Join Stepping In Podcast host Adam Klein in an open and honest conversation with Lizzie Azzolino about what it truly means to keep evolving throughout our lives and embarking on our personal transformation journey. After graduating from New Ventures West years ago, Lizzie has walked a winding path from corporate strategy to a profound awakening that began in a hospital room with her mother and led through cancer, healing, and a transformative “dark night of the soul” in New York City.

In this intimate discussion, Lizzie shares how she learned to let go of the illusion of control and embrace a deeper truth: that we’re constantly being invited to expand beyond who we think we are. She opens up about selling everything she owned and landing in Santa Monica with just two suitcases, discovering that sometimes our greatest moments of loss can lead to unexpected homecomings.

Whether you’re facing your own crossroads or simply curious about what it means to live with greater authenticity, this conversation offers a refreshing perspective on how we can say yes to life’s openings – even when they ask us to change in ways we never imagined. Through stories of personal transformation and practical wisdom, Lizzie reminds us that our dreams aren’t waiting for some perfect moment – they’re calling us right now.

Learn more
Lizzie’s Podcast: Now at Work
New Ventures West Professional Coaching Course

Chapters

0:00 A Light at the End Adam welcomes Lizzie as she shares her journey from San Francisco to New York, and finally finding home in Santa Monica after a profound transformation

6:20 Breaking the Pattern Adam helps Lizzie explore the distinction between doing difficult things and believing life must be hard, revealing how her perspective shifted through crisis

15:46 The Heart of a Storyteller Lizzie opens up to Adam about her evolution from strategic thinking to heart-centered storytelling, and how she learned to trust her deepest knowing

23:23 Moments That Make Us Together they unpack pivotal life moments – including Lizzie’s powerful hospital room experience with her mother and subsequent healing journey – as Adam guides the conversation toward understanding how these experiences shape us

35:40 Dancing with Uncertainty Adam and Lizzie explore what it means to remain open to life’s constant invitations for growth, weaving together insights about time, change, and personal evolution

42:36 Creating What’s Possible The conversation culminates in a shared exploration of how speaking our dreams into the world creates momentum, with both host and guest reflecting on the power of beginning now

Transcript

Adam (00:06):

Hello, welcome to the Stepping In Podcast. I’m your host, Adam Klein. In this episode, I’m joined by Lizzie Aino, one of our graduates from a few years ago. And in this conversation we really step into what does it mean to continue to change and learn and really be in our transformational journey in an ongoing way, not just in one moment in our life. I was really enlivened by this conversation. I hope you are too. We look forward to hearing from you. Stepping [email protected]. Enjoy the episode. Well, it’s really good to see you, Lizzie. I’m so glad you said yes, and I’m looking forward to our conversation today.

Lizze (00:49):

Me too. Good excuse to catch up.

Adam (00:52):

So as a starting place, where do we find you? Where are you these days?

Lizze (00:57):

I’m in Santa Monica. I just moved here after a seriously dark night of the soul in New York, in the dark of winter. And before that, you and I met in San Francisco. I was there for 10 years. So Santa Monica is the light at the end of the tunnel in all of the ways. And behind me is a painting I bought in San Francisco years ago, and I remember seeing it and just feeling so magnetized by it. And only as I’m here am I coming to realize, I think this painting is just me. It’s like the experience of my life represented in a painting. So in San Francisco, in front of a painting of me, that’s where you find me.

Adam (01:53):

Beautiful. Okay. Now you said this really powerful phrase, dark Knight of the Soul, which it’s so interesting. I want to dive into that. And I think maybe where to go with is more as you find yourself on this side of it or maybe still emerging, what are you carrying with you? What are you learning from where you’ve been?

Lizze (02:19):

I am an expert grasper onto what I know, onto anything that gives me an illusion of control. And my move to New York, which was short-lived, it was six months, was my last attempt to grasp on to any sense of my old self. And instead, what I did was actually unravel and unearth all the things that I decided to keep buried, that I would look at some point in my life when I was ready. And they just all came to a head in New York. And there have been moments in my life where I felt like this was a new chapter. I’m a new person. That’s probably happened three times up until this point. This was unlike anything that I’ve ever experienced. And I feel like I had to just completely break open in order to be reborn as a different version of myself in an entirely new way. And so what I am bringing with me is a commitment to allow myself to do things differently than the past, which has been hard and uncomfortable. And I know so clearly who I’m here to be and why I am here and what my journey in this life, what my soul so wants my journey in this life to be. And now my work is to do it, to put one foot in front of the other, to be in my body, to be embodied and

Lizze (04:35):

To do that uncomfortable work. So the easy work for me has always been to intuitively know who I am and what needs to happen and where I’m headed, but it is the actual act of doing it physically. That is my work. So was a coming. So I sold everything in New York during this dark night of the soul moment, and with two suitcases and no idea where I was actually going to call home on a plane from New York to Los Angeles to stay with a friend for a little bit of time. I had never felt more at home because it was like I cleared all of these material senses of control and security, and I was just starting over and I was like, I have all I need. So landing in LA has felt like I’m finally home. I finally belong in a different kind of way.

Adam (05:46):

That’s so beautiful, and I hear you on this, the energy that’s required and the commitment to bring something from the world or what our soul is saying, and then have it become tangible manifested on earth. It’s one of the things I love about our work is it lives at that intersection in one version of philosophy where heaven and earth meet.

Lizze (06:19):

Yeah.

Adam (06:19):

And so curious. So curious, can you say a little bit more about what’s wanting to come through?

Lizze (06:36):

One of, I would say a really significant shift for me in every chapter of my life has been learning to trust what I know is real and express that and manifest that. And in early childhood, and then in early adulthood, most likely leading up to the point that I met you at New Ventures West training, I knew the truth, but I shared it out of fear and out of a need to control out of a need to protect myself from more of a place of lack. And now I have come into this gift of seeing the truth in people and systems and in our world and sharing it when the time is right, when the invitation is there, and from my heart entirely. So from a place of wholeness. And so much of what I know about myself is I’m here to be a storyteller and to help us all through this collective transition to really know and be ourselves individually and collectively in a new way. And I do that through stories, and I do that through personal stories, and I do that through helping people and groups change how they’ve seen their past, how they see their future, and then what’s actually available in the present moment. And so I’m constantly finding new ways to bring that to life. And then in an interconnected world, I’m the same in my life,

Adam (08:56):

Right? Yeah. I mean that’s profound. I remember learning, I can’t remember who I learned it from many years ago, and there’s different versions of it, but how we live into the stories we tell ourselves. So the story we have becomes something that we actually start living into. So if we start to learn what’s a better story to tell and how might that include more of me, more of what I feel like is essential for me to bring to the world? And it can actually happen, but it’s a big undertaking and not just a theoretical exercise, then it calls on us to start shifting our sense of ourself, other people, how we behave, what we take up, what we let go of.

Lizze (09:44):

It’s real work to decide that to ask. I would like to know my blind spots.

Lizze (09:56):

I would like for them to be revealed to me, and I want to work through those, and I want to grow through those. And to actually have those illuminated is it’s profound work. And what I know is what I’ve personally experienced, what I’m seeing people individually experience. And then what we’re collectively experiencing is so much of that is just coming up right now, and we’re being asked to meet it differently and not to try to contort it, but to actually transform it and change it, and to really confront with a lot of compassion, the beliefs that we’ve held for so long.

Adam (10:45):

Now, another way I want to enter into this, and we were talking about it a little bit before we officially got started here, which is around coaching. So a question I had in mind was why coaching all those years ago had you move into that? But now also this other question you’re in is of is it really coaching or what is this really that I’m up to? So maybe just this context, the first part, why coaching in the first place and now where you find yourself in this conversation of, does the story need a little bit of adjusting?

Lizze (11:19):

Yes. Yeah. So why coaching in the first place? Was this eight years ago?

Adam (11:27):

Eight years ago? Yeah, it was about eight years ago. Yeah, actually I looked, I wanted to see, I’m like, I’m going to look this up. So yeah, 20 17, 20 18.

Lizze (11:34):

Okay. 20 17, 20 18, it feels like it was 80 years ago. So new ventures West was my first experience with coaching, and I decided to become a coach in the process. I was coming from a very type A strategy career where as I already shared with you, it was like I always knew the answer. I knew the right thing. And so I always thought, oh, coaching. Well, I always know the answer so I could be a coach. But deep down, I know my soul wanted me to join that class so I could actually learn about myself really. And I remember the first, so there was something about New ventures West. I explored a lot of programs, new ventures West, amazing reputation, and everything you all do is rooted in narratives. I went to school for journalism stories. The through thread of my career always has been. And so I was very drawn to the approach. And I remember the first day, my last, I think we sat in alphabetical order potentially. That sounds, I remember this right. Sounds right. That sounds right. So I was the first person to have to share. It was something incredibly vulnerable. And I remember putting away my notepad, getting out the Kleenex, and actually beginning to feel my heart in a really powerful way. So why coaching initially? Because I thought I had all the answers.

Adam (13:20):

Oh, yeah.

Lizze (13:22):

And at the time, and then upon graduation a year later, I thought, oh, not coaching, I just know who I am a little bit more now I’m going to see how this unfolds. I ended up leaving my strategy career eventually, and only later did I even add coach as a title when it became a part of what I wanted to offer to the world. But it was like immediately I started to view myself and view the world as a coach, as a part of New Ventures West.

Adam (14:08):

And today you’re questioning this name of coach.

Lizze (14:15):

So everything that I create and do and bring and believe in my work is the collective expression of all of my work and life experience and now past lives as I’ve connected to them and the modalities and what I bring into work with people, it’s coach doesn’t really encapsulate it anymore. And so I’m such a believer that words create a reality, stories create a reality. And so I’ve very much been in the process of creating a new reality and shaping my story and still working to find the language for it.

Adam (15:05):

So one of the things I’m wondering about now is we’ve been talking because been so really open about your process and the different points and also bringing clarity about, well, there’s a through line of narrative and storytelling. Who knows what the current story is? Sounds like you’re still shaping that, but what I’m wondering about for people who are listening and they’re navigating unknown territory of what do I want, what do I do, that space of questioning, but also do I really want to answer this question of what I want because of what it might reveal? So I’m curious, based on your way through this so far, what would you relate to those folks listening,

Lizze (16:00):

What do you want is maybe even a harder question to answer than who are you? And so I wouldn’t start at what do I really want? Because when you start there, it’s not coming from who you really are. So as far as I’m concerned, there is a sequence and then there’s not because everything’s interconnected. But one of the things that I always do in these crossroads moments where I know I’m changing, this isn’t me anymore, but what is what’s next is I make a list of who I was, what I believed, all of the things that created the story of the chapter that I want to close. And I reflect on what are the lessons here? And then in that process, I naturally begin to craft, so what are the seeds or the breadcrumbs of the chapter that I’m stepping into? And then I’m opening, who am I now? Who do I want to be now? How do I want to feel now? And one of the incredibly overlooked parts of real change is actually healing, understanding, and integrating the past. Because if we don’t, or when we do, if we don’t, we end up back in a similar place

Adam (17:47):

Because it’s not really past we this word, it’s left somewhere.

Lizze (17:53):

Yes, it’s all here, past, present, future. Everything’s here right now. And so it is only when we really look at and understand our past and our present, that we can get really clear on our desired future. And our desired future is actually far closer to us than we realize. So really looking back and looking at yourself is an important part of figuring out what’s next.

Adam (18:29):

I’m appreciating that, especially the pragmatic part of writing those things down, which I think can often go overlooked. We can mentally rehearse these things, but there is a powerful moment when we put either thumbs to tapping it out or fingers on a keyboard or picking up these things called pens and writing on paper in that translation moment, I always encourage writing.

Lizze (19:00):

Yeah, actual writing, because computers can be very programmed. It’s always writing. And something that I do often is, and I do this with people I work with too, is write a letter from your highest self to the version of you that you are saying goodbye to what you learned from this person, what you appreciate, and then what you really want now. It’s really powerful to actually connect with these versions of ourselves.

Adam (19:47):

Can you share a little bit more about some things that have happened for you in writing these letters?

Lizze (19:58):

Well, I feel like everything I’ve learned through these letters, let me think of something recently. So yeah, actually a letter that I wrote to myself in Brooklyn that really changed everything was after coming into the realization that I had this unconscious belief that my life was supposed to be hard, that I was the person who that my value was because I could experience these miraculous things through the hardest moments, being with an incurable cancer, countless things where I’ve overcome through really hard things, real transformation. And this was something that was programmed in my early childhood.

Lizze (21:15):

And so my move to New York made a ton of sense because it’s a really hard city to live in. And everyone who I met there reinforced how hard it was. You’re like, yeah, it’s hard. And I started to realize everyone that was there, it was like they loved it because it was hard. And that’s a part of the culture. And I was like, wait, and I am saying it. I’m laughing. Everything is like laughter. But it was incredibly painful to realize that, oh, that was my safe zone, is things being really hard. And so I ended up writing a letter to myself that I am now trusting that the things that are truly meant for me will happen with ease, which doesn’t mean it’s not hard work because a different kind of hard, but it’s a trusting in the process and meeting life in each moment and just a completely different embodied experience.

Adam (22:30):

I can feel what you’re talking about, what I’m hearing you say at least is that in the previous way about it was hard, was something that needed to be there because it was a way that you could, it was familiar and it was ground you could stand on. Oh, I know how to work with things that are hard. So everything needs to be hard. And if it’s hard, then I’m familiar with that. I know what to do. I know how to behave in that situation. And what I hear you saying now is it’s not that things can’t be difficult, and that might be what’s required is to move through something difficult that or is hard, but not that has to, it’s not a precondition for life. And life can show up with ease and maybe it could be easeful for a long, long time before something hard comes back. Is that what you’re pointing to?

Lizze (23:22):

Yes. And since I’ve moved here, which happened with, it was not easy to decide to sell everything in New York, to pay a fortune, to break my lease, to remember that six months that I sold my car in San Francisco. I mean just the money, all of these things. But knowing that feeling lifted and supported by a different frequency that was like, no, let go and move this way. And just allowing things to happen without trying to make them happen, without needing to have the plan. And since I’ve moved here, some of the things have come up in my family, in my life that in the past would have completely devastated me. And now I’m just seeing them in a different way. So yes, hard things will continue to happen, but I don’t need to meet them with hard,

Adam (24:53):

It’s a subtle distinction. It’s a subtle thing you’re pointing to. That’s what I’m trying to spend some time lingering here to trying to draw out this nuance of saying, I’m not going to operate with the story that life has to be hard. Doesn’t simultaneously mean saying I can’t be in hard things.

Lizze (25:16):

That’s right. Yes. I’ve been studying Kabbalah a lot recently, Jewish mysticism. And the reason that I’ve been just loving it so much is because I feel like it encapsulates so much of what I’ve come to learn from disparate places in one philosophy. And so much of it is rooted in this belief in certainty, which is everything. And everyone that comes into our path is here to help us transform. And so to meet it with, they have a phrase, you pause and then you say, what a pleasure. Not actually out loud, but inside because this is here to help you grow. And so rather than meet it with resistance, it’s like welcome and welcoming it in and then really being choiceful about how to show up. And that feels far more easeful than trying to figure it out from a place of wanting to control or manipulate or over architect

Adam (26:50):

Or even try to suck too much learning out of something. Maybe it’s just this much instead of this much.

Lizze (26:59):

Yeah, maybe this thing that everyone says is so big when these things happen, maybe it doesn’t have to feel that way. Yeah. So it is, it’s a nuance. It’s like allow yourself to feel the feelings, don’t dismiss the feelings, and we have to work through the feelings or they’ll just come back. But it’s allowing them to move through us in a different way. Yeah.

Adam (27:34):

So something I’m curious about, because you’re talking a lot about, from what I’m hearing, staying in this process of learning, staying open to who am I now? What’s important to me now, really these evolving questions rather than you’ve been talking about living with certainty, and that to me isn’t a place that people often live in this openness of wanting things to continue to move and flow and change.

Speaker 3 (28:07):

Adam (28:07):

I’m curious, what have you found supports you in staying open in this kind of way where things can continue to flow, your understanding of yourself can continue to flow, what allows that for you? Yeah,

Lizze (28:25):

Not just a mental, but a deeply embodied knowing that I’m here to grow and evolve always. And that growth and evolution means constantly expanding what I believe.

Adam (28:42):

Has that been a pretty consistent thing you’ve been in contact with as far as you can remember? No. No.

Lizze (28:48):

Okay.

Adam (28:49):

Alright. The total opposite. Yeah. So where did that come from?

Lizze (28:54):

Oh, it’s been a slow, slowly unfolding process. And then recently it’s gotten quite rapid, like the pace. I’m sure everyone else this moment feels different. It’s because it is, there’s an energy that is propelling us to change right now. No it new ventures. Well, there are a number of moments that I think really catalyzed to this for me. And they’re all long stories, and so I’m going to give the short version of them. I’m happy to go into more detail. One was I was working in my strategy career soon before I came to New Ventures West Coaching was not on my radar at the time. And an important thing to know about me is I had lived so much of my life up until that point dedicated to being independent, making money, having status, accomplishing things, all born from a belief at the time that that’s what I needed to be safe and to fit in.

Lizze (30:27):

And I received a call from a doctor in a hospital in Atlanta. I was living in San Francisco at the time. And he explained to me that my mom was in the ICU with complications from a long time struggle with alcohol. And it was like my greatest fear was being realized and time stood still. And of course I started to blame myself for all kinds of reasons. And I don’t remember the plane ride I took across the country, but what I do remember is opening the door to my mom’s hospital room was so terrified at what might happen. And I walked to her bed and she was heavily medicated. And she looked at me, she opened her eyes and I feel like she looked into my soul and she said, who are you?

Lizze (31:32):

And the question was so real to her, and it was real to me because I realized I didn’t actually know that answer. And so much of who I thought I was and what I thought I was working toward, it just started to unravel from that point on. And there’s a lot that happened. I enrolled in New ventures West for all kinds of reasons and new ventures West opened my worldview in a big way and leaving my full-time job, choosing to follow my intuition, to leave my full-time career without really knowing what was next. But knowing I needed to figure that out was a big move.

Lizze (32:27):

And I, about four years into that was I got extremely sick and spent a lot of time searching for what was wrong with me, so much time searching. And at one point was diagnosed with an incurable cancer, and this was in my early-ish thirties. And that experience changed me in a really big way because it was, looking back now, it was a gift on my path to allow me to start to pay attention to my body and to start to experience who I was in a different way. And that opened up a lot for me. And I, yeah, there’s a long version of this story, but I no longer have cancer, and I really healed a lot from that experience. There are a number of these things that it’s like these moments in life meet me, and I actually do take them as openings, which is at the time when New Ventures West called them,

Speaker 3 (34:04):

Lizze (34:04):

Really do see them as openings to say, what am I not seeing?

Lizze (34:12):

What world exists outside of this one that I’ve been living in? So there have been a number of moments where I feel like my world just keeps expanding. And it’s like years ago I thought, I’m living in a house, it has two bedrooms and I can move around the furniture and it might feel a little bit different. And then a year goes on and it’s like I find a hidden room. I’m like, oh, my house feels bigger. Who knew? And I’m going to get adjusted to this. And that process has continued until about a year and a half ago I started to realize I’m not in a house. There is no house. This is entire, the world is massive. So it’s just this constant, I think just over time I’ve actually gotten nervous and excited about all of these new versions of a house, not house that are out there. And that just continues to happen. And I’ve gotten far more comfortable, although it’s not comfortable with the process of relearning how to be myself and how to show up and how to relate to others and how to do this life thing. So I feel like I’m basically an infant all the time.

Adam (35:39):

So powerful. And you are underscoring this capacity. I feel like we have as human beings to be aware of these openings or be impacted by these openings that are really abundant in our life. We just move by them so quickly. But when they occur, if we for whatever reason in that moment are able to do it, and there’s a lot of mystery there going on, for me at least, that they can build on one another. And we become more used to, oh, I can hang out in this opening even though it feels destabilizing or I have to unlearn things. But there’s something that occurs in that moment that if we allow it to imprint that we can find our way back to it more often. And it kind of builds. And it’s not, like you said, it’s not that it necessarily gets easier. I don’t know what I would maybe say. We just become more capable or we have more capacity, or we feel more held by life that whatever it is, we can stay there and we’re going to not be obliterated. That something lasting is actually going to turn up even more profoundly that we can stay anchored in

Lizze (37:05):

Every single day. I find that there’s more support than I thought there was the day before. And you know what, Adam, the way that you said that has me want to rephrase how I said what I said, which is the biggest shift that I decided to make in the move from New York to here is rather than be met with an opening that is so big that it is impossible not to take it, I am now actually seeing every single moment as an opening. And I’m not choosing to take all of them because that would be incredibly destabilizing. I imagine a future where that will change, but I’m just seeing that we really are unlimited in our capacity and that we limit ourselves, I think for good reason. But there’s just, I think one of the things that I’ve learned from so many of my teachers and friends recently is if we truly dream something and we are dedicated to it, it can happen. It just takes a lot.

Adam (38:44):

Yeah. It can happen is different than, and it’s going to happen in a day or a week or there’s a lot that you’re pointing to

Lizze (38:53):

And it can happen in a day. One of my teachers recently challenged us that anything that you really care about, you can make it happen in a day. And I could get into details around that, but there’s a lot. My whole construct of time is changing.

Adam (39:14):

Yes. Yeah. That’s one of the elements. I think it’s been an under curtain in our conversation that I was wondering about asking about. I’m like, maybe we should start talking about time. And I was like, well, that could get a little abstract and who knows where it’s going to go. But yes, that’s a current in our conversation is what is time? And we were talking earlier about it’s definitely not this linear thing. We like to think that it is.

Lizze (39:41):

No, I don’t have a definition for time. And my experience of time and everything is, it’s all here. Every thought, word, action, intention, past, present, future is here. And that experience, I do believe, and there are people who know more about this than I do, but I do believe that it is a more common knowing of people in this particular moment that we are all in right now. It feels like a very big inflection point for us all collectively.

Adam (40:41):

So I’m curious, we’ve been talking for a while there. If there’s anything in particular that we haven’t covered that you wanted to dive into, questions you wanted to center in the conversation or anything else you want to say?

Lizze (41:00):

This is a message I’m saying to myself, and so I’ll also say it to everyone else that I really do believe we’re all here. Time, gosh, time has been a theme in this conversation. Maybe I should write about time more. We are all here right now in this moment for a reason. And the energy of this moment is actually supporting to decide what we want that reason to be and to do it. There’s so many of the people I work with, and I’ve told myself this story so many times until I didn’t, is like, it’s too late or now is not the right time. Or actually, I’ve stolen a phrase that I heard from some, I want to say it’s Cynthia from New Ventures West, where there’s no island in the sun where it’s like it all works out and that’s the right time to do it. No, no, it is. Now is the time to do it. The best way to start is to start, and the only way to do it is to just decide to do it. So I feel like right now is a really powerful time for people to connect deep down to what it is they really want in this life from a heart place,

Lizze (42:35):

And to find ways to put that into action now.

Adam (42:41):

Yeah. I mean that feels like the gift of one of the gifts of this conversation that you’ve brought is the energy of the energy of creation

Speaker 3 (42:51):

And

Adam (42:51):

That it’s here and that we can collaborate with it. And there is something to saying yes to the moment. And one of the beautiful things I think that we’ve touched on in an ongoing way, which I think you’ve really shared with us, how it’s been for you in an ongoing way, saying yes. And the creation doesn’t have to stop. It can keep going.

Lizze (43:19):

Yes. And you don’t always have to believe the Yes. That’s another thing. Sometimes you can just say the yes and just do it, and then all of a sudden you realize it’s happened or you start to catch up to the yes. So one of the things that I always do when something becomes very important to me is I share it with as many people as

Adam (43:45):

Possible. Beautiful.

Lizze (43:47):

And by words create momentum. Words are energy. It’s like the act of sharing is creation. And so sharing what it is, you’re up to a dream you have. It really does create a lot of momentum. And then people love to support you with

Adam (44:12):

Dreams. Right? It’s true. I believe that’s true.

Lizze (44:15):

Yeah.

Adam (44:17):

Well, it’s been a real pleasure, Lizzie, and like I said, many gifts, but one of this one in particular that’s at the tail end of our conversation here about the creative energy and the possibility of saying yes to openings feels particularly potent. So thank you for that.

Lizze (44:36):

Yeah, thank you Adam. So good to spend time together. I have so many questions for you,

Adam (44:43):

Part two.

Lizze (44:45):

Part two. I know if you want me to interview you, we have all the time in the world. That’s right.

Adam (44:55):

Well take care.

Lizze (44:56):

Good.

Always Becoming You