Rise From The Ashes
"Burnout to Brilliance: Great CEOs, No Burnout"
Leadership is tough. Burnout makes it tougher.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Rise From The Ashes is the ultimate podcast for visionary CEOs and executives who refuse to let burnout rob them of their brilliance, legacy, and impact.
Hosted by Baz Porter, this show isn’t just about surviving leadership it’s about transforming it. Each week, we delve deep into the art and science of thriving at the top, combining actionable strategies, spiritual alignment, and raw truths that reignite your purpose and optimize your energy.
Here’s what you’ll get:
- Bold Frameworks: Learn the exact steps to conquer decision fatigue, streamline your mental energy, and reclaim control of your leadership.
- Spiritual Awakenings: Explore the intersection of purpose, alignment, and success to lead with clarity and connection.
- Transformational Insights: Hear unfiltered stories and practical wisdom from world-class leaders who’ve turned their burnout into brilliance.
This isn’t just a podcast it’s a revolution for leaders ready to rise, inspire, and leave a legacy that outlasts them.
Rise From The Ashes
The Truth About Anxiety (and How to Reclaim Your Center)
Anxiety isn’t just fear it’s feedback.
In this raw and revelatory episode, best-selling author and transformational teacher Cynthia James sits down with Baz Porter to dismantle the mainstream myths around mental health. Together, they expose the truth: anxiety is not the enemy it’s the alarm. The body’s way of whispering (or screaming), “You’re not living in alignment.”
✨ Cynthia reveals her Three Pillars of Emotional Wellness:
- Inquiry – Get brutally honest about where you are
- Introspection – Decode the emotional messages in your body
- Integration – Apply transformational tools that empower self-healing
If you’ve been relying on surface-level “self-care” while still drowning in burnout, this is your wake-up call. Cynthia goes deep on:
✔ Why your body is a trauma computer
✔ How to approach meditation without perfectionism
✔ The life-changing ritual she does before reaching for her phone
✔ And the truth behind why we’re terrified to change (even when we crave it)
Friends, as we wrap up today’s powerful conversation, hear me loud and clear: I’m grateful for you. You’ve chosen greatness over settling, clarity over chaos, and brilliance over burnout. Remember Great CEOs deserve NO burnout.
Did this hit home? Pass it on. Your share could be the spark someone desperately needs. Together, we’re rewriting the rules of leadership, one bold conversation at a time.
I want to hear YOUR story your wins, your struggles, your breakthroughs. My door is wide open whether you’re in Boulder or reaching out at support@ramsbybaz.com, I'm here.
Here is a gift For you Click Here
Are you ready to drop confusion, claim clarity, and step powerfully into purpose?
Let’s connect. Book a coaching session today and experience firsthand how the RAMS framework amplifies results, shatters limits, and creates lasting legacies.
This is Baz Porter, in your corner, fiercely committed to your brilliance. Keep rising, stay unstoppable, and know you’re never alone in this climb.
Until next time rise boldly.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. This is part two. I'm with Cynthia James, who is a phenomenal powerhouse coach speaker. If you haven't listened to part one, stop, Go and listen to part one. Share it, change someone's life. Cynthia, how are you? And welcome back. In part one, we were talking about your life, how you got here and some methods that you use to really uncover the spark in somebody, and I'd love to speak about anxiety and the spark of that and how you guide them through that journey.
Speaker 2:You know, anxiety is really about losing touch with the center of who you've come here to be and who you are, and so it means that worry and the frequency of what's going on around you is pulling you off of that center. So that's the first thing I want to say, and I don't know any human being that hasn't had moments of anxiety or worry or, you know, questioning their own mental health, because life happens. But this is what I want you to know is like if you have a treasure chest of tools, you can always find your way back to center. So for me, when I work with people, you know, I say there's three pillars, and the first one is inquiry when are you? What's happening? Let's get real. What's your current reality? You know what's driving you, what's upsetting you, you know what's pushing you, what's pulling you. I mean, let's get, let's put it all on the table, because until you can get real with it, you can't shift it. So then the second pillar is like introspection and it's like okay, let's find out what's happening internally.
Speaker 2:And when I say internally, I mean mind-body. Your body is a huge computer. It remembers everything that's ever happened to you at any time. In fact, it can even be, you know, historical trauma and stuff can be still encoded in there. So you want to just go in and find out what the body has a language. What's the language? What's it communicating to you? Because that anxiety carries a message. What is the message for you? So let's get clear about that and while we're doing that, get some tools on how to get clearer, because then the third pillar is integration. It's like how do I take these tools and this understanding of where I've been and where I want to be and use those tools as transformative agents that I can use not only when I'm working with a coach or a therapist or whatever, but that I can take with me because I have everything included in me that I need to be healthy, well and vibrant.
Speaker 1:I love that energy that you bring to the table. Dan, that was awesome. You mentioned something key there about energy and vibrancy, but you also mentioned the pain. Someone once told me many years ago the pain was the message. You have to listen to it. Not stay in the pain, because that's just stupid, but listen to the pain of telling and listen to the message you're speaking to you with, because that vibrational element that you have, the encoded message in it, is life-changing. You mentioned a couple of tactics there that you developed something many years ago when you first started this journey, and it was something very profound that changed your life, and you came up with it, I think, in the university, wasn't it? Yeah, Would you mind sharing about that please?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was in this master's degree program in a place called the University of Santa Monica in California and you know they taught us 65 counseling strategies. I mean, they gave us a lot of stuff, but before, but while we were like maybe a third of the way through, they said your assignment is to create your own counseling strategy and bring it back and present it to this smaller group of people. And I, of course, am freaked out. I'm like I don't have a counseling strategy. That's why I'm here, but I've always been, because I've been meditating for so many years and I go to sacred sites all around the world and stuff, stuff is always downloaded through me. And so I said well, what if I took all these things that have downloaded through me and I put them into one package? And some of it was similar to some of the things that we were learning, but some of it totally wasn't.
Speaker 2:And the whole mind-body connection and inviting people to understand the language of the body became the foundation for it all, and I was shocked how it affected the people I was presenting to. And then I was shocked that the people that were coming to me that I could bring this strategy in and they would have massive moments of healing, and I was like, okay, healing. And and I was like, okay, cynthia, this is not about you. You've been given a gift here and so be wise about how you use this gift and how you share it. And so for me it was, I feel, like going to the university of santa monica.
Speaker 1:That was part of the reason why I was there I love that because you recognize the message and you took something with it to take it to the next level Spiritual alignment. You mentioned something about meditation and I love meditating, Joe Dispenza, et cetera, et cetera and I've formidable figure in this space of regeneration and body, mind and soul regeneration from meditation. What's your experience with meditation and can you simplify it for the audience? So if someone will listen to this and go, I don't meditate, oh my God, I can't do that, I can't be present. Too many thoughts. What advice would you give them if they were listening to this now going? Well, I want to meditate, but I don't know how.
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing I want to tell you is people tell you that meditation is shutting your mind off. No, it is not. It is getting quiet enough so that your mind can still itself and that you can open to. You know, there is universal information, which is why 10 people can have the same idea at the same time. Quantum physicists say there's a quantum field and it's full of possibility and potential and that you are emanation of that field. So you can tap in and pull that stuff at any moment. So for me, that's what meditation is. Can you get still enough to be able to listen to the information that's being given to you? Now, for some people, that's sitting quietly in the silence, and you know, and just opening.
Speaker 2:A lot of people don't start that way. When I started meditating, you know, I would think I'd been meditating for a long time and it had been a minute, you know. So some people do it with music, some people do it by sitting by a tree, some people do it by hiking, some people do it by swimming. The thing is is like you get into a zone where you can open your own energy field and your own frequency to receive. So that's what meditation is, and let me say this, it's evolutionary. The way I started meditating 40 years ago is not how I meditate today, and there were moments where my meditation tricks didn't work. You're like, okay, what's happening? My mind is spinning out and I'm doing laundry and all this other stuff, but all that says is then you need to open to another way, you need to open to another technique.
Speaker 2:And what I love is there's so many people out there. Do you listen to Joe Dispenza? I've done his stuff, I mean you know there's Greg Brayton. There's all these people out there that are giving you all kinds of entree points, and a lot of them are using science and spirituality. So you understand that there's absolute science to what you're doing. In fact, a lot of the scientists you know have become kind of philosophers because they understand it.
Speaker 2:So for me it's like do whatever you need to do to be still and start small. If you can sit for five minutes and just listen to peaceful music, I mean you know people have guided meditations and things like that Do whatever you need to do to help you get centered, because what I will tell you is when you can do that, you will find that your days, your weeks and your whole life goes better. Joe Dispenza did this thing and he was talking about create your day, right, and he was like there's a gap between the moment you wake up and the moment you get active right, and in that gap you can create. And so he was like what do you want to create? And so it was like oh, you know, I've always been beautiful, powerful, expansive, you know, because you are eternal right, so I don't get out of bed without creating my day, which is a part of my spiritual practice.
Speaker 1:I love that advice, and you mentioned something earlier about safety. Safety is one of your top values and what you do in everything, but it's about you feeling safe in that moment. Yes, and whether you stay in bed and create your day, or something I like to help people with is have a glass of water by your bed about 500 milliliters and then drink that, sit up so you're not lying down, and just be present with yourself for that five minutes.
Speaker 1:You do whatever you do in that five minutes, but you're intentionally. The body starts to wake up. Naturally, you haven't put any light on Most people get up and the first thing they do is what did I, what did I miss in the last 10 hours I've been asleep? The answer is nothing. What you're missing is yourself and that component. So I love that advice get out, get into bed, get when you get out, just visualize your day. Create from there what the challenge is when. So you come across somebody and they come straight to you. What are the common questions people come to you with?
Speaker 2:people ask me I'm stuck. How do I get out of this? People come and say I feel like I've been living somebody else's life. How, how do I find me? People come and say I feel like I've been on the wrong path. You know, joseph Campbell talked about climbing the wrong ladder. So people are like it's like I know there's something else that is calling me. I don't know what it is, I don't know how to access it and I'm afraid, if I absolutely open to it, I'm going to lose people that I love, jobs that I love or ways that have made me comfortable in the past.
Speaker 1:I love that. One of the reasons, among many, I like interviewing and having conversations with people like you is there's a wealth of experience and untapped knowledge in the world that people like you possess. It's not knowledge that you've gone out intentionally to gather, it's through something that cannot be brought, and that's life experience. That's why I love doing this, because your message, your gift and you are the gift Cynthia needs to be heard now, yesterday, seven weeks ago, because someone needs to hear it. So I want to thank you for spending some time with me today and having just a conversation. I appreciate you and I want to stay in touch and have a conversation in the future, if you're open to that.
Speaker 2:I'm totally open and Baz open to that. I'm totally open and bad, as I just want to say. I hope that in your quiet moments you give thanks that you've answered this call, because it's it's it's a gift to the masses to bring people and invite them into a different kind of dialogue, of being present on this planet.
Speaker 1:Very grateful to have been with you my pleasure and it's an honor and a pleasure for me. It's my honor to be with you and I truly mean it to the audience. That was our little moment. We wanted to have them at the end of gratitude and to come back into a sort of grounded central space audience. I love you. You're awesome. I'm grateful for you. Please download it, share the message it's not my message, it's cynthia's and get it out far and wide because I promise you it will change somebody's life, cynthia. Thank you. I am blessed to be in front of you and blessed to have a conversation with you. Audience. I'll see you next time. You're awesome. Have an amazing day, be blessed.
