The HeartRich Library
Practical, lived, and science-informed writing on the
inner dynamics shaping how we live and lead.
Frameworks, principles, and tools for Self Leadership,
resilience, values, and wellbeing.
Functional But Not Yet Free
For a long time, the people around me thought I was doing fine. From most angles, my life looked stable — even successful.
Inside, I had a word for what was actually happening. A word I made up, because no existing word quite covered it.
Depranxed.
Getting to Know Your Inner Crews | Who Leads Who?
Why can’t I speak up when I need to? Why do I keep people-pleasing even when it costs me? Why do I just want Thai food but end up wherever everyone else wants to go?
Underneath all of it is a quieter, more painful question: What is wrong with me?
Nothing is wrong with you. But something very specific is happening.
The APPs MAP: Upgrading the Adaptive Protective Patterns Holding You Back
When stress hits, old defenses take over – overexplaining, people-pleasing, perfectionism, interrupting, even going silent and shutting down. The APPs MAP helps leaders understand these patterns and begin the inner work to reclaim calm, confidence, and choice so they can show up authentically and powerfully.
From Cringe to Compassion: It’s Time to Meet Your Shadow
Carl Jung called it the Shadow: the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see. Our hidden fears, flaws, impulses, needs, and shames. The weakness we can’t tolerate in others.
In Self Leadership and parts work, we know the Shadow by another name: the Exiles.
Here’s what happens when you finally turn toward the parts of yourself you’ve been hiding from.
Book Spotlight: The Heart of Values
Values aren’t discovered by circling words on a list.
They’re found in the moments when something costs you — when you had to choose, when you held a line, when you didn’t and felt the quiet erosion afterward.
This post is a spotlight on the book that helps you find what’s actually real, and build a life you can trust around it.
Book Spotlight: How to Talk Amongst Your Selves
There’s a conversation happening inside you whether you’re aware of it or not. Parts of you protecting, striving, avoiding, criticizing — often at cross-purposes, often exhausting. This book teaches you how to listen to all of it, and how to lead from who you really are.
This post is a spotlight about the compassionate, practical guide to Self Leadership and the inner life.
Beyond Positive Intelligence: From Inner Combat to Inner Trust
Positive Intelligence, aka PQ, focuses on identifying and overcoming internal ‘saboteurs’ – so-called negative thought patterns that can interfere with success and wellbeing.
While this model resonates with many, it also presents critical limitations, particularly for individuals with histories of trauma, chronic stress, or unresolved inner conflict, and why real growth requires more than positivity.
The HeartRich Resilience System
Real resilience isn’t a trait you either have or don’t. It’s the outcome of learning to turn the dials of influence — nine interconnected capacities — from struggle toward strength, from survival toward flourishing.
Leveraging the powers of the mind, body, emotions and especially the heart to lead you back to Self.
A Year of Reckoning and The Call for Love and Courage
I had not one inkling that the final year of my 40s would turn out the way it did. This past year has reshaped both my inner and outer life in ways I could never have anticipated. I hate to admit it, but I was incredibly naïve, and ignorant. The writing was quite literally, on the wall….
As I turned 50 just days ago, I find myself contemplating how this year of horror, trauma, violence, and hatred has fundamentally shifted my identities – as a Jew, an Israeli, a Canadian, a family man, friend and neighbor, and as a professional who tries to bring more heart to the world.
Beyond Stress Management: Expanding Your Window of Tolerance
Is Stress Changing Who You Are? It’s highly likely that the toll of chronic stress is silently reshaping you, and without understanding how to manage it, the risks to your wellbeing, family life, and leadership effectiveness are only growing.
I would like to share a model to help explain what might be happening, from a neurophysiological perspective, called the Window of Tolerance.
Burnout is Not a Badge of Honor: The High Achiever’s Dilemma
You know the feeling. Not the dramatic collapse — the slow one.
The exhaustion you kept explaining away. The growing sense that something essential had gone quiet, even as everything on the outside looked fine.
Burnout is more than overwork. Here’s what’s actually underneath it — and how to start finding your way back to your Self.
The Power of Heart Coherence (HRV)
There are periods when the stress isn’t situational — it’s the world itself that feels destabilizing.
Heart coherence practice isn’t a way of pretending that isn’t true.
It’s a way of not letting the hardness close your heart, erode the warmth and presence that matter most, and alter who you are.
Here’s what it is, what the science shows, and how to practice it.
Coresilience: How Inner Safety and Connection Build Resilience Together
“The people who have survived trauma teach us about what it is to be human — by teaching us what they’ve lost. And they’ve lost the ability to feel safe enough with another.”
That line from Stephen Porges stopped me cold.
Because I know what that feels like.
And I know what it takes to change it.
How to Choose the Right Coach for You: Expert Insights and Tips
Executive & Career Coach Lynn Nicolai and I had an insightful chat about coaching and what to think about when hiring a coach.
Whether you’re feeling stuck in your career or a relationship, or simply seeking guidance to grow and unlock your full potential, choosing the right coach for you matters.
Here’s how you can prepare for that important decision process.
How to Transform Your Incorrigible Inner Critic from Menacing Monster to Cuddly Caretaker
All that consistently critical and demanding self talk robs a person of their natural confidence, self esteem, and inner peace.
Without our natural confidence, self-esteem and trust in ourselves, self-doubt not only creeps in but begins to predominate and interfere with how we show up in life, at work and in relationships.
Learn how to transform that Menacing Monster into a Cuddly Caretaker
You Need to Value Your Needs and Values
Most of us know what it feels like to lose touch with ourselves.
Not dramatically, not all at once — but gradually, across years of adapting, performing, and protecting.
This piece is about that disconnection — and about two things most people dramatically undervalue: their needs and their values.
The Eclipse of Love & The War Within
The Time to Choose is Now. The answer for a better future will only be found in love, and nothing else. We must make love the priority – within ourselves and between us. [ChoozLuv]
Cracking the Code of Self-Love through Self Leadership: Video Interview
In this video, I put an important spin on Self-Love & explain how Coaching for Self Leadership helps us heal & grow by loving our problematic protective parts & wounded parts
Burnout, Beliefs & Boundaries: Executive Coaching Video Interview
In this video, we talked about Burnout & how limiting beliefs & patterns like Perfectionism & People-Pleasing block us from owning & asserting needed boundaries
Boundary Setting for the Boundary-Challenged
Setting boundaries isn’t hard because you lack assertiveness.
It’s hard because a part of you learned, long ago, that expressing your needs was dangerous.
Understanding that is where real change begins.
Embrace the Full Emotional Spectrum | Transcending Toxic Positivity
Just Be Positive but only Always (blech!) The prevalent culture of toxic positivity that seems to pervade our society and social media platforms makes my stomach turn and gives...
Using the Change Triangle to Liberate Your Emotions
Why do you keep procrastinating, shutting down, saying yes when you mean no?
There’s a hidden reason beneath every perplexing pattern keeping you stuck — and your emotions are actually the way through — back to your Authentic Self.
Here’s the map.
“How’s My Relating?” Understanding the Relational Grid
The patterns you bring to your relationships are often invisible — running in the background, shaping conversation, conflict, and connection.
This piece introduces the Relational Grid: a powerful tool for seeing those patterns clearly, understanding what drives them, and finding your way back to healthier connection.
Five Self-Regulation Techniques for Restoring Presence, Calm & Clarity
The Power of Presence More and more these days, people are telling me they’re feeling stressed and anxious - triggered by ‘little things’ that didn’t used to bother them. Some...
Client Success Story: Walloped with an Insight
There were about 5 seconds of complete silence.
Then it walloped him!
A moment of recognition — a powerful insight about his values changed everything for him.
Love Matters. Especially in Leadership.
I don’t use the word love much with my executive clients. Not because it isn’t present in the room — it is, in almost every session.
But most of the people I work with would visibly flinch at it. This piece is for them.
And for anyone who has ever sensed that something essential is missing from corporate culture, and how they lead — but couldn’t quite name what it was.
Reframing Impostor Syndrome as a Self-Deficiency Syndrome
We’ve been calling it the wrong thing.
Impostor Syndrome suggests you’re faking it. You’re not.
That impostor feeling isn’t lying to you — it’s just telling you the wrong story. It’s not that you don’t belong.
It’s that you’re disconnected — from the part of you that was always real, always capable, always enough.
It’s Time We Talk About Trauma
For years I assumed the problem was fundamentally me.
The anxiety, the pain, the depression returning despite doing everything right.
It took a long time to find the right word for it. This piece is for anyone still looking. Trauma — here’s what it actually is — and why understanding it changes everything.
Get to Know HeartRich Founder & Coach Guy Reichard – Podcast Interview
In a recent podcast interview I shared my responses to 6 core questions that will help you get to know me better as a heart centered + self leadership coach. One is uniquely different than the rest – it’s the Goosebump Question – you can watch that or listen to the whole thing here
Podcast Interview: Values Coaching, Personal Growth, Mental Health
A couple of months back, I was offered an opportunity to be a guest on a podcast called The Daily Path.
It was my first ‘real’ podcast and we got the chance to speak about: what brought me to coaching as a profession — the work of Values Coaching — and what one of my biggest obstacles has been in business.
The Avoidance Trap & How to Free Yourself
Avoidance, over time, shrinks your world & multiplies problems & pain.
Our very own internal feelings have become the ‘danger’ our bodies and minds desperately want to get rid of.
Learning to accept difficult feelings as a part of life is key to creating a rich life. And that does not mean to just suck it up.
The Heart of Resilience
I used to take a hit and not only go down — I’d stay down. A hit that most people wouldn’t even register.
This piece is what I’ve learned since then about resilience, the nervous system, the science of inner safety, and why the heart is at the center of coming back to yourself.
Choice Point: Are You Moving Away or Towards Your Values?
The Choice Point is simple: every action moves you Towards your values or Away from discomfort.
Either we’re moving towards the kind of person we want to be and the kind of life we want to create — or we’re moving away from pain, struggle or discomfort — which also moves us away from the kind of person we want to be and the kind of impact we want to have in the world.
Here’s how to start choosing your values more deliberately.
What is Self Leadership? A Guide to Leading from Your Authentic Self
Self Leadership is the lifelong practice of returning leadership to your Authentic Self — building the awareness, trust, and safety needed to move beyond protection-organized patterns, reclaim your natural capacities, and live in alignment with your deepest values even under pressure.
It is not self-management. It is not productivity optimization, emotional control, or disciplining yourself into better habits. Self Leadership asks a different question entirely:
Who is actually leading within you?
What is Inner Leadership?
Inner Leadership and Self Leadership are closely related — but they’re not the same thing, and the distinction matters.
Inner Leadership is the practice of tending to and managing our inner world: our thoughts, emotions, physical states, energy, attention, and the patterns that shape how we show up.
Self Leadership goes deeper and further. It asks not just how we manage the inner world, but who is leading it, and who tends to it best.
The Personal Growth Journey is one of Self Discovery & also Self Recovery
Lost to Our Selves
Over the course of our lives — sometimes from a very early age — most of us lose some or most of our connection to our Authentic Self. To our true nature. To who we really are at the core.
Personal growth isn’t just about discovering who you are. It’s about recovering who you’ve always been beneath the armor, and adaptive protective patterns.
Thank You
Thank you for visiting – until now, this post only had those 4 words on it. For 7 years!
There are 2 parables that come to mind. One is about the best time to plant a tree and the other is about how we should learn a lesson in patience from the bamboo tree.
Bottom line – the seed has sprouted and HeartRich is growing!
Like what you’re reading? Let’s talk!
Whether you’re interested in coaching, resilience training or custom, heart-centered solutions, click below to set up a time to talk. I can’t wait to work with you!