In this informal walking monologue, Kris Plachy shares a series of recent personal crises—a daughter’s concussion and shoulder dislocation, the death of her long‑time dog Binx, and her mother’s hospitalization with advanced heart failure—while reflecting on how she repeatedly feels high blood pressure and a sense of being overwhelmed. She argues that clinging to negative emotions (anger, grief, fear) actually cedes personal agency, because we implicitly grant permission to the circumstances that caused the pain. By recognizing that we made choices that brought these people and events into our lives (choosing to have children, adopting a dog, assuming caregiver responsibilities), we can reclaim agency, allow emotions to move through us, and then release them without denying their validity. Kris offers a step‑by‑step mental shift: acknowledge the feeling, see one’s role in the broader story, give the feeling space for one day, then consciously let it go, replacing it with purposeful action. The episode closes with an announcement that the CEO Sage (SAGE) program is reopening for the 2026‑27 season, inviting listeners to register via a provided link.
Chapters
Oh, hello there, lovely. Welcome to the CEO Sage. This is Kris Plachy. I am on a walk today and I am not using my normal sound equipment, so may not sound so great. So today we're just going to pretend like you and I are just walking next to each other on a walk. And, um, I had something I really just wanted to talk about, and I love doing this on walks because I'm all by myself. I don't know, feels really liberating. I have a beautiful view of what I see. I just find it also inspiring. And I was thinking about a class I'm going to teach in a couple weeks. The class will have happened by the time this episode posts. And I think that one of the things that I know is true, even about me and in general, right, all of us, like, we have We have a lot of things that happen, a lot of circumstances that come up in our lives that we don't have control over. I can say for sure this, um, this year, this 2026, man, I started off in Hawaii in my retreat with my clients and we were planning the year and thinking about the year and just dreaming about all the fun things. And I came back, I was so locked in. And then like the first week of February, My daughter had this totally random accident. She was having her blood drawn and she passed out and she fell and got a concussion. And it was just, it was so like, wait, what? And she had really big plans to go do trainings with 4 different pro teams in Spain. And it was so disruptive and like, what? And then my My dog died. My Binx that I've had forever, that I love so deeply, she passed away. And then my mom ended up in the hospital with advanced heart failure, and that was an 8-week situation of getting her stabilized and through care. And I'm an only child, and so I just sort of took it upon myself to do what I could there. And, and then even this week, another issue came up. My daughter was going to go have a training with a pro team, and she played a game and dislocated her shoulder. And so anyway, it's just been kind of a weird time. And all throughout this, my personal story is that my blood pressure keeps being really high, and we can't figure out why, which I am laughing. Whenever I talk to my husband about it, he's like, "We know why." And so we're working on that. So I've been thinking a lot about, you know, how do I make my life easier when it just feels like there's always more, right? There's always just another thing that feels like it makes it uneasy, difficult. And I also think that we have incidents that happen in our lives that erupt and make us feel a lot of icky emotions, which are all important. We have to feel all of them. We have to feel anger, we have to feel sadness, we have to feel fear. It's all part of being a human being. But we have to allow those emotions through us. But I think sometimes we believe if we let the emotion move through us, and let it move on, like let go, let its grip lessen, that somehow we are creating permission for what happened, that we're, or that we're minimizing what happened. So for example, with what happened to my daughter when she passed out, it was negligence on the part of the nurse who was caring for her That is not my opinion, that is the truth. And I could stay angry about that and feel very entitled to my anger forever, right? Like, I could come back to it if Kate ever has, like, issues with her mind or her brain, like she got a concussion. I could blame— I could hold this anger. And I think a lot of us do that, and we think that we're supposed to do that. We're supposed to keep the anger. Because if we don't, we're like doing, we're creating this allowing or permission structure for something to happen. And I really am working on this myself because there's a lot of things that happen in our lives that I think we help each other keep. Our emotion in a way that's unhealthy. Oh, I can understand why that's so upsetting. I don't blame you for still being upset about that. I don't blame you for being— I don't blame you for being scared. I don't— I really understand why you would still be so hurt. And I believe that when you hold on to a negative emotion like that and you don't allow it to move through you, you lose your agency. To all of it, to the emotion and to the circumstance. So let me explain, and this may not be something you like to hear, but this is my way of thinking, so you take it or leave it. But let's go with my dog dying, right? She should have lived, on paper, a lot longer. She was a little dog. She probably— everybody thought, you know, people think these little dogs, they live to be like 15, 18 years old. She wasn't. She wasn't even 14 yet. And I, I was so upset when she got so sick. And I still miss her terribly. And I allow myself to miss her. But I don't allow myself anymore, I don't indulge the anger and the resentment that I lost her earlier than I think I should have. Because I contributed to my own circumstance. What do I mean? Well, you know, almost 14 years ago, I drove down to a park in the middle of nowhere and met this little tiny runt of a puppy and said to the guy, who was incredibly weird, "Yes, I want her." And I bought her from him in this park. And that was my decision. It was my choice. I was a part of creating the entire future experience that I had with her in my life, right? And when I think of it that way, I give myself my agency back. It doesn't mean it hurts less. That she's gone, that it doesn't mean any of that. It just means that I have agency. Like, yes, this hurts so deeply, and I also invited her into my life. Like, I want to accept responsibility for that, because now I have my agency back, right? When my mom got sick a couple months ago, I could have, and did, process all this frustration. I don't have time for this. I'm an only child, I resent that. Oh my goodness, I could unpack so many things, right? But the truth is, I decided a long time ago what my role would be with my mom, and I am complicit. I have participated in the relationship that I have with her now and with the decisions that I made about her care. I am a part of that. You could go all the way back to, I decided to have children, and so when my children are injured or hurt or broken in some way and it pains me, I chose this. I chose to have children. I chose to bring these cute little entities in my life. That means I made an agreement when I did that to move through circumstances I would have no way of anticipating. Accidents, illness, bad decisions, all of it. And the faster we can relieve ourselves of that immediate emotion, and it could be all of it, right? The scale of emotions are huge. Rage, anger, resentment, burden, overwhelm, fury, fear, terror. I can allow that to move through me and then come back and say, Okay, I am a part of this experience. This isn't happening to me. I actively made choices that brought me into this circumstance, whatever the role is I have in it. I can allow the emotion that I feel because I'm a human and I don't need to deny myself that. But I don't need to keep the emotion in order to have some sort of justification. Right? We don't have to keep telling the story that makes us feel terrible, that keeps us separated from someone, from keeps— that keeps us separated from ourselves, that justifies our behavior. So if you're kind of in a moment and you've had an experience recently and you're stuck in that space, like you feel like you're supposed to keep your anger, you're supposed to keep your betrayed feeling, your entitlement, your, your judgment. I just would invite you to ask yourself, can I let this emotion go? Can I acknowledge my role in the circumstance? Not that you chose it, not that you did it on purpose, not that it was with intention, and not even that it happened for a reason. Just that, yeah, I can see, I can see the intersection. And acknowledge it. Take your agency back. And yeah, this was hard. These feelings are hard. I'm going to allow myself to indulge them one more day. And then I'm going to move through that and say, okay, and so now what? What's my next best Steph, what's the next thing I need to be honest about? Sometimes it's, I'm really sorry this is hard for you to go through. Here's what I'm gonna do. It's really hard to say goodbye to my dog, and I have two beautiful little puppies that I'm so enjoying. It doesn't mean I love Binks any less or that I miss her any less, but it does mean I can bring myself into the present moment. I don't have to keep my pain and lost feelings to honor her. I don't have to keep the grief so that she somehow isn't less important to me. You don't have to keep your anger towards someone because by losing it you are basically giving them permission for what they did. No, this is for you, not them. And you're living a beautiful life. Life is here. We're here to be savoring this experience, to find joy. It doesn't mean we don't have difficult times, but we can allow those to move through us. So I hope this just gives you a little think to let some shit go, Mama. Let it go. Stop carrying it. You don't need it. It's not serving you. It's okay. It's okay to let it go.
The best news ever! SAGE has reopened for registration going into the 26-27 season. We will begin at the end of September. And complete next year in July. And I'm so excited. We have some amazing gatherings scheduled, and the focus for this year will be just wonderful. I cannot wait to get started. There's still some spots available, so if you're interested, please go to thevisionary.ceo/sageinvitation. You'll see all the details, and the next step is for us meet and have a call and talk about it. Let's do it. Let's go.
