Lisa Kohn's Blog

I was just with new friends, and one of them was talking about the way she feels when she walks into her house. “I’m home. I’m relaxed. It’s like I’ve created a haven for myself.”

I feel the same way, and it’s a damn good way to love yourself First Most Always™️ (even though this made it on my list well before I had my new home).

When we love ourselves, truly love ourselves, we want to take care of ourselves as much as we do the other people we love, which includes creating a space that brings out our best and gives us our best. It can be a room. A home. A chair. A corner. An altar.

Pretty much anything.

When I moved into my new home, I decided I would go the extra bit and make each room, each space in each room as much as possible, something and someplace that brought me joy. I bought extra pillows and throws for the beds. I hung paintings and photos. I carefully arranged objects that made me smile throughout the house. (I’ve been told that “curating” is one of my skills.)

I never would have really done this before. Danny’s (my dad) money mostly went for drugs and baroque recorders. Possessions were sinful (except if they were for Moon or his family). I learned not to want or have and definitely not to buy.

But this time, I splurged on the little things. A tall candle for the candle stick because it was cool. A beautiful pot. Flowers from the farmers market each week.

I created many places I like to sit (check out my deck with a yellow umbrella!). I created comfort all around me.

Creating a big – or small – sanctuary for ourselves is one more way to remind ourselves of how much we matter to ourselves. How much we deserve and want to bring ourselves joy. One more way to love ourselves First Most Always™️.

Try it and let me know how it goes!

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

The post FMA practice #5 – create a sanctuary for yourself appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

I have a small microwavable heating pad that I call my security blanket. I highly recommend it as a First Most Always practice.

I heat it and lay it across my chest. The warmth seeps into my body and soothes my heart and spirit.

The truth about FMA practice #1 – putting your hand on your heart and telling yourself you love yourself – is that part of the amazingness is telling yourself you love yourself, and part is just the hand on your heart.

Comforting warmth and pressure on our heart brings us back into our bodies. It lowers our cortisol. It calms us down.

Sometimes my hand on my heart is enough, or it’s all I have. But the splurge of the heated heating pad is even beyond.

I was in an author’s panel for a writing symposium for cult survivors recently. As we prepared, the facilitator questioned how she should handle the fact that now is hard for nearly everyone, if not everyone, but that said, now can be even harder for cult survivors as much of what’ s happening mirrors and echoes what happened in our cults.

I laughed when she said this, because true to form, whilst I spend much of my time helping other people manage how hard now is, it never dawned on me that now is probably wreaking havoc with my nervous system because of my cultic childhood.

The warm, herbal smelling heated pad on my chest calms my triggered nervous system. It relaxes me before bed. It comforts me like a security blanket.

I highly recommend it (as much as I hate microwaves). For that matter, I also highly recommend a weighted blanket, which I just got. It feels like a night-long comforting hug. Again, a beautiful thing to ease my childhood hyper-vigilance even more, and a beautiful thing because I was certainly hug-starved.

Find your soothers and love yourself First Most Always™️.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

Photo by @dimexphotography on nappy

The post FMA practice #4 – hang out with your “security blanket” appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

If you’ve hung around my blog, you know my love for my goldfinches. If you’ve hung around my home, you know that I’ve been given all sorts of yellow birds by all sorts of people.

One of my kids commented on yellow being my favorite color.

Here’s the deal. I made it all up. Now it fills me full.

During a particularly tough time, I decided that every time I saw a goldfinch, because they’re so beautiful, it would mean that I would be okay and everything would be okay. I remember my mother telling me that I should wait for them to come to me, so the universe could give me what I needed and wanted when it thought “right.”

Hell no! I walked the neighborhood looking for cone flowers (one of their faves). I put goldfinch bird food in my birdfeeder. I drove out of my way near trees and down streets where I’d seen them before.

Every time I saw one, I delighted. My heart soared. Then I’d go look for more. More goldfinches, more birds.

I learned the sound they make and their flight pattern, so that I could find them in the distance.

Every time I saw one, I delighted even more. My heart soared higher. I knew I was loved. (I so needed to be loved.)

I did this so often, that the color yellow itself started to soar my heart and delight me. (This is neuroplasticity – the way our brains evolve and change and learn. I taught myself to be delighted with and by yellow.)

I now have yellow pants. Yellow mismatched earrings. A yellow umbrella. A yellow jumper that I bought for a fiver in a charity shop in London. I’m about to buy a yellow outdoor umbrella for my deck.

Loving yourself First Most Always is an opportunity to prime your brain and heart to be delighted by something. Surrounding yourself with this thing – or color – is a way to love yourself First Most Always.

Life has been hard recently, and I found myself less prone to seeking out the things that bring me joy and delight. I found myself walking past the many yellow birds in my home and not quite registering their yellowness, their joy-giving abilities, the fact that each one was a gift from someone who loves me. Welp, except for the ones I bought in Riga and Paris to bring me joy also with the memories.

I decided to reorient myself to all the joy, all the love, all the beauty in my life, even with the hard right now. To remember to pay attention, to be present. To love myself First Most Always by delighting in – and surrounding myself with – my yellow birds and all my yellow.

Find your favorite color or delighting thing, and love yourself First Most Always.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

The post FMA practice #3 – wear (or surround yourself with) your favorite color appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

it seems to be a phrase I use with nearly all, if not all, of my coaching clients.

“…yet.”

“I’m not good at managing my team,” they say to me.

“…yet” I offer them.

“I still get so triggered by that. I can’t handle it.”

“…yet I offer them.

“There’s no way I’ll be able to do that,” they say to me.

“Not yet, “ I offer.

I offer this to myself as well.

When we choose to say, “I can’t do that…yet,” “I haven’t figured that out…yet” “I don’t think I’ll ever understand that…well at least not yet” we offer a tiny glimpse in our brain to the possibility that it/we can shift our perspective and learn new reactions and behaviors. We move from a Fixed Mindset, where we know we are limited and will always remain the way we are, to a Growth Mindset, where we realize that change and growth is possible and even probable.

Our brains get very comfortable seeing us the way we currently see us. We’re good at what we’re good at. We’re bad at what we’re bad at. We are the way we are.

But we’re not. Our brain has endless power to shift to learn to evolve to grow. And the way we talk to ourselves (and others) makes a huge difference in how hard or easy that is.

The next time you find yourself limiting yourself, throw in a “…yet” or “…not yet,” and see what happens.

It is one small – yet huge – step to loving ourselves and caring for ourselves and wanting and getting the best for ourselves and from ourselves.

To loving ourselves First Most Always.

Let me know how it goes.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

The post FMA practice #2 – the powerful beauty of “…yet” (or “not yet”) appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

Last year I promised a Second Gen (those of us born and/or raised in a cult) dearest a list of ways to love ourselves #FirstMostAlways. I sent it to her.

Since then, I’ve wanted to devote this blog to sharing that list with anyone who is reading (or listening). Because saying you “should”, we “should” love ourselves First Most Always is one thing. Giving suggestions on how to do it maybe is more helpful.

Practice #1 – start each day with your hand on your heart and say OUT LOUD, “Good morning, sweetheart! I adore you (fill in your name here)!

I have the audience do this during my keynotes. I suggest it to my coach friends. I more than suggest it to my clients.

A few people find it amazing and soothing right away. Some people find it okay-enough. Some find it so awkward they can’t imagine ever doing it again (though I strongly suggest they keep trying). Some don’t even give it a go.

I get it. It was weird to me when I started the practice as well.

But, and I may write this in every blog post, the level of self-loathing and self-revulsion that was intentionally carved and baked into me as a child, that I didn’t even realize was there, is beyond description.

And the light and love and gentleness and joy and celebration of myself that I now have, is beyond description in the other direction.

It works.

Telling yourself you love yourself (or adore yourself) helps your brain realize that it’s okay to love yourself. That’s neuroscience. It helps your body and being get used to it.

It’s a first practice, and it takes practice.

Try it. It’s only two weeks until the next practice.

Let me know how it goes.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

Photo by @shanalovecoaching on nappy

The post FMA practice #1 – good morning sweetheart! I adore you, Lisa! appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

It’s still a new year for me. Maybe it will be a new year all year long. I’m down (and up) for that.

Again, a yoga practice (which I’m practicing in my exercise/rehearsal/extra-extra-bedroom these days). Again, a yoga instructor’s wisdom. Or reminder.

Feel your fierceness.

There are many ways that many of us have been taught to not be fierce. Or to be falsely fierce. I was raised and groomed to be a “Heavenly Soldier” and to live – and die – for a false Messiah who preached of a false god. My fierceness was self-denial. Self-punishment. Self-rejection. Self-revulsion. I could go on…

You didn’t need to grow up in a cult to have your true fierceness suppressed or judged or punished if it ever raised its beautiful voice to the universe. Too many people had (and have) their fierceness denied or penalized or criticized.

But damn it everyone. Feel your fierceness.

I have determined that there is a strong fire within each (or many) of us that longs to burn freely… and fiercely. That has truths it wants to speak and live and delight in. That wants to stand proud and true (a very weighted word for me) and seen…and adored.

I have determined that it is each of our responsibility…and joy… to fan the flame of our fierceness. To embrace it. To cherish it. To fuel it and feed it and feckin celebrate it.

I have determined that it is our (my) gift and choice to sit still with ourselves and welcome our fierceness. To breathe deep in the cold air and honor our fierceness. To open our eyes, heart, soul, body, and spirit to the beauty and light around us and revel in our fierceness.

Love yourself and your fierceness First Most Always™️. Let your light and your love and your fierceness spread beauty and light and love to the world.

Especially now.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

Photo by @carolinamarinati on nappy

The post feel your fierceness appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

My debilitating insomnia in 2013. The eventual relief of CBTi. (Ping me about it if you don’t know what that is. And, yes, I was WAY too rigid my first go-round, and it only worked for me when I found the ways to not approach it with my “anorexic”/cult-survivor right-or-wrong thinking.)

My different debilitating insomnia that began in 2019. The sleep debt I still carry. The ebbs and flows I’ve learned to embrace and the meds I’ve learned to embrace and even delight in. The way it takes me down mentally, physically, emotionally, psychically when I don’t get enough sleep. The magic magic magic I’ve felt recently as I wake up after a long (for me) sleep and I think, “Is this the way people feel when they wake up???” The sleep fear and anxiety that understandably kick in when my body starts to register recent changes and my sleep is challenged again. The way it takes me down. My brain hurts. My body hurts. My soul and spirit hurt.

Which is why I am writing this now. What I’ve learned and what I know so that maybe someone who reads it will find something for them.

I have learned and I know to be gentle with myself. To admit that I’m having a hard body and/or brain day – to myself and to others as necessary. I cut myself so many breaks, and I move between pushing through for the things I really want or need to push through on and letting go of so much else. I’ve learned that sometimes when I clean my house I feel better, and sometimes when I lie on the couch with my microwave heating pillow on my chest and a cup of tea, I feel better. If it hurts to talk and think, I don’t have conversations. If it hurts to be alone, I try to find company. Caring company.

I’ve certainly learned not to drive. Not when I can’t think.

I’ve learned and I know that it’s okay to take meds. Welp, for me, as long as they’re prescribed by my sleep CBTi nurse practitioner. In our first appointment, in 2022 during chemo, I was determined to “cure” my sleep issues without medication. She refused that approach and had me on meds that night. I’ve come to the place where when she’s raised my doses, I’ve been a “hell yes!” if it will potentially help me sleep.

I’ve learned and I know that chronic insomnia is a chronic illness. That it is debilitating. That it’s used for torture. That so many people suffer silently and think they’re okay or that they have no options. That there’s nothing that can be done. That it’s normal and eventual that their sleep will be bad. Or worse.

I also know that sleep trackers can exacerbate or even cause insomnia! My sleep doctor once told me that many of her patients came to her after their sleep tracker “told” them they weren’t sleeping well enough! She’s also the one who told me – “If you feel good, you’ve slept well enough. If you don’t feel good, you haven’t. If you’re not sure, you’re probably accustomed to too little sleep.”

Sleeping well is a biological need and an absolute joy. We need it for the day we’re in and for our long-term health.

As someone who hasn’t had enough sleep regularly for a very long time, I can tell you that sleeping enough in a night changes everything. My outlook. My energy. (Welp, still working on that from all the rest…but I can feel the difference). My joy. My ability to think. My patience. My compassion. My heart.

Sleeping is joy and joyful. If you are not experiencing the joy of sleep, with all my heart I suggest you reach out to me or to a sleep practitioner or therapist or someone.

To find yourself as much of that joy as you can.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

Photo by @NappyStock on nappy

The post the joy of sleep appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

A friend was visiting me in my new home. We walked over to the farmers market and caught up on all that had happened since we last saw each other in August. All that had happened since we first met each other years ago. How we’d changed. How we’d grown. Where we were excited to go in 2026.

She asked me how my keynote, First Most Always, would change and evolve, as I had changed and evolved (even more).

I shared with her the new title, that descended on me in November – First Most Always™️: Self-Love Is Your Super Power.

I first read about loving oneself First a very long time ago. I’m not sure where. I just know that I didn’t understand it and didn’t know how to do it. In fact, it was as if it was in a foreign, incomprehensible language. Not one you could possibly decipher from a word here or there but one where the syntax, the structure, the sounds were all unknown.

Maybe it was just the “wah, wah, wah” of the adults in the Peanuts cartoons.

For someone who was taught, literally, to live for the sake of others; for someone who was groomed and carved to sacrifice myself for pretty much anyone else and to have no wants or needs; for someone who was so oblivious to the seemingly bottomless depths of self-revulsion and self-loathing that were intentionally carved into my psyche – it was a foreign, incomprehensible, even Satanic and selfish, concept.

I worked hard to understand it and try to live and love myself that way. Somewhere along that journey, I realized that, actually, loving oneself First was not enough. In my experience and perhaps not so humble opinion, we all, me included, needed to also love ourselves Most and Always. (And in all ways).

I began to talk about this. To write about this. To coach around this. To practice this. I had it tattooed on my arm in 2023, right before my “no breast surgery.”

I was told by some people that it and I were wrong. That loving myself First Most Always was selfish in that bad (Satanic) way.

I firmly disagree. If I don’t love myself, I’ve got nothing to give. And now that I adore myself – First Most Always adore myself – I have so so so so so much more to give.

I have more to give because now I am whole and good and joy and light and love beyond imagination inside me. The self-loathing is gone. The self-revulsion is not even a distant memory.

When it hit me, in November, that Self-Love is truly our super power, I became even more sure about this. Self-love fuels us. It fills us. It strengthens us. It soothes us. It gives us resilience and grit and compassion and caring. It powers us to be there for others and for this world. It inspires us to shine love on all those around us. It nurtures us to fill all the holes we may have in our hearts or psyches from all the s-t that’s gone down.

So that we have so much more to give and so that life is so much more amazing and beautiful and glorious and magic and magical to live.

Especially now, in this world that needs us and needs us to love ourselves and those around us so much.

Perhaps I’ve just preached…but 2026 will be even more about First Most Always and Self-Love being your Super Power. I will deliver that keynote everywhere I can. I will work on that next book that’s been brewing. I will talk with you about it endlessly, if you want.

If I can learn to love myself this deeply and truly, I am convinced that probably anyone can. That is the gift I want to give.

Please let me know what you’re doing to love yourself this way and this much.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

The post Self-Love Is Your Super Power appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

Again a yoga practice. Again exactly what I needed to hear.

You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t posted in quite some time. I have given myself permission.

Permission to pause. Permission to go inwards. Permission to step back. Permission to selfishly and wholeheartedly (and quadruplebadassedly, as a dearest texts me) focus on me and my healing and my movement forward.

I have moved – literally. I live in Philadelphia now, and whilst it’s not “the city,” it is “a city” and an amazing one at that. The city-kid in me is soooo thrilled and playing joyfully.

I have moved – internally. I am eager and excited for the new year and all it is bringing.

I have moved – psychically. People keep telling me to give myself grace, and I laugh and say that I do pretty much nothing but that.

It is all a delight.

We all need permission to pause. To stop. To reflect. To go inward. To find ourselves and delight in ourselves and love ourselves – First Most Always™️.

In 2025 I set a goal of five keynotes. I easily hit it.

I set the goal too low.

For 2026 I’ve set the goal of twenty (20!!!) keynotes. As soon as I did that, three showed up. I’m ready and willing and eager for more (please feel free to pass any ideas and/or introductions and connections my way). I’ve asked unabashedly for votes for my London SXSW submission (voting ends today – here’s the link if there’s still time!)

All while pausing. And pausing some more. And pausing some more.

It is a time of pausing and a time of new year and new birth. May this season of darkness and light bring each of you all you want and need and quadruplebadassedly heart’s desire and more.

Happy Everything!

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

The post permission to pause appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.

I was biking toward the bike path, when I heard, “Love you!” shouted toward me.

It was Percy, driving the garbage truck.

I think I’ve said hello to Percy for a long time. I used to know the names of all of our garbage collectors, but they keep switching and I keep being awful at remembering new names.

But Percy? I’ve been saying hello to Percy for a long, long time.

I like liking people. I like loving people. I like connecting with people. I guess that’s no surprise to the people who know me.

Then I got sick. Cancer. Surgery. Chemo. Weak. Slow. Bald.

And I got noticed. Percy noticed when I “ran” by (slower than people walking by) and said hello. Percy noticed when I was slower and weaker or stronger and still not fast. Percy noticed the hair gone (I wore that bald head as proudly as I could) and noticed when the hair came back.

At some point, Percy got out of the garbage truck and asked if he could give me a hug. I, of course, said yes.

Percy honks when he’s down the block and we won’t pass each other to say hello. He goes out of his way to wave to me. He tells me I always make him smile. I tell him the same. He always, or at least pretty often, checks in to make sure I’m still healthy.

And he shouts, “Love you,” from across the road.

I love to love. I love to share love. I love to spread love. I love to spread smiles and joy and as many good things as I can.

And I feel – and am – very cared for and “held” in return.

There is so much love and joy and connection and beauty in this world, when I open myself to it and when I charge myself with noticing, being, and leaning into it.

Percy is no longer a stranger, but he is another reason why I talk to strangers. There is so much love and support to support us when we open our hearts, minds, and beings to it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please share this post with others if it resonates with you. Let’s start a movement of loving ourselves First Most Always™️!

Photo by Dahcia Lyons-Bastien on nappy

The post Percy said, “Love you!” appeared first on International Speaker, C-Suite Advisor, Creator of Joy, Love Yourself First Most Always | Lisa Kohn.