In today's episode, you'll meet Katie Horwitch, who reminds us how the right community can make all the difference. On March 13, please join me for Uplifters Live, where we'll come together as a community of brave, beautiful Uplifters for a day of deep connection, courage-building workshops, celebration (including my own 50th birthday!), and an amazing lunch created by Emma’s Torch. I hope to see you there!

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Today’s Featured Uplifter: Katie Horwitch

Katie radiates the kind of warmth that makes you forget to care about being "cool." As the founder of WANT (Women Against Negative Talk) and a nationally recognized mindset coach, Katie has built her life's work around helping women shift their self-talk patterns. But her journey to becoming a self-talk activist began with her own struggle to feel at home in herself.

"I am someone who has had such a heightened self-awareness her entire life. I could feel when I was shutting parts of myself away and shutting down different personality traits and pretending."

This awareness became both Katie’s challenge and her salvation – allowing her to recognize when she was living out of alignment with her true self, while simultaneously pointing the way back home.

For Katie, the path to authenticity wasn't linear. It involved navigating OCD (which she describes as "a disorder of extreme catastrophization"), eating disorders, and the constant pressure to dampen her natural enthusiasm. But through it all, she kept integrity as her center line.

Her Courage Practice: "No Talky Time"

At the heart of Katie's self-care practice is what she calls "no talky time" – periods of complete silence that allow her to recharge and reconnect with herself. As a self-described “textbook introvert”, she's learned that these moments of stillness are non-negotiable. Whether it's 10 minutes or several hours, this practice helps her maintain the energy she needs to show up fully for both her work and her relationships.

This seemingly simple practice ripples out into every aspect of her life, influencing how she coaches clients, maintains boundaries, and preserves her capacity to help others. It's a powerful reminder that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is honor our own needs, even when they don't match our expectations of what a "helper" should look like.

"Life is short, but it is also wide, and you have that to use all of the parts of yourselves and bring all of those parts to the table. That is what I suspect will lead you to saying as you look back, 'Oh yeah, that was a life well lived.'"

5 Ways Katie Shows Us How to Build Our Courage Capital:

1. Embrace Your Natural Enthusiasm

Let your genuine excitement shine as a beacon that attracts authentic connections and opportunities.

2. Make Friends with Your Inner Critic

Transform your inner critic into an inner ally by understanding its misguided attempts to protect you.

3. Practice Radical Self-Awareness Times Action

Turn insights into impact by asking yourself what specific actions you'll take with your newfound awareness.

4. Honor Your Non-Negotiables

Protect the daily practices that keep you functioning at your best, from sleep to silence to boundaries.

5. Choose Warmth Over Cool

If we let go of the pressure to be "cool" we just might discover that warmth draws people closer to us.

Today’s opening is by Sabrina Leblanc.

Katie Horwitch was nominated for The Uplifters by Kara Cutruzzula.

Let’s keep rising higher together.

💓 Aransas

TUP EP 095

Nomination: Katie Horwich is a force of nature and a deeply inspiring friend. She is the ultimate self talk expert and has spent her career in life helping women shift their negative self talk in very real and actionable ways. She does this in every [00:00:30] conversation I've ever had with her. And spending time with Katie will lift you up and change your mindset, and I recommend her as both an uplifter and a joyful presence in the world.

She's the founder of a platform called WANT, Women Against Negative Self Talk, and what they do there is [00:01:15] they connect over mindset and she offers up tips and tools and motivation and inspiration to help women move fearlessly in their lives by shifting their self talk patterns. Really, every single one of us.

I'm really, really, really excited for you to hear Katie's story and to hear not only how she does this in her own life, but also how she helps thousands of other women do this in their lives.

Aransas: I think there's something about meeting the people you admire, admire, did that make any [00:02:30] sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Kara Katrusla, who's been on the show and is also one of my nearest and dearest friends and somebody I just wildly, deeply adore, wildly, deeply adores you. And so it's super [00:02:45] extra special to meet you and talk to you because I feel like we are already related.

I think it's so important to be really, really intentional about the people in your different [00:03:30] spheres and that you're really, really paying close attention to and that you have a like a mutual emotional investment in.

Amy Cuddy talks about personal and positional power. And so I think like as teenagers, so many. People are trying to really nail that [00:04:00] positional power. And I'm attracted to people who may give me positional power, who I feel like exude positional power and coolness. And you say something in your work that I say in my work a lot, which is, I'm not [00:04:15] so interested in cool.

Katie: Totally. And that warmth. I mean, it's not an [00:04:45] original thought that I have. Many people have talked about the difference between, you know, cool people and warm people. I think that it's very easy to get sucked in by the allure of being cool. [00:05:00] But when I first came across that sort of phrase of, like, I don't want to be a cool person, I want to be a warm person, and you think about the actual temperature, and what happens to your body when you get cooler and cooler and when you get warmer and warmer, if you think about, like, the [00:05:15] contracting and the expanding, that's something that It really stuck with me when I first heard it, and it made me feel so, so much more settled in who I am and, and my personality [00:05:30] type because I am someone who throughout my life I've been a, a very enthusiastic person.

about my enthusiasm and my enthusiastic tendencies. And I think that a lot of people, [00:06:15] and particularly girls, can really shut themselves down at that age. For me, I am someone who has also had such a heightened self awareness her entire life. That I could feel when I was shutting [00:06:30] parts of myself away and shutting down different personality traits and pretending.

Professionally, that's a whole other story, but personally for me, it's those times where I have gotten so sucked into that game of pretend, and I've [00:07:15] known what I'm doing, and it has been so in conflict with who I actually am that I could feel that I was not living in integrity, and that to me, like, whether it's a romantic partnership, or a [00:07:30] friendship, or whatever it is, integrity is number one to me.

And [00:08:15] that's a really, really tricky dance to navigate.

Aransas: How did you find your way back to yourself in those times?

I won't say that community fixed everything or saved [00:08:45] everything, but I can pinpoint the relationships that I had that started to shift in those times and the way that they shifted to helping me feel safe being myself. I went to college for theater. And was [00:09:00] like the least college y college kid that you could ever envision.

And OCD is not just about the obsessions, but it's about the compulsions. I describe it as, it's called a [00:09:45] doubting disorder, but I think that What is more accurate for me is it is a disorder of extreme Catastrophization. So the second time I would say that I felt so so straying far from myself [00:10:00] Was when I was in college and I didn't want to like go and do the college y things I felt completely out of control out of my element and that's when I started to develop a whole host of eating disorders body related disorders, and [00:10:15] I Now know that those can be a manifestation of OCD.

And I was like, There is [00:11:00] no way, first of all, there's no way that my parents are going to let me skip out on my senior year of college. That is not going to happen. I need to graduate. However, there is no way that I am going to prevent myself from living this big, beautiful life that I [00:11:15] see and I've started to get a taste of for me out there.

And in that year, I became friends with people who saw me as me and embraced me [00:12:00] as me. Embraced my quirks, embraced my, my nuances and allowed me to feel like the me I always knew I was meant to be.

Katie: Yeah, and my work for the last 20 years has centered around helping people shift their negative self talk in a real lasting way. And I [00:12:30] started to do that work in that same period of time when I was in that sort of two steps forward, one step backward, amorphous world that we call recovery. Because your podcast is the uplifters.

And I'm [00:13:15] so grateful that I paid attention. I'm so grateful that I never worked so hard to squash that self awareness and hyper awareness and hypersensitivity that I wasn't then able to access it when it ended [00:13:30] up being, like, not to be cheesy about it, but being my lifeline.

Aransas: Ultimately, it is a choice between, if not life and death, always a big life and a teeny tiny life.

Katie: Yes.

Aransas: I mean, it's the stories, right, that the person is telling themself. Yes. That creates those loops.

Self talk, though, is really more. Along the lines of what you just described and not in the [00:14:15] OCD sort of like way of it, but self talk isn't inherently good or bad. It's information and it's the story that you tell yourself about yourself 24 seven as you walk through the world. So I [00:14:30] got my OCD diagnosis about three and a half years ago now.

I have a personal rule and you can probably relate to this as a writer. I have rules for myself when it comes to what I share when it's personal, like personal stuff. I share what's [00:15:15] personal. I don't share what's intimate. OCD still fell into the intimate bucket with me because I was still figuring out my relationship to it and how I was going to move forward with this as, you know, a piece of who I [00:15:30] was, a part of me.

Spoiler alert, it was not. And I think that part of that is because of. [00:16:00] OCD also latches onto your values. And my biggest values is being in integrity with myself. And so I am very, very passionate about staying in my lane of expertise. [00:16:15] I don't use generalizations often, but I believe that everybody should stay in their lane of expertise, especially when it has to do with your physical, mental, or emotional health.

from one into another. So for OCD, why I describe it as extreme [00:17:15] catastrophization, OCD is an anxiety disorder. And so what happens is that the response that you have, even if you logically know, you logically know that something doesn't matter, doing air quotes, as much As [00:17:30] you think it does, your body doesn't know the difference.

It's an incredible privilege that we have access [00:18:15] to. My OCD, part of my brain, would freak out about whether I should take her to daycare or not. And the if then was if I take her [00:18:30] to daycare, it is going to cost us more money that maybe we will or won't have in the future. And then we are going to go broke and then we won't be able to afford certain things.

And, um, That was the story, but the self talk for me that was coming up [00:19:15] around that wasn't necessarily the ins and outs of the if, if this happens, then this will happen. It was the feelings that I felt. about myself as I was going through the process. And this is [00:19:30] something that a lot of people, whether they have OCD or a diagnosed mental illness or not, struggle with of they feel like I am X, Y, Z years old.

Aransas: around. I think what you're saying, part of the bravery is knowing what you're really most helpful with. [00:20:00] Yeah. And committing your energy to doing that.

Katie: Totally.

How can I stay true to me and make sure that I don't shut off the world? We want to make sure that we stay receptive so that we can be the helpers that we want to be so [00:21:00] we can make the impact that we know we can make. Oprah says that she works to be full of herself because it's only when she's full of herself that she is overflowing and she can give to others.

Aransas: It is. It's a continuous practice and I think most of us learn it. Through practically, I mean, we, yes, we can hear the adage and we can say, yeah, I get it. Logically, it makes sense to take care of myself, but it [00:21:30] isn't until we hear practically and tactically how people do it that we start to see ourselves both in the care and lack thereof.

Katie: Well, I have a few non negotiables for myself that I know if they are not a part of my life. It's bad news bears. All of the servers are down. [00:22:00] Everything is on the fritz. It's not good for anybody. I am diligent about my sleep and I also give myself grace because I know I, and everybody is different, but I know my specific like amount of hours that I [00:22:15] need, which also by the way, changes when I am on my cycle because my body is doing completely different things.

I need silent time throughout the day. I don't care if it's 10 minutes or, you know, it's multiple hours. It would be incredible if it's multiple hours, but life keeps lifing and, [00:23:00] and just that does not happen sometimes, but I need what I call no talky time and I need to not people because I love people, but I am a very textbook introvert when it comes to my [00:23:15] battery life.

In the times in which they need help, because then a, I'm able to help and support them in the way that they need to be supported versus the way that I think they need to be supported. And I protect [00:24:00] myself from doing the mental gymnastics of trying to read between the lines and do all of the work. I mean, this is also something as someone who is a professional and certified.

external processor and so sometimes she just like needs to talk and she just needs to process and have me listen and sort of respond [00:24:45] to her. That not only serves the other person but it helps protect my own energy and use my energy wisely where it is of service.

And so I think really that clarity is an energy preservation system. And one of our hacks for this that we share back and forth to each other when we can't figure out how to ask that question. [00:25:15] of what do you need from me because sometimes that's a hard question to ask.

Katie: Totally. Yeah. Even if you've asked it in the

Aransas: past with people.

Especially if you grew up masking and so we literally put it into chat GPT and we're like, how do I ask this?

Aransas: As do I. It makes me much bolder and more direct when I need to be. When I need to take my own mush and voice, sometimes I need to pour my mush and voice [00:25:45] in there and that's what brings things to life.

But it's really great at taking all my human mess and limiting beliefs out of the equation and just saying. Help me ask this in the most direct way possible.

Emails were the hardest. [00:26:15] The time that I sought out treatment when I was like, okay, I know I'm high functioning, but I've not come this far to get this far, was when I was sending out emails to get the blurbs for my book and it took so much energy out of me. I was so [00:26:30] mentally exhausted and I would like end the day and I was like, I tried to write one email today and I couldn't write that email and I was like, it's time for treatment.

And sometimes you don't even know what that sort of directness. would look, sound, feel like.

Katie: Totally. If you keep writing in qualifiers for ChatGPT, make this more fun.

Aransas: What am I actually trying to say?

What's

Aransas: the fear under that? Yeah.

Music: And

Katie: then ask it, following that up with, with a whole host of why's, like, okay, what is the why behind that?

Aransas: Yes.

Katie: Like that's your brain assuming how you need to be helped.

is that you have this inner ally that just needs to be taught [00:29:00] how to actually help you.

Exactly. And when we're under stress, our perspective gets so tiny and narrow. Mm hmm. [00:29:30] And we're like, this is the problem to solve. And we ignore the 4, 000 other sort of more strategic things going on that are influencing or contributing to that little problem. The problem is a result of, [00:29:45] and then when we step back a little bit, without that constricting layer of stress, we can say, Oh, Look at

Katie: that.

It's these little things, and there's like so much research on this, and we don't have to get into it, like people can, people can ask chat to UBT about it. But there's so much research on the way that these, like, [00:30:30] building blocks affect the way that we process stress. or don't process it. And sometimes it really is about, okay, how can I set myself up for as much success as possible, knowing that I [00:30:45] am human, not a robot, and I will experience stress and stressful experiences in my life.

But how can you set yourself up through whether it's your physical daily practices, your mindset work that you are doing, the people that you surround yourself with, the people that you go to when life is lifing and you're in [00:31:30] those tough spots. How can you set your stressful self up for success?

Aransas: As I think about everything you've said, to me the strongest theme throughout is the practice of self awareness.

Music: Mm hmm.

Katie: Self awareness times action.

Aransas: Because

So what are you going to do about it? Because it is really easy to convince ourselves that we are [00:32:30] doing something to live the lives that we want to live, to make the changes we want to make. All we're doing is actually just thinking about it.

Aransas: Thinking about it.

Katie: Yeah. Because it feels active inside our brains.

Aransas: Right. And for some of us, that's really the only way to learn. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It's through the doing. I could definitely [00:33:00] talk to you for two more hours.

Katie: Well, I think that the biggest thing, what I hope through this conversation and through all of the work that I do. I hope to help people feel empowered to bring their full self [00:33:30] to the stage of their own life and to use all of the goods that they have been given and move forward fearlessly and really be the people they know they are.

That's how that comes to life. And so you might not know what you are passionate about or what you're good at. You might have so many things that you're passionate about and you're good at that people have told you in the past to like, you know, [00:34:45] Ross Geller, like, like tone it down, like niche down. And, you know, I want to tell people that you have all of what makes you you for a reason, and life is short, but it is also wide, [00:35:00] and you have that to use all of the parts of yourselves and bring, bring all of those parts to the table.

Aransas: Yeah, it is. I did research at one point on the very question, what does it mean to live [00:35:30] up? And I think I got close to 5, 000 responses and in synthesis saw that it really boiled down to three things.

Music: Mm hmm.

Katie: Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. I've loved hanging out with you.

Thank you for listening to The Uplifters Podcast. If you're getting a boost from these episodes, please share them with The Uplifters in your life and then join us in [00:36:15] conversation over at TheUpliftersPodcast. com. Head over to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Play. Wherever you get your podcast and like, follow and rate our show, it'll really help us connect with more uplifters [00:36:30] and it'll ensure you never miss one of these beautiful stories.

Mm,

Lift you up, whoa, lift you up, whoa, lift you [00:37:30] up, whoa, lift you up, do do do do, do do do do do. Beautiful. I [00:37:45] cried. Right? In the pre chorus, right? I was like Mommy, stop crying. Mommy,

Nomination: stop crying. You're disturbing the peace.