Episode #73 - You Created Your Life. Now What?

You do the inner work. You go to the retreats. You read the books. You start to feel lighter, clearer, more like yourself. And then you look around and realize some of the people you love aren't coming with you.

On Episode 73 of The Eversio Experience Podcast, we sat down with Adele Tevlin to talk about exactly that, and about a lot more we didn't see coming. Adele is a cognitive behavioral therapist, mindset coach, and founder of the CEO Blueprint. She studied neuroscience at McGill and has been teaching this work for 25 years.

We first heard her name at the Pink Skirt Project in July, an event Eversio Wellness sponsored. Months later, people were still talking about her talk. After this conversation, we understand why.

Why This Conversation Matters Right Now

We both came into this episode carrying something. We had just come through wedding season, the time of year when family, friends, and every version of your past and present end up at the same table. Some relationships felt closer than ever. Others felt like they were quietly slipping away.

If you've been feeling that too, this episode is for you. Adele works with people who have already done some of the work. They know they have childhood wounds. They've been to the events. But something is still in the way, and they can't name it.

This conversation gives it a name.

The Fear Underneath "I Want Everyone to Come With Me"

Brandi describes the feeling the way many of us experience it: "I'm going somewhere, and I want everyone to come. I want them to feel what I'm feeling."

Adele gently disagrees.

According to Adele, we don't want everyone at the party because the party is so good. It's that we're afraid of being left alone. She pointed to the core abandonment wound, which begins in childhood, as the real source of that heaviness.

That shift matters because it changes where you put your attention:

• Instead of trying to bring everyone along, you can ask why going without them feels so frightening
• Instead of making someone's departure mean something about them, or about you, you can let it simply be part of their path
• Instead of holding on tighter, you can practice what Adele calls loving detachment

Adele says that in the past, she saw losing people through a lens of "they're not ready for my change," which she now calls egocentric. Today she sees it differently. People are on their own spiritual paths, and where they are on theirs is, in her words, none of her business. Letting go of that attachment, she says, has made her life far more peaceful.

Desiree shares a line from one of her recent reels that fits right in: the price of admission for living an authentic life is the people you'll lose because of it.

You Don't Have to Be Happy All the Time

One of the biggest myths about personal growth is that once you "get there," you'll feel good all the time.

Adele was clear: that's false.

You will still deal with the ego mind. You will still get triggered. The difference, she says, is that the wobble lasts 60 seconds instead of 60 days.

Her practice comes down to a simple check-in:

• Why am I feeling grief or attachment right now?
• Where have I slipped out of the truth of who I am?
• How do I bring myself back?

Then she does it again. And again. Redirect, redirect, redirect.

Adele also describes growth as climbing a mountain with infinite peaks. Just when you think you've arrived, you discover another layer. She has taught this work for 25 years and says she still approaches it every day with a beginner's mind.

The Story Behind Adele's Calm

When people meet Adele now, they often assume life has been easy for her. Her story says otherwise.

She became a single mom while she was pregnant with her son. Then came five years in the family court system with her son's biological father, including a period of moving to undisclosed locations for their safety. Through all of it, she kept leading calls with her students every day.

She describes living split in two: showing up for everyone else on the outside while falling apart behind the scenes. Compartmentalizing was the only way she knew how to cope, and it created a duality that eventually broke.

In August 2023, she crashed. She had severe PTSD, and at her therapist's advice, she took the month off and went into deep healing work. She credits that month, along with the mentors and coaches who supported her, with saving her life.

What stood out to us most was how openly she talks about it. She shared her PTSD, depression, and anxiety with her students as she went through it. She believes that honesty built trust, and that spiritual teachers are too often placed on pedestals they don't belong on.

Why "This Is Happening For You" Can Backfire

Brandi asks Adele a question she has wrestled with for years. What do you do when someone you love is in the middle of something hard, and you know there's a gift in it, but saying so makes things worse?

Adele laughs. The first time her own spiritual mentor said "this is happening for you," she wanted to punch her in the face.

Here's how she explains it:

• Meet people where they are. Someone in the middle of a crisis, stuck in fight, flight, or another trauma response, isn't able to take in that message.
• Stabilize first. A person needs to feel safe and regulated before they can hear anything about growth or meaning. In Adele's words, they're in reaction, not thinking.
• Delivery matters. Adele noted that in the coaching and personal development world, people often repeat a phrase without living it themselves or knowing how to deliver it. When that happens, the listener can slide into victim consciousness.

Brandi adds her own takeaway: do the work before the hard thing happens. If the same situation keeps happening and you keep responding the same way, nothing changes, because you haven't changed.

Stop Giving Advice Nobody Asked For

This one stings, in the best way.

Brandi shares that after her own healing, she wanted to shout from the mountaintops about what helped her. Adele said she used to be the same, until a mentor bluntly told her it isn't her job to change someone who isn't ready to change.

Today, Adele doesn't give unsolicited advice. She doesn't coach unless she has been asked. Her reasoning:

• People who aren't ready will often push back and look for every reason it won't work for them
• Unwanted advice can hand them evidence for why change is possible for you but not for them
• Saying yes to the work, including paying to be in the room, is part of choosing it

Knowing Versus Being

Adele returns again and again to one idea: knowledge without integration isn't enough.

Many people who come to her say they've already done the inner child work. They already know they've been abandoned. Her response is to ask how their life has changed as a result of that knowing.

She sees a lot of incongruence in the wellness and spiritual space: people teaching mindfulness who are rude to the barista, or teaching wealth while struggling with money. For her, the goal is to embody the work so fully that there's no gap between what she teaches and how she lives.

Kids, Partners, and the Work You Keep Postponing

Brandi raised something many moms in our community feel: watching our kids struggle when we "know better."

Adele offered a clear distinction:

Responsible FOR your children. Your job is to guide them, teach them tools, and keep them safe from harm. But she believes they are sovereign beings on their own paths, and that it isn't her job to be enmeshed with them.

Responsible TO your partner. Adele says she stopped trying to coach her husband, and that doing so had nearly ended her marriage. Instead, she focuses on living the work herself. If she's embodying it, he can meet her there or not.

Then she said the line that made Desiree call "that's the episode" for the fourth time. When women in her program start worrying about whether they've damaged their kids, Adele asks them to put the kids aside for a moment. What about you?

She believes the focus on children can sometimes be a way to avoid looking inward. Her own son, she said, was the catalyst for her healing, because she didn't want to pass her wounds on to him. When you heal yourself, she says, your kids receive so much from it.

A Glimpse Into Part Two

Before we let her go, Brandi asks about psilocybin, something Adele has spoken about openly. Adele shared that she has had two guided ceremonies, one in 2019 and one last August, both one-on-one with a facilitator. She described them as experiences that had nothing to do with her past, and everything to do with remembering who she is.

There's much more to that story, and she has agreed to come back for a second episode to go deeper.

What We're Taking With Us

Here's what we keep thinking about since this conversation:

The grief of outgrowing people may have more to do with a fear of abandonment than with the people themselves

• Loving detachment means letting people come and go without making it mean something about them, or you
• Growth doesn't end hard moments. It shortens how long they last
• People in crisis need to feel safe before they can hear anything else
• Unsolicited advice usually doesn't help, and it can make things worse
• Knowing something is not the same as being it
• The most loving thing you can do for your kids might be focusing on your own healing

If any of this stirred something in you, listen to the full conversation. Adele's honesty, humor, and yes, her F-bombs, are best heard in her own voice.