Empowered Mind, Empowerful You

11/17/2025

⭐ SHOW UP - For the version of you that wants her life back

If you’ve ever thought:
“I don’t even feel like myself anymore,”
then SHOW UP is where you start finding your way back.

This group gives you space to finally understand and talk about the things most people avoid: the fears that shape your reactions, the identity shifts you’ve made without realizing it, the exhaustion you keep pushing past, the stress responses that run your day, the beliefs that aren't even yours, and the patterns that make you feel disconnected from the life you want.

Inside SHOW UP, you get to start understanding yourself in a way most people never choose to. You learn why you react the way you do, why you shut down, avoid, spiral, overthink, numb, or push yourself past your limits. You learn what’s actually happening in your brain and your nervous system - not the guilt and shame-ridden stories you’ve been carrying around for way too long.

Over 8 weeks, you'll gain new language and understanding for things you've probably always felt but never knew how to explain. You'll learn how to self-regulate when stress tries to take over. You'll gain clarity around what is yours to hold and what isn't.
You gain support that doesn't make you feel weak, broken, or behind.
And you'll gain the ability to respond to your life from a more grounded place instead of reacting to life's experiences with fear, doubt, or overwhelming stress.

My hope with SHOW UP is that what you learn here empowers you to reconnect with the parts of yourself that may have gotten lost along the way - and teaches you how to move through your life with intention, confidence, and self-trust again.

SHOW UP is built on six foundations that change the way you experience yourself:

Self-compassion - because you can't heal when you're constantly attacking yourself and keeping the wounds open.
Habits - because your patterns are learned, not permanent, and absolutely changeable.
Ownership - because real change requires honesty without shame.
Why (your motivation) - because direction matters and knowing what drives your direction is key.
Understanding Fear - because fear drives most of our decisions when we don't see it.
Presence - because you can't heal a life you're not actually living in.

These six pieces become the bridge between who you've been and who you know yourself to be - or dare hope to be.

This is nursing, psychology, stress physiology, emotional awareness, and real lived human experience woven together in a way that is meant to finally make sense and finally help.

We start December 6, 2025.
We meet online every Saturday for 8 weeks.
11 AM CST, 60–90 minutes meetings
Small group - only 10 spots

Only 6 seats remain.

This is a group where people connect, talk, grow, and stop doing life alone.
If you’ve been lonely, disconnected, or craving human connection — this is a real opportunity for that too. Sometimes that alone changes a person’s life.

⭐ “Pay What You Want” (with a recommended minimum)

I know healthcare is expensive.
I know therapy is expensive.
I know stress-management, coaching, and mental health programs aren’t accessible to most people - even though most of us would benefit.

I also know that choosing yourself is already hard enough without adding a financial barrier.

So this round of SHOW UP is pay what you want, with a recommended minimum of $100 for the full 8 weeks, if you’re able.
If you can give more, great.
If you can’t, that's okay too.
What matters is the commitment - not the dollar amount.

I offer it this way because I believe deeply in this work, in the power of healing through connection, and I want people who are ready for change to actually have access to it.

⭐ To register or learn more:

Website: empowerfulyou.org
Email: nursejamie@empowerfulyou.org
Phone: 417-553-1963

11/17/2025

Let's talk about self-sabotage for a minute.

Why is it so hard to see when we're doing it?

In working with youth - and raising them - I am constantly blown away by how quickly they doubt themselves, assume the worst, and accidentally sabotage relationships because they keep reinforcing their own fears. Don't worry, adults do it too. We just tend to hide it better.

It’s hard to be vulnerable when life has taught you to dial back your personality, adjust, or shape-shift into whatever makes other people feel more comfortable so you can “fit in.” Most of us don’t even realize we’ve been doing it. So by the time something good shows up - a friendship, a chance, a compliment, a relationship, an opportunity - the brain immediately pulls up every old fear we’ve ever stored:
"Don't trust it." "I don't deserve this." "They are too good for me." "This won't last." "I'm going to ruin this."

And the second those thoughts get going, our energy follows them. And once our energy shifts, our beliefs and behaviors follow right behind it.

People don’t self-sabotage because it’s fun or because something is wrong with them. If you struggle with believing in something better, or in your own worth, you’re more likely to pull away from the very things you want - or hide your true self instead of letting yourself be seen and believing you can be accepted as you are.

Seeing this pattern clearly is the first step out of it. Because once you recognize those inner critics for what they are - fear, not truth - the whole cycle starts to lose its power over you.

If you want help understanding your patterns and learning the skills to interrupt them in real time, I offer free 30-minute consults on Fridays - sign up at empowerfulyou.org.

As always, thank you for reading, and I appreciate you!

-Jamie

Send a message to learn more

11/17/2025

Understanding Habit Loops

As I've continued learning about habits and the role they play in our daily lives, two researchers have really helped me understand why we struggle with making and breaking healthy and unhealthy habits: Charles Duhigg and James Clear. Their work aligns well with what I see working in mental health nursing, stress physiology, and behavior patterns.

What I've learned from them is that a habit is not a reflection of my character, willpower, or discipline. It is simply a behavior that my brain has repeated enough times that it becomes automatic. Because that is what brains do - they are always on the lookout for things that feel familiar, conserve our energy, and will bring quick relief.

Both Duhigg in The Power of Habit and Clear in Atomic Habits explain that most habits operate through something called a habit loop. Habit loops include a cue, a routine, and a reward. The cue triggers the behavior, the routine is the behavior itself, and the reward is whatever relief or comfort the brain receives from completing the behavior. Over time, the brain learns this loop so well that it becomes automatic, even when the behavior does not align with who we know ourselves to be or what we want in our life.

Learning this made it easier for me to understand why people resist change so strongly, and in my line of work, this is an important thing to understand. Our brains will not just naturally seek to change and break our habits; they will actually avoid change if possible. Change requires energy, emotional discomfort, and doubt; three things that our brain sees as potential threats. Because of this, excuses tend to show up immediately: "I'm too tired," "I don't have time," "I'll start next week," or "It won't work for me anyway," or my favorite, "This is just who I am."

"Past-you" may have told yourself that you couldn't break or make that habit because you are lazy or undisciplined or unmotivated, but "present-day you" understands that this difficulty is actually based on your brain's preference for the easy and familiar.

Recognizing this resistance for what it is, a normal brain response, can help us approach change with more honesty, patience, and self-compassion. It also gives us a direction: if we understand the habit loop, we are better equipped to interrupt it and create new patterns that truly support the life we want to live. When we know better, we can do better.

If you’d like support in exploring your own patterns or learning how to make meaningful changes in your daily life, I offer free 30-minute consults to see if we’re a good fit to work together toward your goals. Sign up for your consult at empowerfulyou.org.

As always, thank you for reading, and I truly appreciate you being here.
-Jamie

11/17/2025

How Ownership Can Change Your Life (Part 2)

In Part 1, we talked about how ownership and self-compassion give us a balanced starting point for understanding our habits and the patterns that shape almost half of every day of our lives! In Part 2, we expand on that by digging into the deeper psychological and physiological activity that is involved in changing our habits.

Taking ownership of our life represents the intentional decision to look at these patterns, understand where they came from, heal what needs healing, and take responsibility for future behavior. With practice, ownership becomes less about "taking responsibility" and more about reclaiming the control we actually have, from how we respond to our experiences to how we SHOW UP to our life.

Being too hard on ourselves, without compassion, can lead to shame-based stories, self-criticism, and unrealistic expectations. That kind of response usually reinforces the very habits we don’t like rather than helping us create healthier ones. On the other hand, excelling at self-compassion without being able to take accountability can lead to avoiding the issue altogether.

Integrating both perspectives allows us to look at our habits (and the role they play in our life) with clarity and honesty, while also feeling safe enough to work on creating sustainable change that supports who we know ourselves to be and the life we want to live.

In the context of transforming habits, ownership acknowledges the brain’s efficiency-driven tendency to gravitate toward automatic, easy, comfortable, and familiar patterns, while also recognizing neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is what allows us to interrupt, re-evaluate, and rewire patterns over time. It’s what allows us to learn and unlearn ideas, behaviors, and concepts throughout our life.

Self-compassion helps us stay grounded in understanding ourselves and our experience instead of judging ourselves for our past response. This gives our brains some breathing room so it can actually try out a new response, instead of automatically trying to go back to familiar old patterns.

Together, ownership and self-compassion support a realistic and empowerful approach to personal development: one that honors your past while actively shaping your future to align with who you know yourself to truly be. Practicing this balanced perspective is foundational in the SHOW UP program because it helps people see that they are capable of change by being aware, accountable, and loving toward oneself.

👉I know I have mentioned SHOW UP a few times and wanted to add that I also work with people 1:1 around health, stress, chronic conditions, medication education, and lifestyle changes - but SHOW UP is for the person who's ready to stop waiting to find the time and is ready to make the time to do something for themselves.

If you want help learning and applying these skills, I offer free 30-minute virtual consults on Fridays - signup through my website. SHOW UP is an 8-week online group that goes way beyond habits — it’s about learning your stress, your emotions, your beliefs, your identity, your body, and all the patterns that run your life. We work on self-regulation, ownership, clarity, purpose, and the actual tools that help you show up for yourself in a way you probably never have before.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate you!

Jamie

11/17/2025

How Ownership Can Change Your Life (Part 1)

Understanding how ownership works is an important part of creating real, sustainable change in your life. After exploring how habits form and why the brain holds on so tightly to old patterns, it makes sense to continue by looking at the role ownership plays in this process. Ownership is about recognizing that as we understand the origins of our habits, we gain the ability to influence what happens next.

While understanding why a habit exists may give you some clarity that you didn't even know you needed, it doesn't automatically make it easy to suddenly change. The real work is learning how to balance both ownership and self-compassion when examining our habits and the role they play in our daily lives.

Self-compassion helps us look at our habits without playing the energy-draining, soul-sucking, blame-and-shame game, and ownership reminds us that simply being aware isn't enough if we really want those habits to actually shift.

When stress is high, the brain goes into a conservation mode that automatically pulls us toward behaviors that may once have brought relief, no matter how unhealthy they are for us. So, if we want to interrupt that self-sabotaging cycle that so many of us mistakenly see as part of who we are, we have to understand our wiring and learn to work with it.

When we look at our patterns through both self-compassion and ownership, we can acknowledge where they came from and also take responsibility for where they go from here. This balanced approach helps keep us thinking more realistically, prevents us from getting lost in beating ourselves up, and can be extremely effective if you’re genuinely trying to make positive changes from the insight you gain.

Ownership plays an important role in reshaping habits, especially when paired with self-compassion. These two concepts work well together if you’re in a season of life where you’re ready for meaningful change. Self-compassion allows us to understand the emotional and physiological beginnings of the habits that dominate much of our lives by recognizing that many patterns are formed during periods of stress, trauma, crisis, limited awareness, or reduced mental capacity. And physiologically, self-compassion reduces the threat response happening in the body long enough for the part of the brain responsible for intentional decision-making to come back online. This alone makes habit change more possible.

To Be Continued...

If you want help learning and applying these skills, I offer free 30-minute virtual consults on Fridays - sign up through my website. SHOW UP is an 8-week online group that goes way beyond habits - it’s about learning your stress, your emotions, your beliefs, your identity, your body, and all the patterns that run your life. We work on self-regulation, ownership, clarity, purpose, and the actual tools that help you show up for yourself in a way you probably never have before.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate you!

Jamie

11/14/2025

Something we discuss in depth in my SHOW UP program is habits. So, let's talk about habits for a minute - the ones we are proud of, the ones we are ashamed of, and the ones we swear we "just can't break."

Your brain is wired for efficiency. Its entire job is to keep you alive, and energy is what sustains life. Hence the brain's constant desire to put as many things on autopilot as it can, not because those habits are always good for us, but because automatic routines conserve energy.

Conserved energy = better odds of survival. So the brain is always searching for what feels familiar, predictable, and emotionally comforting - simply because a calm state is better for us than being stuck in energy-depleting emotions.

Have you ever wondered why it was so hard to break a "bad habit" that you hate? Well, go ahead and stop telling yourself it's because you're lazy, lack willpower, or don't have discipline. It's difficult because your brain has been running patterns that were installed a long time ago, because it was deemed safe and effective at that time. Unfortunately, these patterns are not automatically updated to match the knowledge, tools, language, and awareness that you gain through subsequent life experiences.

Believe this - you are not tied to any habit you don't want.

Mental and physiological stress burns a massive amount of energy. Many habits are formed because your brain learns the fastest way out of the feeling that is draining more energy than necessary.

If you failed your first test in high school, felt terrified to tell your parents, and a friend handed you a v**e, your stressed-out brain wouldn't evaluate the long-term consequences. Instead, it says, "Oh, this will calm our immediate stress? Great. Let's do that." Logical processing takes way more energy than your brain has available in crisis mode. The next time your stress level is high, your brain remembers what you did the last time that brought immediate relief, and here we are, building an automatic habit.

Do you have habits that frustrate you? Instead of living as a victim of a bad habit, now you know they're there because, at some point, your brain found a shortcut and stuck with it. They got stored as the easiest path, not necessarily the healthiest one.

Your habits do not define you. They are not a reflection of your innate worth, capability, or potential. They are simply old automated patterns that your brain used to return you to state of calm because it didn't know any better way at the time.

Did you know that up to 52% of your daily actions are automatic? Almost half of your day, every day, on autopilot! And we wonder why we feel so disconnected and out of control. When you know better, you can do better.

Part of becoming empowerful is understanding that habits are learned, which means they can be unlearned and replaced. When you understand the how and why behind your habits, you stop fighting yourself and work with your wiring. You see clearly that you have the power to change what no longer serves who you know yourself to be today.

— Nurse Jamie
RN, HeartMath Certified Practitioner, Mental Health Advocate
Empowered Mind, Empowerful You™
nursejamie@empowerfulyou.org

11/14/2025

Self care is a must! What is on your list?
https://www.theottoolbox.com/self-care-strategies-for-therapists/

Self-reflection: https://www.theottoolbox.com/self-reflection-activities-for-kids/

Wellness wheel: https://www.theottoolbox.com/wellness-wheel-for-families/

11/14/2025

Our next training cycle begins in January! We would love to have you join us. ♥️

Link to apply: https://mo-jasper.evintosolutions.com/VolunteerApplication

11/14/2025

🚨 MISSING TEEN 🚨 17-year-old Elijah Rogers is missing from Webb City, Missouri. He was last seen on Wednesday, November 12, 2025.

His father shared that Elijah is vulnerable, and his family is seriously worried for his safety. 💔 Elijah left his mom’s home in Webb City and left behind his cellphone.

His mother shared that Elijah also does not have the medications he relies on and may have left them behind. This has everyone even more concerned for his well-being.

If you see him or know anything that could help locate him, please call his father at 417-726-2805 or contact the Webb City Police Department at 417-673-1911.

Please share to help bring Elijah home safely.

11/13/2025

11/11/2025

🇺🇸✨ This Veterans Day — A Gift of Healing and Hope ✨🇺🇸

In honor of today, I wanted to share a powerful story and resource for our military community. This video shines a light on how trauma from service doesn’t have to define you—and how true peace is possible.

📽️ Watch the story here: https://eftuniverse.com/aiovg_videos/veterans-stress-project-vet-larry-on-eft-for-ptsd

💬 If you’ve served, or you know someone who has—and the emotional impact still lingers—this is worth seeing.
And if you’re looking for ways to support, share this with someone you care about.

🙏 Let’s wrap every veteran in the support and respect they deserve.
Please like & share, and tag a veteran you appreciate today.

Veterans Stress Solution — Free Help for PTSD StressSolution.org is dedicated to helping veterans recover from the emotional wounds of war. We offer free