What happens when you finally have the life you worked so hard for and you realize you’re not okay?

My guest Koya Webb knows this contradiction intimately. Koya is a globally recognized wellness leader, bestselling author, speaker and founder of Get Loved Up, whose work has helped people around the world build healthier, more connected lives. She’s spent years teaching yoga, meditation, movement and holistic wellbeing, working with major brands and bringing these practices to audiences around the world.

She had built a successful career doing work she loved. She was traveling, teaching and helping thousands of other people take better care of themselves.

From the outside, her life looked like it was working.

Behind the scenes, she was losing herself.

At one point, Koya was literally putting vodka in her green juice.

That image says so much about what we talk about in this episode. You can exercise, meditate, eat well and know all the “right” things to do and still use achievement, busyness and even wellness itself to avoid what’s happening inside you.

Koya shares what was really going on during that period of her life and the moment she had to admit that the way she was living wasn’t sustainable. Her book, Wellbeing Rituals, grew in part from what she learned: there’s a difference between doing things that look like self-care and actually knowing how to care for yourself.

And sometimes that means disappointing people.

We talk about people-pleasing and what happens when being loving, helpful and dependable slowly turns into ignoring your own needs. Koya opens up about learning to say no and what happened when people who were accustomed to getting a yes from her didn’t like it.

We also get into grief, emotional honesty and why some of the feelings we’re quickest to push away may be trying to tell us something important. Koya shares the rituals she uses to reconnect with herself, and I share some of mine too, including one that leads us into a pretty unexpected conversation about our bodies and what changes when we stop constantly trying to manage or fix them.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How Koya built the life she wanted and still found herself struggling

• The story behind the vodka in her green juice and what it finally forced her to recognize

• The difference between practicing wellness and actually feeling well

• How people-pleasing can slowly pull you away from yourself

• What happens when you finally set a boundary and someone pushes back

• Why the emotions we try hardest to avoid may have something important to tell us

• Stress, nervous system regulation and how they affect the way we feel and connect

• Koya’s CHBT method and seven areas of wellbeing

• How to create rituals that actually support you instead of turning self-care into one more thing to accomplish

If your life looks good on paper but something inside you still doesn’t feel right, I really want you to hear this conversation.

You don’t have to wait until your life falls apart to pay attention to that feeling. And having a lot to be grateful for doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to admit that something is missing, hurting or needs to change.

Sometimes we get so busy building the life we think will make us happy that we forget to stop and ask ourselves:

Am I actually happy living it?

Connect with Koya on her website and Instagram, explore her Wellbeing Rituals tour, and check out Wellbeing Rituals: Science-Backed Practices for Sustainable Healing and Living to go deeper into the practices we discuss.

If you’d like to ask a question or get some advice, email languageoflovepod@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com to have your own question answered in a future session.

And if grief or loss is part of your story, come find me on my other podcast, Crying Out Loud. I talk with leading experts, healers and people who have lived through profound loss about what grief does to our brains, bodies, relationships and sense of self, and what actually helps us find our way through it. You can find Crying Out Loud wherever you’re listening to The Language of Love.

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