This Delicious Life™ - Self-Kindness, Less Servitude & Permission to Re-invent

Kim O'Hara
  • 5.0 (11)
  • PERSONAL JOURNALS

If you are driving kids or managing the launch of adult children, fielding calls about aging parents' health, running a business or working over 40 hours, and don't seem to be able to find moments to self-honor and relish in the beauty of life, you get to re-boot with the little delicious moments. So many women 30-60 in the "sandwich generation" have become inundated with tasks and forgotten to do random acts of self-kindness. In This Delicious Life™ podcast, female guests from all professions share how they find these small spaces to bask in their self-love. Host Kim O'Hara also shares about her delicious life and the development of her mindset that is the genesis of her upcoming book, Live Your Delicious Life.

  1. 4D AGO

    What If We Created Fun with Money?

    Over the last decade of coaching women, speaking to women, and my own personal experiences, our most fraught constructs are time and money. So many of us have these old money stories we have brought into adulthood and we are almost paralyzed by conversations and transparency with money, nevermind having fun with it to de-stress and be expansive. Meghan Dwyer, a certified Financial Planner, and podcast host of Money Isn't Scary, joined me to talk about money. Why can't we love money and be proud of money, and also be intentional with it at the same time? What would it feel like if we were in our joy with money and created fun with money? What if you created a fund to do something guilt free for yourself?  Whether you are a mom of little kids navigating Disneyland, or a solopreneur looking at your bottom line for Q2, the money we have can be a representative of our inner worth. Instead, how about we have inner worth and self-trust and let the money follow suit! I find that money becomes a barrier for women, and we have a hard time being transparent with money because we think we are bragging or making someone else uncomfortable. When instead, we could be helping another woman be less alone with her money stress and instead see abundance! We give some Delicious Fun Money Tips on the show! Listen in to learn how to: Save up $20 a week for a fun account.  Check your bank balances each week instead of being ruled by fear Take the emotion out of communication with money using AI. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it, rate and review.  I would also love if you could come join my Delicious Life community through my newsletter at https://liveyourdeliciouslife.kit.com where I will be sharing weekly tips on how to have more random acts of self-kindness in your life.

    32 min

  2. MAR 3

    Lean Into Crafting That Book (with Less Exhaustion)

    You know that dream you have to write a book? The one that shows up uninvited while you're in the shower or staring out the window on a Tuesday?  Once it hits, it won't go away. I got to talk about that dream recently, and why the women who have the most to say are so often the ones who keep waiting to feel ready. Samantha Hawley invited me onto her Beyond Awareness podcast, and honestly, it became one of those conversations I didn't want to end. We talked about what's actually in the way of your book.  It's trust. Trust in yourself, your story, and the version of you that already knows what she wants to say. But in order to have that trust, you need to give yourself those little delicious moments in other areas every day or you are going to continue giving your energy away to everyone else, and not have any left for your creative freedom. We also got into identity shifts, why perfectionism is just fear wearing a blazer, and why writing the book you have right now is what shapes you into the writer you'll be in five years. The woman you want to be with a voice, a passion and purpose... not minimized by all the areas of your life pulling at you (that can make a false sense of importance.) I felt this podcast episode with Samanta was so delicious that I built a whole This Delicious Life™ episode around our conversation. In this honest and frank interview, you will learn: How to know if you have a book versus just a complaint dump. How a book can help you put voice to your feelings. You'll receive guidance on how to stop clinging so tightly to your book ideas. I wrote one book on permission and then at the guidance of a book professional, evolved it to something more akin to this brand. I tossed that book and wrote a new one, and then found a book agent because the newest book was more aligned to the joy and purpose that was bubbling out of me. We can wear our book journey lightly, not like some mission we can never get done. We can let expand and flow, and how you do time in your life is going to dictate how you find time to be in the book process. Listen to, Subcribe and rate Samantha's Beyond Awareness podcast. And of course, do the same for This Delicious Life™ so we can grow! I would also love if you could come join my Delicious Life community through my newsletter at https://liveyourdeliciouslife.kit.com where I will be sharing weekly tips on how to have more random acts of self-kindness in your life.

    35 min

  3. FEB 24

    What If You No Longer Cried Yourself To Sleep?

    On today's episode, I chat with Lauren Young Durbin, a Career Strategist for Midcareer Women. She is dishing out the goods for all of us who are thinking about our next career move. While a lot of advice is floating out there in this category, what I found unique about our talk is what a straight-shooter Lauren is. Some of the takeaways right at the top of the talk include gems like: -       Your vision might not be your vision. It might be someone else's you adopted. -        We are the biggest wardens of our careers. -       Start by thinking bigger and then think bigger than that. Lauren lived the advice she coaches. She was struggling in a job working 60 hours a week with two neurodivergent twins, while also building her own business. She straddled as long as she could, and finally left her job to focus on her business. The end product? She was no longer upset or crying herself to sleep. When we get the hit to make a career shift, it can be scary to make the move and the leap but the benefits are vast when we listen to what our soul is telling us. Then how about when we think we want to do something that is more out of the box than what we have been doing? We get to make that gradual shift and it's  not a complete toss it over. We can lean into both and observe what we are trying to make work and ignoring the signs. We think since we are already doing everything for everyone, the idea of doing seven companies seems implausible and we limit our expansion. Lauren says we need to think out of the box – we can demolish the box or expand it since we created it in the first place. And wouldn't it be nice if we could vision board all the time with all the crafts and glue? With four-year-old twin boys Lauren doesn't have time to do the visualization she wants to do and pepper the walls with vision boards, so she takes time during the day to visualize and think about what she wants. Ask yourself if something is important, and if you discover it isn't, let it go. Just make room for what your vision truly is. And the truth is, many women just need to re-configure how they are showing up for themselves at their job, and want to stay. They stay at the company and get promoted, perhaps, because they don't know what that transition is yet. Lauren's Delicious Advice?  Light one of the 50 candles you have from Ross, and do the small things for and only yourself. Who is Lauren? Lauren Young Durbin, Esq. is a career strategist and founder of Tyche Career Coaching, where she helps midcareer professional women stop spinning and start moving. Her specialty? Helping high-achieving women figure out what's actually wrong, how to fix it, and what they want to do next—without burning everything down in the process. A licensed attorney (JD, New York Law School) and proud Wellesley alum, Lauren has made four career pivots herself, from legal publishing to litigation support to contract management to coaching. She's been the woman in the wrong job, the toxic environment, and the "this looks great on paper but I'm dying inside" situation. Multiple times. She figured it out. Now she helps other women do the same. Lauren is known for her direct approach, sharp questions, and zero tolerance for the corporate lies that keep smart women stuck.

    29 min

  4. FEB 7

    When One Career Ends, Another Has Been Growing Under the Soil

    I spent the last eleven years happily thriving as a book coach. I built that career through networking near and far, and I did all the stuff - the webinars, and the funnels and the 30 day challenges, lives, you name it, I tried it to find the people who needed me and my style of coaching. What I also was doing in all that time was meeting so many incredible women from all walks of life who were passionate about businesses, or ideas, brands and concepts, but we also talked about their kids and their parents. I spent a lot of small circle conversations chatting about the way we live our lives, and the desire to have more. To lighten the load of responsibility but still be connected to love. What I found with most of the women I met was they didn't know how to find their self-esteem without controlling, managing, knowing and understanding where their life was headed, so they felt safe. To be in the middle of a transition created a lot of fear and self-judgment. "I should've known better." "I should've seen this coming." What about looking at the fact that what has been growing has happened right in the middle of what you were accomplishing and is now being called to attention... especially if you gave yourself the bandwidth and ten minutes to stop and recognize the new calling. We look as women to the problems, and not the potentials. We are built to solve problems for everyone we love, and in our companies and professions. So it is natural to believe when we are calling to pivot that this is a problem. What if it is a calling to be bigger than you even dreamed you could be? I had to share with you my season I am in today. Realizing the career that brought me the stuff was also part of the new beginning. It's a wave of growth and opportunity not cut and dry. Be in the open spaces and look at what you launched and did as part of the bigger picture of your delicious life.

    17 min

  5. FEB 4

    The "infinite pie" for Women: We Don't Have to Fight Over Crumbs

    We don't need to be fighting over pies as women. We can just make more pie. Younger women get this, banding together with their small group of women who can be their confidants and friends, and those who have achieved top leadership roles often credit this small group of confidantes, friends, or business partners for their success. The smart money is not fighting anyone, but being yourself and being good at what you do.  Co Founder of Take the Lead Gloria Feldt shares with This Delicious Life that there is an "infinite pie" for us as women. This mindset comes from her from her book, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take the Lead for Everyone's Good, which emphasizes limitless resources and the need for women to redefine power positively as the energy to improve life for themselves and their community. To me this sounds like a very succinct definition of the "divine feminine." Alongside stepping into a leadership role at Planned Parenthood at 54, Gloria has won many accolades -Forbes 50 over 50, Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year, Vanity Fair's Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers. So I got right into asking what changed in her career after winning awards. How did they increase her own personal worth and what did it mean to women who were not winning awards? She said for her "basically nothing changes" professionally as a result. The value of these accolades lies in their ability to help her advance her mission of achieving equality for women, particularly in leadership, power, and pay. It's not a place for women to be more competitive but add more places at the table for every other woman. No one has the golden ticket! Which goes back to the infinite pie! There are not scarce resources! We don't have to fight over crumbs although we have been socialized to believe this narrative. Gloria suggested that many women are choosing entrepreneurship over the corporate world to create their own culture and flexibility, despite having to work harder. She noted that the number of people starting businesses is now almost equal between men and women. She also emphasized the importance of encouraging women to "think bigger" about their business ventures to shift the culture surrounding money and power. Gloria concluded by stressing the necessity of having more women in AI leadership to prevent the technology from programming existing cultural biases. Gloria's Delicious Takeaways: Have authority and agency over your own body. Earn your own money (and at least have a baseline to support you and your children if you need to.) And get involved in AI!

    41 min

  6. JAN 28

    Stop Accepting Underpaid, Undervalued and Underestimated.

    We have the power in numbers as women, at 51% of the population, to stop accepting being underpaid, undervalued and underestimated. Then we can strategically move forward. Attorney and founder of The Justice Department JJ emphasized that emotion is not strategy and advised women to be strategic, especially during times of emotional intensity like perimenopause and menopause.  Women are also starting more businesses at a record number and are about to control most of the money in a great wealth transfer. We are getting better and wiser in our 40's and older, peaking professionally and personally. JJ opened the Justice Department seven years ago to advocate for female founders to position themselves in business "to come on y'all, get rich". Her philosophy centers on being strategic, urging women to accept reality and then strategically plan their moves, rather than accepting defeat. She shared an anecdote about a woman who was overwhelmed at home with her young boys and husband. The husband texted her complaining about a lack of toothpaste, which led JJ to ask if the woman just buys the toothpaste and lets him complain. When the woman affirmed, JJ told her, "Then you're part of the problem," emphasizing that the woman was enabling the situation and not choosing her life. She asserted that partners are equals and told another story from law school where her boyfriend claimed he couldn't do dishes well, to which she pointed out how sad it was that he could get into Cornell Law School and law review but couldn't wash a dish. JJ is a single mother shared who chose to raise her twins on her own because she never wanted to get married, she didn't want any of the people she was dating in the music industry to be the father of her children, and she didn't want to co-parent. She knew she had more financial resources to focus on the quality of time with her children while working full-time. She noted that being a single mother means she is making 100% of the money and providing 100% of the care, which means she can't get things done as quickly as she wants. Her support system includes her New York friends who never married or had kids and a mom group she formed later. JJ's Delicious Takeaways:  Meditation, and exercise.   Time with friends for mental health breaks. She allows herself to watch an episode of a show during the day without guilt once every six months. JJ has an upcoming book!  The working title is "Ask For It: Choose Your Life or It Chooses You." The central advice is that women have the ability to choose their lives, and if they feel "underestimated, underpaid, and undervalued," they need to think about their contribution to that and understand that they are the solution. You can reach out to JJ at https://www.thejusticedept.com/jennifer-justice And if you're craving something delicious for yourself—like finally writing your book and finding your voice—check out my Book Clarity resource: From Overwhelmed to Organized. If this episode resonated, please rate, review, and share This Delicious Life™ so we can keep spreading permission and pleasure around the globe.

    43 min

  7. JAN 28

    Be Unique Behind the Microphone: A Masterclass in Audio Deliciousness

    Courtney Reimer podcast notes: Stop trying to be like everyone else is an underlying theme in my Delicious conversation with journalist and podcast expert Courtney Rhymer, who previously worked with Meghan Markle on her Spotify podcast Archetypes. She now helps aspiring podcasters with her business Sounds Great. And did you know MTV had radio? If not, don't feel bad. Even people in the building didn't know.  But Courtney worked for them converging words and audio back in the day. In our talk, which is a master class in podcasting,  the idea of "Let Your Freak Flag Fly" when getting on the microphone is not going to be found in your everyday homogenized advice.  (And just to join in the mind think, I kept our blooper style moment in the beginning.) Don't follow trends. We are all getting exhausted as consumers of content, especially with podcasts, when influencers are telling us how to accomplish the perfect metric "like them." If you are not your authentic self, truly why bother? Someone is always going to have more numbers of followers and listeners but you get to be you on the microphone. It's your space. When I told Courtney I worried about hogging the microphone with guests, she reminded me people tune in because they are my audience. I get to hold as much space as I want to. She offers real high-level advice for newbie podcasters (or even people like me who have already had a podcast and are on their second one) such as Use Your Existing Skills and don't feel like everything is an exhausting learning curve. If you have a story to tell, stop "shoulding" all over yourself how to do it. If you don't want to do video, then don't.   Also, if you agree to be on a podcast, help promote it! Don't be lame and not share the good with your people because you just dropped your own webinar. Courtney's Delicious Takeaway: She is doing "morning pages" with "scalding hot" black coffee. Morning pages, inspired by Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, allow you to "get the gunk out of your head in whatever form it comes through the pen" without worrying about sentence structure. Courtney Rhymer's upcoming podcast is tentatively titled Talk the Talk. (and we need to hold her to it!) Learn more about her work here - https://www.soundsgreatstrategy.com/about-courtney-reimer And if you're craving something delicious for yourself—like finally writing your book and finding your voice—check out my Book Clarity resource: From Overwhelmed to Organized. If this episode resonated, please rate, review, and share This Delicious Life™ so we can keep spreading permission and pleasure around the globe.

    39 min

  8. JAN 21

    You're Not Bad at Business – You are just Drowning in Advice.

    In this episode of This Delicious Life™, I sit down with Hailey Rowe to talk about what actually burns women out in entrepreneurship, why perfectionism quietly kills joy, and how doing less not more is often the thing that finally works. Let's call it: most women aren't bad at business -  they're just drowning in advice. Hailey is a marketing and sales strategist and LinkedIn lead generation expert who supports women entrepreneurs who are capable, driven, and secretly exhausted by trying to keep up with every marketing trend, funnel, and "must-do" strategy. Together, we dig into why overwhelm isn't a personal failure. It's the predictable result of too many options and too much pressure to be everything at once. We talk about how planning a wedding cracked open unexpected lessons about boundaries, collaboration, and decision fatigue and why personal life and business are never actually separate. How you move through your relationships, your time, and your energy is how you move through your work. This conversation also reframes sales not as begging or convincing, but as a collaborative, grounded conversation rooted in trust. We explore why commission-based work messes with women's nervous systems, why business has natural ebbs and flows (even when no one talks about it), and why running back to old strategies you hate during a dip is usually fear, not intuition. At the heart of it all is this truth: you don't need to be perfect to be credible. You don't need to hustle harder to be worthy. And you don't need to burn yourself out to build something meaningful. You also get to do something else at any time because we don't have to be defined by one title or expertise. Success and fulfillment can come from adapting and growing into financial security and peace. Growth that doesn't cost you joy. Because a Delicious Life and a delicious business should actually feel good to live inside. Hailey's delicious tips include: She loves to journal for personal reflection. She loves to exercise. She sings in two wedding bands! Connect with Hailey Rowe: ·       Free Weekly Planning System (you'll actually use): https://haileyrowe.kartra.com/page/planning ·       Website: https://www.haileyrowe.com ·       Podcast: https://anchor.fm/health-coach-nation And if you're craving something delicious for yourself—like finally writing your book and finding your voice—check out my Book Clarity resource: From Overwhelmed to Organized. If this episode made you feel relieved, seen, or slightly called out, please rate, review, and share This Delicious Life™. Permission spreads faster when we say it out loud.

    34 min
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About

If you are driving kids or managing the launch of adult children, fielding calls about aging parents' health, running a business or working over 40 hours, and don't seem to be able to find moments to self-honor and relish in the beauty of life, you get to re-boot with the little delicious moments. So many women 30-60 in the "sandwich generation" have become inundated with tasks and forgotten to do random acts of self-kindness. In This Delicious Life™ podcast, female guests from all professions share how they find these small spaces to bask in their self-love. Host Kim O'Hara also shares about her delicious life and the development of her mindset that is the genesis of her upcoming book, Live Your Delicious Life.

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