What If It Works Out? A Conversation with Ann Imig

Have you ever caught yourself overthinking, waiting for the “right time,” or imagining everything that could go wrong? What if, instead, you asked: What if it works out?

In this episode, I’m talking with Ann Imig, an award-winning writer, performer, and life coach who created Listen to Your Mother, a nationwide storytelling series that gave people a stage to share their stories. Ann helped me navigate one of the most vulnerable seasons of my life—releasing my book into the world. Today, she’s here to share the mindset shifts and tools that can help all of us move through life’s transitions with more clarity, courage, and trust.

We talk about:
✨ How our brains sabotage us—and how to stop the stress spiral in real time
✨ The biggest lie we tell ourselves: “I’ll be happy when…”
✨ Why listening—to ourselves and others—might be the most powerful skill we can develop
✨ What to do when fear, self-doubt, or life transitions leave you feeling stuck

If you’re in a season of change, if you’re reimagining what’s next, or if you need a reminder that good things are possible for you, this episode is for you.

Mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Ann Imig at ListenLifeCoaching.com

Schedule a free breakthrough session with Ann Imig

Saboteur assessment https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/

VIA Character Strengths Survey https://viacharacter.org/account/register

Loved this episode? Screenshot it, tag me @angiemizzell on Instagram, and let me know your biggest takeaway!

Learn more about my book and subscribe to my weekly newsletter Hello Friday at angiemizzell.com

Transcript

Ann (00:00)
it's all about being able to disrupt our stress in real time, because that left brain, that dominant, brain, we need that brain in a true crisis, but that brain is over-functioning all the time. It's treating life like a crisis,

And it literally shapes and limits opportunities in real time. And it affects our relationships, our performance, and especially our wellbeing.

Angie Mizzell (00:26)
Hi, I'm Angie Mizzell and welcome to More Like You. This is a podcast about what it really means to create a life that feels like home. I believe that home is more than a place. It's a state of being.

Here, we talk about everything from redefining success to navigating big life transitions to making small shifts that align with who you truly are.

Through honest conversations and personal stories, my goal is to inspire you to trust yourself, embrace change with courage, and step into a life that feels more like you. Today's episode is a special one for me because my guest, Ann Imig has played a meaningful role in my life. First as the creator of Listen to Your Mother.

a nationwide storytelling series that I had the honor of bringing to Charleston, and later, as a coach who helped me in the days leading up to my book launch. We talk about how our brains are wired to sabotage us, how to stop overthinking and break free from stress and fear in real time, plus, Ann shares some simple tools that can help you shift from self-doubt to action today.

So please join me in welcoming Ann Imig to the show.

Angie Mizzell (01:41)
I want to go all the way back, because we know each other from Listen to Your Mother. But I knew of you before that, because you were a big time mommy blogger, or mom blogger, Ann's Rants. And so.

Ann (01:53)
Yes, throwing it

way back.

Angie Mizzell (01:57)
So when did you start blogging about motherhood?

Ann (02:00)
Yeah, I was gonna say we know each other from a really special time that doesn't exist anymore. was this blip. I started blogging in 2008.

Angie Mizzell (02:12)
So that is about the time I started blogging, which interestingly enough, I started a blog because I studied and got certified to be a life coach. So I started a website and had a blog as part of that. I quickly realized I liked blogging. I wanted to write about my life through the lens of being a new mom. So,

Ann (02:22)
Oof.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Angie Mizzell (02:36)
I really didn't pursue getting coaching clients because I was like, really like writing this particular way. So we did meet in a special time. And so I knew of you and then Listen to Your Mother launched. And we can talk about what Listen to Your Mother is, but I remember my friend Abby, who lives in Baltimore, who I also met through our blogs and writing about motherhood online. She sent me

a message and said, I went to this show in DC called Listen to Your Mother. And she was like, you need to bring Listen to Your Mother to Charleston. And at this time, my third born was a baby. And I was like, I don't think I can do that right now. But so I did actually just let it go. But when it circled back around, it like was still kind of in me like,

Ann (03:13)
Mm-hmm.

No

Angie Mizzell (03:26)
I'm going to do this. And it was so gratifying to apply and then get accepted to bring Listen to Your Mother to Charleston. And I went on to do that for producing and directing for five years, I believe. And as you know, such a time consuming project, a labor of love, not incredibly or at all lucrative.

Ann (03:43)
Wow.

Yes, 100%.

Depending. Some people do make some nice money. Most of us it was absolutely as you described labor of love.

Angie Mizzell (03:56)
Yes.

And it was, but it is still to this day, one of the most gratifying things I've ever done, something that I am so proud of to have been a part of.

But you were very intent that we make sure our shows were diverse, that we were reaching out to people beyond our social network. And I felt like it was interesting that we did do that, but I felt like it attracted a diverse audience organically, which...

Ann (04:18)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Angie Mizzell (04:30)
I loved, I am still connected

to so many people who auditioned. Well, first of all, I was so surprised at how many people signed up to audition. And then when the cast is selected and they get together and they read their story for the first time around the table, the whole energy shifts because suddenly you're like, wow. And it creates this connection through shared stories. And it was so, so incredible.

Ann (04:49)
Yeah, yes.

You're

giving me chills, Angie?

Angie Mizzell (04:55)
I know, I'm like, gosh, I want to do Listen to Your Mother again.

Ann (05:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know, for people listening and just catching up, it's just your friends and neighbors coming together to read their stories from a podium. It's not actors. I mean, once in a while, there's an actor like a published author, but the heart of the project was just everyday people, many of whom had never done anything like this, like never stepped up to a podium, never produced a show. But people were so

motivated to tell the story on their heart and to feel that connection in a room full of moms and parents and grandparents and people overcame speaking phobias, people. You're right. It was like a magnet. And I think there is something about those motherhood years that are so isolating and makes you start processing things from your life in a new way.

And it was so incredible to watch people finding their voice and the project really became a leadership project for the people like you who decided to produce and direct an event, many of whom were not involved in theater, had never run events. Sure, some people brought those skills. And most of the people who did run these shows were creative online women.

project grew so quickly. So they were really sharp community building women with tons of talents and really good at catalyzing community. But the lasting impact of the show, people ran for office, people started businesses, people, you know, started entire new storytelling projects of their own. People tried stand up comedy. There's a whole core.

Angie Mizzell (06:33)
Wow.

Ann (06:46)
cohort in Boulder, where they still do a show in like the Denver Boulder area, they've all become stand up comedians. I mean, you can't even and then there's just the personal stories of people bringing their partner, their mother, know, somebody to the show and it provoking conversations that change lives, tons of advocacy where people who really needed support found one another and propelled one another to become

Angie Mizzell (06:52)
Wow.

Ann (07:15)
advocates and allies, it was educational, but all in the form of entertainment and really energizing communities around motherhood.

Angie Mizzell (07:25)
Mm-hmm. And you know what I loved about it, you don't have to have birthed a child to be in the show, and you don't have to be a woman.

Ann (07:30)
Right.

Yeah.

Angie Mizzell (07:35)
Everybody has a motherhood story and there

Ann (07:37)
Yes, everyone.

And I also want to say what is so beautiful about that now is there's no likes, there's no comment sections like you are just alone in the dark, surrounded by your community in this quiet space listening. There is such power, we do not do enough listening. We do so much talking and, you know, leaving our opinions and not enough listening and

The event that inspired Listen to Your Mother was at the BlogHer 2009 conference. They had something that they called the community keynote where bloggers would submit their writing to try to be chosen to read on stage. hundreds of people would submit their writing and a dozen or so would get chosen. And I sat there watching it. And I had already had a master's in social work at this time. And I started out my young adult life as a stage actor. So I sat.

in the audience and I was so incredibly moved by something that from a theatrical perspective made no sense. There were no sets, were no costumes. It wasn't memorized. They weren't even performers, but it was riveting. And I felt such a strong feeling of bearing witness of the audience bearing witness to the reader. There was so much emotion and it was

From a social worker perspective, it was so cathartic and catalyzing for everyone who was there.

Angie Mizzell (09:02)
Since then, our kids are growing up, leaving the nest, and I love how you have taken that Listen to Your Mother brand and used it to be part of your professional next chapter. So you now run Listen Life Coaching. And so tell me how that evolved.

Tell me about the transition to, want to be a life coach and I want to do this and help people.

Ann (09:28)
with you.

Well, it was always about listening. In fact, when I wrote my essay to get into my master's in social work program, it was all about listening. It was about how I had been chosen in high school to mentor an autistic classmate of mine who was nonverbal. And was so intimidating to me and I didn't understand my role then. But it was just like braiding her hair and being with her.

Angie Mizzell (09:56)
Mm.

Ann (09:56)
And I talked about how I had volunteered at the Council for the Jewish Elderly the summer before I had written this application. And I was just serving snacks. And the people there would start telling me their stories. And it was so clearly important that I just sit there and listen. Some of them are Holocaust survivors. And it was profound. I could feel the therapeutic value of that with me not saying anything but listening.

So it's always been about listening. I intended to become a therapist professionally. And when I had our kids and I was a stay at home mom, which was a dream role for me, as much as it was exhausting and grueling, don't get me wrong, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. And I thought I was really done with that performing part of my life. And then,

Angie Mizzell (10:38)
Right?

Ann (10:46)
blogging, you know, I found blogging and it was like it just relit that connection with an audience. So it took me away from becoming that therapist I thought I would become. Fast forward, my kids growing up, Listen to Your Mother takes me for a wild, incredible ride. And then it becomes just this huge leadership project that I never intended. And I needed I really wanted to just focus again on my family. And then soon after that the pandemic hit,

Angie Mizzell (10:52)
Mm-hmm.

Ann (11:13)
I had a big creative disappointment. had a book that didn't sell. I felt like lost. And I also was really exhausted from basing so much of my professional life on creative aspirations that were beyond my control. And at the same time, I felt my kids growing up and how quickly the end of their being in our home was coming. And I knew that if I didn't get my professional life sorted, I was going to be a mess.

Angie Mizzell (11:28)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Mm.

Ann (11:43)
And so I looked at getting my license back as a therapist and long story short, I had my own coach, my whole adult life named Robin Shearer out of Oak Park, Illinois and she just retired recently in her eighties, which is the model I'm following. And it was like, what about coaching? Because I had all of these connections with women already. I had a platform already.

Angie Mizzell (11:59)
Right.

Ann (12:08)
And she had had a client go through this positive psychology coach training program. And I was so in need of the positive psychology piece myself that that's where I started. I just took one class to learn about positive psychology for the benefit of my own brain and then quickly was like, yep, this is what I'm doing next.

Angie Mizzell (12:14)
Mm-hmm.

Let's talk about what positive psychology is and what it is not.

Ann (12:34)
Yes.

Yes. So it is not toxic positivity. It is not turn your frown upside down. It is not fake it till you make it. Positive psychology is all neuroscience and evidence based. And it is looking at what works for humans and how we get more of that. Because before the early 2000s, psychology focused on what didn't work, dysfunction, that whole DSM volume that we use to diagnose mental illness, which is critically important.

That was what psychology was. And all of a sudden, Martin Seligman, who was like a real renegade and it was not received well, first he said, and not just him, of course, he worked with lots of other people, but we need to figure out what works. And that's what positive psychology is, figuring out what works and how to get more of it in your

Angie Mizzell (13:22)
I worked, or do you work with a psychologist when you go to therapy? I went to therapy when I left. I went to a therapist for several years after I left my television news career. And I already knew I had a story and a book inside of me, but it was through the therapy process that I started to make connections that helped me see.

Ann (13:28)
You want to therapist, yeah.

Angie Mizzell (13:50)
what was shaping my views of success, where and how my career in life even really got to a crisis in the first place. And it actually really helped me write the book. Where I'm going with this is when my book was coming out.

Ann (14:00)
Mmm.

Angie Mizzell (14:05)
and you had started your coaching business, I reached out to you because I was like, I need what you're offering now because I don't need to talk about all the ways this feels vulnerable and all the things that could go wrong with this or it's almost like I need the courage to stand in my light now and bring this project to life.

Ann (14:32)
Yes!

Angie Mizzell (14:33)
And I just, think it was really good timing of you showing up in my inbox and starting to promote your business. I'm not exactly, when did you launch your coaching business? Yeah.

Ann (14:43)
Yeah, 2021. And I

also want to say that our brains are all primed for negativity. So to just normalize that for everyone, that is where we go. Even when good things are happening, we become afraid that I'm going to mess it up, that I'm not going to be able to hold onto it, that I'll never be this happy again. There's a million variations of that. And I also just want to say like,

I'm a big advocate for therapy when a lot of times people come to me, I don't know if I need a therapist or a coach. I had, there's a blog post written on my site, kind of differentiating the two, but I'm very much like a both and like they're, they serve different purposes and, but you were not in a crisis, like a life crisis. You were not having a chronic or acute depression or anything like that. You knew.

what you needed. And what I heard from what you needed is something I also related to it is for it is very hard to celebrate and savor and really take in even the good things in life. Our brains are not used to that. And that is something that we work like that's what we did together is help disrupt the stress so that you could really savor what you had worked so hard for.

Angie Mizzell (15:59)
Yes, and that work, I did a group coaching program, and it really did help me be present, especially because a lot of things, there were things that didn't go right, and there were a lot of, it's very vulnerable to release your story in the world, but I, and it's not even about pretending like the negative isn't there, but it is exactly what you said.

Ann (16:12)
yes.

Angie Mizzell (16:21)
I celebrated that moment. I savored the moment. I'm still celebrating and savoring the fact that I accomplished that. But I do remember being at my book launch party and I was like, this is actually how I saw it in my head. And that's almost rare. Like I could see the event. And then when I was at the event, I'm like, and it was almost, it was more overwhelming than I thought, but it was only because of how many people.

Ann (16:34)
Wow.

Angie Mizzell (16:46)
showed up and wanted to talk to me. Like, why is it such a surprise? It's like, it's for me, but I'm like, It's like, yes.

Ann (16:47)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it's almost like a wedding, right? Where it's like

you can't, you wish you had hours to spend with each person and there's just, that's how it goes.

Angie Mizzell (16:58)
Right.

Yeah, so it did a lot of wonders. So I will just share with the audience kind of what I gathered from what you were offering and what it helped me see. It's like we have the way I see it is we two sides of our brain or two parts of our brain and we have the saboteur and kind of like the caveman brain. And then we have the wise brain, the sage brain and the fight brain, the caveman brain.

Ann (17:18)
You

Yeah.

I like it. I like it.

Angie Mizzell (17:24)
I don't know if I made that up, but it's

very developed. That part of our brain is in check. It is the sage wise brain that exists, this part of ourself that is underdeveloped.

That's my interpretation

Ann (17:38)
beautifully.

Angie Mizzell (17:39)
of it,

Ann (17:40)
Beautifully said so we did a specific program that I use with Nearly every single client now called positive intelligence and people can go look at positiveintelligence.com You can buy the program on the site, but you don't get a coach like let's talk before you go and do that but It is the most amazing delivery system for everything that we know works well with positive psychology and

What it is, is it's all about actually being able to disrupt our stress in real time, because that left brain, that dominant, very, like you said, caveman brain, we need that brain in a true crisis, but that brain is over-functioning and over-dominant all the time. It's treating life like a crisis, even before we're aware of it.

And it literally shapes and limits opportunities in real time. And it affects our relationships, our performance, and especially our wellbeing. And so this program is, it's a seven week program where you develop new habits, where you can disrupt that stress channel when you feel what we call the judge or the saboteur. And some people listening are gonna know exactly what I mean right away. Like maybe you have a really strong inner critic.

or maybe you have a really strong judge of other people, like whether you like it or not, maybe that's where your brain goes to right away. And all of us have a little bit of both and we judge situations as good or bad before we even know it and make decisions about it. And what this program does is it takes your brain to the gym, literally, as you know, because you've done it. And every day you're just working on what they call PQ reps.

Angie Mizzell (19:19)
Mm-hmm.

Ann (19:26)
like you go to the gym and you do reps where you're just tuning in to your senses for 10 seconds at a time. It stops the thinking, slows down your nervous system. And then naturally you can access this right part of your brain where creativity, curiosity, awe, positivity, intuition, all of this most powerful, important stuff lives that gets

checked constantly by this left brain that's so intrusive. And so by practicing this daily over weeks, you actually, you get a new operating system for your whole body. And then you can start making profound changes in your life. And the saboteur part, so the judges like the master saboteur, judging ourselves, judging other people, judging situations, but then there's this whole cast of characters.

Angie Mizzell (20:12)
Mm-hmm.

Ann (20:21)
of nine saboteurs and we all have them in different areas of our lives, but like the pleaser, the controller, the victim, know, maybe people are nodding along hyper vigilant. That's a big one right now with the stress of the modern world and especially as parents, hyper achiever. That's the one that was making me miserable and telling me I couldn't enjoy my life unless I was achieving bigger and better goals constantly. And you know what? That's an unfillable well.

Angie Mizzell (20:50)
Mm-hmm.

Ann (20:50)
We

all have some version of what we call the I'll be happy whens. And it's a lie. It might be the bigger house. It might be the new relationship. It might be that book deal. And then that book deals never enough because it wasn't a New York Times critic pick or whatever. It might be, you know, your physical body. The never enough that like if I just do that one more thing, I'm finally going to feel OK about myself.

Angie Mizzell (20:54)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ann (21:16)
And know,

yeah, some marriages need to end. Sometimes you do need to get a new job. But that's different than this race to nowhere that makes all of us miserable and really interferes with the ability to enjoy our daily life.

Angie Mizzell (21:26)
Mm-hmm.

That's right. So when I took the quiz, I was so surprised. I thought pleaser, because I identify as a people pleaser. I thought that would be the number one. I was so surprised, and it was incredibly helpful that

avoider, avoiding

Ann (21:47)
Mm-hmm.

this is the thing for people listening. It doesn't matter which saboteur, it doesn't matter if it's the judge or the saboteur. You become familiar with that negative bias in your head and you check it and you do some PQ reps. And I can give you a sense of what those PQ reps are right now if you want to for our listeners.

Angie Mizzell (22:00)
Mm-hmm.

sure, yes, tell us all. So I, well, let me think. I liked sound, like the closest sound, the farthest way sound, because where I sit in my house, I can hear the cars on the road several blocks over. I can hear an airplane, but then can also hear the sounds my house makes. So I find that I really did, I liked that one probably the most.

Ann (22:09)
Are there any that you remember that you like Angie?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I'll go through a few and you can do them right now if you want to or this is just for the listeners if you want to put in your earbuds and just like minimize your notifications. This is just going to be two minutes and what you're going to do is you're just going to feel the seat in your chair and feel your feet on the floor or if you're standing just feel rooted where you are and start to notice your breathing.

Just your natural breathing, really paying attention to the rise and fall in your chest and stomach. So just noticing the effortless rise and fall of your chest and stomach.

and you can have your eyes closed or you can just pick a soft point of focus.

And now deepen your breath and notice as you inhale through your nose the temperature of the air and as you exhale through your nose how the temperature of the air changes.

and let go of any thoughts you're having, it's perfectly normal. And now listen for the farthest away sound you can hear.

And now listen to the closest sound you can hear, maybe sounds inside your own body or your breathing.

and just let go of any thoughts you're having and take two fingertips and rub them together with such attention that you can feel sensation on both fingers. Maybe you can feel the fingertip ridges. Maybe you can feel the edge of your fingernail, but feel sensations on both fingers.

So those are just a couple of examples of what we call PQ reps. And listeners, you can do this if you're in the middle of a hard conversation, if you're talking to your boss, you can rub two fingers together underneath the table and nobody will have any idea that you're calming your nervous system in real time, which will allow you literally to see more when you're not stressed out, you can literally see more in front of you and have access to more choices.

Angie Mizzell (25:37)
So what if someone listening is or was driving in their car?

Ann (25:42)
your car, be safe for sure. That is not ideal. also you can do, you can feel your steering wheel, you can feel your toes in your shoes. You can always tune into your senses. mean, mindfulness practice is another none of this is new. I just want to say this is Buddhism. This is name, name your spiritual preference.

Angie Mizzell (25:43)
Yeah, you're right.

Ann (26:07)
The program is based on positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, and performance science. And over a million people have taken the saboteur assessment over 50 different countries. There are white papers written that you can read on the site about the science of it. is rigorously put together with such thought on purpose to make it accessible for as many people as possible. So it's not religious and it's not super clinical.

And if nothing else, today maybe you noticed one of those PQ reps that helps you relax and you use that. Just for the count of three breaths, roughly 10 seconds is three breaths.

Angie Mizzell (26:42)
Yeah.

And what is that doing exactly? Because what I tend to do, it's when I'm getting quiet, it's a mixed form of meditation and prayer where I might, I usually am bringing something to my quiet meditation time. And I found when doing the PQ reps that sometimes, you know, like a thought would come up that was wise or like a solution.

Ann (27:14)
it stops you from thinking because when we are stressed out, we're so convinced that more thinking is going to help the situation. And all that does is get us dug in farther to the stress channel. So it on purpose stops you from thinking and it actually slows down the stress and resets your nervous system. Because when you are calmer, then you have more access to that right part of your brain.

Angie Mizzell (27:16)
Mm.

Mmm.

That makes a lot of sense. Well, and that's where I actually feel like I call it my wise thought, but it is different than all the other noise in my head.

Ann (27:39)
where the good stuff is.

Angie Mizzell (27:49)
And now when I'm not doing something, I catch myself

And it's like, you're putting this off. It's causing you stress. And what if you just did it? And so now I'm aware of my tendencies, even though maybe I still lean in a certain direction because it's my makeup. For whatever reason, this is the way I am. Is that how you would, is that all right?

Ann (28:01)
Exactly. Yeah.

Like, I mean, you're touching

on some critical pieces of this, and I'm so glad you said. For one thing, the saboteurs and the judge lie. So if you're an avoider, your saboteur is promising you if you just avoid the problem, you'll feel better and it will go away. When in fact, the more you avoid and the longer you wait, the longer the stress goes and builds. Okay. And underneath,

all of our saboteurs is a shining strength that if we can stop the judge and the saboteurs from dominating our choices and our thoughts, the strength can better shine through. So an avoider is a really laid back, often friendly, happy-go-lucky person who goes with the flow and is really delightful to be around. That's the shining strength. And if you remember, we started our work together doing the strength assessment where you

know exactly what your signature strengths are. So when you're able to disrupt the stress, you can, when you identify, okay, there's my avoider again, I'm going to do some PQ reps. And then I'm going to make a choice for what to do next. Then you're letting your sage brain and letting those strengths guide you instead of the saboteur.

Angie Mizzell (29:28)
So since you mentioned it, wanted to go ahead and go over to the strengths assessment. I did take my profile again, and it was a little shifted, but I think the top thing stayed the top. But yeah, but what, and I think you probably find this with everyone. The first thing everyone does is go right to the bottom. it's, so for me, which is kind of funny,

Ann (29:39)
Which is, that's right, yeah.

Yeah, everyone goes right to the bottom.

Angie Mizzell (29:52)
a couple years ago, was bravery. And this time it was humility.

Ann (29:56)
that makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. First of all, you should, there's something about humility that I was just sharing with another client. And this, let me tell you, this assessment comes from viacharacter.org. And it's from, it was designed by Martin Seligman and colleagues. This is not part of positive intelligence, that program. And this is still a tool that I use with everyone when we begin, because the focus on strengths

Angie Mizzell (29:58)
really? Okay.

Ann (30:23)
is critically important when you're talking about figuring out what works. We all, just like the saboteurs, we all have these 24 character strengths. And the ones on the bottom just might be in the, are a little less natural to us and we have to work harder to use them. But specifically about humility, if you're an entrepreneur, you can't afford to be humble. Like that's part of your job to promote the book.

So you've been through this heavy promotional season. So it makes total sense to me that humility is at the bottom of your profile. And bravery before, you really had to pull up your bravery to let this beautiful, vulnerable, let me just glow about your book for a minute because it was so heart forward and pretty revealing about your inner life and the choices you made.

Angie Mizzell (30:49)
Right.

that's so interesting.

Ann (31:14)
So yeah, that completely tracks to me.

Angie Mizzell (31:17)
I'm glad you brought it up now that you read the book because in reading the book you got to know my husband through the story I told and I think it is so funny because I had him take the saboteur assessment and the strengths assessment

both of these are free assessments. You can take the saboteur assessment on the website. That's right. So my husband, who is a free thinker, he does things his own way, that kind of thing. He was sort of out on the premise of saboteurs. Like he's like, I don't self-sabotage, you know, that kind of thing. But I was like, just take the quiz. So here's what's interesting.

Ann (31:34)
Yeah, they're free. And they're short. They take like 10 minutes.

Mm-hmm.

Angie Mizzell (31:56)
for that assessment, we are exactly the opposite. So where avoider is the top, it's literally his bottom one. Hyperrational is my bottom one. It is his number one. His second is controller, and the third is hyperachiever, and those are literally my bottom three. But here's what's interesting. So I laughed because I'm like, I know you don't think

Ann (32:00)
Uh-huh.

I mean yin and yang baby, this is how it works.

Angie Mizzell (32:25)
that any of this is a problem, which I'm not saying it's a problem. What I'm laughing at is, this is why we clash all the time. And I know who he is and he knows who I am. But here's what's interesting. When taking the strengths profile, we were not that different. We weren't ranked exactly the same. But where love is my number one, hope and perspective and honesty.

Ann (32:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Angie Mizzell (32:52)
Those are my top four. Let me just take a look at his. His number one was honesty and his number four was perspective and love was not that far down. So what I found out is like there were only a couple that were on the opposite ends of the test, but not many. Most of them were in the same sort of section of ranking in a different order. And I was telling Shawn, was like, that's so interesting because

Ann (32:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Angie Mizzell (33:20)
We do have opposite personalities So was trying to make sense of that because I thought for sure both of the results, both sets of assessments would be opposite. And that's not the case. I mean, does that make any sense to you?

Ann (33:34)
Well, what I get from it is the beautiful thing to me is that when you can both disrupt your saboteurs, how beautifully you can come together. And that when you are having friction, if you just can like get out of the position taking and the story and just disrupt the stress and consciously use your signature strength,

you're going to have an amazing synergy. That's what I see from it.

Angie Mizzell (34:05)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think over the years, these are things we've discovered about ourselves. It's like we are the same and we're also different. But I think we're the same in ways that feel important. And it's just almost like we want the same things, but we come at it differently. And...

Ann (34:24)
Sure. And even

if you had the exact same profiles, we're such unique, complex individuals that it would still be true even if you had the exact same profile because these are not typing systems and they aren't designed to be looked at that way. It's just tools to help us figure out what works, disrupt the stuff that doesn't work so we can better enjoy our lives, our relationships and feel better.

Angie Mizzell (34:38)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

So on the note of feeling better, I always knew I wanted to have you on the podcast. But when I really was like, I need to reach out to Ann it was two email newsletters that you sent out relatively close together with the subject lines. One was, what if it's wonderful? And the other one was, what if it works out?

Ann (35:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Angie Mizzell (35:15)
And

these were coming out, if I remember correctly, around the fall, we had just sent our firstborn to college. Like, Dillon left the house. I was getting back to work, kind of back in my groove after losing my mom this summer. And I was surprised to notice this huge shift in identity that I was experiencing once again.

Ann (35:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Angie Mizzell (35:43)
The reason

I was surprised is because I knew the change was coming. I tried to have an identity outside of being a mother, but it doesn't change the fact that it was a feeling of loss. There was a literal loss of a person with my mother, but then...

Ann (35:51)
Mm-hmm.

yes. Yes. Yes.

Angie Mizzell (36:01)
but also a loss of my child who I still very much have a relationship with, but what happens in the whole, your whole life shifts. And I know you know this because you're there. So what, and we've touched on this all along the way, but especially how can a life transition, like when we go through these things and our identities shift, how can that help us get closer?

Ann (36:04)
Yes.

100 % 100 %

Angie Mizzell (36:24)
to like, what if it is wonderful? What if it does work out? Like, what is the work that we have to do to flip the way we're thinking about all of it?

Ann (36:27)
Hmm.

I mean, it's a process and I'm really, I mean, this is very real for me right now because we have two sons and our younger son is 18. So we are about to really be empty nesters. You know, he's figuring out where he's gonna go to school. And I also think it's a shock. Time is a real shock. And I think we can somewhat envision our lives, especially those of us who always wanted to have a family and up until this point.

and then it's really, really hard to imagine what it's going to look like. So I do think there's a shock piece of it and you do need to, it's gonna take time. Any big life transition takes longer than people think. And I wanna give everyone a piece of good news, which is that we recover faster than we think we're going to. Like there was a study of...

Harvard academics who were anticipating the tenure process and talk about hyper achievers. know, people thought if they didn't get tenure, they would be destroyed. And what they found is that even for the people who did not get tenure, they recovered a lot faster than they thought they would, and were happier than they thought that they would be. And we also do have to allow ourselves to grieve.

You can't skip over that part. Grief is actually love. And it's in our bodies. And there's no one right way to do this and not something I'm going to be able to like prescribe in a podcast. whether it's an actual death, I mean, the death of a mother is so profound. And sometimes that grief is even more complicated when you didn't have a great relationship with your mother. And

the grief of a life stage ending and a profound shift in a marriage. And you can't skip over it. I mean, you can, but it's going to show up. It's going to be disruptive. It's going to cause stress and maybe physical stuff in your body because of the tension that feelings cause when we push them down. So just knowing that you can't jump over it, it's going to be hard.

Angie Mizzell (38:30)
Yeah.

Ann (38:49)
And it's, it's, you're gonna come back up to a mood baseline. You're gonna be you again. And

that if you can know where your signature strengths are, even if you just take that via strengths quiz, those are huge clues to how you can feel like yourself again, how you can lift your mood to really look at those and figure out how can I use those in my life. So these are like self propelling positivity generators when we are using our signature strengths are the things that make us who we are.

Angie Mizzell (39:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ann (39:29)
And

we figure them out in childhood. It's how we figure out how to navigate the world in childhood, to stay safe, to find friends, to navigate the world. And what happens is this connection between our strengths and our saboteurs is we develop these well-worn pathways in our brain for navigating the world. But as we become adults, the saboteurs jump in.

and they overuse and abuse these strengths. So if you're a kind-hearted kid who made friends easily, and like I come from, I'm a child of divorce. had a very chaotic childhood, but I had a lot of love. had wonderful parents, several of them. But I learned really quickly that how I was going to most enjoy my life was to get along with everyone. And an interesting piece of this,

Angie Mizzell (40:10)
You

Ann (40:20)
is my family, my parents who would not talk to each other, were forced to come together when I would perform on stage. So you can see the seeds of that pleaser and that hyper achiever, because it really worked for me until adulthood when it didn't. And the achievement was leaving me to misery and taking me away from the joy of everyday life. And the pleaser, when the saboteur pleaser is driving the bus, I like look at it like a little poodle up on her.

Angie Mizzell (40:33)
That's right.

Ann (40:49)
behind legs like, you know, panting. It actually gives you the opposite. When you're pleasing everyone, you have no boundaries, you become resentful and you burn out. And really that's the case with most of these all, it's all of these saboteurs, even if it's a different route to get there. When you're controlling everyone, the lie of the controller saboteur is that if you just have things your way, you're finally gonna be, if things are gonna run smoothly, everything's gonna be as it should be.

Angie Mizzell (40:51)
You

Ann (41:16)
The more you control people, the worse off in your relationships, you're actually stifling creativity and you're getting the opposite of what you wanted in the end because you're suppressing and causing more stress.

Angie Mizzell (41:29)
How do we, kind of on a final note with a big question, but how do we do our work in the world and lean on our strengths when we're watching everything going on in the world and for many very concerning times? And I imagine you get a lot of that.

Ann (41:50)
This is the

primary question in every single session right now, and for me as well. And I just want to say a few things, which is that all the terrifying, depressing events going on right now, the last thing that I'm going to do is also let them let this steal my joy. This is our one life. This is it. This is our one world. Okay.

So that's number one, I am feeling very defiant in my joy. And I'm about to, I've been like thinking on a newsletter, another newsletter for a while, and that is figuring out how, so first of all, if you are in a crisis, there are many people in a genuine crisis right now, they may need to move geographically to get the healthcare they need, there are people getting fired from jobs.

Angie Mizzell (42:20)
Mm-hmm.

Ann (42:41)
There are people whose children are not safe, whether it's LBGTQ+. I mean, there are so many things going on. It feels like chaos. So if you're somebody right now who's in a crisis, the first thing you need to do is get to safety. Like none of this stuff you can afford to think about and that left brain is gonna help you get to safety. That's what you're wired for. And if we can all calm down, it's...

Angie Mizzell (42:59)
All right.

Ann (43:04)
Positive intelligence founder, Shirzad Shami, uses a lot of Star Wars imagery and the Jedi, right? The Jedi is not twirling around anticipating every single potential threat and whipping themselves up in a frenzy. They are calm, they are focused, and they are effective. And that is how we can be, whether we are trying to be allies, whether we are wanting to be part of some resistance right now.

finding a place of calm and then deciding. So you can get whipped up any way you look. You can get whipped up by the people who are causing the chaos and you can get whipped up by the helpers too. So first of all, it's trying to figure out how are you going to limit your media? For me right now, and there's no right answer. I really want to affirm there's no right answer. This is evolving and changing so quickly. We just have to do our best to figuring out. Where I am right now is only checking news headlines.

Angie Mizzell (43:42)
Mm-hmm.

Ann (44:01)
once a day, midday. It's not going to start my day and I'm not going to do it before bed because I'm so conditioned to wake up at 4 a.m. anyway because of this phase of life. And I'm really trying to stay off of social media because as much as I like to keep up with people, it's so integrated with news now that you just never know what you're going to see and it can be traumatizing. And then the ways that I give

not only call it good enough, call it good. This is gonna be the newsletter, call it good. So, you know, call your representatives every day is something I've heard. I'm not doing that. I downloaded an app and I called that good. It's like a calling app. It's like five calls in five minutes. And I'm thinking, maybe I'll do it once a week and I'm gonna call it good. I'm not just gonna call good enough. I'm gonna call it good because like,

Angie Mizzell (44:47)
Mmm, good, got it.

Ann (44:52)
Otherwise, even if there's a candidate you're passionate about and you give for me that feeling of them the next day you get another ask I just feel like that trips up my pleaser saboteur so much like it's never good enough. It's never gonna be enough. And so this week, I donated to the Amazon wishlist for the high school and I'm calling that good. And I'm celebrating that.

And this is what we need to do. We need to let things count. And we need to not be whipped around to be most effective because burning ourselves out on fear of what might happen, who is that serving? And easy for me to say, I'm human. I'm experiencing all of these highs and lows and stresses right along with you. I just have really, really effective tools that I'm passionate about sharing.

Angie Mizzell (45:17)
Got it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a word, Ann. I think that was good stuff. I feel like a lot of people in my audience will really appreciate this in your perspective. Where can people find you? How can they know more about your work and explore whether your coaching is right for them?

Ann (45:49)
Thank you Angie. Word.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, so I help many of them are like progressive midlife moms who don't know if they need a job change or relationship. They're like, I don't even know who I am anymore. I don't recognize myself. I don't. My spark is gone. And that's where we start. It's like we do. We reset the system so you can start to figure out what it is you need. You can go to ListenLifeCoaching.com and there you can sign up for a

a breakthrough session, but also we'll put a link to my calendar in the show notes and people can have a 50 minute breakthrough session with me for free, no strings attached because I just want people to have, even if it's the tiniest taste of these tools, just to start to disrupt that stress channel. It's never been more important.

Angie Mizzell (46:52)
is correct. Ann, thank you so much for being here.

Ann (46:55)
It was so fun, Angie. I always

love talking to you. I love how you relate on such a soul level and you are so full of light and I just feel it. Thank you.

Angie Mizzell (47:04)
Thank you.

Angie Mizzell (47:05)
Thank you for listening to my conversation with Ann Imig

If you want to learn more about Ann and her work, visit her website at ListenLifeCoaching.com and schedule a free breakthrough

And if this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway.

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