If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it too late for me to...?” the answer’s NO, and The Uplifters will prove it to you. This space is for purpose-driven women who want to do big, brave things in the second half of their lives. I’m your host, Aransas Savas, and I’ve spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching.
“You feel most alive when you’re a beginner. When you’re scared and unsure, you’re more self-aware, and you’re growing.” — Karen Salmansohn
In this episode of The Uplifters Podcast, I’m talking to bestselling author and behavioral change expert Karen Salmansohn who has sold over two million books and courses worldwide, including the instant bestseller, How to Be Happy, Dammit, and most recently Your To-Die-For Life.
Karen started her career as a creative director, then pivoted to pioneer a category of self-help that didn’t yet exist: books that merged psychology, philosophy, and her signature feisty humor. Over and over, she’s broken molds and created new ones. But despite her epic success, her latest book almost didn’t happen, because for ten years, her agent kept telling her that a happiness author had no business writing about death.
Then, a “Lion King moment” reminded her who she was. “When I was younger, and someone told me my idea was crazy, I fired them and did it anyway.” So, she fired the agent. She wrote the book. It became another bestseller.
I suspect some of you out there have a version of a death book sitting in your draft folder, some idea you believe in that someone important has convinced you is wrong for you. If this is you, put those AirPods on now, because this conversation is your prescribed infusion of badassery!
5 Ways Karen Salmansohn Shows Us How to Build Our Courage Capital:
Fire gatekeepers who can’t see your vision. Karen has done it twice now. The first time launched How to Be Happy Dammit. The second time launched Your To Die For Life. If you don’t have the right team, you deserve a better team.
Write your eulogy. Karen keeps hers on her phone and reads and revises it regularly, including things she hasn’t done yet. It is the map she creates for how she wants to live.
Name your identity, then do the thing. “I am brave, and so I do brave things.” This is not affirmation fluff, but behavioral science. When you link an action to your identity, you are more likely to follow through, because the inconsistency creates cognitive dissonance.
Train yourself to be a noticer. Karen assigns her coaching clients a noticing journal: small, specific observations from daily life that only they could have seen.
Find the fun. Karen has motivated herself to build a keynote career partly by imagining the cool outfits she will wear on stage. Visualize the excitement of the goal, not just the hustle of it.
Lift Her Up
Subscribe to Karen Salmansohn’s Substack and follow her Instagram.
Then, grab a copy of Your To-Die-For Life, and if it moves you (it will), leave her a review on Amazon. Authors live and die by those five stars, and it takes two minutes.
Listen to this episode if...
You have a big idea you have been quietly talking yourself out of.
You are 40, or 50, or 65, and you still feel like you are only getting started.
You want to know what a purple velvet suit has to do with building courage.
