ed #3: Not Waiting For 'Someday'

Bare HEARTS: Q&A with best-selling author, captivating speaker, entrepreneur, and beautiful human being Karen Salmansohn

Danni Levy

and

Karen Salmansohn

Sep 07, 2025

‘If you don't love yourself, it's tough to love anything about your life.’ -
Karen Salmansohn

Hi all and welcome to Bare HEARTS!

This is a brand new Q&A series where I invite inspiring Substackers to share intimate details about their experience with self-love, well-being, core values, relationships, and personal responsibility.

Bare HEARTS because we are so exhausted of holding up the pretty presentation. It is like we are all waiting for someone to come and tell us that it is okay to get super transparent and just be. This is the place. This is our okay.

Holding space for honest conversation & love as we grow with one another.

“*I used to think that I needed a reason to do the things I wanted. Now I think: maybe “because I am alive” is reason enough.”*

Karen Salmansohn

is a leading ‘Behavioral Change Expert’ helping us reach our highest potential so that we can live a life that we love.

Her books and courses focus on topics including anxiety, emotional eating, toxic people, relationships, self-worth, and loving life.

As a best-selling self-help author of 24 books, Karen is loved and respected by the media (The Today Show, The View, CNN, NY Times, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, BusinessWeek, USA Today and US magazine, to name a few), as well as by her millions of followers on social media.

Karen’s newly released book, Your To-Die-For Life, is more than a self-help book; it is a fabulous kick-in-the-butt. Karen offers a wide range of practical, research-based tools mixed with philosophical wisdom and humor to help us to maximize joy and minimize regret before our time runs out.

“She’ll make you laugh, she’ll make you think, and she’ll make you want to stop wasting time on things that don’t light you up.”

Karen is also the voice of the Substack publication, The Stand Up Philosopher: Weighty Musings, Lightly Served. She describes this space as philosophical first aid for everyday stresses.

What I love about Karen…

I love Karen because everything that I have read of hers feels gifted to me like the most beautiful fight song being played while driving along a Tuscan road lined with fields of sunflowers on a sunny day.

This to say that she has a way of making me feel great about life.

I love that she is equally wise, funny, and loving. I believe that these three qualities are the basis of gorgeous insides. And I am all about the insides.

And I love that Karen is too.

Most of all, I love that she is so kind. Karen reached out to me. She, with her millions of books and courses sold worldwide, celebrity clients, and 25,000 subscribers on Substack, said to me, with my under 500 readers, something like: Hi, want to be friends?

I felt like the new kid having her lucky first day in the lunchroom. Karen, without hesitation, offered a stranger her juice box. This says so much about a human.

And when I asked her if she wanted to participate in Bare HEARTS, she replied with an immediate, Yes! I’m in.

I just really adore Karen. When you know, you know. She is my our people. I cannot wait for you get to know her better. So let's do it. Here is…

Who was your ‘hero’ growing up? What characteristic of this hero do you see in who you are today?

My hero was my grandmother. She had no-nonsense compassion. If you were sick, she’d make you soup and then explain, in detail, how your life choices had led to the flu. She didn’t separate love from truth. I inherited her belief that the best relationships are loaded up with tough love honesty. I call it being a pathological truth teller.

What’s one thing you’ve stopped pretending you’re okay with?

The myth of the effortlessly balanced woman. You know the one. She does yoga, answers every text, meets her deadlines, hydrates properly, flosses herself and flosses her kid.... all while maintaining some vague air of whimsical serenity.

I used to think I could become her if I just found the right to-do list app. Or bought a different kind of planner. Or finally figured out what adaptogens actually do.

But now I know: she’s not a woman. She’s a hologram conjured by capitalism, comparison, and perfectionism.

These days, I don’t aim for balance. I aim for soul alignment. I’d rather disappoint someone else than betray myself.

If the dishes pile up while I’m writing, or mothering, or remembering how to rest… so be it. I’m not here to impress the ghost of an imaginary woman. I’m here to live a real, meaningful, messy, joyful life.

So what is your relationship with joy these days?

Joy and I are back in a committed relationship. After a long and messy breakup. There were years where I treated joy like a luxury I had to earn. Like: “After I finish everything on this list. After everyone else is okay. After I solve all the unsolvable things.”

But I’ve since learned joy is not what comes after the hard part. It’s what gets you through the hard part.

Now I keep joy in reach on a daily basis. I binge on joy as much as I can and I collect it in the weirdest places: the smell of onions hitting hot oil, the sound of my son humming when he doesn’t know I can hear him, hearing a song I love playing in Trader Joe's, and suddenly I’m 19 again. (The other day I heard "These Boots Are Made For Walking!" Love that song!)

(Yes, you got me singing this in my head now!)

Share with us something that you experienced as negative in your youth that you can now acknowledge as being a portal for building this type of inner strength.

As a kid, I was shy. The kind of quiet that made adults ask if I was “okay.” I thought it was a flaw. Now I see it was training to be a good observer, a collector of human details other people missed. That skill became the backbone of my livelihood as a writer. Writing is basically being a professional noticer of things.

(Love this. And, observing details is definitely a strong base for beauty hunting our lives.)

You will be alone in a mountain cabin for 3 months. You can take only 3 things with you. What are they?

A stack of blank notebooks, my favorite fancy pen, and an unlimited supply of coffee. That’s not just a survival plan, that’s my dream vacation.

What part of your life needs the most love right now?

Rest. The real kind. Not falling asleep on the couch in yesterday’s clothes with your phone still in your hand. I mean intentional, unapologetic rest — the kind you choose before your body chooses it for you.

My troublemaking brain likes to whisper: Do more.

But I’ve learned to answer back: I am doing something. Resting! And so I’m restoring the only body and mind I’ve got.

These days, I’m practicing rest as a love language: closing the laptop while there’s still daylight, saying no to “just one more thing,” letting my nervous system know it’s safe to exhale. Because joy doesn’t grow in exhaustion. It blooms in the space that rest makes.

(This needs to come up on a Google search for best quotes about self-love and empowerment. How do we make this happen?)

Do you have a go-to personal mantra?

If you can drive yourself crazy, you can drive yourself happy.

What an amazing mantra. It says so much about creating one’s own destiny. I read that you found success early on in life1. I am curious: Do you attribute your success to a precocious sense of self-worth, simple luck, or both?

Both. Luck gets you in the room. However, self-respect kept me from shrinking into the corner once I got in. I believe that luck without self-worth is like being handed a beautiful key and never even trying it in the lock.

No matter how successful we are, we all doubt ourselves sometimes. What makes you doubt yourself the most, and what do you do to regain confidence?

It usually starts with comparison; the sport I keep retiring from, then somehow end up playing again.

I see someone’s “perfect” work or life and my brain whispers, Oh, that’s the gold standard. Good luck, pal. My brain can be like a drunk friend: very loud, very certain, and very wrong.

These days, I try to press pause when the self-doubt kicks in. I remind myself of a past win, or something that I’m good at. Even small things: making a great cup of coffee, cooking my son’s favorite lox and onion omelette, making a friend laugh on a tough day. These are tiny proofs of competence.

In many ways, confidence isn’t just a feeling. It’s a side effect of doing things you’re proud of.

I am pushing the question a bit here because I think that it is so important. You are having an I totally suck kind of day. Specifically, what do you do?

First, I interrogate the suck. Is it real? Or am I just cranky from too little sleep, water, meditation?

If it’s real, I call a friend who will both sympathize and tell me to get over myself. (As mentioned, I love to surround myself with pathological truth tellers.)

If the suckiness is imagined, I do something tiny, but constructive. Answer one email. Go for a walk. Swim in my apartment building’s indoor pool. (I decided to move into this home because I love swimming!)

Sometimes a quick, teeny positive action is all it takes to shift my day.

What word have you eliminated or would like to eliminate from your vocabulary? Why?

“Someday.” It’s a con artist. It convinces you you’ve got unlimited time so that you risk wasting the limited time you actually have here on this planet.

I love how this answer feels so connected with you not allowing your age to stop you from becoming a mom later in life2. Like not someday, and not too late either; they go together.
What is a fundamental thing motherhood has taught you so far?

That loving your child deeply means letting them walk into a world that’s sometimes beautiful and sometimes brutal. As a mom, I must resist the urge to helicopter over every pothole.

Motherhood is this daily tug-of-war between your fiercest instinct to protect and your sacred responsibility to let them grow. And stumble. And get back up.

I used to think that my job was to keep my son safe. Now I know my job is to keep him both safe and brave. Safe is part of it, sure - but brave is what will get my son through the hard days when I’m not around.

Also, most parenting books should be labeled “aspirational fiction.” The only real manual is the actual kid in front of you.

(Truth.)

If you could give only one piece of advice to your son, what would it be?

“Normal” is not a good goal. When you aim to be “normal,” you shrink yourself to fit it and stop recognizing the best quirky parts of yourself. Also, don’t be afraid to look foolish for something you care about. All my best things — love, motherhood, writing — made me look foolish at some point.

Returning to this idea of ‘someday’, we are so conditioned to endlessly seek what we perceive as perfection. This happens often with love. Tell us, what’s a former belief about love that was preventing you from allowing love in?

For a long time, I chased chemistry over character. If he was hot, funny, and charismatic, I was in. Then I stumbled across a New York Times article about the psychology of evil that included something called The Psychopath Checklist.

The traits on the list included: glibness, extreme charisma, constant need for stimulation, inflated sense of self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom, and emotional unavailability.

Unfortunately, that list also doubled as a pretty accurate description of my ex, who was very charming, very confident, very fun, and very much a two-faced cheater. My own personal “Prince Harming.”

After reading this article, I thought about Charles Manson and Ted Bundy. In their day, they were considered sexy and magnetic. But obviously, I wouldn’t want to date either of them.

That’s when it HUGELY hit me: the most important thing to look for in a partner isn’t chemistry. It’s character.

Because strong character values are what matter most in the long-term with your partner, especially when you’re dealing with real life issues like conflict, illness, stress, vulnerability.

John Gottman3 said this too. He’s the famed psychologist who runs The Love Lab. Gottman said that he can predict how long a couple will last, not by how well they get along, but by how well they don’t get along.

A couple is only as strong as their weakest link: how they handle conflict.

In other words: if a couple fights fairly, puts in the work of repair, wants to grow into better people - the relationship will survive the test of time.

All of this makes perfect sense when you pause to think about it. After all, we all say we’re looking for a soul mate....not an ego mate. So we have to look at someone’s soul first and foremost, and not just their shiny exterior.

When I was younger, I used to look at a hot, funny, charismatic guy and think: “Yum, yum! I want him!” Then, as I got older - this changed. I’d look at a happy, loving couple and I’d think: “Yum, yum! I want that.”

I began to realize: True love is a THAT - not a HIM. And a THAT is an emotionally healthy dynamic with someone. And you get a THAT when you’re with a partner with strong character values.

Sorry this answer is so long. I’ve actually written a book about this - called Prince Harming Syndrome - and it’s been a big, important lesson in my life.

“At some point aging stops being about losing youth and starts being about finding your true self.”

Now talk to us about another type of relationship - the one you have with dying.

Here’s the thing: I’m 65. Which means, statistically, the clock on my life is now ticking loud enough to be heard. And I’ve decided to just listen to it.

The truth is, death is the most honest thing about life. It’s the deadline that forces you to focus on what matters most. Without death, we’d waste eons on crap that doesn’t matter.

Think about it. What if you had unlimited time? You’d probably put off everything. Say things like, “Oh, I’ll start my passion project . . . in a century or two.” “I’ll tell her I love her . . . maybe in a millennium.”

Thankfully, mortality is here to tap you on the shoulder and whisper, “You ain’t got forever, buddy.” So maybe you make the call. Or start the draft. Or finally buy the ticket.

When you perk up and embrace your mortality, you’re forced to ask bigger-sized questions: What do I want to do with my limited time? What truly matters?

Define what you refer to as a to-die-for life.

Well, that’s the title of my newest book, and I call it that because I want to live a life I’d be proud of on my deathbed.

So I’ve done the slightly morbid, but wildly clarifying thing: I’ve imagined myself at the end of my life, and then I’ve reverse engineered what I need to do now to live a life that will make Future Me proud.

And so, each day I try to make room for enjoying meaningful relationships and meaningful experiences.

For me, the “to-die-for” parts of my life are the small, ordinary ones - which I try to notice and appreciate more.

For example, a talk with a friend that outlasts the coffee or knowing exactly when to shut the laptop and step outside; savoring a voicemail from someone who never leaves voicemails; holding hands with my partner in the checkout line.

You know how you feel when you realize you only have so many bites of your sandwich left - you start savoring each bite more. You chew slower. Taste longer. Maybe even slather on more condiments. With daily death awareness, you start to savor your life like that.

When you start your day thinking, “Holy crap, I’m still here. I’m still alive. Let’s go!” it’s like flipping a switch. Suddenly, your whole day has this urgency to it. This weird sense of adventure takes over. And instead of thinking: “Why must I crawl out from under these warm, cozy blankets,” you’re thinking: “What can I do with this extra bonus day the universe just handed me?”

(‘this extra bonus day the universe just handed me’… this is one that I am going to ‘post-it’.)

What’s your hope for this new book (and the future of humans, in general)?

That we are reminded that it’s not weakness to rest, to cry, to ask someone to just sit with us while we come undone a little.

That we don’t always need a productivity hack; sometimes we just need a hug and someone to say, “Yeah, this part is hard.”

I hope we start measuring success in moments of aliveness, instead of milestones. That we get less obsessed with chasing accomplishments, and more obsessed with chasing awe.

I hope we stop asking, “Am I doing enough?” and start asking, “Is any of this even making me feel fully alive?”

I hope we soften. I hope we remember how to look each other in the eyes more often.

I hope we more regularly say “I love you.” And also things like: "I see you." “I’m proud of you.” "You don’t have to do this alone.”

I hope that we humans all start to remember how finite life is. Not in a dark, “we’re all doomed” kind of way, but in a clarifying, beautiful, “let’s not waste our time here on this planet” kind of way. This is why I wrote this new book.

I want this for all humans, as much as I want this for my family and myself.

prompt time!

Today’s theme is not waiting to (really) live your life.

In her new book, Your To-Die-For Life, Karen speaks about near life experiences.

“Near life experiences occur when you’re physically present but mentally checked out… spellbound by your screen or some other distractions. So you’re surrounded by life, but not in it.”

Let’s face it - practically everything is a distraction these days and a little bit of mindfulness just doesn’t cut it anymore. Most of us are living, as Karen puts it, ‘life adjacent’.

Near life experiences breed a lot of ‘somedays’.

“In order to start loving and living life for real again, you need quiet contemplation, you need to really listen to what your inner YOU is saying.”

In other words…

“If you want to be live more boldly, fully, authentically, then you need to get familiar with the uncharted territories of your mind. Not those everyday, surface-level thoughts. I mean the real stuff: the buried, inconvenient truths that love to hide behind your daily distractions.”

Grab your journal or a blank page, and…

write the following prompt at the top of the page: What do I need to know that I don’t want to know? (what is really going on here?)

Then just stare at it until your brain can’t help but spill its guts.

In her book, Karen writes: “This is a journaling question for the brave… It’s an invitation to confront those squirming, awkward truths you’d rather not face.

Maybe it’s realizing that you need to walk away from someone or something.
Maybe it’s facing a fear . . . or finally admitting to a secret desire.
Or maybe it’s about recognizing that you’ve been treating your body more like a landfill than a temple.”

This prompt will help you to unblock your intuition as well as your buried unconscious thoughts, and move you closer to creating your to-die-for life.

Here are two more questions from Karen’s book that you can use during your ‘why the heck did I do that?’ (am I doing this or not doing this?) moments:

Which parts of me do I hide because I fear they are too much, or not enough?
If I were immune to failure, what dream would I chase?

Lastly, Karen writes: “Make it a regular habit to journal about brave questions… the more you get in the habit of showing up on the page, the more you’ll be able to show up in your actual life.”

If you enjoyed this interview with

Karen Salmansohn

, subscribe now to support her work at The Stand Up Philosopher: Weighty Musings, Lightly Served.

Learn more about Karen and her books at notsalmon.com.