(Listen & Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart or TuneIn)

If you’re succeeding on paper but feeling flat, wired, or quietly exhausted, this episode will land. Executive coach and spiritual teacher Keren Eldad joins me for a conversation that cuts through the noise and gets to the real root of burnout. We talk about the relentless pursuit of “more,” the hidden cost of being a high performer, and why peace and purpose start with better questions, not bigger goals.

Keren blends psychology, Kabbalah, and grounded compassion to help you dismantle sloppy thinking and come home to yourself. You’ll learn how to begin self-inquiry without overwhelm, why self-compassion has to come before growth, what Tikkun really means, and what to do when you’re in a dark place. We also explore soulmates, redefining success from the inside out, and the simple daily practices that keep you anchored. Press play, and let this one shift something deep.

About Keren Eldad

Keren Eldad is a globally recognised executive coach, speaker, and spiritual thought leader who helps high achievers dismantle burnout, master self-inquiry, and create success that feels meaningful and sustainable. Her work weaves psychology, spirituality, and Kabbalah to guide people back to clarity, wholeness, and truth.

In this episode we chat about:

• Why Keren’s path into this work started with a breaking point, not a blueprint (2:20)
• The burnout “warning signs” high performers ignore until it’s too late (3:22)
• Why being “good” has nothing to do with perfection, and everything to do with presence (4:17)
• The sneaky ways sloppy thinking keeps you stuck, even when you’re doing “all the right things” (5:23)
• The inner work most people avoid, and why it’s the only thing that actually changes you (7:54)
• The self-inquiry questions that cut through spirals in under five minutes (9:26)
• The one Kabbalah principle that can reframe your entire life overnight (12:12)
• The hard truths that stayed with me long after we hit stop (15:42)
• What Tikkun really means, and why “correction” can set you free (18:25)
• Why compassion must come before growth, or the work turns into self-attack (20:59)
• The “relentless pursuit of more” trap, and how it silently empties your life (21:46)
• The daily practices that make transformation inevitable, not occasional (25:00)
• The first step when you’re in a dark place, and you don’t know what to do next (27:24)
• A grounded way to think about soulmates that won’t keep you waiting for a fantasy (30:41)
• What “gilded” really means, and why it matters more than you think (32:28)
• Keren’s definition of success, and why it dismantles hustle culture at the root (33:38)

Episode resources:

• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Keren Eldad (website)
• Keren Eldad (Instagram)
• GILDED: Break Free From the Cage of Ambition by Karen Eldad (book)
• COACHED (podcast)
• Keren Eldad’s programs (shop)
• The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self by Martha Beck (book)
• David Ghiyam (website)
• Brené Brown (website)
• Kristin Neff (website)
• The Four Agreements (book)

Prefer To Read?

The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa 

bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic, 

and I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in.

Your own life and become the best version of yourself possible. Are you ready? Beautiful, beautiful. Hello and welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about this episode because we have Karen Lda here. And we are talking about what happens when ambition stops serving you. Now, she is known as Coach Karen, and she’s a top executive coach who helps high achievers move from constant striving into real success and [00:01:00] fulfillment.

She’s coached everyone from Olympic athletes to global leaders and works with organizations like Estee Lauder, JP Morgan, and Nike. She’s the founder of the Club, speaks four languages and has been recognized as a top 10 executive coach by the International Coaching Federation, real Leaders Magazine and Goop.

And some of the things that we’re gonna dive deep into today are talking about executive burnout, the hidden cost of high performance, and how to lead beyond hustle culture. We also unpack perfectionism purpose and the emotional side of business success, including why dropping anger changes everyth. And for everything that we mention in today’s episode, you can check out in the show notes and that’s over@melissaambrosini.com slash 6 9 0.

This is one you’re gonna wanna take notes, so let’s dive in.

Okay, [00:02:00] Karen, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you here. But before we dive in, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning? 

Keren: Thank you, Melissa. I have prepared in advance for this question, and I’d like to tell you that this morning I had a very heavy protein yogurt with zero sugar and my usual cup of coffee.

Melissa: Well, like I said, I am pumped to have you here and I’m so excited for you to share your story. How did you get into this work? How did this all unfold for you 

Keren: came by this, honestly, like most teachers, through an enormous spiritual crisis. The spiritual crisis resulted in the dismantling of the illusions of my former life, and ultimately led me to the work that I really scoffed at.

I mean, you know how many of us start out as cynics and think that this universe is filled with woo wooy and unacademic nonsense. I was the president of that club for many, many years, and it [00:03:00] wasn’t until I started to realize that I was in a sham marriage, an abusive marriage. I was in a job that really didn’t light me up and that most of my results in life were not only displeasing but subpar that I finally let the work in and it changed everything.

And that’s it. I started buying the Kool-Aid and then I started teaching the Kool-Aid. 

Melissa: I love it. So you now teach top leaders how to not burn out. ’cause that is a big thing for so many people. So I mean, tell us your secrets. 

Keren: I like to tell people that what I teach people to do is not, not to burn out, it’s not to sell out, to stop making a fian bargain or a deal with the devil, Melissa.

So many people get into absolutely any industry hoping to get to the top, mostly because they were really, really after status, and of course financial remuneration. But those things will ultimately turn you into a shark, and as soon as they start turning you into a shark, you behave like one. When you [00:04:00] do, you don’t just sell out your nervous system many times you sell out your ethics too.

This is my job. My job is to start showing you that if you don’t feel good, it’s because you’re not behaving well either. So if you wanna feel good, you should be good. And we come back to basically being what we are, which is good. 

Melissa: Okay, so what is good? 

Keren: Good is integrity. It’s honesty. That’s easier said than done, isn’t it?

Have you by any chance read Martha Becks The Way of Integrity? 

Melissa: No, I haven’t. 

Keren: One of my favorite books of the last five years, most likely, and it’s just a different word for vulnerability and it’s a different word for honesty, integrity is just don’t lie. When I read that book and I had at that point been coached within an inch of my life, I’ve been teaching this work, and she said, just stop lying in the middle of the book.

I slammed it shut. How dare you accuse me of lying Martha and threw the book away. And then I thought about it. Really, all of our stress comes from just places in which we’re still [00:05:00] compromising ourselves, places in which we’re still betraying ourselves. And that was basically it That started to really inform my ethos and to help people just see that overwhelm is a form of S floppy thinking.

Suffering is a form of floppy thinking. All of these are disingenuous behaviors, and if we come back to the truth, to some form of purity, we can dismantle most of this. 

Melissa: How do we dismantle it? 

Keren: Well, the beginning is to be honest with ourselves. The first person you have to be honest with is yourself. My book Gilded is actually structured in as a 12 step program, reflective of another 12 step program, the Alcoholics Anonymous Program, and the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous is of course, admit that you have a problem.

Most alcoholics or any kind of addict if you talk to them, will say, I can quit anytime, and that’s a lie. So the first light to dismantle is I don’t have any problems. You do. My first chapter is admitted. Your life doesn’t feel as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. [00:06:00] There’s some stuff in there that you’ve been repressing, ignoring, moving into the oblivion, glossing over.

You are still restless. You are still aimless. Your results are not pleasing to you. If you can reach that degree of honesty, then the second will be outward honesty. And you can do that in two ways. You can’t do it by not involving humans at all, just by diving into the books and allowing yourself to have honest dialogues with the books, with the podcasts, with programs like so many of the magical things that you offer.

Or you can take it to a next level, which is to an empathetic teacher who’s gonna sit here without judgment and listen and help you. That’s it. Those are the two things. 

Melissa: Mm. And the thing is, is like we all have stuff like, we all have stuff that we need to look at. The alternative is to completely be delusional to the fact that we have nothing to sweep everything under the carpet, [00:07:00] to just move through our life ignorant.

But that’s not why we’re here. It’s not why we’re here, and it ain’t for the faint hearted. But you know, it doesn’t have to be tumultuous. 

Keren: Yeah. It doesn’t have to be tumultuous. And o Oprah has quoted, I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson saying The unexamined life is not worth living. Listen, I don’t know what people’s level of karma is, so I, I, I’m not here to make big pronouncements like that, but I think the most susceptible people to this, or teachers, when many of us really become very deeply ingrained in the work.

We can become completely oblivious to the fact that we are still human, we are still flawed, and we’ve still got some serious stuff going on. So for me, this, this is a yoga practice. This is a, a living meditation, a living reflection, and everyone should hopefully be able to engage with it at least a couple of times in their lifetime.

Melissa: So how do we do this inner work, 

Keren: you know very well. How, but [00:08:00] let’s share with some people a few of the, the ways in. The beginning is to go into an inquiry process. Many people have different inquiry processes. Of course, Byron Katie famously has the work. This is the beginning of using methodologies to question your thoughts, also known as mindfulness work.

There are many options that are available. Active Insight by Andrew Bernstein is another method that’s really wonderful. Ole espouses, a form of meditation form of questioning, and so you can start to engage with any of these tactics. The second is to really go on a deep dive with the teacher, and I personally find that that’s more useful.

The reason for that, Melissa, is most of us cannot see our own blind spots. Isn’t that true? 

Melissa: Mm. 

Keren: This was certainly my case. I mean, the more I read, the more I was just not understanding what I was doing wrong. And then the second I hired a teacher, she could see it from a mile away. I still remember just being astounded at how fast she got straight there.[00:09:00] 

So that really helps you to unpack things and from there you can start to integrate more ideas and more. Conceptual tools that will get you to the other side. Now, this sounds super simple, but as you just said, it’s, it’s brutal. It’s a, the inquiry process is never easy. Brene Brown has called it a caged fight with your soul.

And I concur as someone who’s been through a midlife crisis too. It is, but you’ll come out of it much better. It’s worth it. 

Melissa: Mm. So besides getting a teacher, how can someone start to dive into self inquiry today? What strategies do you have? 

Keren: One of the strategies that I offer is the Pause principle, and a second one is a journal methodology that I like to use, particularly defined our purpose.

So the Pause principle is basically my version of the work. It’s a Kabbalah amalgam that I’ve implemented in my life. It’s essentially whenever you are challenged, in order to teach yourself, to [00:10:00] inquire your thoughts, in other words, to question your thoughts and to come out the other side, refraining your thoughts, which will help you get to the truth of what’s actually happening rather than your interpretation of what’s happening, which is gonna have you reacting in all kinds of ways.

Just take a pause, and in that pause, ask three questions, three simple questions. Number one, is the problem, the problem, or is the way I’m about to respond? The bigger problem. Disclaimer, it’s you. The second question is, is there any other way to see this? And the third question is, what’s the opportunity here?

If you can go through this even as a journaling exercise. Now I can do this back of my mind like this, but if you can really start to just journal on these things, you will see that if you start to question your thoughts regularly and the the challenges in your life regularly. For example, I don’t have enough money or no, clients are appearing anytime soon or I can’t get pregnant.

Just start journaling on these is the problem, the problem is the way I’m responding, a bigger problem. Is there any other way to see this? Is there an [00:11:00] opportunity here? You will start to soften and distance yourself from thoughts that are causing you suffering and causing you to be stuck. The second tool that I wanna offer people is to start getting really, really clear on what they truly prefer, because that’s another way of breaking free.

Another way of breaking free is to find your purpose or at least get close to it. And in that sense, I want people to journal on. Just the following meditative questions. Number one, what do I do naturally? What is my natural talent? What’s super easy for me? There are three different ways to get to that.

Number two, what have I always preferred? And number three, what would I do if nobody paid me? They’re very simple questions. They may even sound like varietals of the same question. They sort of are, but they’ll get you closer and closer to where you truly wanna go. That hopefully will start to make it clear for you why here is causing you suffering.

I hope those make sense and are useful to everybody listening. 

Melissa: I absolutely love Kabbalah. [00:12:00] I am studying Kabbalah. I’m a student of Kabbalah. I absolutely love it. 

Keren: Who’s your teacher? 

Melissa: I love David Gim. 

Keren: That’s my Rob. 

Melissa: Yeah, he’s amazing. So talk to me about some of the. Principles that you embody in your life that have changed your life.

Keren: The number one forever and ever, and the rough changed my life. Shout out to David Guim was the best, best teacher ever. Love him forever and ever. I studied with him for years and until he one day literally said to me, you have nothing more to do. Here. Go Satan. Satan is the way of understanding the ego.

Ka ballistically. Satan in Hebrew, which is my native tongue, does not mean Satan or devil with horns. This is a gentile concoction. Satan in Hebrew means opponent or adversary in this four day stance. You know, if you’re playing [00:13:00] tennis, you don’t wanna play with somebody who can’t play, right? If you’re playing chess, you don’t wanna play with somebody who can’t play.

You want a really formidable opponent. People forget that Satan was a fallen angel. His job is not to come against you. It’s to make you better. It’s to make you a better player. The best book I can recommend from the entire Kabbalah library is Satan, an autobiography by R Berg, especially on Audible because it’s read by a super creepy male voice that literally sounds like the devil.

And when I started to personify my thoughts that were causing me suffering AKA, my ego thoughts as him, I couldn’t see them as me anymore. Melissa. This became really just a concept that personified something for me, and that allowed me to use that pause principle that I would, I just walked through in a way that was way better for me because I wasn’t making myself the problem anymore.

I started to understand that I have an opponent, and that opponent is not here to kill me. He’s here to make me better. You know, the best trick [00:14:00] that the devil ever played is making us believe that he doesn’t exist. That’s a line from a great nineties movie called. The usual suspect, and once I started to make him flesh because of this kabbalistic principle, everything changed.

I had a sparring partner. Kabbalah gives you a sparring partner. 

Melissa: Mm. So in 2015, my first book, mastering Your Mean Girl, came out. And that’s basically what I’m talking about, the inner mean girl. That’s the sort of Satan, the ego. Whatever you wanna call it. That’s what I’m referring to. This was before I had Kabbalah, and it really helped me to create a little character for that fear-based, negative egoic voice inside my head.

The opponent. It helped me to differentiate it from my truth, from who I truly was, which is unconditional love, which is light, and that [00:15:00] one distinction. Differentiation has helped me so much, so much in my healing journey because like you said, it’s then not me. It’s not me who is sitting in fear. It is the opponent.

It is the inner mean girl. It is Satan, whatever you wanna call it. So I love that they word it this way and it’s helped so many people. 

Keren: Yeah. The soul is here to just receive light and receive light, receive light. Every time we pinch ourself off from that, it’s not us. It is really, really useful. It, it’s definitely helps me not take myself so seriously anymore.

Are there any principles that have really sat very deeply with you? 

Melissa: So many? Well, firstly, I love pause. What a pleasure. 

Keren: What a pleasure. 

Melissa: That’s been a game changer, even just looking at all of my reactive behavior and transforming my reactive behavior. [00:16:00] The idea of Satan and the opponent, my tuns, my corrections has been so game changing for me.

His three steps in certainty. I love that. That’s again, been so game changing for me because in those moments of space, the unknown, what’s next? It’s allowed me to just fill inner peace because I have certainty. ’cause I trust. So I love that as well. There’s so many. 

Keren: I especially like, what a pleasure. What a pleasure.

Or something that the ref says every time you’re in a room and you’re very, very uncomfortable or something very difficult has happened to you, get in the habit. At first, he used to say of ordering everyone around or drinks at the bar. I think he thought I was like out partying all the time. And then say, what a pleasure.

And you know, I have gotten into the habit of this because while I was studying Kabbalah in Kabbalah one the first round. All of my things burned in a fire. I was gone through a tremendous period of correction, almost all [00:17:00] my life disintegrated. And I remember by then literally showing up and calling my best friend Janie and saying, Janie, bring a, a shot glass and let’s, let’s toast because what a pleasure.

I literally learned to reframe difficult things. Just what a pleasure is, is something that I teach other people to do because most of the things, most of the webs that we weave, that tangle us up in suffering, make us make poor decisions, move us into reactive behavior are ultimately because we’re trying to avoid pain.

But if we start to see moments of challenges, what a pleasure. I mean, there is no reason to run anymore. You just lean in, adjust your tie and show up to enjoy the party. Right? 

Melissa: Yeah. It’s been such a game changer for myself and my husband. We’ve both been studying Kabbalah and we just love it and we’ve implemented it into our home, and it’s just been such a game changer for our relationship and also for the way that I parent, I can observe.

Before the reactive [00:18:00] behavior plays out now, which is so amazing, and I’m not a perfect human, but I can see, I’m like, Ooh, yeah, I can feel that. I wanna react here and I can transform it. And that’s the growth, that’s the magic. 

Keren: That’s the transformation of light. Yes, the toolbox is magnificent. It’s definitely something that I return to again and again in my discipline.

Melissa: What other ones do you love? What other Cabalistic principles have helped you? 

Keren: You know, I think that the second most transformative concept is something else that you touched on, which is tikun or correction. I used to think that it meant correction of the soul, but the soul doesn’t need any correction.

What it really means is the allowing of the personality to start to follow the soul, the correction of the personality. And the refinement in life is the goal. It’s the game. It’s the whole game. So if I came here with [00:19:00] something to overcome in order to allow my soul to truly shine, then once that’s overcome, I can truly just start to live here as a soul.

It gave me something to, to look forward to, to work towards, and truly it’s been my North Star ever since I started to understand it.

What did I come here to correct? I have to say in my marriage too, I am remarried to the most wonderful man who has ever lived, and it’s also because of the cabalistic understanding of soulmates as the correction, as the refinement, as coming in for the refinement of each other’s soul. That’s a completely different understanding of love.

Here, save me. We’re here to dance. 

Melissa: 100%. I’ve always said, my husband and I like, we are two whole beings and we’ve come together to just share our wholeness. We are two delicious, organic, vegan, gluten-free [00:20:00] cupcakes. And you know, here’s the sprinkles on top. I don’t need the sprinkles at all. I’m delicious and whole and amazing just as I am, but like he’s an embellishment there and it’s beautiful to share my life with him and to.

Go on this journey together, but there’s no need or attachment and these cabalistic principles, it’s a system for living. It’s a way of living. And I’m like, why doesn’t everybody know about it? 

Keren: It’s also a code for getting rich. It is. It’s an, it’s a wealth code and once you really, really start to understand it, you start to really line up with it.

It’s actually very similar to the second discipline that’s had an enormous impact on me, which is the law of attraction. If you really start to understand the laws as laws and you line up with them. In other words, you line up your behaviors and your thoughts with them. That’s it. It’s gonna work out.

Melissa: Yeah. I love that. So important. Any others that [00:21:00] you love? 

Keren: Oh, there’s so much. Really. There’s almost too much to mention, but I will borrow a little bit from academia. There’s one other philosophy that I want people to become very acquainted with. Gilded fuses, almost all of them together. But I borrow heavily from Kabbalah.

I borrow very, very heavily from the law of attraction, which will probably feature more heavily in my next book, guilt Free. But the third is the concept of self-compassion, the academic nomenclature of self-compassion, and the work of Brene Brown and Kristin Neff. And if you take those three together, you’ll see that they line up perfectly with each other.

They’re actually saying the same thing in three different ways, and they give you enormous amounts of tools to live a real integrous life. A guilt-free life. A pure life. 

Melissa: Mm. Beautiful. I love that. So your book, gilded, breaking Free from the Cage of Ambition, perfectionism and the relentless pursuit of more, I feel like that relentless pursuit of more is kind of fueled by social [00:22:00] media and I know I can feel within myself so immensely content and peaceful.

And then I open that app and I instantly feel. I’m not doing enough in my parenting, in my career, in my relationship, and I’m like, wow, I’ve just gone from the most beautiful feeling of inner peace, presence, contentment, love, light, and I open one app and it changes. So what do we do? 

Keren: Well, thank you for being vulnerable.

I think it’s really wonderful for people to hear that we are human. Everybody can get triggered. These apps are designed to trigger you the most important things that you can do. Number one is the outside work, spiritual work. I remember when I met David, he said that he practices kabbala every day, and he doesn’t know where his life would be without it.

I know what he’s talking about today. I cannot live without the work. I do not open apps before meditating. [00:23:00] I do not open apps before reading or before the self-study and before really modifying. My inner world is intact first, and then I invite the outside in. The second is the disciplined consumption of it and the disciplined consumption of it is to bring to it a mindfulness that is aware of the fact that this is nonsense.

It is nonsense. How many likes you’re getting. How many likes other people are getting, what other people are doing, what other people are saying about having children and how to parent and how to be in a relationship. It’s all phony, baloney, nonsense. So really the best way to do this is to truly approach these apps like a grownup and to show up only to consume what you really believe is of value to you.

I consume amazing channels like yours that are inspiring and uplifting and sharing. Honestly, we sold three businesses. I wanna talk to you about this. Let me give you a couple of real tips, real talk. Let’s share enormous moments, and of course, number two, cat videos. And that’s it. [00:24:00] Inspiration in CAT videos, and really if you consume it that way, then this is a tool for joy, like absolutely everything else.

But you can only do that when your inner game is pretty strong first, and that’s really what I encourage everybody to do. Do you know, it’s sort of like the health thing. If your body, if you’re not watching how you eat and you’re not watching how you work out, then with due respect when a disease comes your way, your immunity’s pretty shot.

Good luck. But if you’ve been doing the work, you’ve prepared your vessel. You are, well, come and get me. 

Melissa: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That’s where we wanna be. We wanna be at that place where your inner foundation is so sturdy that whatever happens on the outside, you are not rocked. 

Keren: Yeah. Because the outside is never gonna get better, but you will.

You will. 

Melissa: Yeah. And I understand [00:25:00] like what you were saying before about how these principles every day, like every single day, these principles are lived in our house and it’s just been such a game changer. Like we will forever be students 

Keren: forever and ever. Absolutely. You know, it’s funny, my clients, I, some of them, one of them actually expressed.

Did surprise when I said if I quit this for a couple of weeks, I’d be out. And she said, what are you talking about? You’re enlightened. And I was like, why do you think I am? Because I do this every day. Every day. Just like the gym. You don’t get to keep a hot body. I am now circling 50. I still look fantastic.

Without going to the gym. There’s literally no other way. Right? 

Melissa: Yeah. Same with eating. Well, going to the gym, your mindset, they’re all muscles. You don’t just do a detox or go on a retreat and then you are like, okay, now I can eat junk food again. It doesn’t work like that. It’s the same with your body, like physically, and then it’s the same with your mindset.

You don’t just. [00:26:00] Do Kabbalah one and then go, okay, I can just feed my soul junk now. It doesn’t work like that. And someone once said to me too, on Instagram just recently, I thought you never had any issues. And I was like, have you been reading my work? 

Keren: Yeah. Are you, are you actually following? We’re all long old people, but you’re, you’re absolutely right to say this.

And ultimately that’s what integrity is. It’s consistency. It’s a form of consistency. It doesn’t just happen. It takes a lot of work, but it’s so worth it. It really is. 

Melissa: Well, the alternative is ignorance. Is pain, is suffering, is blame 

Keren: bad marriages, poverty, brokeness, aimlessness. I mean, I could go on, but Karen, 10 years ago is not Karen today.

And let me tell you, I, I think I’ve discovered kryptonite like I’m, I’m gonna go with this. 

Melissa: Hmm. Yeah, it’s amazing. I love that so much. I, I had no idea [00:27:00] that you were a fellow Kabbalah lover like I am. So that’s such a nice bonus. 

Keren: Yeah, it’s a joy to share it with the world. It’s really a joy to share it with the world and all of the works really, I mean, all teachers ultimately have been informed by great work, and that’s I think one of the things I’m always looking for in teachers.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What would be the first step for someone who feels like they are really in a dark place at the moment? 

Keren: Don’t ignore it and ask for help. If you’re in particularly a dark place, I was suicidal. If you’re in a truly dark place, the best thing that you can do is speak to somebody as quickly as possible who will listen without judgment.

Again, you can do this anonymously. In the United States and in 15 other countries, we have a hotline called Crisis Text Line. You may talk to us at any time anonymously via [00:28:00] text or speak to a friend you love and trust and ask for help. When we are truly in a dark place, the first thing we need is compassion, and it’s harder for us to give it to ourselves.

That compassion will most likely give you a little respite. With that respite, you’ll be more receptive to any of the following steps. If you’re really in a dark place, if you’re in grief, if you are truly weary, the first thing you need is compassion and rest, not the work. Thank you. For us, that’s a always very important caveat.

Many people come to me when they are in grief, and I always say, I can give you love right now. I can give you love. I can witness this. I can help you by listening and by talking about them, but we cannot do the work. It pleased to hear. 

Melissa: Exactly. It’s kind of like if a child is worked up, like I have two kids, and if my 4-year-old is worked up and [00:29:00] distressed, there’s no point in me trying to quote, unquote teach her a lesson or whatever.

In that moment, it is just about holding her, holding her, loving her, holding her breathing with her heart to heart. It’s okay baby, I’m here. Like that is what I do. And, and then, you know, later or the next day I can say, Hey, you know, if something happened, maybe we won’t touch that again. Or climb up there again, or whatever it is.

Whatever the situation was. So, you know, I think about this so much with our relationships and with ourselves. Like when I’m feeling worked up, like doing that to myself. I got you babe. I love you. You’re okay. I got you. And like I just want my husband to do that sometimes to me when I’m activated, I just want him to hold me and just say, it’s gonna be okay.

Don’t try and fix me. Just hold me. 

Keren: I mean, poor thing. He’s a [00:30:00] man. That’s what their default is. How can I solve this? Let’s work through this. My husband in particular is like, well run through this. So I really have learned the value of doing this for myself and always just checking in on myself and being super cheesy and saying things like, what do you need?

And many times I literally hear myself say, I need to rest. I just need to rest. It’s funny because for overachievers, this is a very difficult thing. They really love to move into action. They want to move into action, and they don’t love it. When coach says. I’m gonna need you to take a couple of days off.

Truth is you need a timeout. You need a hug? 

Melissa: Mm. Yeah. Some love. 

Keren: Yeah. 

Melissa: Speaking of love, talk about soulmates and you know, something that many people want is to find their love. Yeah. How do we do that? 

Keren: Oh, it’s very easy. We become the beloved. You really want to attract the love of your life. Think for a second [00:31:00] about the qualities that you’re interested in attracting, and then ask, do I embody those qualities?

Your job is to line up with those qualities. When I understood this, really it’s basically changing lack to love. Cooperate. Believe me, I am beneath the line. I am not worthy, so I need this person to complete me. In these departments, you will only attract chaos. But a soulmate, like you said, is somebody who’s not here to complete anything.

I must first be whole. And so if I must first behold, I have to ask myself, what am I holding up as what I desire, and do I already embody this? Do I already possess this? So I thought about a lot. I thought, well, what do I really, really want? What would feel right? Ease, comfort, love, generosity, integrity, decency, reliability.

And then I truly said about looking at my own life [00:32:00] and closing those gaps. Absolutely. Adamant that I would close those gaps first. And when I became those things, I knew it was inevitable that I would meet a perfect match. And I did, and this is true how I coach people. I literally coach you to line up within yourself because that’s what love is.

Love is a, an alignment with yourself that’s so profound that it becomes magnetic. 

Melissa: Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. What does gilded mean? 

Keren: Gilded means covered in gold, but not real gold, fake gold. And the analogy is of a gilded cage, which if you’re watching the video, you can see the cover of the book. Gilded Cage is of course, the analogy for a very fancy, very beautiful trap, and many of my clients, overachievers like me, find themselves in a life that looks fantastic from the outside and that feels very comfortable on the inside, but is in fact a trap because it’s not.

Actually [00:33:00] emblematic of your freedom and my job is to show you that the door’s open and all you gotta do is make the decision where you’re gonna fly and you will. And then you’ll live a life that’s real. 

Melissa: Mm. Takes courage and trust. 

Keren: Yeah, it did. I can do it. Anybody else can. And it’s worth it, isn’t it?

Melissa: Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, the alternative is suffering pain. Suppression, anxiety, overwhelm. 

Keren: Yeah. That’s a hard no for me, so, 

Melissa: yeah, exactly. What’s your definition of success? 

Keren: To me, success is satisfaction with what is an eagerness for more. It’s a really important one ’cause I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

It’s a form of, it’s one of the definitions I also use for happiness satisfaction with what is, is the state of truly, truly loving what you have. That’s real success. Real success is. [00:34:00] This in Hebrew, we say, Eno, this is enough, this is enough, this is always enough. I will take it and I will say thank you.

And in addition to that, I’m also eager for more. I’m not obsessed more, I’m not relentlessly pursuing more. I’m not constantly thinking about my next meal while I’m eating my present meal. I’m just always open to more. This is a very nice state of success. This is a reverence for life. This is the state of being tantalized by the creating and not obsessed with the creation.

That, to me, is best. It’s supposed to feel good. I love reminding this everywhere I go to people, but success supposed to feel good to you. If it doesn’t feel good, something’s off. 

Melissa: Yeah. I’m in a phase of my life where I’m reimagining everything. 

Keren: Yeah. You guys are going through a big transition now, huh?

Melissa: Huge. Just sold three businesses, had our second [00:35:00] baby. So much transformation, so much change. And sitting in that unknown, if I didn’t have Kabbalah uncertainty, like I would be totally. Drowning, but I just, I have certainty that this is happening for me, and the next thing will be presented to me. It’s brought up a lot, which is great for me to look at, and that’s why we’re here.

Huh? 

Keren: I love what you said on some of your channels. That this is actually a conscious choice. It’s not just that you have certainty, it’s that you’re making a deliberate choice that is aligned with that certainty and what you know for sure is your worth. What you know for sure is that this will deliver for you, so if you make a decision from there, you can make the decisions, even the ones that are counterintuitive, as you said in your channels with clarity.

And of course they’ll work out. They will work out. 

Melissa: [00:36:00] Yeah. Like selling three businesses is like, just trust the certain Yeah. Trust, trust, trust. 

Keren: Yeah. Not anything will work out, but I do, I have tremendous phase this year has been, we launched the book six months ago and I, I don’t mind telling you, Melissa, it’s been a huge success and so.

As a result of that, many of my friends have been encouraging me to make bombastic move just as you were on the verge of, all right, let’s do this and let’s move forward and let’s do the linear thing. But I don’t really want to, I have certain beyond reason that my way is gonna work better, so I’m just gonna step back and do exactly what I wanna do, and I think it’s gonna work because it always does.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. It does. I love that so much. Now let’s pretend you have a magic wand and you could put one book in the school curriculum of every high school around the world. Besides your book, what book would you choose? [00:37:00] 

Keren: Oh, that’s easy. And by the way, the only reason it’s not a Kabbalah book is because I like it to be neutral and appropriate for all ages ’cause at school.

And that is The Four Agreements by Domi, Miguel Ruiz. 

Melissa: A few people have mentioned that on the show. It’s an amazing book. If you haven’t read it, go and read it. I’ve had Don Miguel Reese Jr. On the podcast and yeah, it’s such a game changer. It’s so easy to digest and implement into your life. So definitely read that if you haven’t already.

Keren: And every reading is, is deeper. 

Melissa: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Now let’s talk about your day. I love hearing about how. People prime themselves for the day, a quote unquote typical day in your life. So can you talk us through a typical day for you? 

Keren: Yeah, so I’m the most regimented person on the planet, which sounds boring, but is really great because it’s easy for me to tell you about my day.

Super Virgo, by the way. I wake up, I eat my [00:38:00] breakfast, have a cup of coffee, very light breakfast, because I work out right afterwards. I usually go to either a Pilates class or to a spinning class. My husband keeps telling me that I need to do weights, but I’m not interested either way. I am working out every single day and then I come back home.

I usually coach for two hours, take a break. During that break, I take a walk around the lake. I live right on the lake, right here in Austin, Texas. Listen to a podcast or zone out. With one of Eckhart’s guided meditations. Come back, coach for two more hours, do my recaps and follow ups and reply to emails.

And then the evening portion begins three out of seven nights. I am quite social, so I’m out. I’m doing stuff. The days in which I’m not working, which is three days a week, I’m writing, so just swap coaching for writing and that’s it. That’s what my typical days are like. They are. They’re fun. I, they include a husband and cats in the [00:39:00] occasional television show, but they’re very, 

Melissa: and do you coach one-on-one or is this group containers 

Keren: Both.

I still coach one-on-one because I believe there’s no substitute for it. And in addition, I also have my advanced coaching cohorts, which are usually groups of 20 people like the club or coach with Enthusiasm, which is a coach, coach program. And those run all the time, so I’m, I’m usually doing both.

Melissa: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Beautiful. I love that 

Keren: because I’m a speaker, so I’m on a plane for about one day a week. 

Melissa: Mm. Beautiful. I love that. Thank you for sharing. Now let’s do some rapid fires. Are you ready? 

Keren: Yes, ma’am. 

Melissa: What’s one thing that we can do today for our health? 

Keren: Love yourself. Be easy on yourself. 

Melissa: Mm-hmm. Yes.

What’s one thing we can do for our wealth? 

Keren: You should become very interested in it and read wealth consciousness books, [00:40:00] preferably religiously. 

Melissa: Yes. And what’s one thing we can do for our love? 

Keren: You should adore and understand how wonderful you are. 

Melissa: Hmm. Beautiful. This has been so beautiful to dive deeper with you, to hear.

Your wisdom. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us or any last parting words of wisdom that you have? 

Keren: I think the best wisdom I can share is that everything that you’re sharing on this program is worth it for everyone. This journey is truly about delivery, not only of central pleasure in this lifetime.

Of paradise on Earth. I think it’s really worth it. I know I sound like I’m drinking the Kool-Aid, but I am. I truly won’t get, if somebody finally heard something in them that made them make the decision to go all in, that they go all in ’cause it ends really well. 

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. You are helping so many people.

You are serving so many people with your [00:41:00] work, with your coaching, with your book, with everything that you do. You’re speaking. How can I and the listeners give back and serve you today? 

Keren: Please connect with me on at Coach Karen. That’s with two E’s on Instagram. I’m as friendly as I look, and I really love people being part of our community.

We’re gonna have Melissa on the podcast soon, so I really hope that you tune in for that. And I hope everybody checks out gilded. That’s pretty much it. If there’s any way that I can serve you, that will be a service to me. 

Melissa: Absolutely. And we’ll link to everything that you mentioned, your book, your Instagram, your website, in the show notes.

Thank you for being here. It’s been such a delight to dive deeper into you and your work, and I can’t wait to come on your show. 

Keren: Pleasure was all mine. I can’t wait.

Melissa: I hope you got a lot out of this conversation, and if you did, please follow and subscribe to the show and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts if you haven’t already, and send me a [00:42:00] screenshot of your review to hello@melissaambrosini.com and I will send you my wildly wealthy guided meditation just as a thank you for taking the time to leave that review.

It truly means the world to me, and I’m so grateful. And come and tell me on Instagram at Melissa Ambrosini, what you got from this episode. What was your biggest key takeaway? Come and share it with me. I would love to hear your biggest key takeaway. And before I go, I just wanna thank you for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest, the happiest version of yourself, and for showing up today for you.

You are amazing. And if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, please share it with them right now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them, do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears.

And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy. Healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

---

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

P.S. If you’re looking for a high-impact marketing opportunity for your business and are interested in becoming a sponsor for The Melissa Ambrosini Show podcast, please email pr@melissaambrosini.com for more information.

P.P.S. Please seek advice from a qualified holistic practitioner before starting any new health practice.