SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — What does self-help look like these days? What does it look like to have a courageous conversation with yourself?

In this part Ozarks First’s Courageous Conversation, Jenifer Abreu talked to a few people here in Springfield who are creating spaces for people to work on personal development and celebrate self-growth. 

“There didn’t seem to be much in Springfield towards prevention and towards maximizing potential,” said Kate Alsup. 

So Alsup and her colleagues started a group called The Bravery Board. 

“We wanted to find out what would it look like to create an organization that found people where they were, thriving, functional and maximize that potential,” she said. 

The group meets quarterly tackling a variety of topics –  relationships, privilege, owning your story and finding value in your own experience. 

“It’s hard to define our topics sometimes,” Alsup said. 

To reach beyond their meeting room at Eurasia Cafe additional talks are also put on a podcast every month.  

“We’ve talked about the multiple roles that we all manage and how to juggle those. What it’s like to juggle multiple roles as a parent, and a professional and a friend. We don’t use the word balance anymore, because that is not possible.”

And that’s kind of the same idea with another podcast that’s created in Springfield. Hustle and Harmony, which also ditched the idea of balance. Their philosophy is that we have different buckets in our life, it’s about how full you want to keep each of them.

“Where do you want to put that intensity and intention towards,” said Kolby Kallweit. “But first you gotta identify what you want life to look like.” 

Kallweit and Shaun Hall are the co-founders and co-hosts of Hustle and Harmony.

“A lot of the things we talk about in the podcast are things that we personally needed to figure out ourselves,” Kallweit said. 

For example – meditation.

“I wanted to explore, what are ways that I can use meditation in my life that can help reduce stress or anxiety or whatever it may be. And I did that exploration, and Shaun did that exploration on our own, and then once we had our mind wrapped around it, we could talk about how that helped us and then we created an episode about it,” Kallweit said. 

Hall says the knowledge and inspiration he’s found through podcasts and other ways have helped shaped him not just in his personal life, but professionally, too 

“I wouldn’t be near as far if I was just trying to reinvent the wheel every single time,” he said. “I am  listening to people that I aspire to be and it’s been their lessons learned and it’s just been an accelerator for everything.” 

For Alsup, an avid listener herself, podcasts have been eye-opening. 

“They have opened my ears up to a much wider experience than I have for myself in Springfield, Missouri,” she said. 

They say when it comes to personal development, there’s no right way to begin. 

“The important thing is just starting, there is not a perfect strategy to it,” Kallweit said. 

But in the end, self-growth is more than just about you. 

“If I am not the best version of myself, that means that I won’t be able to help others be the best version of themselves,” Kallweit said. 

So, it’s like a bucket that inevitably spills over.