Marisa took Alex to Italy for ten days and it was his first time in Europe. Rome, Florence, the Amalfi Coast, and almost none of it planned, which she says is the whole reason she actually got to be there. What she keeps coming back to isn't the sites. It's that Alex got to see where her grandparents learned to make pasta and where her mom lived, and after a lifetime of her bringing pieces of that culture into their home in little ways, he finally understood her at a deeper level. Their love went deeper because he saw her in a new light. Then they came home to Iowa and she didn't pick her old pace back up. She stopped prepping six days out at the practice, stopped posting to teach anybody lessons, and started letting a priority be a priority when it's actually a priority, herself included.

🔥 In This Episode:

• What opens up when you stop trying to accomplish something on a trip and let yourself actually be there
• The difference between capturing a moment on your phone and letting it land in your own eyes, and what you give up when you choose the screen
• Why being seen by your partner in the place you come from does something no story about it ever could
• Why Marisa stopped preparing six days out in her practice, and what she means when she says a priority is a priority, and so is she
• How to carry your family's culture forward without it becoming something you shoulder alone

We look to travel for rest or adventure, and then we come home and talk about the views. What actually stays is what your heart got informed in while you were there. For Marisa and Alex, that was him understanding where she comes from and why she loves what she loves, and then wanting to build it into their life together. He's the one at the grocery store now buying mortadella and Italian sourdough. She isn't passing her family's culture down by herself anymore. Take whatever opened up in you somewhere else and let it change your regular week here.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: hello@theheartworklife.com

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Sara made a decision this season that looked, on paper, like going backwards. With one of her associate doctors heading into maternity leave, she chose to put herself back into nearly full time adjusting after almost two years of protected CEO time. It was the right call financially, culturally, and for the energy of her practice. And it still stirred up the old story: I'm not moving forward, I'm not good enough, real CEOs don't do this. In this conversation, Sara and Marisa pull apart where that story actually comes from, and it isn't the decision itself. It's comparison, the mastermind metric, the version of success built from everyone else's life but your own.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why a decision that looks like a step backwards can be the most aligned move for your finances, your culture, and your energy, and how to tell the difference between retreat and stewardship
• The comparison trap that turns aligned decisions into evidence of failure, and why measuring your season against other CEOs will always make you feel behind
• Marisa's discernment question for every big decision: are you gathering information so your heart can feel it through, or is your ego collecting approval
• How "we're in a season of transition" quietly becomes a crutch that stalls momentum, and the question that stopped Sara mid sentence when she caught herself using it
• Your relationship with change is contagious: how Sara realized her team hated change because she was the one saying it out loud, and what that fear cost her practice

The episode ends with a challenge worth taking seriously. Look back at every season of your life, the winters included, and name one beautiful thing that came from each. If you come up empty, that's not a failure. It's a signal to slow down, because you may be moving through your life without actually living in it. And if that's where you are right now, reach out to us. We're in it and we're here for you.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: hello@theheartworklife.com

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This episode starts with a hand on someone's back. Marisa walked into an adjusting room, felt something off in a practice member's energy, and asked her twice, are you okay today? The woman broke down. Fresh off a divorce and a morning masterclass about success, she said the thing so many people are circling right now: I've been living my life by society's metrics of success, and I just want to say F the success and take care of myself. What follows is a short, honest conversation about the difference between satisfaction and joy, why the things we do purely for love lose something the moment we turn them into a project with an outcome, and the strange, splitting feeling of looking at the life you built and not knowing if you still love it.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why a life built on achievement can look successful on paper and still leave you living in constant striving with nothing that feels like arrival
• The research on satisfaction, joy, and meaning, and what happens to people who chase only one of the three
• How turning something you loved for free into a source of income can quietly drain the joy out of it
• The disorientation of realizing you might not love the thing you built, and why that confusion is part of the journey rather than proof you took a wrong turn
• The question Sara was gifted two months ago that reframes everything: what would it look like for you to fall back in love with what you do?

This one is short, and it doesn't tie anything up. If you're in a season where you're questioning what you actually love, whether the thing you built still fits, whether the metrics you've been chasing were ever yours, this episode won't hand you the answer. It hands you the question. What would it look like for you to fall back in love with what you do, not because the P&L says you should, but because there's still something in it worth loving? Sit with that one this week.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: hello@theheartworklife.com

Support the show