Have you ever wondered how you could live your life differently? Then you’ve come to the right Punk Rock HR episode.
This week, my guest is Dr. Nikki Coleman, a licensed psychologist, a relational wellness expert and a DEI expert. Nikki is knowledgeable about race, culture, sexuality and organizational change and, most importantly, she is a force in this world for living your life differently.
Nikki spent most of her career in academia before she entered the DEI space through corporate health care. Then, she branched out and founded a private psychotherapy, coaching and consultation practice called Dr. Nikki Knows.
Nikki loves helping people navigate the inequalities and inequities of our social structures. She’s a psychologist who’s interested in change and helping people become better, not just as a worker but also as human beings who feel joy.
Punk Rock HR is proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is a B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head over to thestarrconspiracy.com.
Creating a New Way of Being
Creating a “new healthy, whole integrated way of being,” as Nikki calls it, requires more than just burning it all down, which is typically the path I suggest. I know that the idea of “burning it down” comes from a place of privilege, and it can be a damaging and reckless path.
This is why Nikki’s alternative gives us a chance for genuine change. She talks about the concept of emergent strategy as developed by writer and activist Adrienne Maree Brown, whose book provided a blueprint for creating a better way of being and inspired Nikki’s own work. “Reading that book really reframed a lot of my “burn it all down” thinking. One of her primary concepts is: Change on the small is going to be reflected on the big,” Nikki says.
Nikki’s own journey accelerated when she realized she had to align who she wanted to be, how she showed up in the world, with the spaces she was operating in.
“I tried to navigate that tension for as long as possible until I was like, ‘It’s either going to be me or the organization,’ And I’m going to choose me every time,” Nikki says. “I will say the leap from academia to corporate health care was easier because I had a job lined up, I had an offer lined up.”
Being Worthy Doesn’t Require Being Perfect
Our society struggles to think about women as beings who can accept and experience pleasure while also thinking of them as powerful figures like executives. Our society tells women especially, in Nikki’s words, “You need to be useful, you need to be productive, you need to be successful, and all these indicators.”
Many women Nikki works with also feel the pressure that they have to earn the right to do things for themselves.
“So I have conversations all the time that your worthiness is not contingent upon perfection. I have to say that mantra over and over again,” she says. “Your worthiness is not contingent upon your perfection and you have pleasure as your birthright. Period. There’s nothing that anyone can do to take that away from you.”
Finding Pleasure Starts With You
As easy as it is to say that we deserve pleasure, many of us don’t know where to start or where to find it. I always talk about how your work is not your worth, but that’s easier to say than to practice. Nikki helps many of her clients with self-discovery and curiosity.
“The first part is acknowledging that no one is going to give it to you. So you do need to find it. And two, that you get to play. Part of a human experience is playfulness. That means there’s error. That means that you try things out,” she explains. “That means you get to be awkward and uncomfortable. That means you get to change your mind. This is why this concept is about perfection and it’s not about production, that it’s an exploration process.”
While self-discovery is important in finding that pleasure, being curious really helps people uncover a whole new being.
“I really encourage folks to get curious about yourself,” Nikki says. “What is that little thing that you’ve once thought like, ‘Oh, I used to really sort of be into blah blah blah, but that’s whatever’? Let’s go back to that. Let’s get curious about that,”
[bctt tweet=”‘Your worthiness is not contingent upon your perfection, and you have pleasure as your birthright.’ — Nikki Coleman, licensed therapist and owner of Dr. Nikki Knows. Tune into the latest episode of #PunkRockHR!” via=”no”]
People in This Episode
Nikki Coleman: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Dr. Nikki Knows website
Full Transcript
Laurie Ruettimann:
This episode of Punk Rock HR is sponsored by the Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, everybody. I’m Laurie Ruettimann. Welcome back to Punk Rock HR. My guest this week is Dr. Nikki Coleman. Dr. Nikki is a licensed psychologist with experience in race and culture and sexuality, but most importantly, she is a force in this world for living your life differently. So if you’re interested in a really deep conversation about feeling better, about operating better, not as a worker, but as a human being, as an individual about actually feeling joy, well sit back and enjoy this really awesome conversation with Dr. Nikki.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, Dr. Nikki, welcome to the podcast.
Nikki Coleman:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited for this conversation.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, I’m so pleased that you’re here. You’ve got an interesting background, which it brings you to the podcast. You’re a licensed psychologist with deep knowledge and race and culture and sexuality, and organizational change. So before we get into those four quadrants, why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you’re all about?
Nikki Coleman:
I am Dr. Nikki. I’m a licensed psychologist as you just said. I am a recovering academic. So I was a tenured professor for the vast majority of my career, about 17 years, across three different universities. I left the University of Houston in 2019, and then I made the leap from academia to the DEI space in corporate health care and ran into some challenges in that space, and then decided I was going to finally branch out and do my own thing.
Nikki Coleman:
So now I have a business. It’s Dr. Nikki Knows, because I know a lot of stuff. And there’s two sides. There’s a therapy side, because I’m a clinician. I love working with folks and particularly I work with Black women and couples who are experiencing relational or sexual issues. And then there’s another side that does racial equity training and consultation with small to midsize organizations.
Nikki Coleman:
It all makes sense in my mind because so much of our lived experiences are really sort of influenced by the social structures. We live in a country in which there’s a lot of inequalities and inequities around those social structures that — you really can’t evolve as a human being without having some significant influence on those structures and who you are and how you are. I’m a therapist, so I’m a psychologist that is particularly interested in change. And so that’s what I do.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I love it. I love it all. Well, I’m fascinated by a therapist who goes through her own pivot. And you mentioned that your pivot happened around 2019. You’ve had a few, right? With your desire to move out of academia into corporate America and then from corporate America to being an entrepreneur. So you did all of that during a pandemic. So you made it 50% harder on yourself. What was that journey like for you?
Nikki Coleman:
Yeah. So in both decisions to pivot, what happened was, the context, the circumstances, just became really untenable for me. That the decision about how I wanted to show up in the world, who I am as a person, what my integrity is, what my values are just was completely incongruent with each of those spaces. I tried to navigate that tension for as long as possible, until I was like, “It’s either going to be me or the organization.” And I’m going to choose me every time. I will say the leap from academia to corporate health care was easier because I had a job lined up, I had an offer lined up.
Nikki Coleman:
I didn’t have to change too much of my life because it was also here in Houston. There was a pay grade. It kind of made sense. And then when I got in the space, there were things about me that were, which I really sort of hate this word, but too radical for the space. They didn’t quite know what to do with me.
They weren’t willing to do what I needed them to do for me to feel good and safe in the space. And so that was a bigger decision to make in the pandemic to decide, “Am I going to actually launch a whole business?” I’m a full-time single parent. I’m a whole person I’m responsible for. I was mid-40s, like solidly mid-40s, and I was like, “I feel like I have made dumb career choices. This is not the time that people make big pivots.” But again, it just really felt like I had no other choice for my own wellbeing, my own sense of integrity, but to make these decisions.
Laurie Ruettimann:
That speaks to me because while that pivot in your mid-40s may surprise you, corporate America is losing women and women of color in their mid-40s because these women are like, “What did I survive a pandemic for? What am I doing all this hard work for? Only to be in a system that doesn’t appreciate me. I might as well drive my 10-year-old car for a few more years and have more time with my family.” Or whatever the choices are. But they’re no longer willing to just work for that paycheck and put up with the structure that doesn’t benefit them.
Laurie Ruettimann:
On top of that, so much of the world of DEI is nonsense. It’s garbage, and it doesn’t put a smart, educated woman like you in a position for success. So do you resonate with any of that?
Nikki Coleman:
I resonate with all of it. So without getting into all of the details, I will say specifically what happened was I was tasked with doing anti-racism work in the organization. And then when I started to make white folks uncomfortable in the organization, I was told by the DEI leadership that you need to stop making them uncomfortable. I said I refused to erase myself and I refused to misrepresent what this work is. You asked me to do anti-racism work. You didn’t ask me to talk about racial prejudice or discrimination. And the can is open. I’m not going back in.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Well, wait. That’s a really interesting distinction. So can you talk about anti-racism work versus traditional DEI classes that we make people take? What’s the difference?
Nikki Coleman:
Yeah. So the DEI stuff is like, it feels good. The I part is like everybody is inclusive. Everything about diversity matters, everything is the same. That equity piece oftentimes really means equality. It’s not about the equity piece, which is a different conversation. And so the anti-racism work is about radical transformation. It’s about owning that there are policies and practices in place that uphold a particular worldview around white supremacy. And that if we’re going to have an environment that is one that facilitates an equitable space for people across racial dimensions, some people are going to have to acknowledge that they have racial privilege and maybe even possibly do something different.
You may have to reallocate some spaces. It was really frustrating for me because when I was confronted and directly confronted about the work that I was doing, I said, “OK. Well let’s take a step back and recognize that the organization is not ready for this work. Let’s pull back. Let’s address where we are. Let’s talk about giving some of these white folks and leadership some more support. Let’s have some more interracial dialogues. Let’s do some more coaching around these skills to get us to that place.” And that was not even an option put on the table. Frankly, Laurie, I was like, “You’re losing somebody with an amazing skill set.”
Laurie Ruettimann:
For sure, yeah. What strikes me though is that in order to do some of this anti-racist work, we have to acknowledge that most of capitalism is built on racism. So we’re talking about foundational core work in saying, “OK, we’re trying to find a new way to navigate in a world where we accept capitalism, but we no longer stand for denigrating other human beings.”
Laurie Ruettimann:
For a lot of people they’re like, “Well, shit, I don’t want to lose my job.” So it’s funny, we have a common friend in Zach Nunn. Zach and I are like, “I don’t know where this is going to all end up.” I feel like sometimes we just need to burn it all down and start over again. But I don’t know. Where do you come out on that?
Nikki Coleman:
So the “burn it all down” feels — it’s easier said than done. I think there is a space in the middle, but I think even the space in the middle feels extremely threatening to folks because whenever you start talking about equity, you were talking about redistribution of resources, and nobody wants lesser resources. Even if you have an awareness that you have amassed more than you could ever possibly need in a lifetime and that is fair to anyone else, the idea of letting it go is just — I don’t know. I don’t know how to make people do that. I do think what it requires is us to build new systems.
What I am particularly hopeful about and sort of invigorated about this, I do see more common discourse about the human experience in the world of work. I think the piece you brought up earlier about women in their mid-40s making different decisions right there is this recognition like, “Oh no, I am a human being. I’m not a machine. And in my humanness, there are parts of myself I really want to value and honor. I can’t do that if I keep doing things the same way.”
Revolution never happens nearly as quickly as we wanted to. But I do think we’re moving in the right direction. Even to hear Gen Z folks talk openly about mental health concerns and burnout and neurodiversity openly, for there to be critiques about “What is professionalism, and how do we define it?” I think that’s a way better conversation to be in that can lead us to creating more holistically whole healthy, equitable environments than trying to really transform the ones that already exist.
Laurie Ruettimann:
That’s a real good healthy political take on all of that. I mean, you’re right. Burning stuff down often doesn’t benefit the people who need it the most because then there’s nothing available. But I hear from so many individuals like, “Oh, you want to redistribute wealth? Let Jeff Bezos go first, or let Richard Branson go first.”
Nikki Coleman:
Oh, yeah. I’m totally down, like, both/and. So I think my response is more practical. Richard Branson is not going to like — that’s not going to happen. Jeff Bezos? What’s the supervillain guy’s name? Tesla, Elon Musk. He’s a supervillain in real life. If our change movements are continued upon those people having enlightenment or doing something different, we will stay stuck.
So we can openly criticize them and talk about the harm. And I do think they create harm in lots of real ways. We also have to talk about there’s a whole lot of folks whose everyday life is just really centered on survival, and it’s really almost inequitable and unfair to ask them to let go of what they already have in service of a broader movement. Right?
I think it’s better served for those of us with some degree of privilege and power — of which I recognize I have some, right? I definitely have marginalized identities. Being a Black woman is a whole mood, it’s a whole experience. And I’m highly educated. I’m solidly middle class. I have access to resources. I have relationships with folks that have more resources that I can leverage. So I have greater responsibility in how I use all of those than for those folks to which I’m related, like related to many of them, connected to many of them, to think about burning it all down.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Right. You’re totally fair. Your pathway is practical. My pathway of burning it down actually comes from a position of privilege. Because I’m like, “I’m going to be fine no matter what. You burn this down, I’m going to be OK.” But there’s real damage in a revolution that’s reckless. Although, I like to dream about it all the time, Dr. Nikki.
Nikki Coleman:
And I think —
Laurie Ruettimann:
That’s fine.
Nikki Coleman:
So I got introduced to this concept, emergent strategy, from Adrienne Maree Brown. Adrienne Maree Brown is a Black queer woman organizer who’s done work for her entire life. And she wrote this book that’s sort of this blueprint about how do we create a whole new healthy, whole integrated way of being? And it’s called “Emergent Strategy.” Reading that book really reframed a lot of my “burn it all down” thinking. One of her primary concepts is change on the small is going to be reflected on the big.
So if we continue to do this work for ourselves, we continue to have these conversations. It does create change. The bigger has to automatically at some point represent that. And for me, that was really critically important for me to have hope, right? Because when the 2020 election results — first of all, the whole debacle around that was, what reality is this?
But for me it was that the margin of win was as slim as it was. That to me is more frightening than the more obvious insurrectionist, crazy people sort of things, right? Which has been true for me my whole life. Crazy, white supremacists that goes to a meeting in the woods with their rifles, yeah, that’s threatening, that’s scary. But really the people that are more threatening to me are the folks that are in the office right next door to me or the people that I am at the grocery store with who secretly harbor all of these really horrible thoughts about me, don’t recognize my humanity. Because I have to interact with them more.
So I need to think about how do we engage the white liberal? How do we get people aware to their own internalized classism, and how do we learn to divest from that? To me, that feels way more productive than thinking about burning it all down. It’s happening anyway. I mean, we have no democracy. It’s in name only. So we’re getting there.
Laurie Ruettimann:
We are. But I like your optimism around Gen Z. And I think one of the interesting things about your body of work is that intersection of humanity around culture and even of sexuality. Because you’re right, this conversation about being human first is so important. I’ve dedicated my life to telling people, “I know you’re having a career crisis, but it’s not about work. It’s about yourself and fixing, air quotes, yourself.” And that’s the work that you do. You’re focused on relationships. You’re focused on sexuality and getting people, especially in marginalized communities, to feel good and whole so that they can take that good stuff out into the world. Am I representing your work correctly?
Nikki Coleman:
You get it perfectly. One of my catchphrases is, “If it’s not giving joy and pleasure, what’s the point?” We could burn it all down. And then what? If I don’t feel good, if I don’t have access to things that allow me to feel safe and comfortable, and even experience erotic pleasure, what’s the point to just create another system that is focused on production, that’s focused on a blandness? No, I want my revolution to include sexual eroticism. I wanted to include access to pleasure as a foundational concept. I wanted to include access to rest and restoration, to my fallibility as a human. It needs to include all of that. Otherwise, I’m not interested.
Laurie Ruettimann:
That’s so fascinating because when we do hear conversations around wellbeing, first of all, they’re superficial. And second of all, it’s around getting enough to eat, but eating healthy, getting some sleep. But nobody ever —
Nikki Coleman:
Clean eating.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Yes. And like a 5K ever solved anything. Right? I love this focus on human sexuality. So many of us for years define ourselves by our job description, and we forget that we like to be loved and to express love. Right? That’s a conversation we never have in wellbeing.
Nikki Coleman:
No. The wellbeing industry is another industry. This is where the intersection of capitalism — and I also think white supremacy, to an extent, because most of the wellness practices that are most promoted have been co-opted from standing cultures and traditions. The whole yoga industry is like, “Are you kidding me?”
Laurie Ruettimann:
I mean, sure there are people who love yoga, but for the average human being, what’s that about? You’re absolutely right. And that is absolutely an expression of power over some people.
Nikki Coleman:
100%. It’s to be able to say, “Oh, there’s this thing that’s shiny and new and different and I like it and I’m going to take it for myself because I feel like it.” Right? But no, this access to pleasure, it’s just really so non-negotiable for me because otherwise we’re just really — for me, I don’t understand an anti-capitalist movement that doesn’t include pleasure because the missing piece is the humanity. I need to feel good to want to keep getting up every day to come do this shit that you’re asking me to do. I’m sorry, I don’t know if you’re —
Laurie Ruettimann:
Oh, you can swear. Please.
Nikki Coleman:
To do this shit you’re asking me to do, right? I was telling my daughter this the other day: “I love what I’m doing. I am building my life on my own manifestation and vision, and that is extremely powerful.” I love every project and endeavor I have chosen because I have fully chosen it. And there’s shit that I got to do that I don’t like, like responding to emails or making sure I get back to people in a timely way or doing payroll stuff. That is not fun.
Laurie Ruettimann:
No. Where I clearly fail at that kind of stuff. It’s funny that we’re talking about this because I fail at all that administrative stuff. But I also fail often at that pleasure piece. I think one of the ways I failed early was thinking about pleasure in a very sexist, patriarchal kind of way. I mean, when we talk about pleasure in our society, it’s often pornographic, right? It’s the pleasure of penetration. It’s the pleasure of succumbing. As I get older, I’m tired of that.
Nikki Coleman:
Yeah. Well, so there’s this whole thing called the orgasm inequality. You may have heard of the orgasm gap, right?
Laurie Ruettimann:
Tell me more.
Nikki Coleman:
Oh my gosh, yes. So there’s tons of research that has asked women, heterosexual women in specific — so let me back up and say there’s studies that have asked people about sexual satisfaction, about frequency of orgasm, about types of access of stimulation and touch to orgasm. So the question’s asked in lots of different ways by different folks. And every time when you look at the data, heterosexual men are having orgasms pretty much 9.5 times out of 10. And heterosexual women are having orgasms about six and a half, sometimes even half out of 10. And it’s because there is this overfocus on, one, ejaculation, which means penis, which means like that’s not our thing.
And the crazy part is even when you look at women who identify as lesbian, there’s still a gap. So there’s all of this stuff in our socialization around femininity and womanhood, and what that means as relational beings, and our unapologetic decision that we are required to have pleasure that gets in the way.
I always ask folks to think about the inverse. Could you imagine a world in which five out of 10 men that you’ve met said, “Well, I have sex with my partner, but I don’t always come.” Hell no. That’s not even a concept that we can wrap our brains around. And yet we have this very real phenomenon that happens for women all the time.
Laurie Ruettimann:
And it’s so fascinating because we understand men’s sexuality, especially as they rise within corporate America. We understand, even though it’s probably not true, that a CEO has got a partner, most likely a woman, and he is getting it on all the time, and he’s eating steak. Right? But the moment we start to think about women as beings who can accept pleasure and experience pleasure, we don’t think of them as executives. We don’t think of them — and I can’t even imagine what it’s like for women who aren’t part of this descriptor of heterosexual. Lesbian, anybody who’s a trans woman.
We don’t want to think about work and pleasure in the same kind of way. It just gets all messy. So this statistic is so fascinating for me because it comes back to that point that you made. What am I working so hard for if I’m not enjoying life? Is that a conversation you have on repeat?
Nikki Coleman:
On repeat. So in my practice, so I do individual couples therapy and coaching. By and large my practice are high-achieving Black women, and I have to have this conversation all of the time, in part because there’s so much of the external world and the structures of the external world that tell them the exact opposite: You need to be useful, you need to be productive, you need to be successful, and all these indicators. And then, the “and then” doesn’t even get filled out.
So there’s a whole set of identity characteristics around success and worthiness around all of those things that happens at a very early age. There’s this whole other part of themselves, this other core, around “What do you do for you just because you want to do it for you?” You haven’t earned it. You haven’t worked for it. It’s something that feels good.
And I’m not talking about a piece of dark chocolate before you go to bed at night. I’m talking about the real that, you would be like, “If I could say ‘F the world’ to everybody, I want this to happen.” Do you even dream about that? Do you even know what the answer to that is? And then how do you then begin to create a life that gets you closer and closer and closer to that?
So I have conversations all the time that your worthiness is not contingent upon perfection. I have to say that mantra over and over again. Your worthiness is not contingent upon your perfection and you have pleasure as your birthright. Period. There’s nothing that anyone can do to take that away from you.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I can’t imagine how a high-functioning woman with any background can hear that and not just go, “Ugh, I need that.” Right? We don’t get that from anything in our society. I have a conversation all the time that your work is not your worth. But then there’s this big gap, and your question of, “What is it that you’re doing to feel pleasure? What is it that you’re doing?” And it’s not dependent on anything. It’s your birthright. It’s like the right way to steer this conversation. But then how do you find that? Where do you go to find what you enjoy? How do you take people on that journey?
Nikki Coleman:
So the first part is acknowledging that no one is going to give it to you. So you do need to find it. And two, that you get to play. Part of a human experience is playfulness. That means there’s error. That means that you try things out. That means you get to be awkward and uncomfortable. That means you get to change your mind. This is why this concept is about perfection and it’s not about production, that it’s an exploration process.
I really encourage folks to get curious about yourself. What is that little thing that you’ve once thought like, “Oh, I used to really sort of be into blah blah blah, but that’s whatever”? Let’s go back to that. Let’s get curious about that. I do a lot of stuff around embodiment. Even when I start talking about this stuff, what is getting activated in your body? Are you feeling tension anywhere? Is any part of you feeling excited? Where is that coming from? What could we connect to? What are your senses already telling you? Are you a person that’s sort of like, “Oh, I want to go to Bath & Body Works and smell all the candles.” Or you’re a person that’s like, “My sheets must be 1,000 threads.”
We can start to use all of these things that you really sort of have benign access to, and then we want to just go full throttle and explode and invest in all of that and explore all of that.
Laurie Ruettimann:
I can see how this would be risky if you’re a Black woman or you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community. You have to have a sherpa. You have to have a guide. You have to have someone giving you space and helping you brainstorm ideas. Right? Because this is not something that society gives you permission to do.
Nikki Coleman:
No, not at all. And the beauty of my clientele is they are across the spectrum. So they’re across the age spectrum, they’re across the gender spectrum, they’re across the sexual orientation spectrum. And the conversations remain the same, which is really fascinating because when you start talking about patriarchy, it really takes sexual orientation off the table because we’re all negatively impacted by patriarchy.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Including men. I think that —
Nikki Coleman:
Including men. 100%. I have a couple male clients that I see individually, and interestingly enough, they come to me through the lens of racial trauma work — like, they have experienced racial stress in the workplace, and they want to work through that. And then I start to pull in my other stuff about joy and pleasure and they’re like, “What? What’s this about?”
But actually, most of the women come to me because they hear me saying these things. A lot of my marketing happens on my social media platforms. And people come to me and almost to a person, they’re like, “I saw this post and you said this.” I was like, “You were talking to me.” Or people in my DMs are like, “Thank you so much.” You don’t understand how much even the questions you’re asking make me just experience myself differently. And this is why the work is really important because there’s nothing in our lives that creates accountability.
The inertia is to go to bed, get up, get the kids up, pack the lunches, drop off, go to work, do the thing, come home, maybe have a glass of wine, maybe have a date night, maybe go to, I don’t know, a vacation a couple times a year. And that’s it. I am so anti that. I’m so anti that. So I do it —
Laurie Ruettimann:
There’s nothing worse than a date night that’s planned and stressed about. That’s not fun.
Nikki Coleman:
It is not fun. That feels obligatory, right? Like, “Well, we’re doing this because we say we got to do it.” No.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Yeah. There’s no pleasure in the programmatic way that we tend to operate. As we start to wrap up the conversation, I want to give our wonderful listeners a sense of what you’re passionate about for the rest of the year, for 2023, where your business is going. What are you thinking about? I mean, you must be thinking about all of these topics, but the world is still kind of crazy.
Nikki Coleman:
The world is very, very crazy. So the things that I’m passionate about is actually, I’ve launched a small-group coaching program called Pleasure Pursuers. And it’s around walking women through this journey of — what are these internalized narratives that you have that really aren’t yours, but you sort of swallowed them wholesale? How do we help you unpack them? What tools do you need to make different choices in your life to start living a life that centers joy and pleasure?
So I’m super-excited about that. It’s so good. Literally, I was going to bed last night. I was like, “I’m so fucking proud of myself. This is awesome.” So that’s one of the things that I’m really passionate about and looking forward to. And then there’s another thing — so there’s this whole movement, at least on social media with Black women talking about living their soft life. And it really is like a rebellion against all of the things that we’re talking about.
So one of the other things is I’m developing a soft-life retreat. I want to start as a virtual retreat first. And I think the three components of a soft life are authenticity, boundaries and self-compassion. I want to talk to women about what does that mean? What does that look like for you? And how do you start to practice those things?
Laurie Ruettimann:
Oh, that is wonderful work. I’m so excited.
Nikki Coleman:
Yeah, I’m excited.
Laurie Ruettimann:
What a job. You really built something for yourself that not only has great potential financially, but is just so needed in the world. And the one thing that I was thinking about as we were talking today is I need more time to fuck around and find out.
Nikki Coleman:
Yes.
Laurie Ruettimann:
This is exactly what I needed, this conversation, so I’m so pleased that we had a chance to connect. Dr. Nikki, we’ll make sure we have all of your good stuff on the show notes. So thanks for being a guest.
Nikki Coleman:
Thank you so much. It was a great time for me.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Punk Rock HR. We are proudly underwritten by The Starr Conspiracy. The Starr Conspiracy is the B2B marketing agency for innovative brands creating the future of workplace solutions. For more information, head on over to thestarrconspiracy.com.
Laurie Ruettimann:
Punk Rock HR is produced and edited by Rep Cap with special help from Michael Thibodeaux and Devon McGrath. For more information, show notes, links and resources, head on over to punkrockhr.com. Now, that’s all for today and I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll see you next time on Punk Rock HR.