Ep #334: Break Free from Your Gilded Cage with Keren Eldad

This is Feminist Wellness, and I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner, somatics and nervous system nerd, and life coach Béa Victoria Albina. I’ll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency so you can live from your beautiful heart. Welcome, my love, let’s get started.

Hello, hello, my love. I hope this finds you doing so well. This week, we are joined by certified executive and personal coach, speaker, and author, coach Keren Eldad. She is a renowned force in this world who helps high achievers transition from the pursuit of success to true fulfillment. She is an incredible human with a lot to say and just wrote a beautiful book called Gilded that I was really grateful to get to read. I'm excited to share this conversation. It's going to be a good one. 

Bea Albina: Hola, hola.

Keren Eldad: Hola, amiga, qué haces?

Bea: Eh, todo re bien. I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you, thank you for joining.

Keren: Thanks for switching to English so that nobody thinks that we're going to have an entire conversation in Spanish.

Bea: I mean, we could do a second one.

Keren: Yeah, exactly. One for Argentina.

Bea: Right? But this one, this one we'll do in English. Mi amor, I'm so happy you're here. I adore you. I love your work. Your book is phenomenal.

Keren: Thank you.

Bea: And I'm so glad that you're here to talk about the mission. So will you tell us a little bit about, when we, right before I hit record, you were talking about what you've been thinking about, about your mission and the mission. And I think it's such a potent place to start.

Keren: It's a wonderful place to start and one of the best things about talking to you, to a very good friend, but also a friend who grew up in the same country I grew up in. Interestingly, I am Israeli, but I grew up in Argentina, the same country as you. And it allows me to tell the story of Gilded, my new book, with a very particular flavor that's not available on any other podcast because it would never be with an Argentine and with a dear, dear soul sister like you. Gilded, the name of the book, has a, as you know, a large golden cage on the cover, which is gilded, not real gold.

The gilded cage analogy is the one I used to describe the book's contents, which is that many of us overachievers find ourselves, basically, while we're trying to build a life of freedom, building ourselves a very shiny cage, in which we become trapped, frankly. But I particularly love the idea of not real gold. 

When I grew up as a kid in Argentina, something really fascinating started to happen around me. In the early 90s and until the early aughts, Argentina went through not one, but two enormous economic crises. And when I talk about economic crisis, we're not talking this tiny little 2008 recession that people remember from the United States. We're talking no money coming out of the ATM. People become destitute overnight. The country has completely economically collapsed. And I still remember the fascinating phenomenon of the upper class, the bourgeoisie, around whom I was raised. My parents are ambassadors. We were representing the state of Israel in Argentina, which means we were living in a very chic neighborhood with very chichi accoutrements, completely shielded from this.

At the same time, I start to notice that the bourgeoisie of Argentina, who have lost everything, are still keeping up appearances. They're still getting their hair done. They're still getting out of Bentleys. They're still wearing serious jewelry to, like, lunch on a Sunday. And that's when I start to understand as a kid, as a child, that there is a cognitive dissonance going on around here, that there is something that's real and there's something that's fake. And a lot of people are buying into something that's fake. I don't know how, but I think this was part of my psychology and a little bit of part of my pathos that I had to overcome myself in this life, but also informed my work, whether subconsciously or consciously, and the work that is today Gilded.

Bea: It's a really interesting place to start when talking about overachieving. Yeah. Because is, of course, at its core, all about keeping up with the Joneses, Los Joneses, in our case, and telling this not-self story to the point where we believe the not-self to be our true self. It's in the work I do around codependency, which is it's all the same work, no? It's that same, I don't believe I'll be safe, loved, valued, trusted, etc., if I'm not what they think I should be.

Keren: Yeah. Overachievement is an identity. It's an ego identity. Now, of course, it's a very useful identity and a lot of fun if you are choosing it and you understand that it is not self. But the moment you make itself, in other words, you identify with the false identity, it is a gilded cage. It is, in fact, a trap. And you have to maintain it. That's how you know it's a trap.

Bea: Right.

Keren: If it's the true self, there's no maintenance.

Bea: Makes perfect sense. So, I'm curious, and this might just be semantics, but, you know, overachieving as a choice. Can you talk about that?

Keren: Yes. Overachieving is intense obsessiveness. It's focus that has gone in the direction of addiction. And it is actually a form of addiction. My book is a 12-step program. I'm sure you noticed, just like another 12-step program. Alcoholics Anonymous and Overachievers Anonymous are basically the same structure of the program. And that's because we have so identified with the overachieving that we begin to think, first of all, I got this under control. And second, it is me. It's who I am.

And those are two completely false premises. Overachievement is something that has basically just become a thing that we do to identify ourselves. It's not an accomplishment moniker. And so, for many people when they think about the book and they see me talking about overachieving and don't identify with this, they think that this is about results above and beyond. But it's really not. It's a way of being that is overly intense and overly dedicated in the direction of perfectionism and relentless pursuit. In this sense, somebody can be an overachieving mom. They can be an overachieving tulip grower. They can be a little too obsessive in any direction and they will understand and identify with these patterns.

Bea: Yeah, it's really important to make that clarification. No? And so then from that framework and that understanding, overachieving as a choice. Can you talk more about that?

Keren: Yeah, I mean, it took me a while to realize that it was an actual choice, and the only time I ever realized it was a choice was when I moved into grief. And in grief, all of your former identities start to dissolve. This is when you start to understand that the identities are, in fact, false, that it is a not-self and not a self. So, all my life, I identified not only as an overachiever, but then in turn, I started to identify with the roles, right? The role of A-student, the role of married person, married to tall guy, in my case, very important identity. I got that from Argentina. Identity as thin person, got that from Argentina. 1000%, thank you very much. What is it, like, the capital of anorexia? 

Bea: It is. It actually is. 

Keren: Still. 

Bea: Yeah, we beat Switzerland, but like, barely.

Keren: I mean, it makes so much sense because I didn't eat between 1990 and 2005. And number three, the identification with job and top of job. In other words, the identification with title. When in my early 30s, all of these big wagers I had taken in my life to obtain these things started to blow up in my face. Number one, the marriage was abusive. Abusive marriage is something that at some point you are going to have to sort of go, oh my goodness, this is terrible.

Bea: I remember that moment.

Keren: You have to contend with it. It is a reality. It is a horrifying reality. Identification with job. Well, what happens when you lose that job? When you start moving into grief, that means you have been overidentified with job as identity. And so, all of these systems start to collapse for me one by one. 

And that's when I started to understand that there had been an overidentification with myself as something I needed to be in order to feel safe, in order to feel valued, in order to feel loved. And this is when I start to inquire my own identity. It's what I'm calling everyone to do with this book. Start to identify the parts of yourself that were never yours and that are not who you are, so that you can actually be free. Because anything you built from this indentured servitude will essentially be false.

Bea: Just more gilding. Yeah, and I grasping is gilding. Gilding is grasping, right? They create that same paradigm of subjectivity to what we thought and were taught would get us free.

Keren: Totally. And that's what sucks about it so much is that we are, and Jung said this, right, initially, the identity will constantly wrap itself, the ego will always wrap itself around another identity. So for example, even for teachers, we start literally wrapping our understanding around the understanding that we are understanding. And so the real practice that has to start to come into place is the understanding that we can also claim the identity of becoming nobody. And that takes time, I think, and a lot of cats. But I'm working on it.

Bea: Really, though, to get scientific, how many cats?

Keren: Only two.

Bea: Right, but two are enough.

Keren: But now, of course, you could go anywhere from there. But two is the minimum acceptable number.

Bea: Okay, two is the minimum. For full enlightenment, how many?

Keren: For full enlightenment, I would prescribe three to four. And by the way, just lest anyone think we're joking here, and we are joking here, Eckhart Tolle said it himself.

Bea: Did he?

Keren: He did in The Power of Now. And he's also said, I have met many Zen masters, all of them, cats.

Bea: All of them cats. All of them. Yeah. I feel so lucky to have my hypoallergenic best friend.

Keren: I love it. And when JD Vance decided to villify us, I was like, I'm gonna get more cats.

Bea: More cats. More and more. More and more.

Keren: Try and stop me.

Bea: Yeah, just freaking try it. Good luck, buddy.

Keren: Exactly. That's an identity my ego willingly espouses.

Bea: Listen, I think there are some choices that support all of us and all of our growth.

Keren: Well, you know, actually now you're hitting the nail on the head back into the conversation, which is, once you start becoming aware of what the not self is, you can make conscious choices of what you want to include in the self that is actually positive rather than toxic garbage.

Bea: Yes.

Keren: And that's really all this is, is just starting to understand that you have a choice around here about your identity.

Bea: That was so much of my shift, because you know, our stories have so many parallels, mi amor. And my shift from, you know, I never chose the word healer, right? I always saw its paternalistic undertones, but from like being practicing medicine, having that, we'll use the word healer for colloquial ease. From that place of feeling like I was taking care of so many people, so many people needed me. I had to stay in medicine because no one was doing what I was doing, how I was doing it, which like is not just identity, but right, that puffed up ego, like my whole body feels, it's almost, you know, it's interesting when I feel into my spine, it doesn't feel mine. Right? It takes this shape that just feels kind of like I'm not breathing right when I talk about that state.

Keren: Yeah.

Bea: And then the move from that into the coaching work I do now, which is so much more feminist, so much more cooperative.

Keren: Yeah.

Bea: Right? Like I was meeting with a new client this morning, and she started talking and was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't mean to, like, take over your session." And I was like, oh, and she's also an Argentine. Reinita, you know, no, this is our collaborating to support you getting free.

Keren: Yeah.

Bea: Right? And that's that shift. Because when we allow ourselves to step out of that cage, we can hold the door open for others, no?

Keren: Yeah, that's right. I mean, ultimately, it's also kind of the work of self-compassion, right? What Dr. Kristin Neff talks about. When you start to release yourself, you inadvertently release others. The most beautiful work there is.

Bea: Yeah.

Keren: Nothing like it, man.

Bea: Nothing like it. 

Keren: But it is work. And that's, that's sort of the part in which I really, really identify with what you just said. I am not a healer. I practice healing, which is completely different. This is not an identity. I'm just a nice human being who gets to live in a meat sack for God willing, 80 more years. But other than that, I get to do this.

Bea: Yeah.

Keren: I get to do this is really different from I am this.

Bea: Right. And that sort of prescribed notion of having to be a thing, gosh, it just limits so much creativity.

Keren: Exactly. And it also ruins your dynamic with others. I love to remind people, particularly coaches whom I might train, that the great Tejano singer Selena was murdered by the head of her fan club. In other words, be very, very careful when you over-associate with an ego from the people who put you on that pedestal and can only see you that way, because you're essentially inviting more egoic interaction with self.

Bea: That is actually interesting. Andy Warhol, the guy who tried to kill Bjork, I mean, it's always the head of the - I've not paused to think about that.

Keren: They're always close collaborators, aren't there? Well, not always, but many times they are, it's Tall Poppy Syndrome. So whenever we start to relate egoically with the world, the world starts relating egoically with us. You stay in that trance. It's an awful trance. I always say to some of my clients, like, really, really, you know, after a while, they just become obsessed with the work. And I always say you're like two seconds away from seeing my face in a tortilla. In other words, enough. You got to take me off the pedestal immediately. I am a human being. I am a weird person, just like you. We're only in this dance together, just like you said to Reinita.

Bea: It's true, though you are weird in a very special way. That's very charming, I must say. 

Keren: I think it's Argentina. 

Bea: I think it is. God, what a weird freaking place. 

Keren: What a weird place. And by the way, also the hub of so many neurosis. I understand there are more psychotherapists per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Bea: Anywhere. And it's similar to New York, where we both lived, in that way that everyone talks super casually about their therapist. Like nowhere else on the planet.

Keren: No, it's like very common. Absolutely. But it's also, I mean, a very different society. It's an aspirational society. It's an elegant society. So you can sort of see where Gilded would have formed in my psyche very, very early on.

Bea: It makes a lot of sense. And I think every Argentine listening is like, oof.

Keren: Every single Argentine I've ever met is massively pretentious in the most delightful way. And to unlearn that is a hell of a knockout.

Bea: Yeah. Oh, sorry, hold on. I just saw some lightning. I think that was God taking my picture. That's my favorite Argentine joke ever.

Keren: That is phenomenal. How do you recognize an Uruguayan?

Bea: How?

Keren: You grab an Argentine, take all the air out. And there you go.

Bea: Pobecito.

Keren: By the way, that joke is funnier in Spanish. But yes, all the pretense, like, that all the pretentiousness that I picked up as a kid was definitely from there. And that's where overachieving comes from. It really makes you keep up, maintain an appearance. And what we're talking about here is just an aggressive maintaining of appearance that can spill over into any of your area of your life. 

Some people, for example, think that just because they don't get their hair done and are not bedecked in jewels, they're not maintaining an appearance. But many of us are maintaining an intellectual appearance. We're trying to maintain a familial appearance. Look how magnificent and perfect my family is, or my marriage is, etc. Anything we're using to perfect the self and to appear therefore invincible is a false self. And that, if you are trapped in that, it's actually costing you the size of your dreams. It is costing you a fulfilling life. This is why I hope you'll take the inner journey to break free, not to create something new, but to just break free.

Bea: Yeah, and I'll, I'll add to that that overfunctioning is really how I'm seeing it showing up so commonly in my clients and listeners, thinking that what some might be doing is overachieving outside of the home, is really living everyone else's lives for them. And I'd even extend that overachieving to emotionally regulating others, or attempting to, trying to keep others from having big feelings, having big experiences, and just keeping everyone within the shape and the form of what feels safe to you and your nervous system, right?

Keren: Which means that this is, and, you know, I only recently learned this, it's a trauma response.

Bea: Sure.

Keren: The overfunctioning is a trauma response, and you don't see it that way. You literally see it as your amazing superpower default. It is not. It is you as a small child freaking out about the possibility of impending doom and moving into hyperaction.

Bea: Oh, yeah. Well, because if you go, go, go, go, go, go, go, then the T-Rex won't possibly have you for lunch. 

Keren: I ask my clients all the time just as an exercise, for funsies, to take two hours out of their day and do absolutely nothing. And then I ask them, and I say, absolutely nothing. That's not listen to a podcast. It's not take a walk. It's literally pretend it's 1991 and all you have is your living room and a bathrobe. And see how quickly your brain starts to move into let's do something. It's amazing. Most people report that within the first 10 minutes, their brain is like, we have to reorganize the furniture. You have to do something. That's overfunctioning.

Bea: It is. It just gets so deeply coded, that neural wiring that I have to go. And I know I've been there in that moment of, if I stop, then all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the upset will come rushing and it'll be too much for me to handle.

Keren: Yeah. And you can see that also start to transpire into people's bodies. For example, I was observing several clients, most recently one client who was as she was speaking to me, shaking her leg. If you're seeing this on YouTube, you know that I'm currently shaking, but they literally shake their leg. Their leg goes bounces up and down. Where it's some kind of a nervous tick. 

This just means that you are first and foremost blocking your own manifestation. That means that what you're emitting and vibrating all the time is scarcity, lack, and fear. So if you're worried about your results not lining up, that's it, my friend, that's it. And it just means that the journey will, it's not gonna be easy, but the journey is inward to rewire those neural pathways to essentially create new ones that are further along in the gratitude and rest game. It takes a long time. 

One of the things I observed was because I, I have the pleasure of having had such an inflated ego before be that I recorded a lot of my talks, I've noticed that my speech has slowed very significantly. And when I thought about that, I was like, is it because I'm old? No. It's because I'm chill. It means that I've been doing this for so long that I'm actually allowing myself to breathe and to think and to speak in a sequence. That's it. That's when you start to see the transformation.

Bea: And that I think so elegantly sums up that shift from the anxious novice, the anxious neophyte, to the master of her craft, right? If you're not overthinking what will I say and what will they think and will I mess it up and will it be okay? And when your subject matter, what you're working with, becomes who you are and what you know, and when you're living it, then that calm, casual cadence can be. 

Keren: It’s true.

Bea: The shaking leg can also be too much caffeine. Let's give Dr. Ellen Vora, our dear friend, a little nod.

Keren: Don't even. And I love you, Ellen. I love you, but you are not taking the coffee away. In the words of the great Depeche Mode, in the song Strange Love, I give in to sin because you have to make this life livable. I only have one vice, is my cafecito, don't take it from me, thanks.

Bea: Cafe and cats.

Keren: And yes, I am very well aware of the fact that caffeine is not particularly good for you, but I do want to say one tiny little thing just for funsies. Culturally speaking, for those of us who grew up in South America or with Israelis, Middle Easterners, coffee is literally a cultural staple.

Bea: Oh yeah.

Keren: And I think we have, as a result of that, I'm not saying caffeine doesn't affect us, I am saying the effects are numbed, because we're so used to it, which is so different.

Bea: And we'll go afar, but we'll come back, folks. If you look at the blue zones, and we can critique that whole thing, but when we look at things like wine and caffeine, and we look at communities that eat, they drink those things in community, right? Like wine with your gente.

Keren: Exactly. Exactly. When I walk into my parents' house, do you want a cup of coffee? And it's not a coffee that's like an obsessive thing. It's just you sit down, you get a coffee and a cake.

Bea: Right. And you sit down. But that's the difference. You sit down. You talk with your people. It's a relaxed experience. I think what I see so much in the US is asking substances to do things for you, to do work for you.

Keren: Of course, collecting that Starbucks on your way to work and just basically numbing your nervous system.

Bea: Right. Jacking yourself up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, I'm not anti-caffeine. I'm just saying. This one different.

Keren: I totally get it. Alcohol, I totally agree with you, Dr. Vora, zero is the adequate amount.

Bea: The zero is completely the adequate amount. But if you're gonna drink it, with your abuelita is the right way.

Keren: It better be expensive. That's right. Correct.

Bea: My abuela was super Catholic and so she didn't drink because, you know, religious, but Fernet, that's medicine. Chinad. So she would drink amaros, like bitters. 

Keren: I love when they make their little compromises with God in their head. We’ve got the same thing going on.

Bea: Fantastic. Work it, Abuelita.

Keren: My mom doesn't eat shellfish, of course, because of kosher, but shrimp, God would want her to eat that because it's delicious.

Bea: They don't really have a shell.

Keren: That's basically like, she literally explained it to me that way, and I'm very much, all right. You enjoy that. You go nuts. 

Bea: We’re all just doing our best out here, Keren.

Keren: We're all just doing our best. Exactly like Depeche Mode said. You have to make this life livable.

Bea: Why not, right? Why not? So mira, everyone who's listening and is like, listen, you're making me see the gilded cage I'm in. What do I do? How do I start to step out?

Keren: And then I'm going to reveal to you the big one, but you're going to have to do a lot of work for that one.

Bea: Okay, great.

Keren: The first thing is admit that you're in a gilded cage. If anybody out there genuinely is resonating, going, I wanted to build for myself freedom and I have gotten the wrong end of the stick here. Like me, when I woke up in the middle of that marriage going, what the hell did I build here? This is a monstrosity. Or my career, it's okay, but I'm not waking up eager for the day. Like, there's no real payoff here. Or your finances are just hitting some upper ceiling all the time. You have to start by literally saying this is not good enough for me. And this is much easier said than done. We all know from Alcoholics Anonymous and from any type of our own neurosis that the hardest step first is admitting that I don't got this and I need some help around here.

The second thing is to stop lying. To stop lying means to tell the truth in somewhere, in a container that is safe and empathetic. In other words, with a great book like Gilded, where no one will judge you, on account of it's a book, or with a master teacher like B, who will listen to you without judgment. This is where you start to truly break free, because you're not just admitting to yourself that you have a problem, but you are openly stating to the universe, I am willing to change. I am willing to do what it takes to change. 

These are the two most fundamental, most important steps. I spend a lot of time at the beginning of the book essentially dismantling the bastions of the ego to allow for this to happen. And then we guide you towards your first 10 post. And this is the one that's going to require more work, which is wrap your identity around real purpose.

The thing is, and the reason the false self takes such predominance and keeps us in the cage and tells us, hey, the cage is really nice. It's actually not that bad. You love gold. You're very Saddam Hussein in your tastes. The reason that happens is because you are also wrapped around a flawed premise of what your purpose is. Your purpose has wrapped itself around survival needs, like significance and certainty, also known as money and status. 

Money and what I look like in society. And when those reign supreme, it's really, really hard to unlock and unshackle the cage because you'll be guided continually back to some form of this oppression. If instead, we can start to do the work to really uncover who you are, what your great gifts are, what your great desire is in this life, you will start to wrap your identity around something more noble, more ennobled, more in service of humanity, and you will start to move out of this. Now, it's okay, B, as you know, everybody's going to go around like, I'm a healer. It's okay. You'll over identify with something new, but you will already be identifying with something slightly better than before. In other words, it's a progression, it's a ladder.

Chapter seven of my book is the longest one in the book. And my husband always says, make it half as long and twice as good, but this one I left really long because, not because it's not good, but because I really wanted to take everybody through the steps to clarify what their true purpose is and to remove a lot of the garbage. That's it. That's what you can start to do to break free right now.

Bea: Beautiful. And I love that it, do you know that I use the term kitten step? Have you heard me say this before?

Keren: No, but that's magnificent.

Bea: Mira, it's one of my favorite things this little brain ever came up with. Because I think, honestly, and you're a very fancily certified coach. Don't you think a kitten, a baby step is way too freaking big? It's like two and a half inches. That's an enormous step to take when you're starting off.

Keren: You're right. And newborns kind of walk very, very unstable.

Bea: Right? 

Keren: Kittens are extremely delicate creatures.

Bea: They really are.

Keren: Not only are their tiny little paw steps, tiny, but they're also very graceful.

Bea: Very graceful, elegant.

Keren: Yeah. It's actually a perfect term.

Bea: Why, thank you. I enjoy it myself. So, kitten steps, those are the size steps to be taking. Kitten steps. Teeny, tiny, little kitten steps, because anything else is just going to land you back on your butt, right? Boom.

Keren: Exactly.

Bea: Boom. And if your identity is shifting into being wrapped up in this new story, what happens when you try to move forward and boom?

Keren: I know. And it's so important for people because so many people say to me, especially like in the middle of coaching, I don't know, I don't know where to even start. And I'm like, girl, you're already on the path. Just keep following the overground. Just keep walking. I got you.

Bea: Keep walking. Yeah, slow and steady. 

Keren: And, I mean, slow and steady. That's literally it. It's one step ahead of the next.

Bea: And the capitalistic culture that created the gilded cage also tells us to go fast.

Keren: No, but that's, that's what's driving them crazy. They just start to basically shortcut. They see the entire mountain. They want to eat the elephant in one fell swoop. And every single philosophy will tell you, you've got to relax and just move one step at a time, the path will appear.

Bea: That's right. And more cats will appear.

Keren: That's the best part.

Bea: It really is the best part. We're so lucky to have them. We're so lucky to have you. Anything else you want to say to my listeners who I'm sure are just eating up every single word.

Keren: Well, I'm thrilled to hear it because if you are listening and you are eating up every word, because the main message is the most important message of all of us teachers and it's your life is supposed to feel good to you. Anything that doesn't feel good to you is literally a sign that something has gone wrong. 

This is really important because so many of us, particularly women who have been raised, I don't know, in Argentina, to not eat, to subsume and repress the most basic of needs, we learn to live with really aggressive patterns that feel terrible without questioning them. We learn to live with aimlessness and with boredom and with restlessness, like they're nothing. And it's my hope that the best thing we can do here by having conversations like this, isn't just to fill the space, it's to say, you're supposed to go home now. That's what this is supposed to feel like.

Bea: Yeah. And that change is possible when something doesn't feel good. I mean, we're both examples. We left abusive marriages. We left careers that weren't fulfilling our purpose. Do you feel like that's fair to say for you?

Keren: Yes, I burned everything to the ground 10 years ago and I have to tell you something, if I saw the size of how awesome this was going to turn out, I would have done it 20 years ago. I just didn't know. So now I talk relentlessly so that somebody can hear me sooner.

Bea: And with enthusiasm.

Keren: And with great enthusiasm, baby.

Bea: If you're new to Karen's work, that's her tagline and it is so phenomenal because why not? Everything should be done with enthusiasm, no?

Keren: I quite agree.

Bea: Listen, why not? 

Keren: And if not, don't fucking do it. 

Bea: Listen, I could not agree more. You can find the joy in a lot of things. Even the litter box because it means you've got a kitten to snuggle.

Keren: It's so true, exactly. And you know, it's funny you should say that because the most concerning thing to me at this moment are our geopolitical times. And I keep thinking about it exactly from that perspective. I hate that it's such a freaking litter box. But that means that there must be a kitten somewhere. In other words, there's a karmic correction happening. We are essentially, and nobody likes to hear this, but we are essentially getting what we deserve. We are getting the lesson we have to get in order to truly evolve in the direction of our souls. Maybe that's wrong, but it's the way I'm choosing to see things in order to keep on being enthusiastic.

Bea: Yeah, I think I'll have to sit with that one. There's a little part of me that can believe it on a sort of a macro level, but then I just think of all the suffering humans, you know, and that's where it feels really challenging. And I think there's something important in there about seeing the pain but not getting mired in it.

Keren: Yeah, that's the only way you can move forward. I would be literally, I'd be catatonic if all I could see was the suffering.

Bea: No, of course, of course.

Keren: So I have to put with this a purpose to the suffering.

Bea: Yeah, because what else is there? I mean, because… 

Keren: What else is there? Exactly.

Bea: What else is there? And, and I think, you know, we do well to remember that the first page of the Nazi playbook is to hope is to destroy hope.

Keren: Exactly. So it's an act of rebellion, but it's also the only proactive thing we can do that will continue our joyful resistance.

Bea: Less fascism, more cats, more joy, more love. 

Keren: Less fascism, more cats, JD Vance. That's right, baby. 

Bea: Because there is something about when we choose to see the positive, we ripple that outward. Like I've been at restaurants with you. You are incredibly kind to servers. We're both big tippers, right? It's those little tiny things that are not tiny in the life of the recipient. Right? We both do that very Argentine thing of walking into a store. Hi, how you doing? How's your day been?

Keren: Exactly. 

Bea: And that, that does ripple out and that, I think so…

Keren: It's funny, I was listen, so you know I'm obsessed with Yuval Noah Harari and will marry him one day when he realizes he's not in fact gay. And he's quite nihilistic right now and very, very pessimistic about the future of mankind and talking about the disillusionment and the essentially disarray in which humanity finds itself. And I said in my comment to him, which one day he will read, that maybe it's just all of us with acts of individual defiance and individual love who will essentially ultimately elevate the consciousness around here because it's not nothing. Mother Teresa herself said, if you want to change the world, start with your family. What if what we're doing is not tiny? What if what we're doing is beginning to be enough? What if it's better than all of us descending into collective nihilism and collective hopelessness?

Bea: Way better. 

Keren: Way better.

Bea: Exactly. A scale of one to way better, it's like right up at the top. 

Keren: So I'm going to go with this.

Bea: I like it. I'll meet you there.

Keren: And I'll keep voting with my life. 

Bea: Oof, mi amor. Yep, that's an electoral college I can get behind. Living a good life, being kind to people, being loving, and helping folks to feel better about the life they're living.

Keren: Yeah. We have a choice. A little bit, but it's a choice.

Bea: Thank you for that. Really appreciate it. Algo más? Anything else?

Keren: That's the entire message. I hope everybody checks out the book. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk about it. I'm really proud of the work. I'm super excited for the trilogy because the next one's Gilded Relationships. And then we're going to do Gilded Business. And just hopefully start to help people with their neurosis. One of the things that's really been amazing to me is as I transcended into the world of coaching is that Gilded exists here too. Obviously, right? 

But I've encountered enough people who are teachers whose nervous system is completely shot, who never stop talking, who never stop running, who are always hustling for the next level. So that's where Gilded Business came out about where I was like, why is everybody trying to sell me an eight-figure business? You know what I mean?

And then the second thing was Gilded Relationships, which is, I think what we hold most sacred, but this identity crisis, this not-self, if you bring it into a marriage, how quickly is that gonna bite you in the ass? 

Bea: Real fast. 

Keren: Real fast, right? So I'm really, really excited that this is resonating and I hope if just one person reads it and emerges feeling like they can wear a superhero cape, I've done my job.

Bea: That's phenomenal. So my love, where can they find you?

Keren: On KerenEldad.com and it's not spelled Karen as you know, K-E-R-E-N-E-L-D-A-D.com. And the book is BreakFreeWithGilded.com or of course where 99% of people are buying it, which is sadly Amazon. It is what it is.

Bea: I know. I know. Well, we'll undo that cage and kick them out. 

Keren: From your mouth to God's ears.

Bea: Right? Thank you. You are an absolute delight. Thank you for being the incredible human you are and for sharing your brilliance with our listeners. 

Keren: Likewise, amiga. Love you.

—

Wow. What a conversation. It is so amazing to apply this depth of psychology to so many areas of our lives and to see where so many of us are living in these gilded cages. Yeah, really powerful stuff. There's a lot we talked about that I know is gonna be, I'm gonna be mulling over for a while. So, thanks again, Coach Keren. You're really a special one. And thanks to you for listening. 

Let's do what we do. Gentle hand on your heart should you feel so moved. And remember, you are safe, you are held, you are loved. And when one of us heals, we help heal the world. Be well my beauty. Talk to you soon. Ciao.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Feminist Wellness. If you want to learn more all about somatics, what the heck that word means, and why it matters for your life, head on over to BeatrizAlbina.com/somaticswebinar for a free webinar all about it. Have a beautiful day, my darling, and I'll see you next week. Ciao.