I recently attended a Yoga Journal-sponsored talk on “True Power” with Gabrielle Bernstein. She tested out material from her upcoming book The Universe Has Your Back, which addresses how to transform fear into faith in order to live a divinely guided life.

At the 700-person event, we meditated, we consciously breathed, we chanted, we sat with our (for some, uncomfortable) feelings, we shared and we learned steps to awaken our true power.

The following week I met with The New York Times best-selling self-help author and motivational speaker over a lunch of vegan cuisine at Angelic Kitchen in the East Village, for a Q&A for the Observer. We covered a lot of ground, talking about success, ISIS and her tips to happiness (see the story here). But there were a lot of interesting bits that didn’t make it into the article, like Gabby's thoughts on money, trying to get pregnant and having faith amid tragedy. I share all of that below.

I was at a Cyrus Innovation event last night when I heard Mary Kopczynski, the founder and CEO of 8of9, talk about having had fear of speaking as an expert on various news programs. These were topics for which she was well-versed, but felt ill-equipped. It wasn't until she attended an event where they was a dearth of women on the panel that she felt ready to speak at the next opportunity that came her way. "We do need to speak up," Ms. Kopczynski asserted.

Sara Potler LaHayne, the founder & CEO of Move This World, spoke of forbidding the use of "I think x, y and z," and "I feel x, y and z," in cases where her female employees are actually stating facts. She also advises against including inflections in sentences. All three of these habits don't convey confidence.

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The power of habit—defined as a repeated behavior that tends to occur unconsciously—has long been a topic of interest to me, and even more so now that I am reading "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business," by Charles Duhigg. The book offers a fascinating look at habit formation and change in settings from boardrooms to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous to the sidelines of the NFL.

In a chapter about "the power of a crisis," Mr. Duhigg talks about how among companies and institutions change is generally possible "only once a sense of crisis takes hold." 

At some point we have to let go of the baggage we are dragging around or else it will start dragging us. Recently, Connect the Dots Coaching held a vision board workshop at which we ceremoniously let go of resentments, disappointments, etc., that we were hanging on to. The vehicle? A helium balloon. Watch the moment of balloon release in the video below.