this podcast is here to help you slow down, reflect, and practice healthier ways of being.

  1. Jul 21

    Boundaries: Loving Others Without Giving Yourself Away

    Boundaries can feel selfish, harsh, or like something that will create distance in our relationships. But healthy boundaries are not walls that shut people out. They help us understand where we end and another person begins, what belongs to us, and what we are no longer willing to give away. In this vulnerable conversation, Danae shares honestly about her own struggle with boundaries and what she is beginning to uncover about why they can feel so difficult.  Together, they explore how boundaries help us become more self-defined, why a boundary is about what we will do rather than controlling someone else, and why limits without consistent consequences are often only hopes. Show Notes:  Ways to Get Into Action This Week: Start small: Notice one place where you are saying yes when you genuinely want to say no. Practice saying a clear, respectful no without overexplaining or defending your decision. Pay attention to how you respond when someone else tells you no. Can you allow them to hold their boundary without pressuring, withdrawing, or taking it personally? When guilt or discomfort surfaces, remind yourself that feeling uncomfortable does not necessarily mean you are doing something wrong. No one can do the work for you, but you do not have to do it alone. Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life/ We would love to hear from you! Email us questions, topics you would like us to cover, or just say hello! makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com  Learn More

    Boundaries: Loving Others Without Giving Yourself Away

  2. Jul 8

    When Work Gets Personal: Practicing Self-Regulation Under Pressure

    What does it look like to stay grounded at work when emotions are high, conversations are hard, and people are looking to you to lead? In this episode of Making Wholeness Possible, Danae and Ken are joined by Kelly Andamasaris, co-owner and administrator of Absorbent Minds Montessori School, for a practical and honest conversation about self-regulation in the workplace. Kelly shares what she has learned through nearly two decades of leading a school community, including how to pause before reacting, listen when others are emotional, hold compassion and boundaries together, and recognize when someone else’s anxiety does not have to become your own. Together, Danae, Ken, and Kelly talk about the real work of emotional maturity: not shutting off your feelings, but learning how to steward them well so they serve the moment instead of controlling it. This conversation is for leaders, teachers, parents, business owners, team members, and anyone who wants to show up with more intention when work feels personal, pressured, or emotionally charged. SHOW NOTES: Ways to get into action this week: Notice when you start taking something personally. Pause and ask, “Is this really about me, or could this be about their anxiety, worry, or fear?”Practice caring for others without taking responsibility for fixing everything for them.Pay attention to where empathy may be pulling you into someone else’s emotions instead of helping you stay grounded and present.Build your tolerance for emotional discomfort, both in yourself and in the people around you.Choose one hard moment this week to pause, calm yourself, think, and then respond from who you want to be. Learn More Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life We would love to hear from you! Email us questions, topics you would like us to cover, or just say hello! makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com Learn more about Absorbent Minds Montessori School: https://thesmarterkids.com

    When Work Gets Personal: Practicing Self-Regulation Under Pressure

  3. Jun 30

    How to Feel Your Feelings Without Letting Them Run Your Life

    Self-regulation is not about pretending you are fine, stuffing your emotions, or never feeling angry, anxious, afraid, or overwhelmed. It is about learning to notice what is happening inside of you, pause before you react, and choose how you want to show up. In this episode of Making Wholeness Possible, Danae and Ken continue the conversation on self-regulation by unpacking the five dimensions of self-regulation: emotional control, behavioral control, thought control, adaptability, and believing in yourself in a way that helps you become proactive. Together, they talk about what it looks like to feel your feelings without being controlled by them, take responsibility for your role in a problem, live with integrity, manage distractions, pause between the demands of the day, and practice courage when fear is present. This episode is a reminder that emotional maturity does not happen by accident. It grows through awareness, practice, responsibility, grace, and the willingness to keep choosing who you want to be. SHOW NOTES:  Ways to get into action this week: Notice where you get triggered.Pay attention to the moments when you feel angry, anxious, defensive, overwhelmed, or afraid. What happened? What expectation was unmet? What story did you start telling yourself? Monitor your reactions.Ask yourself: How do I behave when I get triggered? Do I fire off the email? Shut down? Withdraw? Overfunction? Blame? Try to control the situation? Talk about someone instead of talking to them? Ask a responsibility question.When something feels hard or frustrating, pause and ask: What is my role in keeping this problem in place? Your role may be active or passive, but noticing it helps you begin to respond differently. Practice a small pause.Before moving from one task, conversation, or responsibility to the next, take a moment to breathe, walk, pray, sit quietly, or do something that helps your brain and body reset. Choose one small place to practice.Do not try to fix everything at once. Pick one area where you can practice self-regulation this week. Start with the easiest place, celebrate small wins, and let that growth begin to impact the rest of your life. Learn More Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life/ We would love to hear from you! Email us questions, topics you would like us to cover, or just say hello! makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com

    How to Feel Your Feelings Without Letting Them Run Your Life

  4. Jun 23

    How to Show Up Differently When Anxiety Hits

    In last week’s episode, we talked about what anxiety is and how it shows up in our reactions. This week, we’re taking the next step: what do we do when anxiety is actually happening? Ken and Danae talk about how we begin moving from noticing anxiety in the rearview mirror to recognizing it in real time. They unpack the practice of stopping, calming ourselves, thinking clearly, naming the threat, and using guiding principles to help us show up as the person we want to be. They also talk about repair, what it looks like to acknowledge when anxiety got the best of us, and how to take responsibility without blaming the other person. This work takes courage, practice, and grace. The goal is not to get it perfect. The goal is to keep becoming more aware, more grounded, and more whole. Show Notes:  Ways to Get Into Action This Week: Take some time this week to reflect on a moment when you felt triggered or anxious. Ask yourself: When did anxiety show up? How did I react? What was I being threatened by? Was there something from my first formation or childhood that may have been stirred up? How did I try to protect myself? How do I want to show up differently next time? Then, write a short guiding principle that can help you in that moment. Keep it clear, direct, and easy to remember. For example: I am brave enough to talk about deep things with the people I want to.I am not threatened by my imperfection.I am present when things feel uncomfortable.I am honest without being reactive.And if anxiety got the best of you, consider whether there is a repair conversation you need to have. That might sound like: “I realized I didn’t show up the way I wanted to.” “My anxiety got stirred up, and I reacted.” “I’m sorry for the impact that had on you.” “I want to keep practicing showing up differently.” No one can do this work for you, but you do not have to do it alone. Learn More Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life/ We would love to hear from you! Email us questions, topics you would like us to cover, or just say hello! makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com

    How to Show Up Differently When Anxiety Hits

  5. Jun 16

    Anxiety Isn’t Always Worry: What’s Really Driving Your Reaction

    Anxiety does not always look like worry. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes it looks like keeping the peace. Sometimes it looks like venting, controlling, fixing, shutting down, or taking responsibility for things that are not actually ours to carry. In this episode of Making Wholeness Possible, Danae and Ken begin a new conversation around self-regulation and anxiety. They talk about the difference between acute anxiety and chronic anxiety, how anxiety shows up in our relationships, and why our reactions are often connected to a deeper sense of threat. They also explore some of the common ways we miss anxiety in ourselves. This conversation invites us to look beneath the surface of our reactions and begin asking a better question: What am I being threatened by? The goal is not to never feel anxiety. The goal is to learn how to manage ourselves in the middle of it so we can show up with more maturity, honesty, courage, and love. Show Notes:  Ways to Get Into Action This Week: Think about one moment this week when you got triggered, reactive, angry, defensive, shut down, or stirred up. Then take a few minutes to reflect: Who was involved? What happened? How did you react? What did you think but not say? What did you feel in your body? What were you angry, afraid, or anxious about? What threat did you experience? Did you feel dismissed, controlled, unseen, blamed, exposed, abandoned, or afraid of messing something up? Then ask one more question: How would I like to show up differently next time? You may not catch your anxiety in the moment at first. That is okay. Start in the rearview mirror. Look back. Get curious. Practice one small step toward becoming a less anxious presence. Thank you for listening to Making Wholeness Possible. Stay curious. Keep practicing. This is how wholeness becomes possible. Learn More Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life/ We would love to hear from you! Email us questions, topics you would like us to cover, or just say hello! makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com

    Anxiety Isn’t Always Worry: What’s Really Driving Your Reaction

  6. Jun 4

    Self-Awareness: Managing Your Strong Emotions

    Strong emotions are part of being human, but many of us were never taught how to handle them in healthy ways. In this episode of Making Wholeness Possible, Danae and Ken continue the conversation on self-awareness by exploring what we learned in our first formation about managing strong emotions. They talk about how early messages, family patterns, and modeled behaviors can shape the way we respond as adults, like learning to stuff our sadness, not to cry, not to show fear, or not to let anyone see what we were really feeling. But those emotions do not disappear. They leak out in our relationships, our parenting, our leadership, our work, and even our bodies. This conversation is about looking back with curiosity so we can understand what we learned, name what is still shaping us, and begin practicing healthier, more whole ways of responding. Show Notes: Ways to Get Into Action This Week 1. Reflect on what you learned about strong emotions.Choose one emotion to begin with: anger, sadness, fear, disappointment, grief, anxiety, or shame. Ask yourself: What did I learn about this emotion growing up? Was it welcomed, ignored, punished, silenced, mocked, or modeled in a healthy way? 2. Make a simple “what I learned” list.Draw a line down the middle of a page. On one side, write what you learned that may have been healthy or helpful. On the other side, write what you learned that may have been unhealthy, limiting, or harmful. Consider both what was said out loud and what was modeled without words. 3. Use the Five Whys.Think about a recent moment when you had a strong emotional reaction. Then gently ask yourself “why?” several times to get beneath the surface. Why did that upset me? Why did it feel threatening? Why did I respond that way? What old story, wound, fear, or pattern might be underneath it? 4. Use a feelings wheel.If it is hard to name what you are feeling, look up a feelings wheel and use it to find more specific language. Sometimes naming the feeling is the first step toward understanding what is happening inside of you. 5. Name the loss.If you are feeling sadness or grief, ask: What have I lost? Then ask: What is different now because of this loss? Naming the loss can help you sit honestly with grief instead of running from it or stuffing it down. 6. Give yourself permission to feel what you feel.Feeling an emotion is not the same as being controlled by it. This week, practice saying, “It is okay for me to feel this.” Then ask God to help you respond with maturity, honesty, and compassion. We would love to hear from you! Email Danae and Ken at makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life/ Learn More

    Self-Awareness: Managing Your Strong Emotions

  7. May 26

    Self Awareness: What We Learned Early and Still Carry Today

    In this episode of Making Wholeness Possible, Danae and Ken begin a new conversation around self-awareness by going back to our childhood – our first formation: the early shaping we experienced through family, relationships, culture, authority figures, and the things we learned we had to do to feel safe, loved, accepted, or in control. Ken and Danae talk honestly about how early lessons can become adult patterns. Avoiding conflict. Over-functioning. Playing small. Keeping everyone happy. Shutting down. And more. These reactions often feel like “just who we are,” but they may actually be protective patterns we learned a long time ago. This conversation invites you to look back with honesty and compassion, not blame or shame. We may not be responsible for what happened in our first formation, but as we gain awareness and tools, we can begin to take responsibility for how we show up now. Show Notes Ways to Get Into Action This Week A few simple but meaningful ways to begin practicing self-awareness this week: 1. Carve out time for reflection.Deep awareness does not happen without reflection. Set aside time this week to slow down, think, pray, journal, or simply pay attention to what has been stirring in you. 2. Make a positive and negative first formation list.Create two columns. On one side, write down positive things you learned in your first formation. On the other side, write down negative things you learned. These may be things that were directly taught, modeled for you, implied, or simply absorbed as you tried to make sense of the world. 3. Journal about a specific experience.Think about one moment or series of moments from your early life that shaped you. Start by writing the facts: What happened? Who was there? What do you remember? 4. Ask, “What meaning did I make?”After naming what happened, go deeper. What did you come to believe about yourself, others, God, relationships, conflict, safety, love, or acceptance because of that experience? Don’t be satisfied with the first answer. Let it simmer. 5. Ask, “How did I learn to protect myself?”Did you learn to hide, perform, overprepare, avoid conflict, keep everyone happy, shut down, get loud, stay quiet, or play small? Begin noticing how that protective pattern may still show up today. You do not have to figure it all out this week. Just start noticing. We would love to hear from you! Email Danae and Ken at makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com Learn More Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life/ Show NotesWays to Get Into Action This WeekLearn More

    Self Awareness: What We Learned Early and Still Carry Today

  8. May 19

    Personal Responsibility at Work

    Work can bring out some of the hardest parts of us. A tense conversation. Receiving feedback. A coworker who frustrates you. A moment when expectations are unclear and anxiety starts to rise. Before long, you may find yourself defending, withdrawing, over-apologizing, blaming, shutting down, or carrying responsibility that was never yours to carry. In this episode of Making Wholeness Possible, Danae and Ken talk about personal responsibility in the workplace and what it looks like to stay grounded, honest, courageous, and clear when work gets hard. They explore how to listen before reacting, receive feedback without spiraling, own what is yours, stop carrying what belongs to someone else, create a safer workplace, and practice clear communication even when the conversation feels uncomfortable. This episode is for anyone who wants to show up with more maturity at work, navigate hard conversations with courage, and grow in the way they lead, communicate, and respond under pressure. Show Notes Resources mentioned in this episode: Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead: https://brenebrown.com/hubs/dare-to-lead/  Dr. Henry Cloud’s Necessary Endings: https://www.drcloud.com/books/necessary-endings  We would love to hear from you! Email Danae and Ken at makingwholenesspossible@gmail.com Ways to Get Into Action This Week 1. Ask: What is mine to own and not mine to own? Think about one workplace situation that feels frustrating, tense, or unresolved. Ask yourself: What is my responsibility here? What is not my responsibility? 2. Ask the hard question. Choose one recurring problem and ask: What is my role in keeping this problem in place? Your role may be active, or it may be passive. Maybe you are not speaking up, not asking for clarity, avoiding a hard conversation, or carrying more than what belongs to you. 3. Practice one clear conversation. This week, say one thing clearly and kindly that you may have been avoiding. Ask for clarity, name what you need, own what is yours, or set a needed boundary. 4. Give yourself grace as you practice. Hard conversations may feel awkward at first. The goal is not perfection. The goal is showing up with courage, honesty, and a willingness to grow. Learn More Faithwalking’s course, What No One Told You About Life: Growing Up Emotionally, Managing Anxiety, and Improving Relationships, is designed to help you grow in emotional maturity, manage anxiety, and improve your relationships. Learn more here: https://faithwalking.com/what-no-one-told-you-about-life/

    Personal Responsibility at Work
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Making Wholeness Possible is a podcast about emotional maturity, real-life leadership, and growing in ways that actually change how we live, work, and relate to others. Hosted by Danae Labocki and Ken Shuman, this podcast creates space for honest, practical conversations about what’s happening beneath the surface of our lives, especially for leaders, professionals, and people who care deeply about showing up well. Whether you’re navigating leadership, relationships, or personal growth, this podcast is here to help you slow down, reflect, and practice healthier ways of being.

Information

  • Creator
    Making Wholeness Possible Network
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Making Wholeness Possible Network
  • Show Website
    Making Wholeness Possible

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