About

This week, Samantha talks with empowerment coach, Kristin Zucaro about how to have difficult conversations.  As an empowerment coach, she helps people breathe through people pleasing and perfectionism, setting and honoring boundaries, and finding their life’s purpose.Kristin became a coach because of a wakeup call she received back in 2019.  She was a total people-pleaser her entire life and through college.  In 2012, she received a diagnosis of thyroid cancer.  She beat it and got right back onto the corporate horse.  Then, she received a diagnosis of melanoma, a non-life threatening form of cancer in her case.  This time, though, she took it as a gift.  This time, she wouldn’t be returning to the corporate world and pursued her career in coaching.Difficult conversations aren’t an “if” but a “when” they happen.  Kristin’s coping mechanism used to be to avoid the conversation completely.  She wasn’t taught and didn’t know how to have difficult conversations when she was growing up, so her goal now is to give people the tools, support, guidance, and the listening ear to prepare for them.Her tumultuous childhood didn’t give her the tools to go deeper because she wasn’t allowed to talk about the things that were happening in the house.  She details the events of her youth that caused her own trauma and caused her difficulty in having difficult conversations.  She also loosely attributes her thyroid cancer on her suppression of the truth growing up and not talking about the things actually going on in the home.Kristin has formula for having difficult conversations. For example, Kristin’s intention with the podcast interview was to “be assertive.”  This is how she decided she would show up.  If you know that you have to approach a difficult situation or conversation, if you can commit to being intentional, you can try to stick to it.  Then, after you have your intention, you can contemplate where the other person is.  You can make an attempt to put yourself in their shoes.  This is empathic, but also allows you to anticipate difficulties in the conversation before they happen.  Finally, she says to use “I” statements instead of “you” statements.  This allows you to find common ground with the other person.  “I noticed that” or “I observed” are statements that you can use to disarm the other person and have a difficult, but productive, conversation.  If you get to the point where you start to get into “you” statements, it’s time to take a pause and pick up the conversation later.During their conversation, Kristin and Samantha agree that "all we can do is work on ourselves and be the best person that we can be and set healthy boundaries."  As parents, Kristin says, it is so important to work out our own stuff so that we can be our best selves for our kids.  She realized that the best example she can set for her kids is to model difficult conversations with her husband in front of the kids.  Over time, it will teach them how to have disagreements in a healthy way.If you want to get in touch with Kristin Zucharo, you can find her and her podcast at:Instagram: @kristinzucaroWeb: kristinzucaro.comPodcast: on Spotify and on her website - “Curiosity, Courage, and Truth”https://www.kristinzucaro.com/podcast