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    • Mar 20

Becoming Your Most Authentic Self: Maria Eilersen’s Survival Guide


3 Things We Dive Into In This Episode:

  1. It's never too late to search for and be your authentic self.

  2. How to reflect on the best and the worst experiences of your life to find who you really are.

  3. The importance of recognizing how no one will do what you do the way you do it.

📘Resources

📌Episode Highlights

[02:33] Getting To Know Maria

  • Maria is a third-culture kid. She’s originally from Denmark but traveled around her whole life. Her globalized upbringing gave her a unique perspective.

  • She found yoga at 17 years old through her mom and kept going back because it felt good. Now, it’s a big part of her life.

  • Maria is also an entrepreneur. She found that the journey of a business owner is a spiritual one. It pushes you to get to know yourself better.

  • Regarding business, she wants to lean into the more intuitive parts of working with people.

[07:19] Working With Maria

  • As a PR coach, Maria was usually behind the scenes for her clients. When she started her business, Maria realized she was now visible and had to use her advice.

  • She worked closely with heart-centered people who tended to be overly aware of the space. We need to listen to these people more.

  • Tapping is a tool Maria uses to support people and shift these limiting blocks that are stopping them. She helps them overcome fears and anxiety about taking space.

  • The people she works with walk away with a tangible PR strategy, energetic work, and healing on a deeper level.

  • Her work in PR isn't what motivates her to get up and go. It's the magic of empowering people and seeing how much impact they can make.

[13:59] A Different Approach to Work

  • Many people might feel unfulfilled about their careers. However, we can reinvent how we view our work and how we work.

  • The industry has a grind mentality that makes us feel we need to seize every opportunity.

  • Maria reminds us not to beat ourselves up for missing an opportunity — there will be others.

  • Having a scarcity approach won’t help us. It will only lead to more shame and pressure that can take us away from a place of intention and joy.

[16:04] A Survival Guide to Find Your Authentic Self

  • Finding your authentic self is an ongoing exploration and practice. It's an endless journey.

  • Maria just recently came out as queer. Everyday she’s still getting to know herself better.

Maria: “You're always in a state of becoming, you never arrive. And that's kind of cool. Like when you get older, you start to realize there's not this point you need to arrive at. It's like learning to enjoy the process and continuing to learn new things about yourself.” - Click Here To Tweet This

  • The first step is getting to know our true selves. Take the time to explore and follow whatever we’re curious about.

  • Unlearn the expectations that society has imposed on us. It's never too late, so don't feel ashamed when you do.

  • Lastly, follow the things that feel good. We'll know when something feels true and warm. It can be subtle, but it will resonate with us.

[22:54] Resonating With Your Authentic Self

  • When we change in a way that’s authentic to us, it can be scary. Despite we can get a sense of warmth, resonance, or peace within our bodies.

  • One of the biggest shifts she went through was getting laid off and training to be a yoga teacher. It was a transformative, spiritual experience where she learned about herself.

  • One of the participants was openly queer and often spoke about it. Maria resonated deeply with her and came out of herself.

  • Afterward, she went solo traveling and used that time to sit with the shift and get used to coming out.

  • Travel is freedom. It allows us to be free from our usual parameters and be whoever we want to be.

[30:40] Spending Time Outside of Our Heads

  • Being able to be present can help us have a sense of internal safety. People who aren't present and don't feel safe are also often people who don't know who themselves.

  • Spend time outside of your head. Traveling, taking a mindful walk, or just sitting and listening in the sun can help us drop into the present.

  • Yoga is another powerful practice where we can learn to be rather than do.

  • In the modern world, many things can distract and numb us, like social media. These things can make being present difficult.

[33:29] Tapping Into Ourselves

  • Tapping is an emotional freedom technique we can use anywhere for anything. It can help reduce stress and is also energetic work.

  • To do it, choose an acupuncture point and tap it. While doing so, we acknowledge how we feel and speak out loud about it.

  • In the end, regardless of the difficult emotion, love, accept, and forgive ourselves. From there, we can shift how we feel or how we feel about what we're feeling.

  • Many people refuse or resist their negative feelings. Tapping requires presence and awareness about how you feel to acknowledge it.

  • We often think we must do something about what we're feeling, but all we need to do is feel it. Tapping can help us feel like doing something while also letting ourselves feel.

[41:18] Life's Emotional Beauty

  • Feelings are a part of the human experience. Acknowledge the feeling. It's trying to tell you something.

  • Maria has gone through painful times. There's beauty in being alive and experiencing the full range of emotions.

Maria: “Being alive is not feeling happy, calm, and peaceful all the time. Being alive is experiencing the full range of human emotions. It's feeling it all. And only by feeling the difficult feelings can you appreciate the good feelings." - Click Here To Tweet This

  • We tend to numb or repress emotions society has deemed unacceptable.

  • However, living a beautiful and fulfilled life is living an authentic one. Part of this is the truth that a wide range of emotions exists.

  • If we're not allowing ourselves to feel the full range of emotions, then we aren't allowing ourselves to live wholly — it denies your authentic self.

[45:34] Maria's Work in Progress

  • Maria is still navigating how to market and work her business.

  • Even now, she continues to unlearn things that don't resonate with her. She's still experimenting and discovering what she aligns with.

  • Now that she's single, Maria is also exploring her queerness.

  • The "Q" in LGBTQ can stand for both queer and questioning. It reminds Maria that she's free to explore and doesn't have to know everything.

  • She found that coming out as an adult and finding her authentic self was like a second puberty. She was discovering new things about her identity and attraction.

[49:23] Courage to Be Uncomfortable

Maria: “I would rather be uncomfortable and explore something that feels true in the pursuit of living a more aligned, fulfilled life rather than staying in safety and then knowing that that's a guarantee that I will not find the fulfillment I'm looking for.” - Click Here To Tweet This

  • We can have either comfort or courage but not both. It's in the uncomfortable where we'll find truth and expansion.

  • Being scared and feeling discomfort about our chosen path doesn't mean we're wrong. It might mean it's the right one.

  • We can have times of safety and comfort while taking courageous and uncomfortable steps. Practices like tapping, yoga, and more can help.

[54:46] A Survival Bag for the Journey

  • Maria recommends reading multiple books that can help you explore your authentic self.

  • Practices like tapping and yoga can help us practice being with ourselves.

  • Find a teacher who makes you feel safe and can hold space for you.

  • Living authentically and being your authentic self can be messy. We need to embrace this mess.

About Maria

Maria Eilersen is a PR coach and the Founder of Be Conscious PR. She has experience in the industry landing high-profile press features for clients. As a PR coach, Maria empowers conscious business leaders to build success and make a bigger impact through the power of PR. Alongside her work, she enjoys traveling and is also a yoga teacher.

Connect with Maria: Website | Instagram (personal) | Instagram (Be Conscious PR)


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Transcript


Maria Eilersen: I feel like traditional PR is very like that. It's like, Okay, what's your target audience? Okay, what do they care about? And then going outside. I think that's the shift, I think that's maybe why the work that I do ends up being so much about healing things because everyone I work with has a heart centered intention. That really means a lot to them.


Caitie Corradino: Welcome to Whole, Full and Alive, a podcast exploring the art and science of falling in love with your life, with your story and with who you truly are. Underneath your titles, your resume, your relationship status, and your bank account. I'm Katie Cortino, a registered dietician, nutritionist, certified fitness and yoga instructor, eating disorder recovery coach, Reiki healer, and founder of Full Soul Nutrition.


But underneath my titles and resume: a big fan of kitchen dance breaks, early mornings, all things chocolate truffles, world traveling and serendipity. I'm here to share no bullshit stories and actionable tools to help you feel unshakably worthy. You have everything you need within you to feel whole, full and alive. Right here. Right now. Let's get into it.


Hey, welcome back to another episode of Whole, Full, & Alive. I’m so grateful you’re here. Thanks so much for tuning in. I am coming to you today from Denver, Colorado. I have been here for about 48 hours now. I just arrived home to Denver after two months of traveling around the world, and I am — holy shit — I have so much swirling in my brain and in my heart right now that I just truly can’t wait to share with you. So many fun shifts and changes and updates that came out of my travels. And yeah, expect some fun and exciting things in the next couple of weeks. But for today, I have a very exciting interview for you that I recorded while I was traveling.


So one of the places I stopped was Lisbon, Portugal. And when I was there, I met up with my friend, Maria Eilersen, who is a PR expert, a public relations and messaging expert, also an EFT tapping coach, which is an incredible tool for regulating your nervous system and squashing limiting beliefs and tapping into a sense of self worth. She’s also an incredible yoga teacher— I got to take her yoga classes while I was there — and a writer and an all around amazing human being who I’m so lucky to call my friend.


She is also my personal PR and messaging coach. She really helped me with that a lot while I stopped over in Lisbon, which was amazing. I’m so grateful to know her, and I’m so grateful for you to hear her voice today because Maria is going to be talking about something that I feel is resonant with a lot of the clients I’ve been working with lately, and a lot of people I’ve been talking with lately: this idea of recognizing what you really want in life, no matter how crazy it is, and taking a risk to go and get it.


Maria is going to tell the story of how she built her very unconventional life that she lives in Lisbon as an entrepreneur, yoga teacher, EFT tapping coach — all the things. She’s also going to tell the story of how she recognized who she really was, and she’s going to talk about her story of coming out “later in life” which isn’t really a thing, right, not later in life, but coming out in adulthood, and how she connected with that truth and the authenticity and how she recognized who she really was.


I have been talking to so many clients lately who are contemplating quitting their jobs, blowing up their lives in some way, or who are just realizing that they’ve been living inauthentically in some way, shape, or form. They’ve realized a new truth about themselves that they want to implement. I’ve also been talking to some people who are wondering if they are living out of alignment but aren’t really sure.


Maria is going to tell her story and provide so many tangible tools for you if you are in this place of just wanting to really know and understand who the fuck you are, and live in alignment with that truth of who you are. I love this conversation with her. I loved being in Lisbon with her. I’m so excited for you to meet Maria Eilersen today. Let’s get into it.

Maria. Thank you so much for being here with me today in Lisbon.


Maria: Well, thank you so much for coming to Lisbon for one and then inviting me on. It's a pleasure to be here.


Caitie: Ooh, this is? Is this my first podcast abroad? No, I did one in Costa Rica. But I haven't recorded any other podcasts abroad. I feel like it's, the energy of traveling does something so special for my creative juices. I'm really excited for this conversation. I have also been spending a few days with you already, which we can get into in a moment. But yeah, the timing of this whole interview just feels really good right now.


Maria: Agreed. Totally


Caitie: Who are you, Maria?


Maria: Who am I? Just like dive straight into the existential question.


Caitie: Everyone always says that's me. I'm like, I want to know who you are, not just what you do. I can't even tell you how many guests have been like, Well, what do you mean? Yeah, like.


Maria: What do you want to know?


Caitie: It's whatever you want to tell me, is what I want to know.


Maria: Well, in the interest of speaking about travel, I'm a TCK. If you don't know what that is, that means third or it stands for Third Culture kid. Even though I have a deceptively American, some people say, Canadian accent. I'm actually from Denmark, but grew up moving around a lot. I had spent a lot of time living in Japan, I lived in Canada. I've been traveling my whole life, which is why it's not a surprise that I've now, I'm randomly now in Lisbon after being in New York and Italy, in London, in my adult life.


I think that's a really big part of who I am that I keep coming back to because I think I see the world differently as a result of that kind of globalized upbringing. That's part of who I am but I'm still a Dane at heart. I still appreciate dim lighting, candles, good bread.


Caitie: Am I a Dane at hear too?


Maria: Maybe, maybe. I feel like a lot of people might be everyone's like very much into like the hygge. That's like, become all the rage. What else? I'm a yogi. That's pretty big I think in my life. I found yoga thanks to my mom, when I was 17. I had no idea really, I did not understand anything about the practice. But I just kept going back because it felt good. It's a really big part of my life beyond the physical asana practice. I’m an entrepreneur, which is something I want to own more, not just be like, “Oh, this is something I do.” Like, no, I'm a business owner.