The Practice Lab

Lead Executive Officer

College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario

Registered Psychotherapist

Coaches Training Institute (CTI)

Certified Professional Co-Active Coach

Kara Hardin Mental Health Consulting

Principal

Relate Counseling Center

Mental Health Practitioner

Goodmans LLP

Associate

Donner Civic Leadership Research Fellow in Public Law

Research Fellow with League for Human Rights

Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP

Summer Research Student

I am a mental health educator and clinician, who works at the intersection of mental health and performance. I specialize in the complicated ways that mental health drives performance and how it shows up at work. I am a former practicing corporate and securities lawyer and hold a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and a Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law. My core values are learning and kindness.

I’ve been working on something new and big for almost a year now... and it’s brought up a lot of feelings of self-doubt.


Am I smart enough?

Who am I to dream this big?

Every first attempt feels hardly pleasant, and the results aren't particularly inspiring.

The thing is: I’ve kept going. 

Not because I’ve convinced myself the doubt is wrong, or because I have gotten rid of it, but because I believe this is worth doing, even when I’m still learning how to do it.

Sometimes it’s not about knowing you’re enough.

Sometimes, especially in the beginning, it’s about believing the thing you’re trying to build is worthy of your time, energy, and attention.

Psychologist Carol Dweck calls this a growth mindset. Angela Duckworth calls it grit.

I call it a practice.

So I’m practicing.

Often with a fancy drink, which helps me feel more cozy and less intimidated somehow (I am definitely officially part of some conglomerate industrial coffee complex).

... I can’t wait to share more with you soon.

What’s something you’re practicing these days, that’s pushing your sense of what’s possible?

PS: The drop is coming in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned, Strivers, and thank you for being part of this. It really does take a village.

Kara Hardin

Empowering High Performers to Shift Their Relationship With Work | CEO of The Practice Lab | Psychotherapist & Speaker

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It’s a privilege to be on this entrepreneurial journey with my best friend, and the second most funny person I know.

It isn’t always easy, but we try our best to practice what we preach, especially on days where it feels hard. 

That’s how we strive, together.

General Manager / Chief Growth Officer - The Practice Lab

“So what is it like to work with your partner?”


It’s one of the first questions I get asked whenever I tell people what I “do for work” and who I do it with. 

And most of the time I answer with some version of:

“Like any working relationship, it took us time to figure out how to work together”

“It works because we have almost no overlapping skills”

or, my favourite “Kara is extremely patient, and it works because she navigates me with expertise”

And most days, this is all true. 

But it isn’t always easy, or even pleasant 😂

Some days we are completely out of sync, like yesterday, and we bicker (like any married couple or coworker who cares about the work) about something that is completely mundane. 

And taking yesterday as an example, do you know what we did to work through it?

The same advice we give others - we went and moved our bodies. We walked to the gym, we exercised, we ate, and then we revisited our discussion once we were in a better state to do so. 

And everything was fine. 

The playboook is often simple to wellbeing, but it does require discipline and consistency.

This is my cherry tree, in it's most glorious two weeks of the year.

I noticed this morning though, every branch is blooming, except one.

It made me think of how often we expect ourselves (and others) to be all one thing.

All in bloom, all okay, all “happy” or at least, "ok."

The reality is, people are many things at the same time. You can be well and still feel off. Grateful and overwhelmed. Capable and in need of care. Healthy in parts, unwell in others (see my presently sore thumb from a skating misadventure in October, or the anxiety that flares as I prepare to launch new big things ahead).

As we lean into well-being week in law, and mental health awareness month, it's important to remember that we get to be complicated, messy, and growing in different directions... all at the same time.

Wherever you are today, may you give yourself (and people near and far) grace to be growing.

Last week, with the 2024-2025 Class of A&O Shearman Associates, we explored a quiet tension many high performers carry:

Powering through vs. peak performance.

One is fear-fueled—driven by threat, bracing, and never quite enough.

The other is regulation-fueled—rooted in safety, clarity, and choice.

Powering through is survival.

Peak performance is presence.

We’re not taught to feel the difference. But we can learn.

Thank you A&O Shearman, for making space to notice it.

Katie Kilgariff (Zacharias) Shaye P.

“How do you negotiate with your self. That’s the biggest thing.” - Kobe Bryant (thanks to Steve Magness for bringing this to my attention*).


There are two trajectories for professional development. 

The first is competency and learning proficiency. Doing the job itself. 

The second is how your perceive your competence. 

How you talk to yourself, how you understand and make space for yourself, as you learn and grow. 

More than just growth mindset, it's the voice that brings your core beliefs into being.

Do you believe you are valuable?

Do you believe you are worth your time?

Do you believe your effort ... is enough?

On this Monday morning, consider how you negotiate with yourself. What do you believe: about yourself, your world, and your effort - and how are those beliefs shaping your reality? 

Push yourself. 

Not only as a striver, but also with the might of the person who could be your biggest and most influential fan - you.

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining the Greater Washington Society of CPAs (GWSCPA) for their Women’s Leadership Conference, where I spoke about how we reclaim delight as ambitious, driven women.


The reality is, community doesn’t just create support, it creates possibility.

To everyone who saw me striving, and decided to cheer me on, to join me, to laugh and to learn together with me - for the possibilities we are chasing delightfully - I thank you.

Let's keep expanding what's possible, keep feeling delighted and satisfied, for ourselves, and our wild and precious lives.

Productivity feels personal... because we've been taught: it is.


Many of us measure our worth by what we do. #5am club, inbox zero, top 30 under 30... when it comes to getting things done, we consistently feel behind and in turn, feel less than.

This is conditioning, rooted in the history of work.

The term “productivity” was first used in the agricultural context, to measure crop yield: how much could be produced with as little land, labor, and capital as possible. Frederick Winslow Taylor then used these ideas on the factory floor, measuring workers to optimize output.

The result: by the 20th century, productivity became synonymous with output per worker, not just on farms or in factories, but in offices, schools, and eventually knowledge work. No longer a human process, work became a system to be measured, managed, and optimized.

Output as identity.

Efficiency as a virtue.

It’s one of the reasons why rest feels risky.

Why achievement rarely feels like enough.

... so, your stress, your striving, your stuck-ness, they're all informed by this story.

You Make Sense.

So now we get to ask:  What kind of story do we want to live in? What’s one belief about productivity you’re ready to rethink?

I spent time in Boston earlier this month with the team at Facing History & Ourselves — an organization I’ve been lucky to partner with for over two years.


In a world that pushes urgency and constant doing, this team made a different choice:

They paused.
They planned.
They prioritized.

They chose meaningful direction over perpetual motion.

Thoughtful planning is peak performance.
It’s the discipline of asking what really matters?… and then structuring around the answer.

It’s also a reflection of their values. Values I share.

Grateful to Melissa B. Lewis, Ed.D., MBA, Jon Cramer and the whole team for the continued partnership—and the clarity that comes from doing work that matters, together.

As Kara Hardin and I have been teasing over the last few months, we've been working on a few big things.


I often get asked 'what exactly do you do?' - and my answer is some version of:

'Everything and anything that isn't a good use of Kara's time'

I'm 50% business operator, 50% Brand Manager of Kara Hardin. 

But over the last few months, I've been able to dip my toes back into my prior life of brand marketing and focus on dreaming up what the future of Kara's brand, and the future of The Practice Lab looks and feels like.

We'll be sharing more next week (hint: you can go find it at the most obvious of places to look), but even for our little business it's been surprising how many places a new identity needs to show up:

- Kara's speaking slides
- Invoice templates
- Email designs
- Email signatures
- LinkedIn page assets
- Proposals
- Website

The list is surprisingly long.

Excited and grateful for you all that have been on this journey with us for the last 4 years (and with Kara for much longer).

More to come next week, but if you're able to stumble around and find the new brand somewhere (hint: it's in the most obvious of places) - I would love to hear what you think!

Thanks for practicing with us!

Taplio

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