How Doubt Can Ruin Progress: Cate Coaches Alja Podgornik

Mar 22, 2022

Podcast Intro:

Alja Podgornik, Neuroscience Ph.D. Student and Yoga Health Coach in training has reached a fork in the road. To finish, or not to finish the Ph.D. that is crushing her soul, that is the question…

Listen in on this Coaching Gym, as Cate explores both paths with Alja.  While both are completely different paths, similar challenges will arise on each.  Luckily in this growth-oriented community, we know that embracing either set of challenges will lead to a more evolved version of ourselves!  The journey is the destination!

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• How to know when it’s time to let go of something.
• How to make the most of a negative environment.
• How to navigate next steps when resistance is high.
• How to authentically fake it until you make it.

Links/CTA:

• Check out Episode 196: Fear of Being Unlikeable
• Join the Master Class
• A day in my life | Lex Fridman

Highlights:

• Cate talks about her process of writing Wild Habits
• Cate talks about how she’s learning biochemistry at 48.
• Cate references the yoga sutras and fluctuation of the mind.
• Cate talks about bringing ground rules to personal soccer carpool.

Timestamps:

• 1:12- Prioritizing Sales, Marketing, and Ph.D. Program.
• 5:10- Tapas and pushing through resistance.  
• 9:11- Being out of alignment as a limiting belief.
• 12:48- Getting to the root of the energy around quitting.
• 15:10- Finding the Karma of a difficult situation.
• 20:20- Realizing short-term and long-term goals.
• 25:20- The opportunity in surrender.
• 29:50- Alignment of ethics.
• 34:01- Creating ground rules in the Ph.D. process.
• 40:18 - Applying lessons. 
• 44:35-  Finding Marketing Material in your current experience.

Quotes:

• “Diksha is initiation.  It’s the thresholds, and in order to cross certain thresholds there is an insane amount of tapas, of friction, of tension, of doing the hard thing.”
• “It’s not just to say you accomplished it, It’s who you become in the process of accomplishing it, and that’s the Diksha .”
• “Act it until you become it.  Actually, take on the behaviors even though they don’t relate to the ego.  So it’s not the ego acting, doing what it normally does, doing the pattern.  It’s making a choice.”
• “If you read the yoga sutras…. it’s really clear that the fluctuation of the mind is what doesn’t allow the higher power of the mind.”
• “Early on I had to realize that my peer group had a very different trajectory than I did and so my discipline had to be entirely self-reliant and self-motivated and that my rules were for me.  And that has continued to serve me.”

Guest: Alja Podgornik

I have a background in neuroscience and I am currently finishing my Ph.D. I want to transition into a career where I can help people align their lifestyle to build resilience, health, and connectivity to, eventually, pursue their highest potential.