EP 1 – The Work Of Becoming

Episode 1: The Work Of Becoming

Hello, hello, my friend, and welcome to the first ever episode of The Work Of Becoming podcast. My name is Dr. Karin Nordin. I will get more into me and this podcast and what we’re doing here in a minute, but to start off today’s episode, I really wanted to do some time traveling.

So, I invite you to time travel with me back to the summer of 2017 which is when I made the move from Tuscaloosa, Alabama (where I had been living for two years doing my master’s degree) to Fairfax, Virginia where I moved because I was entering the PhD program that is the PhD program I graduated from which was centered around health behavior change.

So, when I moved to Fairfax, Virginia in late summer of 2017, I was feeling really, really lost. I had just gotten out of a weird pseudo-relationship with a boy and was feeling heartbroken over that. I was in a brand new space meeting all sorts of brand new people. I had roommates that I was living with who I sort of knew but didn’t really know. I wound up at a coffee shop one day just desperately trying to get some work done, and I was sitting there in this coffee shop feeling totally overwhelmed and totally lost, and I decided to help turn my day around I would just create a playlist on Spotify.

So, I made this playlist on Spotify, and the first song on the playlist was “This Is Me” by Demi Lovato. So that gives you an indication of where I was at, mentally. But I named this playlist “The Work Of Becoming.” It just came to me in that moment that that was the name: “The Work Of Becoming.” This playlist, honestly and truly, got me through the next three months of transition. I remember listening to it at, like, 5:00 AM when I was up at the crack of dawn working on reading academic articles about mindset and self-efficacy and behavior change. I remember listening to it as I drove to Arlington, Virginia to go on the first date of what would then become my now five-year relationship with my partner, John. I remember listening to it at the gym as I started to strength train for the first time.

Really, these first three to five months in Fairfax, Virginia were a massive period of personal evolution for me, and within that period of personal evolution, whenever I was feeling lost, whenever I needed to pivot my day, whenever I needed to ground myself in the vision of what was possible for my life, whenever things got really hard, I would come back to the playlist, and I would listen to “The Work Of Becoming” playlist.

And so, when I thought about creating a podcast, I knew immediately that it would be called The Work Of Becoming podcast, and I knew that I wanted it to do for you what the playlist had done for me back in the summer of 2017 which is that I want this podcast to be a place of hope for you. I want you to listen to it when you have woken up in the morning and you’re in the wrong mood. I want you to listen to it when you are having a really rough day and you just can’t focus. I want you to listen to it when you feel like the version of yourself that you’re trying to become is impossible or far away or that it’s gonna be too hard to get there and you just can’t make it. In those moments where you are feeling lost or hopeless or confused and you need a boost or you need some tangible tips, I hope this podcast will be that resource for you.

So, we’re gonna do five-minute episodes three times per week. They are going to be tangible tips, small stories, tools, things that are gonna help elevate your life and pivot you back to be on the right track. And so, that is what we’re doing here.

So, welcome, my friends, to The Work Of Becoming podcast where we become the people we’ve always wanted to be and where we become the people who want to be exactly who we are.

Thank you so much for listening. I will see you in the next episode!

ⓒ2022 Karin Nordin, The Work Of Becoming