By Ly Smith | UpCycle Coaching You brush your teeth without deciding to. You reach for your phone before your feet hit the floor. You take the same route to the grocery store, sit in the same seat at the table, and say "I'm fine" when someone asks how you are. Most of your day runs on habit. Your self-talk does too. That sentence that shows up every time you try something new, who do you think you are?, isn't a fact about you. It's a groove you've worn into your thinking from

Think about the last time you got angry. Not the big, dramatic kind. I mean the quiet kind. The email that made your jaw tighten. The comment that stayed with you all afternoon. The moment you snapped at someone you love and then spent the evening replaying it. If you're like most of the women I work with, there was probably a second wave right behind the anger. It sounded something like: What is wrong with me? I shouldn't react like this. Why can't I just let it go? That sec

By Ly Smith | UpCycle Coaching Most of the self-talk that shapes your day never gets said out loud. It happens in the half-second before you raise your hand in a meeting and then decide not to. It happens when you open the email from the event planner and think, they probably found someone better. It happens when you look at your calendar and hear, very quietly, you're behind again. None of those sentences feel like decisions. They feel like facts. That's what makes them so p

By Ly Smith | UpCycle Coaching From the age of nine to seventeen, I was a competitive gymnast. I want you to sit with what that actually means for a moment. It means I was in a gym, doing the same skills over and over and over again until my body stopped thinking about them and simply did them. It means I fell. A lot. It means I got back up. A lot. It means I learned very early that the performance people see on the floor is never, ever the whole story. Nobody in the stands s