What does it mean to choose your life, even when everything feels stacked against you?

In this episode of GUTS, Topaz Adizes sits down with Luis Velasquez, executive coach, Stanford leadership facilitator, and author of Ordinary Resilience. This is a conversation about resilience that isn’t performative. It’s lived. Through stories of survival, identity, fatherhood, and near breaking points, Luis unpacks how reframing reality can become a tool for transformation and how the smallest shifts in perspective can change everything.

In this episode, they explore:

• Why resilience is built through choice, not circumstance

• The difference between fearlessness and fearing less

• How identity shapes behavior and long term growth

• Reframing pain into purpose and forward movement

• Parenting, legacy, and what it means to truly prepare your children for life

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Listen GUTS:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it mean to truly come home to yourself, and what happens when you stop performing and start creating from your soul?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Didier Sylvain, coach and creative practitioner working at the intersection of personal liberation and collective transformation. Didier has guided executives and teams at organizations like Lionsgate, WME, and the NBA Foundation, drawing from a background that spans Deloitte Consulting, somatics, sound healing, and a deep lineage of embodied practice.

Through decades of inner work, loss, and creative discovery, Didier reflects on what it really means to lead from your values, why music is the marrow of his soul, and how the work we do for others is often the work we most need to do ourselves.

Together, they explore:

• What it means to be alive in your soul vs. hiding from it

• How lineage and ancestry shape who we become

• The dance between dreaming and discipline

• Why the opposite of fear might be play

• Creating beauty as a spiritual practice

• Grief, vision, and learning to trust the unseen

• What it feels like to finally come home

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Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What makes a conversation truly good and why are those moments of connection so rare?

In this episode of GUTS, host Topaz Adizes sits down with Emma Templeton, social psychologist and researcher studying the science of human connection. Emma explores what happens in the precise moments when conversation clicks and why some interactions leave us feeling deeply understood while others fade away.

Through her research on real, unscripted dialogue, Emma reflects on the invisible forces shaping how we connect and why meaningful conversation may be one of the most powerful tools we have.

Together, they explore:

• Why we dread social interactions we end up loving

• What makes conversations feel meaningful

• The science of conversational chemistry

• Why social scripts limit deeper connection

• The value of long, undistracted conversations

• Communicating complex ideas simply

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Listen GUTS:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1GSiahH3NYTiFKZ4mIGQnJ?si=fce013635cfa4947

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-under-the-skin/id1821276933

Follow GUTS:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/guts.podcast/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/topazadizes/

Subscribe for updates: topazadizes.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.