159. Karen London, PhD, CAAB, CPDT-KA 

Colleen Pelar  0:00

Welcome to Unleashed at Work and Home. I'm Colleen Pelar, and this is where pet professionals come for honest conversations about what it really takes to show up for yourself while serving the animals you love. If you've ever felt caught between compassion and exhaustion, you're in the right place. Here we explore what it means to reconnect with your inner wisdom and rediscover the joy that brought you to this work. Make sure to join my email community at ColleenPelar.com for gentle, practical insights designed specifically for pet professionals.

Karen London  0:40

Now let's dive in.

Colleen Pelar  0:44

Welcome back to Unleashed at Work and Home. My guest today is Dr. Karen London, who is a certified animal behaviorist specializing in dog behavior challenges. Welcome, Karen.

Karen London  0:56

Ah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to talking with you more.

Colleen Pelar  1:00

I'm happy to have you here. I had Tricia McConnell on recently, and I always associate your name with hers, because when I first encountered your work, it was in some of the work that you two did together. So can you tell us a little bit about the work you do now?

Karen London  1:18

Well, first of all, let me say I'm thrilled to be associated with Tricia McConnell. She is my mentor, my colleague, and my friend. So that's a happy pairing from my end. Right now I work as a certified applied animal behaviorist. I work mostly with dogs with serious behavior problems, including aggression, but I do a variety of training as well. Sometimes it's just a dog that's very, very busy, you know, a working dog in a suburban situation, and looking for things to deal with with that. And then I do a lot of writing, and I occasionally teach at my local university, Northern Arizona University, but the teaching that I do there is actually not dog related. I teach in ecology and behavior related to my insect work, which is what I studied—insect behavior, social wasps—in graduate school. So I do teach things related to insects.

Colleen Pelar  2:09

Oh, how interesting. I didn't know that. Not a surprise.

Colleen Pelar  2:16

That's really cool. So one of my very favorite questions to ask everybody is, when you were 10, what did you think you were going to do? When people would ask you, what are you going to be when you grow up, what was your answer?

Karen London  2:29

I had a lot of uncertainty even then, but the one constant theme is that I always knew I wanted to work with animals. So I didn't have necessarily a specific animal in mind. Although I always loved dogs, I loved cats, my favorite animal at that time was the gray whale. And I was very interested in going into marine biology. I lived within sight of the ocean in Los Angeles, but I love to wade around in creeks in Southern California and collect frogs. I was interested in birds and, you know, any creature—I just really knew I wanted to work with animals. But it was a very vague plan. I knew I didn't want to go into the medical side. So I knew I wasn't going to be a veterinarian. That wasn't where my passions were, but just animals, animals, animals of all types.

Colleen Pelar  3:13

Can you then take us—sort of the plot points—from that kid, you went off to college, what did you major in, and how did it turn out? Take us down the path of how you wound up here.

Karen London  3:30

I went to UCLA, and I majored in biology; my concentration was ecology, behavior, and evolution. When I was a sophomore, I went on a field quarter to Costa Rica. And I became really interested in termites because the professor that took us on our introductory tour—his name was Michael Greenfield, really great professor—he turned over a log or rock, and he ran his finger across this termite trail, and all of a sudden the termites stopped being able to follow the trail, because it's a chemical trail, and when he rubbed his finger across it, it was all chaos. And I became interested in that. So I decided I wanted to work with social insects. There's so many interesting things about them, about their defense and their social organization and their reproductive division of labor. So I ended up studying social wasps. My master's degree was about a nesting association between two species of wasps that live together in many areas in Costa Rica but not in Mexico—I studied them in both places. And then my PhD was the defensive behavior of tropical social wasps. I studied a bit about how wasps learn to detect the scent of ants and whether they have an innate ability to detect the scent of ants that don't even live in their area—very destructive ones, army ants—and what kind of parasitoids they had, and just how aggressively they defend their nest depending on where they are in the colony cycle. They're more defensive when their brood is closer to adulthood; they have more value at that point. So I was interested in that. And then I was in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, and there was a big TA snafu where someone broke an arm or leg, and they were supposed to TA ornithology. So the person that was supposed to TA another class moved into the ornithology TA slot, and I ended up—because I had one philosophy class on my undergraduate transcript—TA-ing for Patricia McConnell's class, the biology and philosophy of human-animal relationships. And that's how I ended up meeting Tricia McConnell. And I was like, wow, I'm really interested in defensive behavior, which is much like aggressive behavior in dogs, and species interactions—that's what my master's had been about. So I started just volunteering in her dog training classes. The next thing I know, I'm working full time for her. When she wrote The Other End of the Leash, she hired me to take on her aggression cases. So I originally planned to go into academia working with social insects, and now I am in clinical practice working with the behavior of dogs—as could happen to anyone.

Colleen Pelar  6:02

Yeah, I mean, it's totally normal. Everybody studying wasps would expect that, you know, an easy side adjunct is dogs.

Karen London  6:09

Sure, same old, same old. Same old story.

Colleen Pelar  6:14

And vice versa. Like, ask me anything about wasps, because I definitely know—of course, I'm not even sure I could identify one. I mean, quite sincerely, like, is that a wasp or is it a bee or is it some other? I don't know.

Karen London  6:30

Well, they are fairly closely related, so you're good.

Colleen Pelar  6:34

I'm phenomenally ignorant about pretty much all species other than humans and dogs—just amazingly so—and so far that's worked for me. But it is really interesting to me that I meet so many people who have had a passion for another species, and I sometimes don't even have a picture in my head of what that might be. It's really, really cool. So you are making me think about the social behavior pieces. You've written a book called Treat Everyone Like a Dog, and I have to tell you that for years as a dog trainer, one of my jokes was that everything in life relates to dog training, because it is the social behavior piece that is so often the part that really matters. I'm curious—can you tell us a little bit about that book and why you chose that title?

Karen London  7:34

Sure, and I totally agree with you—everything does relate to dog training. I feel like as I go through my day, whether I'm in the work part of my day or the social part of my day, or my family, or just dealing with everything, I'm a dog trainer all day, every day. And that's how I view the world. And I think that as a social species, humans are very interested in influencing behavior, and that's what dog trainers know how to do. We know how to influence behavior, whether that's teaching dogs to do what we want them to do—sit, heel, come—or whether we want them not to do things, like jumping up, digging, biting. And so I have thought for years about the way that I apply what I know from dog training: positive reinforcement, classical conditioning, shaping, how health factors can influence behavior, learning one thing at a time, asking the question 'What would success look like?'—all these things apply. And I just started keeping a lot of anecdotes about it for the better part of seven years. I used to joke that I thought about writing a book, and I jokingly called it my 'treat everyone like a dog book.' I said to myself, I could never really call it that. That'd be crazy—who would do such a thing? And then the pandemic hit and I had some time on my hands, and that's when I actually wrote the book. Eventually I just decided, you know what, it's always been called Treat Everyone Like a Dog, and that's how I think. So that's what I called it. The way I like to describe the book is that it's my love letter to dog trainers and an instruction manual for everyone else. That's sort of my elevator pitch on it.

Colleen Pelar  9:51

Oh, I love that. My love letter to dog trainers and an instruction manual for everyone else. Yes.

Karen London  9:57

And at one point I was thinking of a subtitle: 'Harnessing the skill set of dog trainers to influence the behavior of people,' which probably would have been a good subtitle, but I didn't go with it. I ended up going with 'How a dog trainer's worldview can improve your life,' because I really think it's true. I think what dog trainers know is really good stuff, and we should share it with everyone. It helps with relationships, it helps minimize frustration. And I just really like the way so many dog trainers—me included—are so patient with dogs. Because if a dog doesn't do something we want them to do, we tend not to get really upset. We're like, well, okay, they're not really prepared to do that in this environment—how can I help them? Or, maybe today's training session is just a wash and we need to start over tomorrow. But with people, it tends to be so emotionally laden: why aren't you doing what I'm asking? Maybe they have a different agenda. Maybe they just really haven't been taught. And I think that acting like a dog trainer in my interactions with people allows me to be my best self—not just with dogs, because I do think my best self, my best me, is the dog trainer in me.

Colleen Pelar  11:24

It really is interesting how so many dog trainers don't realize that the skill set applies beyond. In all of my training for the coaching and psychology pieces of the work I do now, I was amazed that I was often one of the best-read students in the class, because I had already read this book or that book, because I was looking at how I could help my clients do better. There was a lot of human psychology baked into just the world I lived in as a dog trainer, and vice versa. And it does all come back to looking at behavior and being curious about it and analyzing it. I always hesitated to talk about it that way, because there is this element of, like, are you treating me like a dog? You know, 'Treat everyone like a dog' is a great title when we can laugh about it, but it was a fear—because one of my specialties when I was training was kids and dogs, and I very much saw parenting and dog training as very similar. Not identical—I get it, I have kids, I've had dogs, I know they're not the same. And also it's a lot the same, a lot the same. So it was always this little tricky spot of like, are you saying you're treating me like a dog? What higher compliment could I give someone? I adore dogs. Treat them so very well.

Karen London  13:10

I agree with you 100%. I think that everybody does deserve to be treated like a dog—and by that, I mean the way the best, positive, humane dog trainers treat their dogs. I mean, if somebody doesn't agree with the statement, I would argue they're not really understanding where we're coming from with it. But I think—I have two kids that are now in college, and I did a lot of things with them that related to the way I raise dogs, and I am really pleased with the young men they have become. I think they are much the better for having been raised with a dog-training perspective and understanding.

Colleen Pelar  13:49

I think that served them well. Yeah, yeah, I definitely think so.

Colleen Pelar  13:55

So I ask all of my guests to share some words that had meaning for them, and you shared a quote from Dr. Seuss: 'It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how.' I'm just going to stereotype broadly here—when we think of people who've pursued something to the level of a PhD, we don't tend to think of fun as being their first motivating force. Tell me a little bit about this quote and how it came into your experience of being something you want to hold on to.

Karen London  14:30

Well, I think that a lot of people who are scientists, and I would put myself in this category, consider the work of science as a very playful, creative pursuit. It's the way that we might think of engineers when they were children—that they were tinkerers. I think many scientists as children were extremely playful, not necessarily super attached to doing things in a linear manner or the way everyone else has done it. So that's one aspect of it. I think that play is so important for dogs. It matters to me because it matters to dogs, and because I'm an aggression specialist, play comes up a lot. Play and aggression are really closely linked. Emotional levels of frustration and arousal affect both. Play can be used to treat aggression a lot—that's something I've spoken about quite a lot and feel very strongly about. I think that sometimes I meet with people and they say their dogs have kind of no training, but they're undervaluing the work they've put in teaching their dog to play: being able to retrieve, to drop, to go get a toy on cue. All of these are skills. And I think that a lot of behavior problems in dogs come from a lack of skills—the dogs don't have the skills they need. And the reason that the quote from The Cat in the Hat, 'It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how,' means so much to me is because that philosophy has helped me help a lot of people and their dogs, and also because play seems so intuitive and so obvious, but you need to know the rules. I mean, if you're playing cricket or curling or tag, you need to know the rules. And I think that it's a reminder that no matter what you're doing, you need to know how to do it. Many people who go to medical or dental school, for example, learn how to practice medicine and dentistry, but they don't know about having a business. It's just a reminder that no matter what you're doing, there are things you need to know. And I think play is so often taken as just intuitive or natural or just like, oh, anyone can do it—but just like everything else, it's a skill, and you need to know the rules, the boundaries, the techniques. And I just think that the people I like the best are the people who are the most playful, and so it all sort of connects. It's a little bit unfortunate that it's from Dr. Seuss, because he is not always taken seriously, but I certainly think he should be.

Colleen Pelar  17:29

I love it. I think both pieces of it are really valuable here for this conversation, and particularly for this group of people. It is fun to have fun, but you have to know how. I know a lot of pet professionals who struggle with being able to have fun for themselves. They can do it in the context of setting up fun things for others, fun things for animals, fun things for friends, but there's a little bit of a permission-giving of like, am I allowed to have fun? Because I'm serious, and I have a lot of work to do, and there are important things that need to be done, and this would be wasteful and self-indulgent if I go do something fun. So not only do they not always feel permission to have fun, but when they take time to have fun, they sometimes don't know how. I have had people say, like, oh, take the afternoon off, and it was really kind of boring and stressful because they didn't know what to do.

Karen London  18:30

Yeah, I think people can get out of practice with that. And I think this idea of permission that you bring up is so relevant to people in any kind of pet professional role, because it's a very weighty field with a lot of work that needs doing to help and save animals, and that can weigh heavily on all of us. But when I think about permission—I live in the mountains at 7,000 feet in Flagstaff, Arizona, and we typically have averaged 100 inches of snow a year. We're way low this year due to climate change, and it's really warm out, and people are sort of upset about it. And I know it's terrible, but I love being out in the nice warmth in January and February and December when it's often cold, and I know it's terrible, but it can either be terrible and I'm upset about it, or it can be terrible and I enjoy it. I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. So I think the same thing is true here—just because you're enjoying yourself or doing something strictly for recreational purposes doesn't mean you don't still value the important work you're doing in your professional life.

Colleen Pelar  19:47

I think that's important. There's this idea that the work people are doing is worthy of care, and taking the time to have positive experiences matters—not only for your health and well-being, but even for the work. Now, I don't think you should take a break so you can do better work. There is that argument, but I don't want people to have their identity and their worth so tied up in it that they say, I'm going to go have fun so that I can be an even better dog trainer. You could also go have fun so that you could just be a person who has fun. That would be nice. And don't you think that the whole world could use a few more people who are just kind of happy and joyful and having fun? There are big problems, but happy, joyful people might come up with better solutions than cranky, stressed out people.

Karen London  21:06

I mean, I've said for years—even when my kids were little and I needed to nurse them when they woke in the middle of the night and cried—I always went to the bathroom, got a glass of water first, meanwhile the baby's crying. But I was always like, I have to take care of me so I can take care of you. Now people tend to say, you know, put on your own oxygen mask first, but it's the same thing. And I think—I just don't know—we only get one life. I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying as much of it as you can. And it doesn't mean that I don't take the problems of the world seriously, but I'm honestly not thinking about them every minute of every day, nor do I think I should be. And there are so many people in our field working so hard to do so much for animals, and I think we just—it's always wise to keep in mind that when we're just doing whatever we want to do for fun or joy or recreationally, there's someone else working. And I'm really big on running and track and field, and sometimes people say, oh, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And I say, it's not, it's a relay. You've got to hand the baton off all the time. You'll get it again. But you know, you're always handing it off. And I just don't feel guilt or shame about enjoying my life. I do think I'm a contributing member of society, but that just isn't something I put on myself on the regular.

Colleen Pelar  22:29

I kind of love the metaphor of the relay. I've definitely heard, 'it's not a sprint, it's a marathon,' and I like the long view of that. But the relay piece is important too, because it isn't all on any of us—any of this. It's so easy to lose sight of that. It's so easy to feel like it all comes down to how much effort we ourselves are putting in, that there are things happening that we don't know about, and things that we can't see, that are also making a difference. So the relay concept is kind of cool, because you do need to stop, get your breath, let someone else run for a bit, and then you can have another turn in the relay when it's your turn to run again.

Colleen Pelar  23:20

I like that.

Colleen Pelar  23:24

So since we're here on fun, tell me what you do for fun.

Karen London  23:29

I live in an outdoor area, so I like running, hiking, biking, some skiing. I haven't done any this year yet. And I like racing any kind of distance. I've raced everything from the 60 meters to the marathon, and currently I'm focusing a lot on the triple jump in track and field, which is, you know, used to be known as the hop, skip, and the jump, but it's just like the long jump in the sense that you run and jump into the sand.

Colleen Pelar  23:55

Wow, wow. What got you into that?

Karen London  23:59

My son was a triple jumper in high school, and he taught me how to triple jump. We had a good laugh because we looked up my husband was also trying to triple jump, and he did so well—he was about a foot off the state record in Arizona for his age class. So when we looked up, I said, well, let's look up what it is in my age class. And there was no mark. I was 54 at that time—I'm now 57—and there was no mark in the age group 50 to 54. So my son taught me how to triple jump enough, and I now have the state record in Arizona in those age classes for the triple jump. And by that, I mean apparently I'm the only one who's ever registered a mark in my age class. And now I do it for fun—originally I did it just to get the state record. But I feel really strongly that it's super important, if you're teaching—as we often are in dog training, whether you're teaching group classes or individual skills or whatever—to experience being a learner. Mary Lee Nitschke, who has since passed away, was a psychologist and dog trainer who, when she had a dog training facility, required all of her trainers to take a class to learn something new every nine months. She didn't care if it was calligraphy or macramé or, you know, triple jumping—but the experience of basically not knowing how to do something and having a teacher keeps you in that zone of what it's like to learn at the very basics. It also helps you identify what good teaching looks like. My son taught me to triple jump—he did a really good job, and I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up really going into coaching. He understands his learner, which is so important with dogs, people, everything. The person who first taught me to snowboard kind of said things like, 'become one with the hill' and 'you gotta shred it.' Okay, that really doesn't tell me how to get off the lift without falling and having it whack me on the head. He just wasn't a good instructor for beginners. And that was useful too—what's he saying? He wasn't giving any real information.

Colleen Pelar  26:18

Yeah. And it's very different to be an instructor for a beginner than for an advanced person, because the advanced person has a whole framework of knowledge that you can just add your 'be one with the hill' piece to, and that might mean something to them. But for a beginner, you have to really do that. I do agree that there's such value in taking a course and being a beginner. It's hard, it's uncomfortable, sometimes it can be really cool—you sign up for something like, this is going to be interesting and fun. And also, you know, to use the calligraphy example: when your ink keeps globbing on the paper and you're asking how not to do it, they're probably using words that don't mean something to you—the jargon, the technique doesn't actually translate into what do I do right now in this moment. And metaphor is a great way for doing that. So your relay example is a really nice way for somebody to get an idea without having to use jargon for all of the concepts.

Karen London  27:29

I totally agree. And for me, I think the biggest thing I just keep learning over and over again as I learn new things is that jargon is really not helpful. I come from an academic background—I've been dog training since 1997, I'm certainly familiar with the academic terminology. And if I'm discussing with colleagues, I'm certainly comfortable using those terms. But unless I happen to have a client who is a psychologist or someone who would find those words useful, I really don't bother. I very actively minimize jargon—except when I don't realize I'm using it, which I'm sure happens to everyone—but it's a general goal. And I find that as a beginner, I don't really care what you call things, because I'm not trying to distinguish them from other closely related things at that moment.

Colleen Pelar  28:21

Right, right. I have found that the more comfortable somebody is with what they're teaching, the more they're able to let go of jargon. I want to be careful about a blanket statement, but I have known people who were a little bit less comfortable who would rely on the jargon as a credibility builder—like, 'you'll see I know my stuff.' That was well intended, because they did know their stuff, but they weren't as comfortable yet to dance in the moment of sharing the information. But jargon can really be alienating for those of us who don't understand it. I'm actually taking a cartooning class right now, and they were talking about hue and tone and saturation of color, and I almost fell over. I'm like, I don't know that I can articulate the differences between those. And then the teacher came back and was like, you don't actually need to—just start with light and dark, and then we'll work on warm and cold. That might just be fine. But when those terms come out for someone who's just beginning, it becomes one of those things where it is interesting to professionals in any field—the nuance matters—but to the person we're teaching, usually at the beginning it doesn't have the same value. Letting ourselves use language in a way that communicates to the learner is more helpful. Metaphor is a great way for doing that. So I like to ask people: if you had a magic wand and you could grant one wish or a blessing for pet professionals as a population, what would you give us?

Karen London  30:45

Well, first of all, how do you know I don't have a magic wand?

Karen London  30:50

No, if I had a magic wand and I had one wish, I would like for the guilt to go away. People feel very guilty about the dogs they couldn't save, or other animals too, or what they didn't get right, or what they wish they had said. And I love to give people the grace of—if people are legitimately doing the best they can, I would not like to see so much guilt. And many people that I come into contact with who are pet professionals, especially with dogs, they themselves got into it because they had a dog with aggression, and there's so much guilt and shame associated with having an aggressive dog. I would just like to toss all that guilt and shame away. That would be my terrific wish.

Colleen Pelar  31:31

That would be lovely. We'll take it. Thank you.

Colleen Pelar  31:37

Okay, so if people wanted to learn more about you and your work, how could they do that?

Karen London  31:41

Well, I am on Instagram at Karen London Dog Behavior. But I think the best way to learn about my work, because I tell a lot of stories in my books, is to read them. The two most recent ones about dogs are Treat Everyone Like a Dog, which we already mentioned, and then another one that's a collection of newspaper columns called My Dog's Mystery Adventure—that's 50 columns about dogs. I write the London Zoo column for the Arizona Daily Sun, which I need to say has nothing to do with the actual London Zoo in Great Britain, but is my name and my interest in animals. I've been doing it since 2008. I wrote a book of about 145 columns from the first seven years of doing that. That book is called Cows, Ants, Termites and Me, and that is about all kinds of animals—but the dog columns I pulled out separately. And just as sort of a fun side note, I'd love to mention that my editor is Eileen Anderson of Eileen And Dogs, who's written Remember Me? and Puppy Socialization. She made it a better book—she made all three of those books better books, and I appreciate that.

Colleen Pelar  32:49

She's lovely, and I have interviewed her on the show as well, so I'll link to her episode in the show notes. In the show notes, I'll put in all your books and Eileen's episode and all that. Well, this has been such a pleasure talking with you today, Karen. It's been really nice.

Karen London  33:04

Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much for having me. It really is a pleasure to talk with you, and just really a treat. Thank you.

Colleen Pelar  33:14

So I stopped recording and then we kept talking—and oh my gosh, wouldn't you know she'd be brilliant again. So I turned the microphone back on. Karen and I were talking about a really important idea about compassion fatigue, and she shared it, and I said, can we just put this back on tape? So could you please say again what you just shared with me about what you think is really important for people to remember when they're experiencing some of these symptoms?

Karen London  33:39

Sure, I would love to. I think that one of the best ways to handle compassion fatigue is both preventative and proactive. And that's to have some other aspect of your career beyond the part that really draws from you emotionally. So I work a lot with people with aggressive dogs, and that, as you can imagine, can be very emotional and very draining. And I love it—I absolutely adore it—but I have to keep feeding my emotional energy to continue to be able to do that. And what I do is have other things that I do. So in the past I've taught puppy classes and tricks and games classes and other group classes. I speak to conferences and local groups. And then I write. So not all of my work week or work life is working with aggression cases. I have something else. So for many people—if you are working in a shelter, which can be incredibly draining, or in a veterinary clinic, or in so many other areas—if there's some other thing you do that's career related, whether it's writing or even to help you learn more about dogs, doing dog sports, something sort of more recreational with your pets, or if you're with horses, to ride just beyond the trail for fun—some other aspect of career. It could be teaching horseback riding lessons. That you have some other avenue related to your field that doesn't drain from you quite so much. I think that's super important.

Colleen Pelar  35:06

It really is. And it's particularly challenging when you are the one they turn to for the hard stuff, because it can feel like you should leave the lighter or easier stuff for other people—because they can do it, and you should do all the hard stuff. But to see the balance and to have that ability to refuel is so important. And you offered such a lovely variety of ways that somebody might fill their cup, because you don't always get it right in your workplace. You said your writing feeds a piece of you—so if you were working in a veterinary clinic, you're probably not going to be writing about that on the job, but you can write about it at other times of your day, in other ways. And it can be a way of reconnecting you to what brings you to the work and also a little bit more of the joy of it. That's really valuable. I wanted to pop us back on here so that you could hear that, because I absolutely agree with Karen that your skills matter and your energy matters and your experience matters, and so finding ways to keep yourself fueled matters. Is there anything else you'd like to tag on to that?

Karen London  36:25

Well, just that—no matter how draining various aspects of work in the animal professional space can be, I think it's important too that you do what you really love. So I really love working with families, even if they're in crisis with aggression cases. I mean, even though I do have to take care of myself, I really do love it. I love wading into those big emotions and big problems and being a part of just—I kind of think I just want to make their journey a little bit easier in whatever way helps. And there are plenty of people who are doing the job they truly love, but sometimes I think people maybe aren't doing the piece of it they really love. So I think it's really worth evaluating: do you really love it? For example, I've done a little bit of shelter work, and I enjoy doing a little bit of shelter work, but I know if I did a lot of that, that wouldn't be a good match for me—and that has nothing to do with my value or the value of shelter work. It's just a matter of whether it's a match, and it doesn't happen to be. But I really like the work that I do, and I think that minimizes the compassion fatigue I have, because even when it's draining me, it is still fueling me in some sense. But if that's what I did all day, every day, I don't think that would be sustainable for me personally.

Colleen Pelar  37:35

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Colleen Pelar  37:37

That's our conversation for today. If something we talked about resonated, I invite you to sit with it. Notice what feels true and what you want to explore further. You don't have to have it all figured out to start moving toward what matters. Whatever showed up for you today—clarity, questions, even resistance—trust that it's pointing you toward something important. For more support, join my weekly notes at ColleenPelar.com. And until next time, remember: you are enough, always, just as you are.