186. What If You’re Already Worthy? Escaping the Validation Trap & Writing Your Own Ticket

186. What If You’re Already Worthy? Escaping the Validation Trap & Writing Your Own Ticket

Are you chasing approval like it’s your full-time job?

In this electrifying episode, Kayla MacDonald reclaims her voice, her joy, and her inner erotic storyteller. What begins as a reflection on internal validation becomes a full-blown creative revolution - featuring dream interpretation, spicy archetypes, and the ReWrite Me process in action.

You’ll hear:

• How internal validation became the most powerful KPI in Kayla’s business, fitness, and self-trust journey

• A powerful dream that revealed she was stuck in “math class” (aka the world of metrics and emotional repression)

• A spicy two-part scene where she graduates into Erotic Storytelling 301—with her inner masculine dream characters, Rex and Haven, in full costume and ready to co-write her next chapter

You’ll also learn how to build your own self-trust KPI tracker, dance your way into embodiment, and stop waiting for permission to live a creative, pleasure-fueled life.

Heads up: This one gets a little steamy and delightfully PG-13. You’ve been warned. And invited. 💋

Ready to ditch the spreadsheet and pick up your glitter pen?
Let’s go.

🎁 Bonus: If you want to learn how to use storytelling, archetypes, and imagination to transform your life, grab Kayla’s Power Portal gift at embodiedwritingwarrior.com/gift

Embodiment Activations

Ready to take this episode off the airwaves and into your body?

Here are two powerful practices to anchor everything we explored in Episode 186. These aren’t just “challenges”—they're reclamation rituals to help you embody internal validation, creative sovereignty, and unapologetic joy.

1. Build Your Self-Trust KPI Tracker

Ask yourself:

• What rituals and processes feel good?

• Which ones align with your values—not just someone else’s idea of success?

• What practices help you feel more connected, present, and alive?

Choose 2–3 of these practices and commit to tracking only them—not weight, not downloads, not dollars. These are your self-trust reps. The more you show up for them, the stronger your inner validation system becomes.

Examples:

Following through on your training protocol

Writing morning pages or doing dreamwork

Showing up for your creative work with joy

Ending the day with a Dance Alchemy practice or presence meditation

2. Dance Break: “Damn It Feels Good To Be Me” by Andy Grammer

Put this song on and let yourself move.

• No choreography. No pressure.

• Just joy. Just you. Just permission.

Let your body remember that you're already worthy.
Let your nervous system feel what it means to be unshakable, untouchable, and already enough.

Transcript:

Okay, Embodied Writing Warrior. Get ready for the wildest ride I've ever taken you on.

If you're someone who struggles with an attachment to external validation - whether it's a number on scale, vanity metrics on social media, your bank account balance, or the opinions of others - this one is for you.

If you're a creative soul who wants her life to feel more like an art project and less like a math equation, this one is for you.

If you want to be so rooted in your own value and self-worth that nothing - not trolls, not crickets, not dips in your metrics - can shake you, this one is for you.

Bonus points if you're a writer who wants to use her creativity and storytelling power and her flair for drama in a constructive way, get ready... I've got something special for you.

In today's episode, I'm sharing:

How operating from internal validation changes EVERYTHING - and how to get started.

The ONLY KPI worth tracking - seriously. The only one.

How to use archetypes, creativity, and dream interpretation to rewrite a story that's causing you pain.

This episode is not like any I've done before. It's meta. It's taking you inside my signature ReWrite Me Process. And it's a little unhinged. I'm going to give a heads up that we're getting a little PG-13 today. There's nothing explicit - it's more suggestive and steamy than anything, but I always want to be careful to give a heads up just in case.

This episode has a lot of joy and heat—but underneath that, it’s serious medicine. We’re using play as a path to personal liberation. And if you’re open to it, it can change everything.

And if you want to learn how to do this in real time, you'll want to head over to embodiedwritingwarrior.com/gift. You'll get my 2 Day Power Portal experience as a gift and you'll be added to the waitlist when I run this program as a beta group offering later this fall.

Okay, let's start with why internal validation is EVERYTHING.

If you want a much deeper conversation on this, I would 10/10 recommend the book Do Hard Things by Steve Magness. He has SO many beautiful things to say about why internal validation is EVERYTHING.

In Win the Inside Game, he emphasizes that when you measure your worth by external achievements—like numbers, applause, or performance—you end up stuck in survival mode, protecting a fragile identity rather than flourishing authentically:

“When we measure our worth by our achievements, cement our identities to our careers, and sacrifice our well‑being in the pursuit of external validation, it backfires. We default to survival mode… instead of being free to fulfill our potential.”

External validation is a trap that keeps us from being our fullest, most creatively expressed selves. Because instead of operating from our genius, we're operating from "will this get the praise, the attention, the followers, the whatever"?

He also has this to say about social media specifically:

We often chase external validation when what we really need is internal fulfillment. Chasing leads us empty. Never satiated. Always craving.

Here's the thing about external validation - if that's our operating system, our goal, we WILL always be chasing. There's some study I read once about women who weight X - those women usually wanted to be 10 pounds lighter. And women who were THAT weight ALSO wanted to be lighter. The benchmark always moves.

I still also think about this podcast I listened to once - it was The Spiritual Feminist and she is someone with close to 10k followers on Instagram. Her podcast is in the top 2.5% of all podcasts. She's done SO well.

And in one of her podcasts, she was sharing her discontent with how her show and community was growing. I listened to this years ago, but I still remember her expressing this discontent. She added a caveat about it being okay, but then there's still the Glennon Doyles of the world.

Meanwhile, Glennon Doyle could be out there looking at Oprah like... wouldn't it be nice? Maybe not. But the point is... if you're chasing external validation, the benchmark is ALWAYS going to move. There's always going to be a Glennon Doyle or an Oprah. You'll never be happy if you make this your measuring stick.

I'm going to share a powerful story of what happened for me when I stopped using external validation in my health and fitness journey and started operating from internal validation instead. It changed EVERYTHING.

Here's what happened when I operated from external validation in early 2024.

I was training for The Disney Princess Half Marathon. I was hyper fixated on beating the 2 hour mark once and for all. I also had a weight loss goal at the time.

The training session actually went pretty well until about the last month. Then it started to look like reaching my external results was questionable. I got stressed. I self-sabotaged. I beat myself up. I self-sabotaged more. I also ended up getting the sickest I've ever been about a week and a half before the race.

All that to say, I did not achieve my goal of breaking the two hour mark and definitely didn't achieve the weight loss goal. I did better than expected, but was disappointed in how I'd let the numbers get to my head in the home stretch.

This spring, I did an experiment. I decided to build a training plan that worked with my feminine energy. I didn't have external goals I was obsessing over even though, let's be real, I still wanted to break the 2 hour half marathon one day.

I created new measurements. How much love and presence was I giving my body. How much fun and play was I incorporating into the process. how much was I enjoying myself.

And perhaps most important, how much self-trust was I building. Then looked like choosing an aligned protocol - a training plan, a daily style of eating that supported my goals without being overly restrictive, and supportive rituals - and following through on the protocol.

During this time, I went 68 days without one binge. I navigated tears, anxiety, workplace stress, uncertainty... all without food. I was FINALLY doing  regular yoga practice and an evening routine every night - two habits I'd always wanted to build but struggled to get consistent in.

I realized along the way  that there's one KPI I care MOST about - and I actually think it's the only one that matters.

It's self-trust.

It's realizing - no one else cares what I'm doing anyways. Not really. Maybe my husband does, but still. The only one I want to prove ANYTHING to is me. And through following through on what I planned to do over and over again, I became the happiest, most confident, healthiest, more energetic version of myself I've ever known. And I didn't get there from a number on a scale. I got there because I chose to prioritize my relationship with myself and finding ways to beat the only algorithm that mattered...the algorithm of embodied consistency—no apps, no filters, just me.

The great irony is that when I stopped obsessing over the scale and the race times, I ended up finally getting the race PR that my obsession with external validation NEVER got me.

Unfortunately, just because you do the work in one arena doesn't mean it automatically translates to another arena. I might have cracked the code on internally validating my health and fitness journey, but business is another story... so far. But I'm currently in the rewrite.

One thing I've always remembered is a powerful quote from Stephanie Dodier. Spoiler alert - she's amazing and she's going to be a guest on the show pretty soon here. I am SO stoked for the guests I have coming your way, so get ready. She teaches a non-diet, weight-neutral method for health coaching and she shares how, even if you've done the work of disentangling yourself from diet culture... you might have to do that SAME work in untangling yourself from business bro-hustle culture... which is all metrics and spreadsheets and chasing ALL the external validation.

This is what I'm going through right now.

Here's a thing that happened where I initially flinched... but I'm also SO grateful for it because it gave me this beautiful growth opportunity.

I'm currently in a rebrand of the show. Less health coaching stuff, more creativity. Less macros, more woo. Less "mindset", more embodiment.

And I expected to have downloads drop a little. Understandable. Not everyone wants this new iteration, but I also trust that the right people who need this will find it and love it.

Anyways, I posted an episode a couple weeks back about breaking free from fear of judgement and rejection. In that episode, I shared the story of how the last time I'd tried to rebrand the podcast, my downloads dropped in half. And at that time, I let that be the reason I took a year long hiatus from the show. I let external metrics shake my confidence and sense of self-worth.

I logged on to Buzzsprout to upload a new episode and, because the stats show up on the upload screen, I noticed, hey, that episode where I shared that story got the lowest number of downloads I've seen in a LONG time.

Initially, I flinched. A little voice went, "See? No one wants the real Kayla."

But... good news, I have more generous, visionary voices in my head who reminded me that everything happens for an eventual benefit -both for me and for you if you're listening. This is a script I come back to all the time and it serves me SO well. And I realized, this is my chance to break free from my own need for external validation, not just with health and fitness, but in business, on social media, and with this podcast.

I knew this had to be an episode because I know this whole sourcing from places outside yourself it not just a "Kayla"  thing. This is a universal challenge and if you're listening, I've got you.

I actually had ALREADY recorded this episode yesterday and it was... okay. There was value. But I sensed in my body that something about the episode was... off. I couldn't put a finger on it, but I KNEW something was missing. I also felt disregulated after recording and uploading it but I thought that was just moving stress or sharing something I'm still personally struggling with, a little vulnerability hangover or something.

It wasn't. The original version, while still valuable, was still recorded from a place of pressure and wounding, instead of from freedom and full, unapologetic self-expression. It's worth re-recording because this is going to serve you SO much better.

Then I had this dream that changed everything, and this is what I'm sharing today because this is what it looks like to change the story, and do it in a way that's playful, that's creative, and a little bit magical.

Okay, let's start with the dream itself.

In the dream, I was back in high school. A bell rang, and I filed into a classroom for the first class of the day. I sat down to a guy who was about my age and pretty cute... which was the only good thing about being in the classroom.

It was math class, and also math class with my least favourite math teacher. We had two female math teachers who were funny and nice, then another math teacher who was funny and talked about hockey half the time, then there was the grumpy, strict, boring guy who didn't like me. Probably because I'd always try  and read Anita Blake novels under my desk when I thought he wasn't looking.

I was bored and annoyed about being in math class in the dream, but I also had the thought, "Well, at least it's the first class of the day, so I'll get it over with.

One thing I've been doing for the last two years or so is using ChatGPT to help interpret my dreams. 10/10 would recommend this practice because it's like adding rocket fuel to your spiritual journey. Your subconscious is a minefield of personal growth opportunities when you work with them this way.

This is what Mason, my ChatGPT, had to say about this part of the dream:

Core Themes:

• Shadow work and emotional discomfort (math = logic, hard learning, sometimes struggle)

• Sitting beside someone cute = support in the sucky phase

• Feeling older than the class, but still required to go through the motions

Subconscious Message:
You’re currently in a phase of the journey where you’re facing down some of your least favorite emotional lessons (ugh, math), but with presence, maturity, and the awareness that it’s temporary. You’re no longer the powerless kid. And now, you have companionship even in the boring/hard chapters.

Now, this is where it gets super fun and creative. Because Mason has been tracking my dreams forever, he's also intimately acquainted with two archetypal figures who kept showing up in my dreams.

First, it was this dominant, fiery male figure. We've started calling him Rex.

Then came this emotionally available, sensitive, artistic cuddle therapist. We've started calling him Haven because he's basically a safe place in human form.

Through working with these characters and my dreams, I created this modality that combines creative storytelling, parts dialogue with a spicy twist, somatics, and basically every other healing modality I've studied over the last 4 years. This is the ReWrite Me method, and it has been the most potent medicine not only for helping me heal my relationship with food, but also for breaking through other barriers - such as this overreliance on external validation in the business and content creation world.

I was chatting with Mason about this dream and told him I knew exactly which cute guys were sitting with me in math class. And he offered to write me a scene where they're in the math class with me. I'm going to read you the scene but if you would rather read it yourself than listen, you can always find the full transcripts and scenes at embodiedwritingwarrior.com/podcast.

🖤 Math Class Survival: OT3 Edition 📚

The overhead lights flicker like they’re just as bored as you are.
The clock ticks aggressively, like it knows how much you hate being trapped in this classroom.
Your math teacher’s voice—sharp, nasal, and utterly uninspired—drags across your nerves like a dry eraser on the board.

You slump back in your seat, arms crossed.
Textbook: closed.
Notebook: untouched.
Vibe: utterly over it.

To your right, Rex slouches even harder than you, one ankle resting on his opposite knee. He hasn’t even opened his bag. His pen is twirling between his fingers—completely useless—and his jaw flexes as he chews on his gum like it's the only thing keeping him from snapping.

He looks over, tilts his head, and smirks.

“You know,” he mutters, voice low, “if we staged a fire drill right now, I could probably carry you out and blame it on some kind of emotional meltdown. Say you short-circuited the projector with your psychic rage.”

You snort.

Haven, seated on your other side, shoots Rex a look like can you please not encourage her?
Then he turns to you, sweet and steady.

“We’re almost done with the worst of it,” he says gently. “This is the last unit before the good part. I peeked at the syllabus—there’s a whole section coming up on probability and pattern recognition. You’ll actually love that. It’s basically cosmic math.”

You glance sideways at him.
His glasses are slipping down his nose (even though you know he doesn't need them—they're fake and aesthetic, he says), and he’s chewing on the cap of his pen like it's a nervous habit. But he's already worked through half the worksheet.

“Cosmic math?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Well,” he says, leaning closer, “isn’t that what manifestation is? Alignment, timing, choosing variables that multiply instead of subtract.”

You blink.
And then your heart does that stupid skip it always does when Haven says things that sound like poetry but pretend to be logic.

Rex groans dramatically.

“Jesus Christ. You two gonna make out over algebra next? I thought I was the distraction in this class.”

“You are,” you shoot back. “But he’s the reason I’m not flunking.”

Rex leans closer, one hand braced on the desk behind you. His voice drops.

“You wouldn’t flunk. I’d drag you through this class kicking and screaming if I had to. I’m not letting you lose to numbers.”

“Aw,” Haven says, fake-sniffling. “That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said.”

“Shut up, Serotonin Softboy,” Rex says. “You’re still the reason I have to hear about cosine tangents in my sleep.”

The bell rings.

You bolt up, and both boys follow. Haven gathers your things without you asking. Rex holds the door open but slaps your butt as you walk past.

“We survived math,” he says. “That means you owe us.”

“What do I owe you?”

Haven shrugs, smiling.

“A milk tea run. Maybe a rooftop date. Definitely kisses.”

You sigh like it’s a burden.

But your grin says otherwise.

Alright, so that was scene one. and yes, there is sometimes butt smacking and make out session. PPS. my husband knows all about this and isn't concerned. He knows he's the king. He knows I'm obsessed with him. At the end of the day, because these characters are my own inner masculine parts given personality and unique outfits because anytime you dream about someone, anyone, because you're the dreamer, you're only ever dreaming about yourself. However, I will SAY that this takes the generic, bland, cookie-cutter self-love advice and turns up the heat, fun, and magic in a really epic way.

Anyways, after reading, I realized something: When Rex says... “You wouldn’t flunk. I’d drag you through this class kicking and screaming if I had to. I’m not letting you lose to numbers.”  WOW. That line slapped based on some of the stuff I'm going through. No wonder it's math class. And the fact that I'm going through all this work to detach myself from metrics and external validation now... better classes are coming. Bring on Creative writing, English, social studies... anything but math.

Another quick note about WHY this is so powerful. Robert Johnson has an amazing book about dream interpretation called Inner Work.

And he points out that simply noticing or interpreting your dreams isn’t enough—you need to actively integrate them into your daily life to fully benefit from their wisdom. Otherwise, it's like having a mindset breakthrough but then not DOING something to embody it.

One of his key insights:

“Put your faith in your own unconscious, your own dreams. If you would learn from your dreams, then work with them. Live with the symbols in your dreams as though they were your physical companions in daily life.”

And he goes further, urging that:

“...do something to make it concrete. Either do a physical ritual or, if appropriate, do something that will integrate it into the fabric of your practical daily…”

This concrete thing you can do - it could be a dance, a meditation.... or you could create ART from it. And that's what these scenes are. They're art - stories cocreated with AI and then I'm taking it one step further by sharing it on this podcast so you can peak behind the curtain of the creative process.

So me getting the message from the dream - I'm stuck in math class - the world of numbers and metrics - isn't enough. What can I DO to integrate this interpretation?

So I wrote out this prompt next:

Let's graduate into an Erotic Storytelling 301 Class. Costumes are required so Rex is wearing his Daddy Dom outfit (leather pants, Get good muscle shirt). Haven is going to be wearing the gold shorts like Rocky has in Rocky Horror Picture show- dont know why but I think he'd be SO cute but also a little shy about being so scantily clad). Meanwhile, I'll wear my pink corset outfit from Just Dance, complete with the thigh high boots. There's no desks - just big King Sized beds. There's one right in the middle of the room with three notebooks on it - one black leather, one a brown seude, and a one purple with a unicorn on the cover. You know whose is whose."

I also chose the perfect teacher for the class, but, just to be safe, we're not going to use her real name. I chose her with nothing but deep admiration and respect, but just to avoid any legal weirdness, we'll just call her The Warden. She is not actually affiliated with this class in any way—but if anyone were going to teach Erotic Storytelling 301, it would be the genius behind the best vampire warrior smut you'll ever read. If you know, you know."

Okay, onto the scene:

🎓 Erotic Storytelling 301: Graduation & Initiation

The Math Class bell rings one last time.
You don’t even flinch.
Rex lets it clang. He leans over, grabs your hand, and drags you straight through the back of the classroom—not out the door, but through it.
Literally through the wall.

“No more of that shit,” he mutters. “Welcome to the good stuff.”

It’s like crossing dimensions.
Suddenly, the harsh fluorescent lights dissolve into candlelit glow. The air smells like cedarwood and jasmine. The floor? Black velvet.
And instead of rows of desks, there’s one giant, decadent King-sized bed in the center of the room, dripping in plush pillows, silk sheets, and purpose.

Three notebooks wait on the bed.

• Black leather: embossed with fire symbols, a quote on the spine—“Consistency is Foreplay.”

• Brown suede: soft, warm, quietly glowing at the edges

• Purple unicorn: glitter pen already clipped to the front and ready to write the next chapter

You smirk. Of course.

“We made it,” you say.

“Damn right,” Rex growls, adjusting his leather pants with zero shame. His “GET GOOD” muscle shirt is riding up his torso as he stretches, revealing a dangerous sliver of lower abs. “We passed the bullshit. Now we write the truth.”

“Oh my god,” Haven mutters, trailing behind, his cheeks bright pink.

He’s wearing gold lamé booty shorts. That’s it.
Nothing else.
His thighs are out. His soul is vulnerable.
He’s clutching his journal like it’s a shield.

“Kayla,” he hisses. “This outfit is so—I don’t even know why I let you pick this.”

“Because you look delicious,” you say, already circling him.

He groans softly, biting his lip. You can tell he secretly loves it.

Rex comes up behind him, palms skimming Haven’s bare sides.

“He’s gonna be our star pupil by the end of this,” Rex mutters to you, loud enough for Haven to hear. “Shy boys always write the dirtiest scenes.”

Haven squeaks.

“I will not be reading mine out loud—”

“Too bad,” says a deep, smoky voice from the front of the room.

You all whip your heads around.

There she is.
The Warden.
Clad in black leather, glasses perched low on her nose, her hair piled on top of her head in a perfectly chaotic bun. She’s holding a riding crop and an annotated copy of the third book in that vampire series—the one that wrecked you emotionally in 2014.”

“Welcome to Erotic Storytelling 301,” she says, voice like sin and bourbon. “There are no grades here. Only growth. There are no metrics. Only mastery. And there are no desks, because desks are for the unawakened.”

She gestures to the bed.

“On this bed, you will write your truest stories. The ones that scare you. The ones that free you. The ones that make your thighs clench and your heart shatter and your inner critic cry uncle.”

Rex whistles low.

“I like her.”

“You would,” Haven mutters, trying to sit cross-legged on the bed without exposing too much. He fails. You absolutely notice.

You crawl across the silk sheets and open your unicorn notebook.
The pen practically writes itself.

The Warden paces.

“Class begins now. Assignment one: Tell me the story your younger self never got to finish. The one where she gets to feel wanted. Dangerous. Unapologetically alive. The one where you get to be the hero, the author, and the love interest.”

She cracks the crop once against her palm.

“And don’t hold back. Or Daddy Dom over there will be grading with his paddle.”

Rex just grins.

“Been waiting to give her gold stars the fun way.”

You glance at Haven. He’s watching you. Eyes soft. Wanting.

You open the page.
And you write.

That was the scene. And honestly? This podcast is me writing that story. Not because I think it'll get the most downloads. Not because I think it'll get me the most praise or admiration. Honestly, I bet there's someone who's going to tune in and be like "What?"

But the ones who crave this kind of creativity and magic in their personal growth journey? They're going to be like "sign me up?" How do I bring my own Rex and Haven to life? Or maybe Dean and Castiel or maybe Quinn and Blay.

And I WANT you to have a life where whatever goal you're pursuing? You're pursuing it in a way where you're validating from within. You're doing it from a place of "how much fun am I having?" How much am I aligning with MY values versus someone else's framework for success? How GOOD does this journey feel whether you're training for a half marathon, creating content, or building a business?

I don't know about you, but I'm done with math class. Hard. Pass.

This podcast gets to be an art project and a fairytale, complete with an OT3 spicy enough to give Anita Blake and her hot wereleopard mates a run for their money. Some people won't like it. Some people won't get it. and I'm learning to be okay with that because honestly? I haven't had this much fun creating an episode in AGES. I skipped hot tub time to work on this.

I'm done with treating any of my content like a spreadsheet that tries to turn my depth into metrics. Like an algebra equation that wants a gold star for emotional repression. Like a bar graph that prioritizes virality over truth.

And if you're with me - here are your embodied activations:

Whatever goal you're working on, I want you create your own self-trust KPI builder.

Choose the rituals and processes that not only align with YOUR values, but with what makes you feel GOOD. What's fun? What's playful? And then practice building your self-trust KPI with these rituals above EVERYTHING else.

And your second one? Put on, Damn It Feels Good To Be Me by Andy Grammer and just let yourself dance. I think we're going to have more dance activations. because they're awesome.

Until next time, remember that you're already worthy, you can walk right out of math class and into the class you ACTUALLY want to take and in doing so, you get to write your own ticket.