In this episode of The Coach’s Corner, host Davina Lyons sits down with Patti Oskvarek, a Life, Leadership, and Work-Life Balance Coach and Reiki Master, for a powerful conversation about confidence, boundaries, and creating a life with intention.
Patti shares her personal journey from shyness and people-pleasing to finding her voice and helping others design a life they truly love.
Through coaching, Reiki, affirmations, and reflective practices, she guides individuals toward calm, clarity, and meaningful personal growth, both at work and beyond it.
✨ In this episode, we explore:
Finding balance in a busy, demanding world, letting go of people-pleasing and honoring boundaries, leading with intention and inner peace
Kindness is more than being polite or pleasant. It’s a choice, a way of moving through the world with compassion, empathy, and respect.
Every moment offers a decision:
Will I react with frustration?
Or respond with calm and grace?
When we choose kindness, we soften tension, build trust, and strengthen relationships in ways that feel natural and authentic.
Simple daily examples:
Smile at someone passing by
Say hello or thank you
Offer a compliment
Slow down long enough to truly see others
These examples have a ripple through our day and often uplift the people around us more than we realize.
Kindness in the Workplace:
In the workplace, kindness is a powerful yet often overlooked leadership skill.
It may look like:
Listening without interrupting
Acknowledging others’ efforts
Offering help without expecting anything in return
Choosing calm communication, even in stress
When we pause before responding to a stressful email or a heated moment in a meeting, it can shift the entire tone of a conversation.
Kindness Toward Yourself:
Many of us freely offer kindness to others, yet struggle to provide it to ourselves. Self-kindness fuels resilience, clarity, and emotional well-being. Without it, we risk burnout, compassion fatigue, and inner frustration.
Self-kindness may look like:
Take breaks without guilt
Say “no” when you need to
Rest when your body calls for it
When kindness leads the way, others naturally feel safer, calmer, and more connected, and this is how compassion spreads, one moment at a time.
What is one small act of kindness you can offer today?
Recently, someone made a harsh comment that sent me into a spiral of self-doubt. For a few days, I felt unmotivated and creatively blocked, like I couldn’t move forward.
Eventually, I paused and reflected: Who am I really doing this for?
The answer became clear for me; it’s for all of you who are seeking encouragement and calm in the chaos of life.
When we’re in a rut, it’s tempting to think we need a complete overhaul at once. However, it’s often the small changes that make the most difference. Ruts thrive on sameness, so anything new, even small, helps.
Journaling is one of the most powerful ways to gain clarity. It helps you see patterns, release emotions, and focus on what truly matters.
Reflect on this question:
🖋️ What shift will I make today to inspire me and get me out of this rut?
Affirmation: I trust that ruts are temporary, and I have the strength to move forward.
You may be surprised how one thought can begin to create change, and your outlook shifts from feeling demotivated to inspired.
From the daily grind of work duties to juggling family time, the daily choices can slowly wear you down and may lead to decision burnout and overwhelm, which is more common than you think.
Decision burnout or overwhelm happens when your mind becomes overloaded with too many decisions to make within a short period.
As time goes on, you may be experiencing:
Irritable with making decisions
Procrastination or Avoidance of making decisions
Overwhelmed by making decisions
Taking occasional breaks or going for a brisk walk can help.
Affirmation:I allow myself to pause before making decisions.
In a world that promotes hustle and constant doing, I am sharing this Affirmation as a gentle reminder that peace is a choice and a strength.
As inspiring leaders, we don’t have to push ourselves to the edge to make an impact. We can rise higher when we lead from a calm place, when we choose clarity over chaos and stillness over burnout.
💫 Affirmation:
“I choose peace over pressure.”
Say it slowly. Breathe it in. Let it soften the tension in your shoulders. This simple phrase holds powerful energy. It reminds us that peace is always an option, even in the midst of deadlines and decision-making.
Take a moment to breathe, reset, and return to what truly matters.
These few seconds of calm can shift your entire day.
If you’re an overgiving leader, caregiver, or someone who naturally gives so much to others, delegation might feel hard, even guilt-inducing. I understand because I’ve been there, too.
Hi, I’m Patti from Coaching for Inspiration with Patti, and I created this short video to remind you of something powerful:
“I delegate with trust, grace, and confidence.”
Letting go doesn’t make you weak. It’s an act of leadership, love, and self-respect.
In the video, I share a journaling tool called the 3-Column Clarity Method. It’s a gentle way to reflect on your responsibilities and gain peace around what’s yours to hold and what’s okay to let go.
✍️ Here’s how the 3 columns work:
Tasks that Inspire & Energize Me (Keep): What brings you joy, energy, or a sense of purpose?
Tasks Only I Can Do (Must Do): What requires you and your expertise?
Tasks I Can Delegate or Release: What can be shared, outsourced, paused, or a growth opportunity for someone else?
This simple journaling practice can shift everything. It clarifies, reduces burnout, and helps you move forward with intention and peace. This week, delegate one small task at work or home. Notice how it feels. Next week, try again. The more you practice, the more natural it becomes.
Let This Affirmation Inspire You:
“I delegate with trust, grace, and confidence.”
If this message resonates with you, please share the video or blog with someone who might want it today. 🦋
👉 About Patti
🦋 Hi, I’m Patti Oskvarek of Coaching for Inspiration with Patti. I’m a Leadership, Work-Life Balance, and Life coach and Reiki Master who helps individuals achieve their dreams, goals, and aspirations and live more purposeful and balanced lives outside of work.
I share strategies for work-life balance, work and life tips, work-life balance affirmations, building better relationships, navigating leadership situations, and more.
As a manager and supervisor, are you experiencing your employees silently quitting?
I came across an article on LinkedIn about the rising trend of quietly quitting and thought this is a good topic to explore.
Silently Quitting, which can contribute to a lack of enthusiasm, decreased productivity, or a reluctance to take on new tasks, has increased due to workplace burnout, dissatisfaction, and blurred lines between work and personal life. Many employees feel overwhelmed by expectations and find themselves doing just enough to meet their job requirements without going above and beyond.
Dealing with employee disengagement is not a passive task. It requires a proactive approach, and let’s explore why.
Here are some strategies for managers and supervisors:
Be a safe environment where employees share their thoughts, feedback, and concerns while creating a healthy work-life balance by respecting personal time and encouraging breaks. Flexible work arrangements help. Ensure employees understand their roles and responsibilities. Monitor workloads to ensure they are manageable, that employees are calm, and that they have the resources they need. Demonstrate engagement and positivity in your work. Your attitude can influence the team’s morale.
Having strategies can help create a more engaged and motivated workforce, reducing the likelihood of silent quitting.
Silent quitting can have several effects on the workplace.
When employees disengage, this creates an unpleasant atmosphere. Employees not invested in their work are slow to complete tasks or may not complete them. Employees who feel undervalued or unmotivated may seek other opportunities, leading to turnover rates and the costs of hiring new staff.
Addressing the issues that lead to silent quitting—such as lack of recognition, limited growth opportunities, or poor work-life balance—can help mitigate these adverse effects.
“Silent Quitting,” where employees disengage from their work without formally resigning, can significantly affect managers, supervisors, and employees.
Managers and Supervisors may see a reduction in team performance. If some members are visibly disengaged, the overall team morale can suffer.
They might have to take on extra responsibilities or redistribute tasks to accommodate less engaged and disengaged employees.
If silently quitting becomes the norm, Managers may need to implement these strategies.
To address silent quitting, managers can foster open communication, provide support, and ensure employees feel valued, engaged, and safe.
Question:
How have you experienced silent quitting, and how did you handle it?
If you are struggling with the daily grind and feel alone, a leadership, life, and work-life balance coach like me can help you overcome those everyday challenges and continue moving forward to where you want to be.
What are your opinions on the changing employee and company loyalty trend and its impact on company behavior?
Employees used to be more loyal to companies. This shift in loyalty may be due to a perceived lack of company not being loyal back.
There’s a growing perception that companies need to show more empathy towards their staff, treat them well, and support them in front of others.
Layoffs and retail store closures are happening to people who have worked for companies for decades, and employees who are more recent and making less money appear to keep their jobs.
What are your opinions on the changing employee and company loyalty trend and its impact on company behavior?
Let’s explore this together.
What do you think are the primary reasons people are not staying in companies for their entire careers or lifetimes as they have in the past?
Is it?
Lack of positive recognition and feeling undervalued.
Businesses not offering pensions or laying off staff before they reach their retirement date for a pension?
Lack of growth opportunities, passed over for promotion by a colleague who needs a better work ethic.
Working with less, excessive workload, and career burnout.
A toxic work environment or frustration with their manager or company work culture, mission, or values.
Management tolerates lousy behavior and the terrible work ethic of staff.
Policies change, workload changes, or job duties change.
Low pay or no raises in years.
Lack of clear direction or training for the job position.
Employees who don’t feel safe will start looking for something new.
Turnover and training new staff can be costly to the company’s bottom line, and what about losing knowledge, experience, and customers?
Customers tend to stay as repeat customers when they feel appreciated and have built a good relationship with an employee within the company.
Are there other ways to cut costs, see what’s working and what’s not, and try new strategies other than eliminating positions or closing stores?
There may be no other alternative. Have different strategies been considered? Hopefully, yes, and it was the last option.
Some companies have maintained loyalty. What do you think are some of the factors for this?
Employee loyalty and retention may have a combination of factors, many of which revolve around how employees feel about their work environment, the organization’s culture, and the value placed on them as individuals.
Today’s podcast Affirmation I strive to maintain employee retention!
If you are struggling with the daily grind and feel alone, a leadership, life, and work-life balance coach like me can help you overcome those everyday challenges and continue moving forward to where you want to be.
Get all the inside secrets and tools you need to develop your intuitive and leadership skills to achieve the highest success. Listen as we help you learn to be the person people want to go and grow with.
In this episode, you will learn:
How to consider your management style and its impact
Pay attention at group meetings – look for the signs
Your thoughts and perspectives on this topic are incredibly valuable. I would love to hear them.
What does this term mean? Coffee badging” is a workplace trend that describes when employees go to the office to show their presence while maintaining flexibility and working remotely. Employees might “coffee badge” by showing up to the office to get coffee or attend a meeting, then leave to work from home for the rest of the day. The term is a response to return-to-office mandates that require employees to be physically present. It also allows employees to maintain the flexibility they’ve enjoyed during remote work.
You can go to the link in the below to read the post and share your thoughts. 🦋 ~ Patti
