In this rendition of The Way Out I’m beyond excited to bring you an exceptional interview with person in long term recovery on the family side and author of The Connected Leader: 7 Strategies to Empower Your True Self and Inspire Others, Karen Hardwick. Karen shares with us her journey to and through recovery to this point and embodied with it an empowering message of the power of connection. Karen shares how only authentic connection to our true selves and inner truth can result in genuine connection to others which is in many ways the antidote to addiction. The Way Out faithful will recall the familiar refrain of what the 12-Steps remedy on a macro level, and in a word it’s relationships. First, we address our problematic relationship with substances, behaviors, or people. That’s Step One. Next, we address our relationship with a power greater than ourselves. That’s the 2nd and 3rd Steps. In Steps 4 through 7, we address our relationship with ourselves. Then and only then, can we repair and build genuine relationships with others, because we’re connecting from our authentic selves, which creates the kind of pure acceptance that cannot be imitated by any substance or addictive behavior. We then have the opportunity to take this relationship transformation to the next level which is all about continuing the process we started of embracing our true selves and systematically discarding counterproductive thought and behavior patterns, flaws or character defects if you will, that get in the way of true connection to ourselves and others. Karen likes to call this being flawsome! Our flaws, which are often rooted in big or small traumas, reveal the ways in which we have opportunities to grow in our recovery. To be sure, the 12-Steps aren’t the only way to do this important work, as we’ve highlighted on this podcast in a variety of ways and will continue to do so. Dating way back to our hunter and gatherer days we’ve been biologically programmed to seek this sort of authentic connection for our very survival, because not being accepted into a group then meant certain death from predators or starvation. This fundamental drive is just as important to our well-being today as it was then because the lack of connection and acceptance can wreak havoc on us in myriad ways mentally, emotionally, and physically. Karen shares how we can make the daily, active decision to lean into, and indeed embrace our true selves and begin the transformational journey of authentically connecting to our selves and others so that we can truly recover and if we chose, become connected leaders for ourselves and the people we surround ourselves with so listen up. Contact Karen Hardwick: https://karenjhardwick.com/ More about The Connected Leader - 7 Strategies to Empower Your True Self and Inspire Others: https://connectedleaderbook.com/ Karen's Recovery Literature (Quit-Lit) Recommendation: The Bible How Al-Anon Works: https://al-anon.org/for-members/members-resources/literature/feature-publications/how-al-anon-works-for-families-and-friends-of-alcoholics/ Best Piece of Recovery Advice: Call Your Sponsor! Song that Symbolizes Recovery for Karen: Rescue by Lauren Daigle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PugD11k3JU (c) 2015 - 2022 The Way Out Podcast | All Rights Reserved Theme Music: “all clear” (https://ketsa.uk/browse-music/) by Ketsa (https://ketsa.uk) licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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