Iva's Blog & Free Resources

When I was a teenager, it was easy for me to daydream. In a small town, without cell phones, video games, or distractions, and with plenty of boring downtime, I spent long hours dreaming and visualizing my bright future. As an adult, I am busy, always chasing, jumping from task to task, getting things done. We don't allow enough space and time to dive into our imagination. We have Hulu and Netflix, Facebook, and constant email checking to fill our down time. We don't take time to...

If I could choose just one tool that made my process of growing as a leader easy, it would be the power of visualization and mental rehearsal. It's that powerful. 

The basic concept is that your brain doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined when it comes to learning. It can almost just as easily learn by visualizing a situation than actually performing a task or taking action. 

If that is true, to be a good public speaker for instance, wouldn't it be much...

We spend our lifetime telling ourselves that we shouldn't be the way we are. We should be more educated, smarter, prettier, taller, have straighter/curlier hair, be more accomplished, more successful, richer, and then we will be worthy. 

We believe that if we are all the things we made up at some point in the past, we will gain everyone’s collective approval and we will be okay. 

What's this all about? To find the answer, we must go to the era of our ancestors and look at how...

Journaling is great. 

When I started journaling and discovering what holds me back from being fully self-expressed and showing up in my full power, I saw that fear of judgment was the other side of the coin of looking for approval. We want to look good and we want to avoid being judged or criticized.

But why? What is it about judgment from others that has us doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out how to make people think positively of us? 
And more importantly, how might you...

As a child, I did fine at school. I always had straight A's. I was smart, had a good memory, and paid attention. But what I didn't lack in ability to learn things quickly, I lacked in ability to make friends, or worse, keep the giggling and laughter of other kids away. The classroom was my safe time. When class was in session, I didn't have to worry about my awkward interactions with others, trying to fit in, or making friends. 

I dreaded the bell that rang at the end of each class. Most...

Here are some of my thoughts about leadership: 

Despite what you might have been led to believe, leadership is not about padding on more tactics and strategies and becoming effective in manipulating people. Leadership is about discovering and shedding what is getting in the way of you being the powerful leader you really are. 

If you heard that sentence and immediately started talking to yourself about how you are not a leader, going through the evidence in your head of why that...

About Anger

When I did the Hoffman Process in 2015, my teacher said something about anger being authentic. “There’s nothing wrong with anger,” she said. Hmm, what a concept!

In today’s society, anger is made wrong. Anger is bad, wrong, and immoral. Expressing anger is inappropriate. We have learned to suppress and resist our anger, make others wrong for being the source of our anger, and most of us don’t realize there is a lot of useful driving force behind anger...

There is only one thing we avoid perhaps just as religiously as we avoid rejection, and that's failure. The fear of failure can be the biggest driver of performance, but it can also be the biggest deterrent.

June 2016. It was five months after I opened the second location of Blooming Beets Kitchen, in Chandler, Arizona. After months of paying high rent, which was about to double after six months’ usage of the space, I knew the restaurant was turning into a ticking, money-losing, time...

I’ve been sharing stories from the first days of Blooming Beets Kitchen, and you may be wondering what happened after my conversation with Shaina that I talked about last time. Well, after that, I started spending time reimagining my business. I had been spending time being an employee of my own business. I was doing the chef's work and the cooking. I also did all the social media, marketing, ordering all the food and supplies, training all the staff, talking to media, doing interviews,...

I want to share a story with you that transformed my business, and reveal what finally allowed me to go from working almost 18 hour days in the restaurant and considering selling it to the restaurant becoming very manageable, joyful, and not all-time-consuming job.

Sometimes when we are stuck, really stuck, as I was in the restaurant, we need a guide or a coach, someone who isn't blinded by the fear in which we are living and is willing to see our full power.

I called my friend and coach,...