Navigating the Just Be Space: A Journey Through Identity, Anxiety, and Personal Growth with Behati Hart

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Behati Hart and she is an author from the Chicagoland area. Welcome to the show.

Behati Hart: Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kantor: Well, can you tell us a little bit about your book and what prompted you to write it?

Behati Hart: Yeah. Sure thing. So Just be is the title, and the subtitle is Unmasking and Becoming Human Again. And I know that sounds so like sci fi, but I am a 51 year old woman from Chicago. I identify as Afro-indigenous. And so with all of that being said, the book demanded to be written because I was experiencing a lot of the transitions that midlife women typically do, like menopause. I was going through a career, a career transition after a job loss from federal government, and then I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety. And so when I sat with myself and did the inner work that I do as a life architect with my clients, I realized that I had something to say and I put it in a book.

Lee Kantor: So let’s talk a little bit about, before we get into the book, a little bit about kind of the life architect practice that you’ve built. What is kind of how’d you come up with that term, and what does it mean, and what types of clients does it attract?

Behati Hart: Sure thing. So a life architect is someone who is multidimensional life coach. I have a background in innovation and design and strategy, and I’ve been helping people for at least over a decade, about 15 years in the space of transition, myself, being a veteran, having transitioned out of federal or government service, but also as a military spouse. I think I know a thing or two about transitioning and confidence. And so the framework that I designed, I call it the Betty method, and it’s an acronym because of course, government, we love acronyms and it stands for Becoming Empowered Through intelligence. I’m an AI coach as well, and so I weave that experience in with my clients. So when my clients come to me, they experience the transformation of the human experience between somewhere in between that loss of identity, but also the becoming something else. And they’re not quite sure yet. And I use AI as a tool because there’s some frameworks that I can’t access, just my brain won’t allow me to. And those are ancient frameworks like I Ching or Ikigai, or I use numerology, even astrology, to help people remember who they are. And then we can start using modern behavioral techniques. And that looks like helping them write the narrative from their traumas or this transformation that they’re going through. And then we can introduce design strategies like human centered design is like a framework that we use in space, where we prototype a new way of being. And so a client that what my clients would look like is really anybody that’s kind of in that stuck space. And I call that the just be space. Because oftentimes transformation is hard. You have to let an old identity die before you can create a new one. And so when clients come to me they’re typically in that transition transformation stuck area.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, throughout life we all go through a variety of transitions and evolutions as you progress. Um, you use the word die as a, as, I guess, a kind of marking of one from one transition to the other is I’m sure that was intentional. And can you talk about why you frame it in that manner?

Behati Hart: Sure. I call this system this triangulation of being the trinity of transformation. And this is, again, not something that’s new. I didn’t create this, but there are studies around death, near death experiences. There are studies from the ancients around the cycle of life and death in karmic being. And so when I say die, I say that to kind of like trigger curiosity because nothing ever really dies, right? Things continue on and go on, and they transform like the seasons. But it’s an invitation to bring people to the knowing that our egos will die, right? The ways that we have operated will die. They no longer serve us. They no longer serve our becoming. But we have to eulogize that death. We have to honor what once was. So whether you’re going through a divorce or, again, a career transition or you’re becoming an empty nester. Ways of of identity pass on and new identities are waiting to be born. So I walk my clients through that process of the trinity of transformation so they understand you have to eulogize what once was and honor that so you can become who you want to be now.

Lee Kantor: Um, how do you decide which transformations or transitions warrant being seen as a death and, and others that are just, you know, the like you can make a case that every day is a death.

Behati Hart: Yes.

Lee Kantor: So so how are you deciding which transformation you mark with? Okay. This is a real transformation. This isn’t just, you know, Wednesday.

Behati Hart: Yeah. So I let my clients decide that Lee, I don’t, um, as a coach, we’re trained not to overwrite the system of the person who’s having the experience. It’s more. So let me turn this. Let me hit this button here and see how that feels for you. And again, you you nailed it right? Every day, every moment is a choice. An opportunity to make a decision to be different. We do this every year, Lee. We do this during the season of the new year, when we make a resolution to become something different, and statistically by February, that flops. And so technically we can say resolutions die right around the mid February time frame. But what I offer to my clients is to bring that reframe back and identify why that didn’t work for them specifically. And that’s why my framework happens in three phases. The first phase of remembering is exploring who you are beyond the identity labels. And it’s as simple as starting with what does your name mean? Where did you inherit that name? What does your ethnicity mean? What does the group that you grew up in, or the community that you grew up in mean for you? And so that first experience is that meaning making? And by the time we get to the second phase, which is the reprograming rewriting, they’re able to understand that that wasn’t meant for me in the first place.

Behati Hart: I don’t know why the heck I said I was gonna lose 15 pounds within six weeks. Can it be done? Sure. But oftentimes that failure becomes that obstacle by which they stay there and they stay in this kind of death cycle. And so by the time we get through the second phase of my coaching, the third phase, we’re able to design a way out. And this is the rebirth phase, right? We design our way out of that illusion of death so they can finally figure out, like, maybe I was reaching a little too far. I wasn’t being too kind to my true self. And maybe I need to stretch this goal out in a different way. That feels right for me. So yes, death happens daily.

Lee Kantor: And how do you help your clients? Um, like in their head, they want to be this new version of themselves, but they are the version they are today. And how do you kind of prevent them just kind of almost accepting this, the trauma that they’ve experienced that’s put them in the place that they are and that that it’s insurmountable that I can’t, I can’t like I can wish for that, but it’s unrealistic for me to really get to that next, um, the place that I’d really like to be.

Behati Hart: Yes. So someone who is constantly in her head daily, I’ve had to adopt a new way of of practicing. And I’m a student of a a science called heart intelligence or heart coherence. It is a way that many eastern cultures, and even Western cultures and religion have initially taught us how to be right. It’s going inward and centering and breathing and being one with yourself, feeling all the feelings. I read a statistic while I was writing this book, and it wasn’t surprising to me because we see it all over the news, and many of us who are empathic can feel the energy of anxiety throughout the globe. But the statistic was the World Health Organization said that we are in a loneliness epidemic. And I was like, wow. Last time I heard the term epidemic was when we were in Covid and it felt very lonely. It felt very isolating. And when you’re isolated, you tend to stay stuck in your head, and we don’t get down to the root of the feeling. So while I became a student of heart intelligence through the Heartmath Institute, I learned that the heart is actually the first brain. It operates like a brain because it has 40,000 neurites that send signals to the brain. More signals in the brain sends throughout the body. And so I had to learn how to rewire my thinking by bringing feeling into the balance of that. And that has helped me manage my ADHD, manage my anxiety, and just live a more fruitful life. To be quite honest, a more joyful, happy life is every day happy. Absolutely not. My body keeps the score and it tells me what it wants to do. But through coherence, through this alignment that I mean to operate from and teach my my clients how to how to be, they’re able to come out of their head and feel the feeling to make it make sense. And then it goes back upstairs to the brain and they can rewire everything.

Lee Kantor: So what are some of the.

Lee Kantor: Symptoms that a person is having right now where you might be the right answer for them? Like what? What are their signs or signals that a person is going through that it’s like they don’t have to be doing that if they would just get Ahold of you.

Behati Hart: Sure. Um, so if you’re navigating loss, maybe you’re you’re feeling like you’re craving something deeper. You know, that there’s more to what you’re experiencing, but you just can’t put a name to it. And it typically is happening because change is happening. Some people are maybe feeling stuck in between chapters. You know, like me, I’m kind of a quasi empty nester and I’m trying to figure out, like, what does life look like when I don’t have to cook dinner every night for everybody? Maybe, um, you’re sensing there’s more to life, right? Like you’ve been living in a performance way. And when I talk about unmasking, I mean that from the multi-dimensions that I live from. Typically, as a neurodiverse person, we use masking as a protective measure because we’re very hyper sensitive and we sense everything. But as a woman and as a woman of color, I mask as well. And so maybe you’re feeling like that mask is cracking and you’re tired of being perfect and you’re tired of the over productivity and it’s burning you out. Or maybe you’re looking more towards like, I want to live more consciously. I want to integrate my ego. Sure, maybe it needs to die, but also maybe it needs to integrate into who I’m becoming and I need help with how to do that. So those are the types of folks that would come to me.

Lee Kantor: And then what is kind of those early sessions look like? What are some of the questions you’re asking people when they start working with you? Or maybe some of the pre homework before they even start working with you.

Behati Hart: Well, again, in my three phases of the Betty method, we always start with who you are and we’ll stay there for a little while. Typically my clients will will range between 5 and 9 sessions. And I can guarantee you and I have the evidence that within five sessions, people are like, okay, I can kick the training wheels off and move this thing. But some of them want to stay the long haul and finish the design process. And so in that first phase or that first session, I typically ask, who are you? Like what? How do you experience life through you? Tell me more about who you are and let’s remove the labels. You’re not a mother. You’re not a father. You’re not the CEO of whatever. I just want to know who is Lee Kantor. If I didn’t know you and I wanted to be your friend, who are you? What does your name mean? Where are you from? And you’d be surprised that the light bulbs just really start going off at that moment. Because people don’t tend to describe themselves outside of all the labels that we live from. So that’s what they would experience is a friendly neighborhood conversation.

Lee Kantor: And then when you made the transition in your life from working in government to coaching, was that transition, uh, scary? Was that something that just was natural? Uh, did you feel like did you have any doubt that you could do it? Did you need some kind of evidence that, hey, I can do this?

Behati Hart: Well, you know, I’ve been coaching my whole life. Like, I think when I look back at my career in government, like I said, I ran, um, while I was working for Department of Defense. I was the lead program manager in transition and employment. So by that logic, I was already doing it professionally, but not officially with a certification. Um, I received my certification through the Association of Coaching under the Jay Shetty Program, um, in 2023. And I was doing that kind of like a side. Like a little hobby, if you will. I had a couple clients when I was released from my career back in March 2025. I decided to do this full time and it was scary as hell. Lee because I had not been a full time entrepreneur before. And so luckily through that program, they taught us all the fundamentals of business startup. And so I’ve been able to apply that and, um, learn so many things. But yeah, when you’re starting a business that doesn’t have a solid framework, it really is individually based. It is absolutely scary. This isn’t a plug and play. This isn’t a franchise type of of business. This is you’re building something around your own capacity, your own skill and your time.

Lee Kantor: And then once you kind of took the leap to do that, did it just start working or were you getting traction right away, or was this something that like, do you have a support group that you kind of lean on that helps you kind of through this, or were you just kind of rocking and rolling. Let go.

Behati Hart: So these are great questions because I was just talking to a former client about this because they want to explore coaching as well. Um, no, it was not rocking and rolling right away because I needed to figure out who I was presenting myself to be to the world, like what kind of services. I didn’t want to copy paste what everyone else was doing. I knew I had to stand out in my own way and stand in my own knowing of what I wanted to offer to folks. But first I had to draw myself back, and in drawing myself back, I went to my AI tool, and what framed from that was me creating a my coaching framework and also my AI coaching companion, Betty AI. And together I was able to identify my new job title to build my framework for my new clients, to build marketing materials and communication. And so it’s been a slow well, I want to say slow because I really probably launched this officially in August 2025. So in hindsight, it’s been a few months, but now I’ve already had, um, I just signed a contract today to coach a group and I have one new client, and so it really is day by day doing making the effort to put myself out there, trust that my product is good and in building the community around that.

Behati Hart: So when you ask about community, this is really important for me too, is I’ve been getting a lot of like messages for people to offer me their services to help me find speaking engagements and all these enticing things. Right? But hey, I’m bootstrapping this. So I tell folks, hey, I don’t have all the finances that you need for your services, but I can barter with you. I can offer you a free coaching 2 or 3 sessions in exchange for the knowledge that you have. And I think that people have lost the, um, the understanding of how valuable bartering is, and I want to bring that back. I want to reintroduce that to communities, especially my communities, the women who have been going through these transitions, I think the last statistic was like over 455,000 women left the workforce in 2025 by November, and so many of us don’t have that additional income or the capacity to get a loan to pay for the services that we need to build our own businesses. But we certainly can barter. We certainly can barter. And so I hope that through what I’m doing that influences and inspires folks to consider bartering might be the new way of exchanging services.

Lee Kantor: Now, is the avatar of your ideal client, a woman that is a certain age going through a transition.

Behati Hart: That is the avatar that is one of my my clients. But today, um, my other client is male, and they completely identified with the work that I’m doing. And I was like, well, everyone’s welcome. I’m not rated E for everybody, but the type of coaching that I offer can be.

Lee Kantor: And then you mentioned an organization hired you. What type of organization is a good fit? Is it non-profits or is it, um, technology? You mentioned AI.

Behati Hart: Um, yeah. So it’s a it’s a technology training organization and they have a community. And they asked me to train their community. So this will be like a virtual training that I’ll do once a month. And it is confidence coaching, which is what I offer as well. And so I’ll be talking to this group over a period of five months about how to how to draw the confidence through the betting method for the work that they’re doing, because all of the work that they do is uniquely different. They’re all in e-commerce and, um, they’re all selling different things. But As an entrepreneur, drawing confidence when you’re first launching your idea out to the world or your product out to the world, you can lose confidence because you don’t assume all of the things that you had envisioned for it to come to fruition, right? Sometimes it could be a quiet month or a quiet week. And, um, I imagine for them, if it’s anything like what I’ve experienced, it’s very vulnerable and scary. But I know how I work and I know that my tool is good and they know it’s good. And so I’m excited about that opportunity.

Lee Kantor: Now. Is getting the book kind of a way to just experience a little bit about what your practice is like?

Behati Hart: Oh, certainly. Yes. My book is a memoir, and the memoir is a nine year journey that I’ve taken, and I’m sharing with the world about how I make meaning out of the different spaces of science, spirituality, humanity, and just kind of came full circle when the rug was pulled out from under me because, like my first chapter talks about, like this is where I am today. I know all these things about myself. These are all my identities. But my identities are stripped down to the bare bones. And as I put it, like butt naked I am. And when I’m naked and afraid, who am I? And so then the book kind of journeys from there. And so I wrote this in a way to allow people to see themselves through some of the experiences that I’ve had, whether you are a woman, whether you’re menopausal, whether you’re going through a transition, most of us have gone through a transition and sometimes a traumatic one. And so I think that that my book, my memoir, my story is relatable to anyone who is seeking meaning in that quiet moment that I call just Be. I call it the sacred pause, because it’s that valley of the shadow of death. It’s like, I know I’m going through something and I know there’s a way out on the other side, but this is actually really quiet and scary. But it’s also beautifully quiet and maybe I need to pay attention.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more about your practice or get a hold of the book, is there a website?

Behati Hart: Of course is Bahati.

Lee Kantor: Com and that’s b e h I. Com.

Behati Hart: Yes. And I’m on all the social channels LinkedIn Facebook Instagram, TikTok. And I’m working on my YouTube. But if you find me on YouTube, you can listen to some of my banter.

Lee Kantor: All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Behati Hart: Thank you. Lee. I appreciate you too.

Lee Kantor: All right. This Lee Kantor we’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.