Episode 073: A.S.K. Part 2: Acknowledge What You Are Feeling

My system for quieting your Monger (inner critic) and hearing from your Biggest Fan. First step: Acknowledge What You Are Feeling. I promise it isn't as painful as it sounds.

+ Read the Transcript

Hey everyone, I am so excited to be here. I'm excited to have you listening. If you have not listened to last week's episode, I highly recommend you go back and listen to Episode 72. It kind of kicks off this series that I'm doing, which is in honor of my upcoming book called The Happier Approach: Be Kind to Yourself, Live Happier, and Still Accomplish Your Goals, which is coming out January 30th. I wanted to do some teasers to that, give you some information about the content that's going to be in that book, encourage you to pre-order the book because I think this book is a game-changer, and I'm very excited about the content in it.

And I wanted to give a little background story into how the book got written and how the idea came about. For years I would teach these classes on how to quiet your inner critic, and in the classes, I would do what I've always heard to do, what I was taught to do, what I taught other people to do, all the books I've read, talked about two things.

One, find your inner critic, you know, get to know her and be able to pull her out of yourself, so the key I was taught is to make the Monger become another person that you realize that wait, that's a Monger talking, and that's not myself talking. That's a voice that's separate from me, which I still do in my work around Mongers.

But the second piece was to then be self-compassionate and be kind to yourself. So step one, really get to know your Monger. Step two, be self-compassionate. And so I would teach classes on this topic, and I worked with my clients in really getting to know their Mongers and being able to draw pictures of their Mongers and understand the themes their Mongers had and what their Monger talked about. We would spend lots of time on the subject of what does your Monger look like. Then we would do a little bit about "be kind to yourself," and it was always like this frivolous be kind to yourself part.

A couple of years ago, I was teaching this class, and I taught it to a group of women that I know well, and one of them, who's a very close friend of mine, came up to me after, and she was like, "It was amazing. You did a great job. I love the presentation. It was absolutely fabulous. It doesn't apply to me, though, because I still need my Monger. I won't get anything done if I don't have my Monger."

And we laughed and joked around about how her Monger was helping her, blah, blah, blah. As I got home, I realized that's kind of how I feel too, that I won't get anything done without this Monger. So from that point on, I stopped teaching as much about the Monger. I pulled back because I was like, this isn't working, A, and B, I'm getting eaten alive by this Monger, and I don't quite know what to do with it because I have a secret belief that I need my Monger.

So, way back years ago, she put the notion in my head that we need a different way. So I figured out after years of working on this and researching, and doing my own work and helping clients, that it wasn't so much that we needed to do this big piece about getting to know our Monger and understanding her. It was more about part B, which was how to be kind to yourself. That was the piece that had so much complexity and so much depth to it, and we would just do this blanket "be kind to yourself" piece.

The book The Happier Approach dives into that piece. Exploring the piece of what does our Monger look like. But, more so, what does it look like to not have something telling you what to do all the time, and what does it look like to be kind to yourself and how does that work when we're so used to be nasty to ourselves all the time? That's kind of a backstory on how this all got involved, and I just was talking to that same friend earlier this week. I had given out a free copy to the group that had come to that presentation I had done years ago, and I called her and said, "You are part of the reason this book exists because you challenged me by saying, 'Wait a minute. I love my inner critic,' and she was like, 'I don't love my inner critic. I just need it,' and I was like, noted, I totally get that. It's for those of us who have a love-hate relationship with our Monger, and we know we don't want it to be in our lives. It drives us crazy, but we can't imagine a life without it."

So that is the spirit of this book, The Happier Approach. With that, last week, I talked about the three steps I think are necessary to bring in what I call the Biggest Fan. And the Biggest Fan is the person in our head, similar to the Monger, except the Biggest Fan wants us to get stuff done. She is supportive of us and is wise and kind. This is the voice that is kinda quiet, probably for most of us because you're probably not used to hearing that voice because your Monger is just so loud and so overwhelming.

The Biggest Fan voice is very quiet, but she keeps us on our goals. She always knows what's best for us, and she is very kind and wise and pushing us toward our goals. What I like to say is that there's the Monger who's the voice that's continuously berating us. There's the B.F.F. who is the voice that's like, "Go ahead. Do whatever you want." I call her our false self-compassion, so a lot of us think self-compassionate with ourselves, but in reality, we just have a B.F.F. The B.F.F. and the Monger argue and go back and forth all the time. They're like siblings constantly fighting.

And then there's the Biggest Fan, who is the voice of wisdom and kindness who says, "You can do this. It's okay. It's going to be hard but let's keep plugging along." To channel the Biggest Fan, when we hear our Monger talking, we need to engage in what I call A.S.K., and we need to ask to hear from our Biggest Fan. A.S.K. is an abbreviation for Acknowledging what you're feeling, Slow down and get into your body, and Kindly pull back to see the big picture.

So last week, I did an overview of A.S.K., and this week I want to dive specifically into Acknowledging what you're feeling. The first thing I want to say is that no one wants to acknowledge what they're feeling, and I get that. You know, I joke that I went into therapy so I could figure out my feelings and be able to justify them away, and I would never have to deal with them at all. It isn't so much I am the opposite of most therapists, and I hate feelings, especially those negative, you know, sadness and anger and anxiety and fear. Those are hard to deal with.

For a lot of us, we were taught let's just pretend they don't exist. Just keep moving on. Just keep soldiering on. Think positive. Be grateful. Whenever those negative feelings come up, just push them down and soldier on and forget they even exist. The idea of acknowledging your feelings is scary and is one that people are going to be like, "Yeah, no, I'm not doing that." So bear with me. Keep listening. I promise it's not as painful as it sounds.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by Acknowledge what you're feeling and why this is so important. Let's take the example of you're caregiving for an elderly parent. Your Monger steps in and is like, "You're totally dropping the ball. They are unsafe in their home by themselves. I can't believe you're doing this. You suck. You're a terrible daughter. How can you be doing this?" And just really hammering you.

And so, the ability to acknowledge what you're feeling is simply to pause and say, "Oh my gosh. I am so scared that one day I'm going to be sick like this. Are my kids going to be able to take care of me? Am I going to be a burden to someone?" Or, "Oh my gosh. I'm so scared of losing my parent. It just makes me so sad to think that they may not be here one day." Or, "I am so angry that this disease has taken over my life and my parent's life, and I just don't know what to do with all this anger I'm experiencing."

So the idea of just being able to label it and own it, and what we do is when our Monger comes in and says, "You shouldn't be feeling this way" or "You shouldn't be upset" or "You should be doing a better a job," we immediately jump into, "Okay, I need to be sucking this up, and I need to be doing this differently."

And so we immediately go into justifying our behavior and justifying what we're doing or trying to rationalize it away. "So I shouldn't be feeling scared. That's stupid because it's going to be fine. This isn't going to happen to me" or "I have kids, and that's what they're there for, and they'll take care of everything."

So we jump into denial. We jump into a superb rationalization. We don't give ourselves the, "Oh sweet pea, you're right. This is so hard right now." Instead of acknowledging the feeling and giving ourselves some grace around that feeling, we immediately jump into fixing it, avoiding it, or stuffing it down. That's the beauty of acknowledging what you're feeling. It's just allowing a little space to come in so that you can hear the "It's totally understandable you're feeling this way." That's all you have to say. "Wow, this must be hard."

And I love the phrase, "Oh sweet pea." It's just a term of endearment that I say to myself. For me, I know that's what the Biggest Fan would say to me is, "Oh sweet pea. Oh my gosh, this is so hard. You're right. Let's give yourself a little room here." That immediately just relaxes everything—the minute you acknowledge and give yourself the permission just to feel that.

You know, a really simple example is a lot of us are exhausted. We're so tired from jumping from thing to thing and running and pushing ourselves so hard, and the minute we admit, "Wait a minute. I'm a little tired today," a Monger jumps in with, "What? How can you be tired? You got eight hours of sleep" or "You're supposed to be superwoman" or "You have too many things to do. You can't be tired. This can't be happening."

Instead of softening and saying, "It's not a personal defeat that I'm tired. I'm just tired. That's all it is." That piece of acknowledging what's going on and giving yourself that trust to say, "I don't have to keep denying a large part of my life. I can just make room for it here. I can acknowledge that this is happening, and it doesn't mean I need to do anything."

When I acknowledge, "Wait a minute, I'm tired," then I can pull back and see is there a chance for a five-minute nap today, or can I go for a walk and try to re-energize? How can I take care of myself? When we spend our lives in justification and analyzing it, that's a huge one that we do. We just analyze the feeling. Well, why am I feeling sad? The analyzing it is trying to find a justification for why you feel sad, and your Monger will never give you the justification. That is the power of just saying, "I'm just going to own it. I'm just going to own that. I'm sad. I don't have to find a reason for it. I just am going to label that it's there, and that's what I'm feeling." That's all step one is about.

Now, a lot of times, people have resistance to this step because we are so afraid, those of us that have the love-hate relationship with our Monger, we're so afraid that we're going to be whiny or needy or overly emotional. To the minute it comes up that I'm feeling sad or I'm feeling scared, in rushes the Monger saying, "You're needy" or "You're too much." So start recognizing, "Wait a minute. By acknowledging the fact that I am sad right now, which is a pretty normal human reaction to a parent being sick, am I being overly emotional? Am I too much? No. You're pretty normal here."

So the idea that we who have trained ourselves to keep it down and stuff it down and soldier on, any emotion that comes up that is slightly less than positive, we totally hammer ourselves with it. To start recognizing how often you do that, and the pressure and the stress that is caused by pushing down our feelings is so overwhelming. It just amplifies everything ten-fold.

So all it involves is acknowledging, acknowledging what you're feeling, simply saying to yourself, "Oh my gosh. I'm feeling sad right now." Now trust me. I know there's a lot of pushback around this concept. I know that the idea of doing this is scary, and your Monger is going to flip out, but what I want you to do is practice it this week. This week when you notice your Monger talking, and you're feeling especially hammered, stop and say, "What am I feeling?" Just start labeling it. "I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling scared. I'm feeling angry." No justification is necessary. No positive thinking necessary. No gratitude is necessary. Just labeling the feelings. That's all I want you to do. Step one, acknowledge what you're feeling.

Okay, so that's Acknowledge. The first step in A.S.K., how to channel in your Biggest Fan. This is all from my book called The Happier Approach. So that's the show. Thanks for listening.

---

Episode 072: The Power of A.S.K.

Today I am sharing my system for quieting your Monger (inner critic) and hearing from your Biggest Fan

+ Read the Transcript

Hey everyone, I am so excited to be back. It has been quite a while before Thanksgiving, before I did a podcast. I have missed you all, and I hope you had a fabulous holiday season and had a good time with friends and family, and were able to find some peace and joy in your holidays. Today, I want to talk about the power of ASK. ASK is the abbreviation for the system I use to call in my biggest fan.

The system is going to be talked about in my upcoming book. It's coming out on January 30th called the happy approach. In the happy approach, I talk about this idea. Because the book is coming out at the end of this month, I wanted to give you all a sneak peek into what the system is all about and what I mean when I say ASK.

Today, I'm going to go over just kind of a brief introduction to ASK. And then, over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be diving into each letter in more depth. And so, you can get a sneak peek before the book comes out on January 30th, and hopefully, you will want to buy and learn more about the system. I am so excited about this 'cause it is one of those things that every time I practice it, I'm like, "Oh my God, this works!" I'm just shocked that the system that I came up with really works.

It is something I developed, yes, but the idea of it is nothing new. Personal development and self-help it's all pretty much the same. You have to feel your feeling; you have to get into your body; you have to see the big picture. That stuff is universal. This system works for me and my clients who tend to be more type A, super driven, carry a lot of stress, carry a lot of expectations for themselves. Their Mongers just really run the show. And so, this ASK system is for those of us who are overwhelmed by our Mongers. I have found, and my clients have found, that it really works.

That's the thing I'm most excited about. Because for years, I tried to do it the way everyone kept telling me to do it. To be grateful and to think positively, and to argue with my Monger, tell my Monger how much I loved her. That just did not work for me. So, I have spent some time trying to find something that would. And so, I came up with ASK.

ASK is three parts. A, acknowledge what you're feeling. S, slow done and get into your body. And K, kindly pull back to see the big picture. How it works is when you are getting attacked by your Monger, and that's a big step right there. Just to be able to hear yourself getting attacked by your Monger. In the book, I have a lot of resources on how to start recognizing your Monger. But we've talked a lot about the Monger here, and a lot of those myths and all that stuff. Hopefully, you have a little bit of a head start on what your Monger sounds like.

When you start hearing your Monger, the first thing I do is I usually say, "Okay, I need to hear from my biggest fan." So, I ask to hear from my biggest fan, and the first thing I do is acknowledge what you're feeling. This is a huge, huge step that for those of us who have been raised with suck it up buttercup and soldier on, the acknowledging what we're feeling piece is challenging. I actually wrote something about this on Facebook this week because everyone's been talking about the Oprah speech, which was absolutely amazing, the Golden Globes.

Everyone keeps talking about the idea of speaking your truth and how powerful that is. And I have big-time red flags that go up around that. First, if we're going to practice speaking our truth, we need to practice listening to other people's truths as well. It is one thing to speak your truth; it's another thing to have it be heard. We, as humans, just really need to practice our ability to listen to that. But that's for another podcast. What I think is, when we're speaking our truth, we need to start speaking our truth with ourselves. I've talked about this here about labeling what we're feeling and owning it, there is a podcast episode I did a few months ago, and that's what I'm talking about. Acknowledging what you're feeling, I'm feeling sad, or I'm feeling scared right now, or I'm feeling overwhelmed.

A great example of this would be, this is an example actually from a client this week. She was saying that her Monger was telling her, "You really should get some work done." It was a Sunday; she wanted to watch the Golden Globes, she didn't really want to do some work. Her Monger was like, "You need to be working. What's your problem? You should be working from home." We went through the ASK process, and she was like, "Well, acknowledging what I'm feeling, I'm feeling annoyed that my Monger is talking to me."

And I was like, "Yeah, but go a little deeper and acknowledge what you're feeling. You're feeling scared that you're going to lose your job. You're feeling overwhelmed with all the work you have to do. Angry that you have so much to do," etc., etc. I asked her to go a little deeper beyond. I'm just feeling tired, or I'm just feeling annoyed at my Monger, to be like, "Wait, I'm feeling scared that I'm behind and I'm going to lose my job. I'm feeling overwhelmed with all the work I have to do. I'm feeling angry that the deadlines are approaching, and I don't know what's up next."

So, to dig a little deeper, acknowledging what you're feeling is key. But when you're first starting this, if you can just say, "Oh no, I'm tired," or "I'm overwhelmed," or "I'm scared right now." 'Cause we tell ourselves, "Hurry up, move on, get it together, what's your problem?" We don't acknowledge what we're feeling. That process of acknowledging what you're feeling starts to slow your body down and get into what's happening. And then you could move on to S, which is slow down and get into your body.

And slow down and get into your body is simply one of the weekly rituals that I've talked about here every week. One of the ideas of wiggle, or dance, or touch your toes, some way of getting in your body. That just forces you to slow down; the power of that is incredible to me. The power of slowing down and getting it to our bodies is truly life-changing, even if it's for 10 seconds. Ten seconds, 20 seconds, it doesn't have to be five minutes. If you do five minutes, that's great. But for a lot of us, that's just so overwhelming to do five minutes. And so, the idea of acknowledging what's going on, slowing down and getting into my body for 10 seconds, and then K, kindly pulling back to see the big picture.

We'll go back to my client example who acknowledges what she was feeling, and she's feeling scared that she might lose her job. S is slow down; she got into her body, touched her toes or whatever, and then K kindly pull back to see the big picture. Well, the big picture could be, "Okay, I'm ahead of the deadline." The big picture could be, "I'm behind the deadline. I need to get more time in. Where can I get that time in?" Or maybe, "I work better in the morning. So, I'm going to get up early in the morning and hit that." Or, "Maybe I'm going to start asking for help at work and get my coworker to join in and help me figure this out."

The power of pulling back and see the big picture is, you can give yourself some options that aren't necessarily, "Oh my gosh, I have to do this tonight. I have to work tonight at 9, but I want to watch the Golden Globes." And our Mongers push us so hard without really seeing the big picture because our Monger lives in black and white. To her, it's work now, or you're going to lose your job. When in reality is lots of options there. Ask someone for help, do it at a different time, maybe crackdown on your distractions that you would have at work, and really focus more when you're doing your work. There's a lot of options. That's the concept of ask. When you hear your Monger, Acknowledge what you're Feeling, slow down and get into your body, and kindly pull back to see the big picture.

Now, a lot of times, when you hear these ideas, the first thing people will say when you're spinning out on anxiety is, you need to slow down and get into your body. The reason that is not the first step in this process is because that's the last thing we want to do. Truth be told, that's why I'm so amazed every time I get into my body that it works so well. Because I don't want to do it. And so, Acknowledging what you're Feeling gives you a little teaser, a mental exercise, a way to ease into that process of, "Oh wait, I'm putting myself first, I want to hear from my Biggest Fan, so I'm going to acknowledge what I'm feeling."

Those of us that the system works for love analyzing and justifying and can get good at that intellectualizing. Acknowledging what you feel allows us to do a little bit of that practice before we have to slow down and get into our bodies. And then, once we can slow down and get into our bodies, that gives us the chance to pull back and be able to see the big picture. Which is where the key is to unhooking that black and whiteness of the Monger.

That's the idea behind the Happier Approach, ASK, Acknowledge what you're feeling, Slow down and get into your body, and Kindly pull back to see the big picture. Like I said, over the next few weeks, I will be diving into each one of these concepts a little deeper so that you can figure them out and practice them in your own life. And if you want to pre-order the Happier Approach book, you can simply go to HappierApproach.com, and you can download an audio version or a Kindle version or a print copy, and we'll send that out to you on January 30th.

Okay. Usually, I do the weekly ritual challenge at this stage of the game in the podcast, and I'm going to be pausing that for 2018 and just giving that a little bit of break. Obviously, I still believe in the power of the weekly ritual because it's slow down and get into your body. Last year, my challenge was to do a different weekly ritual every week, and that happened. This year, I just really want you to be practicing getting into your body and figuring out which of the weekly rituals from last year you enjoy the most.

---

Episode 063: Even More Myths of the Monger

Our Monger (that nasty inner voice) keeps us stuck in myths that make us feel more stressed and overwhelmed. Today I am unraveling 2 more of those myths: The Myth that THEY have it figured out The Myth that there is a Right Way.

+ Read the Transcript

I'm very excited this week to be back talking about More Myths of the Monger. A couple of weeks ago, I started out talking about the biggest myth of the Monger, and that is that we need the Monger. And then, two weeks ago, in episode 61, I started the myths of the Monger, and I talked about the myth of the finish line and the myth of being vigilant and worrying. This week, we're going to be talking about two myths, and that is the myth that they have figured it out and the myth that there is a right way.

I briefly want to touch on, for those of you that don't know and haven't listened to my stuff, what it is, when I say Monger, what I'm talking about. A monger is that nasty voice in your head that kind of tells you how you failed, how you didn't hit the mark, how you weren't quite up to snuff, how you shouldn't risk anything or get out of your comfort zone. It's kind of that voice that constantly keeps us in check and constantly is there. My theory and I found it in my life and my client's life that the more we keep our Monger unchecked, the more it doubles and triples and quadruples our stress loads. We're already stressed out, and then we have this voice in our heads telling us how much we failed and how terrible we are, and it isn't helping things.

The insidiousness of the Monger is that it keeps us stuck in these myths. These myths keep it going, keep it alive, and we spend a lot of time trying to fulfill the myth that the Monger is telling us. This week, the two myths are the myth that they have figured out and the myth that there is a right way. Let's go into the myth that they have it figured out first. This one has just gotten tenfold with social media. We live in a world where everyone else's beautiful, manicured outsides are there for us to observe. People can curate photos and have them looked at through Facebook or Instagram, and then we immediately think, "Oh my gosh. They have it so together. Their life is perfect. I am a failure."

My favorite saying is, "Stop comparing your insides to other people's outsides." We see these beautiful photos, these beautiful images that people are putting out into the world, and we assume that's how they live their lives because we see our insides, and we just naturally assume that they are better than us. The idea that everyone else has it figured out is such an incredible incredible myth because no one has it figured out. No one has it together. When you look at those Instagram posts, they probably took 7, 8, to 10 pictures to get it to look that beautiful.

They're not sending you pictures of their kids yelling at them and their husband coming home and the craziness of cooking dinner. They're sending date night photos, or they're showing you what it's like to go on a family vacation. It's little tidbits of people's life. It is not the ultimate. And so to watch how often you compare your insides to other people's outsides, because it leaves us feeling lost and sad and that we can't measure up. When in reality, what we measure ourselves against is not reality.

One of my favorite examples of this is my cousin. In the first year of her daughter's life, she was doing the monthly photos, like, "Here is three months. Here's four months." I don't remember what month it was, it might have been five months, and she shows a picture of my second cousin with her little five-month plaque, and there's my second cousin looking so gorgeous and beautiful and calm. She takes that photo, and then she takes the photo of what's happening in the house. And there, her son is jumping on her partner, and they're wrestling, and the house is a mess, and all this craziness is happening. I thought, "Yes, that is was what life is really like." Here's the perfectly curated photo of the four-month-old, and here's what's happening in our lives.

The Monger keeps us from authenticity, and authenticity is where happiness lives. The more we can live authentically, the happier we're going to be. So I'm encouraging you to pay attention to how often you get stuck in that myth of, oh my gosh, they have it figured out. They know what they're doing. They, they, they, they, they. They don't have it anymore figured out than you do. So the wonderful analogy of staying in your car, being responsible for your stuff, and figuring out what's going on in your life instead of worrying about them, because that keeps us stuck in time-wasting and anxiety and all that stuff that is not helpful to us.

Okay. The second myth that I wanted to talk about is one of my personal favorites. I've talked about it a lot. I might have even have done another podcast on it, but the idea that there is a right way. Our Monger loves that there is a right way. They send us on this wild goose chase, trying to find the right way. When you think about it, it's just so absurd, the idea that there is a right way. This is one of my triggers, and I can get obsessed with finding the right way. What I mean by that is there a right way to drive. There's a right way to make the bed. There's a right way to do laundry. There's a right way to cook a meal. There's the right way to be a mom. There's the right way to run a meeting. We have a million of them.

To pay attention to how often you get stuck in, "There's a right way," and I literally will have to say to myself, when I'm going to the grocery store, "There is no right way to do this." Or when I get in the car to drive home, and I'm trying to find the best route to avoid traffic, to remind myself, "There is no right way." There's no perfect way to get home. You will not get an award at the end of the time. When you pull into your garage, there isn't a little man standing there saying, "Yay, you did it the right way." That doesn't exist. So to pay attention to how often you get stuck in that idea of the right way, the right way, it gets insidious when you start paying attention to it.

I remember when I started noticing this in my life. My husband would point out to me every time I was triggered with the right way. I mean, I would get upset about not doing the right way to make a sandwich, it had to be the most efficient way, and it had to be the most together way. It kept me stuck in my anxiety and my worry. As I've talked about before, that Monger keeps us stuck in the black-and-white thinking. There's a right way, and there's a wrong way, and it doesn't allow us any wiggle room, so being able to expand beyond that wiggle room and be say, "Oh my gosh, there are a lot of ways to do it."

That's what's so insidious about the Monger; if you could see me, I'm shaking my head in madness. It keeps us stuck in the right way, and the right way changes for each person. I may have, "This is the right way to make a bed," and you may have a "This is the right way to make the bed," and both of them are completely different. We get so stuck in this absurd, undefined right, and we spend our lives hunting it down when it doesn't exist. That's the thing that all these myths have in common, the end game never exists. We never get there. We never measure up to them and what they are doing. We never find the right way and get the reward. We always are struggling to get there. That is the ultimate part about the Monger and why it is so important that we work on her because she keeps us stuck in these loops. We get stuck on the treadmill, and we can't get off, so bringing awareness to our Monger and the myths that are keeping us stuck is powerful.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Look Up and Make Eye Contact

Our Mongers keep us stuck in limited thinking where we don't see a lot of options. So this week, we will try to play with our peripheral vision to help our minds expand and see other options.

Extend your arms to your side in a T-formation and wiggle your fingers. Then slowly bring your arms forward until the fingers are in sight, and then extend them out again.

---

Episode 061: More Myths of the Monger

Our Monger (that nasty inner voice) keeps us stuck in myths that make us feel more stressed and overwhelmed.
Today I am unraveling some more of those myths.

+ Read the Transcript

Hey, everyone. I am back. I apologize. I kind of just fell off the face of the earth. So, what I've been doing in my time off is I've been writing a book. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe it. There is a big difference between writing a blog and writing a book. So, it has been a major undertaking, but I'm making big headway.

I'm excited about the topic, which is more about mongers and biggest fans, and how we can stop hustling so much and still be happier because I think many of us are struggling with that concept that we have to be hustling, hustling, hustling, to be happier. And I have found in my life and working with my clients that that is not the case. So, in one of the chapters of my book, I talk about the myths of the Monger and how the Monger keeps us stuck intentionally.

In the last episode, back in June, I talked about the main myth of the Monger, which is that you need the Monger. So, I'm going to continue that. That's why this episode is called, "More Myths of the Monger." So, I'm going to continue that and talk about what you can do to be aware of those myths and work against them. So, this week, I'm going to talk about two main mongers, and then next week, I'll pick up and talk about a couple more.

But the biggest myth that the Monger keeps us stuck in is the actual idea of the myth of the finish line. The idea that at some point, we will be done. At some point, we will be happier. At some point, we will have checked everything off the list, and we will have arrived at this amazing place, and we can stop. We can stop working; we can stop hustling; we can stop pushing so hard. Once we get to that magical place, then everything will be okay.

And that is a dangerous myth because there is no place. There is no end. The end is when we die. That's the bluntness. There is no magical place where we can sustain happiness, and it sticks around forever, and we never experience pain again. That place does not exist, and so the myth is that if we keep pushing, we can find that we're more worthy, if we're better people, if we are perfectionists, if we do it right, then we'll get to that magical place.

So, the key is to keep reminding yourself when you hear that and you find yourself hustling, hustling, hustling, for that magical place, to lovingly remind yourself this is it. There is no place. So, right now, today, that's what we have. So, today, I can be hustling, hustling, hustling. I got up early to do this podcast because I promised myself I would start back up. And here I am between clients. I have to run to the grocery store. We have family coming to town. There's a lot of stuff on the list today. It's also a beautiful day. I'm sitting here with my cat.

There are pluses and minuses to everything. The day is the day. So, the idea that if I do today perfectly, then I can end the day feeling better is a myth because I've missed the whole day trying to do it perfectly. So really be aware of how often your Monger convinces you in little ways in how you do the day, too big ways in how you do your life. So the myth shows up a lot—the myth of the finish line. Once I arrive, wherever that may be, I will be happier, and you're not. You have to make a choice every day to show up and embrace the mess that is our lives. And in that mess, there are positives and negatives and in-betweens, and we need to learn how to just live there instead of constantly be striving for what's next.

So, that's the first myth I want to talk about, the myth of the finish line. The second myth is a really strong one for those of us that struggle with anxiety, and I am one of them, and that is the myth of worry and vigilance. So, the mongers keep us stuck in these myths to keep us trapped and safe. The theory is that the Monger wants to keep us safe, and so to keep us safe, we really can't do much of anything because anything outside of the normal zone is unsafe, and therefore scary, and something bad might happen to us.

So, in the idea, the Monger is kind of like an abusive parent that wants us to be trapped in the house all the time. So, it keeps us kidnapped and captured. So, the myth of worry and vigilance is kind of the idea that if we spend all of our time in this worrying place, and if we think, "Oh, if ... as long as I'm vigilant and I plan, I can make sure that everything is okay," we don't really do a lot. My former therapist used to call it, and I hate this name, but she used to call it mental masturbation.

Because it is the idea that we get stuck in mental masturbation, so we're just going off on this worry and this vigilance and trying to make sure all of our ducks in a row and, "What if this happens, and what if that happens?" By doing that, we miss our lives, and so we don't show up in our lives. And the Monger is happy about that because if we don't show up in our lives, nothing bad can happen to us.

So, the Monger keeps us stuck in the idea of worry and vigilance, and worry and vigilance isn't helping anything. You hear the news that, like for me, example. The family's coming into town. So, there's a lot of things that could go wrong with family coming into town. A lot of things could go right with that too, but there are a lot of things that can go wrong. So, I can get caught up in trying to plan out everything and pace everything and make sure everything's okay, and worry about all the different relationships and all the different dynamics, and try to take control of the whole thing.

But in reality, I have no control. These are all adults. We're all trying to figure it out. There is no way of making sure every one is perfect and happy and having a great time. I can only take care of myself and the things that I can control. And those things are like making sure everyone has food and making sure everyone has a clean place to stay, and making sure that I show up and I'm present, and I'm not overly tired. And if I am tired, I take a break, which I take care of myself.

My brother and I used to spend hours on the phone talking about my dad when he was sick, and what we would do and what would happen and what if this, and what if that, and going through various scenarios, and trying to figure out the best way. Because we had so much anxiety, and we were so worried about him. And then he died, and all of that time was wasted trying to figure out what's best, what's going to work because we didn't know. And living in that "I don't know what's going to happen" place is really hard. So, we need to take control of that rather than just allowing ourselves to spin off on this mental masturbation piece.

So, I encourage you, when you find yourself stuck in this worry and vigilance, to ask yourself, "What can I control here?" I could not control what was happening to my dad, the illness that was happening to him. And I knew the rules of the game. I knew he wanted to stay at home. I knew he didn't want to leave the house. There were certain things in place that I couldn't change. So, no matter how many times I talked about it with my brother about moving him into an assisted living or whatever, it was never going to happen because he didn't want that to happen.

So, you have a friend who's going in for surgery, and you're worried about them, that's okay, but you can't go into the operating room and make sure everything's okay. And the worrying isn't helping your friend. Showing up, being present, being there for them in the best ways possible, being there for yourself, that's how you take care of yourself. What changed all this was remembering that the Monger just wants me to stay stuck in worry and vigilance.

So, it became "I'm not going to ..." My stubborn streak kicked in, and I was like, "I'm not going to give this to you, Mr. Monger." I'm not going to give you my worry and vigilance. I'm not going to give you my time because I have better things to do. So, I'm going to be aware of when I get stuck in spinning out on worry and vigilance, and I'm going to start showing up for my life."

It's a choice. It's a tough choice, and it's a challenging choice to catch yourself in. So, again, go easy on yourself because it takes a long time to unhook. I still get stuck in worry and vigilance. It is a genetic thing, and I learned it from my parents as well. So, paying attention to when it's happening is the first step in letting go of that.

Okay, so those are my two myths that I want you to start paying attention to this week. One is the myth of the finish line, which does not exist, and you have to show up every day. The other is the myth of worry and vigilance, which again is about showing up for your life and, "What can I control, what can I take care of here?" So, as you start paying attention to these myths, you can start unraveling that Monger and welcoming in the biggest fan.

As I said, I'm working on a book. I'm hoping it's going to come out later this year, early 2018. We'll see how that goes. Cross our fingers. And all this information will be in there as well. I'm excited about talking more about this and having this be more of a theme than it has been, but taking it to a deeper level because I think the idea of hustling for our happiness keeps a lot of us stuck in depression and anxiety. There is no finish line.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Massage Your Hand

This week's challenge is simply to massage your hand. You can do this one when you're stuck in a meeting, waiting for a pot to boil, standing in line, or just watching TV. Just take 20 seconds and massage your hand. Massage your hands by gently squeezing one hand with the other between the palm and fingers. Then using your thumb, stroke your palm gently from your fingers to your wrist. You can go up and down your fingers. You can do whatever it is.

---

Episode 060: Without my Monger, I Won't Get Anything Done

The biggest obstacle to quieting the voice of the Monger is the belief that without the Monger (inner critic) you will be an unmotivated sloth who accomplishes nothing. In this episode, I discuss how to quiet your inner critic AND accomplish everything you desire.

+ Read the Transcript

It's a beautiful Monday, and I am here to talk about our Monger. Monger is my term for the inner critic, and I have found that the number one reason we struggle with dealing with our Monger is that idea that we find her motivating. There is a secret belief that a lot of us have, and I was included in this camp, that without our Monger, we wouldn't get anything done. We need that voice in our heads to constantly tell us how behind we are, how much we're going to mess up, how much of a failure we are, how slow we are, how much of a loser we are. We constantly need that voice to motivate us to do more.

It's hard to want to get rid of your Monger that you hate because you find it shaming and belittling, and it makes you feel bad about yourself, and it increases stress tenfold, and it makes you feel a lot of overwhelm, and exhaustion, and anxiety. But at the same time, as we want to get rid of that anxiety, we also have bought into the idea that without it, we would be on the couch as a lump; we wouldn't get anything done. So we believe that the motivation of that shaming and belittling is the key.

That is why all the time, all the work I've done with inner critic and Monger over the years, and the number one thing people say is, "Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be your own best friend." For me, it did not work. My best friend always gives me a pass. My best friend can justify anything that I want to do, any bad behavior I want to have. My best friend is on board; she is ready to blow off work, she's ready to blow off the exercise class. She is game for anything and is great at justifying all the behaviors that I'm trying to change in my life.

When everybody would say, you know, all the gurus and all the experts would say, "Okay, if you don't want to get rid of this inner critic, you need to challenge that constant love voice." To me, that was so confusing because the constant love voice was just too scary to go that far. Going all the way into the constant love was just a little too freaky cause I didn't trust that if I went to the pure love of myself, I would get anything done. My whole life, I've bought into this idea that the only way to achieve is to hammer yourself and to be belittling and beat yourself up. The only way to counter that then is to be 100%, to give yourself 100% love, and 100% of a pass, and those two things were just too far apart in my life. It was just too much to go there.

What I have developed and what I came up with for my life was, what if I combined the two? What if I took the best traits of my Monger, which is that it motivates me. The best trait of my Monger is it knows what we need to do next. It knows where we need to go. If I want to feel better in my body and feel better about how I look and such, my Monger knows. "Well, we need to work out. We need to watch what we eat." It knows the rules. It's message for getting me to follow the rules, quote/unquote, "Not helpful." The tone is not helpful. What it's sometimes saying can be helpful. I have found that taking the message of the Monger, taking off the shaming and belittling piece, and adding in the love piece that comes from self-compassion and 100% love for yourself. Pulling those two traits together creates what I have found, call the "Biggest fan."

The biggest fan can be motivating without the shaming and belittling. A great example of this for me is right now; I have gotten out of shape. I think I've talked about this before. I've gotten out of shape, and something I valued was being in shape and being able to do whatever anyone was up for. I could ride my bike; I could hike; I could do anything. As I've gotten older and I've had a couple of injuries that have stopped me. I'm not as in shape as I used to be.

The message of my biggest fan, the message of my Monger, let's do that one first. The message of my Monger is that I am a middle-aged out of shape woman. "How could you let yourself go like this?" And, "How could you let yourself become this." And even nastier talk comes from my Monger about this subject. My super compassionate person, the super love, is like, "You look great however you look. It doesn't matter; you're fine. It's beautiful; you're beautiful, you're beautiful." But, in truth, "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful" isn't really how I want to be feeling. I want to be back in shape.

We need a little motivation, but I don't want to be motivated by the fact that I'm a loser, or I'm overweight, or that I look bad, or I'm middle-aged, or whatever the motivational piece the Monger's going to use. To combine both of those together and take the best traits of both is to say, "Okay, sweetheart. Yeah, you are middle-aged. Yeah, you are out of shape. We can change that. It can happen. All you need to do is recognize how much better your body feels when you move it." Giving myself the love of these things is true, and that doesn't mean you're a terrible person. It doesn't mean you're evil; it just means this stuff's true. We have to acknowledge the truth. That's the motivational piece; we have to acknowledge the truth with love and kindness.

I can say, "Hey, yeah. You are middle-aged." That's a fact. "You are overweight." That's a fact. You are out of shape, "That's a fact." I can choose what to do with those. Right now, what I'm choosing to do is to say, "You know what? I am overweight. I love my body, and I love not worrying about what I eat. I spent too many years obsessing about food and obsessing about what I looked like, so I'm done with that. But what I love is being able to move my body whenever I want to." That's something I'm going to work on, is getting back in shape so that I can move my body.

See, that motivational piece is so different. This morning when I wake up, and I don't want to workout, and I think, "Oh, just think how much better you feel when you move your body." That gets me downstairs into our gym to work out. The idea that I'm an overweight, middle-aged, out-of-shape person does not get me downstairs to work out in the basement cause then all I'm thinking about is all that shame and belittling. What is motivating is recognizing this is something I can change, and I want to change. I want to become more in shape because I love my body, and I love myself, and I want to do whatever it is I want to do.

You can see the difference there, I hope, that while the Monger does serve as a motivation, it's a crappy shaming and belittling motivation that isn't all that motivating when we break it down. We've convinced ourselves it's motivating; we've convinced ourselves that if we do what the Monger says, we won't feel this crappy, this shaming and belittling, but we still do. What happens if we let the Monger motivate us, and I say, "Okay, I'm going to go downstairs, and I'm going to work out because I don't want to feel like a middle-aged, out-of-shape loser."

Then I go downstairs, and I work out, and I don't feel good because I'm just constantly telling myself that, "I'm a middle-aged, out-of-shape loser." How is that motivating? When I go downstairs with the biggest fan saying, "Okay, here we go. We're going to do this; we're going to change our bodies. Every little bit that we workout is that much closer to being more in shape and feeling better." It's all positive. The idea that I convince myself, "I'm going to go down in the basement and do what my monger tells me, and then I won't feel bad about myself anymore," is wrong. Because of the Monger, you will always lose. The Monger then will say, "You didn't workout hard enough. You didn't work out long enough. You didn't do enough reps. You didn't do enough cardio. You didn't do enough weights." Whatever the Monger always finds a bar to raise.

That's the problem with using our Monger as motivation, is we never hit it cause she always changes it, cause she always wants us not to be hitting the bar. We have to channel that biggest fan and get that biggest fan in there to say, "Yes, you went downstairs, you worked out, you moved your body, that was the goal. Check, check, check, check, check. Nicely done." It's a totally different way of looking at this, and I wanted to talk about it because I think that idea that the Monger is motivating is such a harsh lie that we believe. So, what can you do about it? Because it's hard just to change that overnight. I want you to start paying attention to how often you are using the Monger as motivation. How often does it chime in there, and you think, "Oh, you're right, I need to go do what it says." Just paying attention to how often it's there. Building that awareness is step number one.

Then step number two is if you can lovingly add an and. To say, "You better get down." If I say to myself, "You better get downstairs cause you are an out-of-shape, middle-aged loser." To say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now, I am middle-aged, and I am out of shape, and I'm working on it. I'm going to get that back. And I'm going to go downstairs and move my body cause it feels so much better." If you can take the message of the Monger but cut out that shaming piece and that belittling piece, I tell you, your life will change. If you can get past this idea that, "I won't get anything done without my Monger."

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Notice the Trees

This weekly ritual is a shout-out to my Dad who loved trees. This week, look up take a breath, and notice the wondrous trees around you. This time of year they are gorgeous offering us shade from the sun or a cooling breeze. Pause, breathe and look up.

---

Episode 058: What are your rules?

Now and then I catch myself, reverting to the old habit of beating myself up for all the rules I am not following. These rules can keep us stuck in a cycle of beating ourselves up and unnecessary suffering.

+ Read the Transcript

This is one of my favorite topics, What Are Your Rules, because I feel like our mongers and that little voice that chomps in our head tends to have a lot of rules. What I mean by rules, they can range from anything, and sometimes these rules are so embedded, it takes us a while to figure out that they're there.

What I have found is I like my rules. So when I realize that I am being overwhelmed by rules, I'll just go through the day, and every time I hear a rule playing in my head, I'll just say it out loud, like, "Oh, there's another rule. Oh, there's another rule."

When I say rules, you might be like, "What do you mean by rules?" I'm talking about the absolutes that we say in our life. Like a good person always gets up before 8:00, or a good person always reads the paper. A good person always has dinner prepared for their kids. A good person responds to emails right away, as soon as they get one. A good person is always on top of things, always knows the answer, always makes coffee first.

We can have a thousand little rules that we say; a good person never lets the gas tank go below a quarter of a tank. A good person always has a clean car. A good person's yard is always mowed right away. I mean, I could go on and on and on and on and on with these rules. I think that's enough examples, but that gives you the idea of what are we telling ourselves?

The funny thing about these rules is they vary for all of us. They're different. So you may have the rule that you can't waste any food. A good person does not waste food. And so that is something you get hung up on, and you beat yourself up for when you go to the grocery store, and you buy strawberries, and you don't eat them.

And another person, such as myself, that isn't one of their rules. That is not one of my rules. I don't care if we put food in the compost pile. I know it's not awesome, but it's something I beat myself up for. So that's not something that plays heavily on my Monger's radar.

The funny thing about these rules is that they vary so that somebody else may have a strict rule that you can never drive the car beneath a quarter of a tank. My dad used to have that very strict rule. And he would beat himself up when it got below a quarter of a tank because it would panic him. I don't have that rule. I go until the light comes on, and I'm still kind of pushing it a little bit. It isn't one of the things that drive me.

So when you can start realizing, wait a minute, this is just my internal rule. There is no book of rules out there that's written. We got the 10 Commandments, but no bad things will happen to you if you don't do these rules. That doesn't exist. But in our brains, with our Monger telling us, it does. So my challenge to you is to kind of go through the next week and just really bring awareness to these rules. Notice how often you tell yourself, Oh, a good person does this.

When I catch myself, I have a rule in the morning when I get up; I have to do everything in a certain order. And a good person gets all my morning chores done in half an hour. And if I don't get it done in half an hour, if I don't get it done in a neat, tidy way, quickly as possible, then I'm a bad person. What's that about? Who cares how long it takes me in the morning? If I only have half an hour, that's a problem, but if I have the time, who cares how long my morning chores take me?

That efficiency is a big message of my Monger. So paying attention throughout the next week, what are the rules driving you and just bringing awareness to those. Then, as I always say, bringing lots of compassion to yourself. To be like, oh, wow. This is tough to be constantly living enjoying your mornings, but having to be super-efficient. What's that about? Bringing some compassion to, oh, sweetheart, it doesn't matter if you are the most efficient coffee maker in the world or not. It doesn't matter if the car goes below a quarter of a tank. It doesn't matter if we put strawberries on the compost pile. Life moves on. We will be okay.

Paying attention to what the rules are in your life, how often they spin around in your head, and then giving yourself lots of compassion around that. We spend a lot of time suffering because of these rules. These rules keep us stuck. They keep us trapped. They keep us feeling crappy about ourselves, to be honest because we think that we can't do such and such because of some made-up rule we have in our head.

When you figure out what these rules are for yourself, I challenge you to see where I can add some wiggle room? For example, in the morning, because that tends to be when I get hooked, the idea of my morning has to be super-efficient is to repeat to myself, "there is no right way to do your morning." There's a lot of ways we could do this in a lot of different orders. We could take our time. I have designed my schedule to have my mornings fairly flexible, so I have time in the morning, so give myself a break.

And also to recognize if you have a rule, if I have to cook a meal every night for my family, then flip that around and be like, where could I add some wiggle room for that? What's important to me about my family and cooking? What's important to me is my family feels loved. Or what's important to me is that my family gets a nutritious meal. It doesn't matter the source of that nutritious meal. It just is that that nutritious meal has to be on the table. That could come from eating out or bringing in. That could come from my husband cooking the meal. That could come from one of the kids stepping up and cooking the meal. So there's a variety of ways to get that need met.

Paying attention to this is a legit need that I would like to get met, or is this just how I'm trying to create order in my life? What I mean by that is that if you think about these rules that we have of a good person does that, a good person does that, I kind of think it's our brain's way of making sense of the world.

Because in all honesty, the world is grey. There is no black and white. There is no absolute. There is no right and wrong. There are things we shouldn't do, but there's no it has to be done this way. So that's a little stressful for those of us that like to know the rules. We like to know what's happening. We like to know the black and white. And so we'll make up rules.

We'll make up rules around eating; we'll make up rules around what to wear; we'll make up rules about what we should look like. Those rules give us some guidance and some ways to live our lives. The rules are helpful in that way. They relax us and let us know like this is the proper way to do things. That's great. Perfect. That works well.

The problem is when we use those rules, and we take them to the extreme point where we're beating ourselves up for them. When our mongers take over the rules, that's when we get in trouble. Because our mongers tell us we're bad people if we don't follow the rules. When the rules are just guidelines, they're just ways for us to make sense of the world. They're not hard and fast; we're not going to get punished; we're not good or bad based on the rule that we're living.

So to kind of pay attention to how much are these rules keeping you stuck? How much are these rules holding you back from doing something you want to do? Even if it's something tiny like I want to relax in the morning, but I'm so stressed out on making sure I get just everything done right. I want to enjoy my evenings, but I'm so obsessed with cooking dinner for my family that I have a hard time enjoying my evenings. And most of the day, for that matter, because I'm stressed out about cooking the meal.

They also can hold us back in big ways. Like saying, I'm too old to go back to school because I should have had this figured out, and a good person has their life figured out in their twenties. I can't take two weeks' vacation because a good person always reports to work for the full amount of time. I can't change my job because a good person stays in their job for at least two years. I can't write a book because I don't have a degree in English. I can't paint because I've never taken a creative painting class. Whatever the rule is. They can keep you stuck in big ways and little ways.

So really, this week, I challenge you to pay attention to what those rules are, just bringing awareness to them. And then the second step is bringing a lot of compassion to yourself and recognizing oh, sweetheart, or babydoll; this is tough, but this is how you're choosing to live. And then, thirdly, see where you can add some wiggle room. See where you can add a little grey into that rule and use it as a guideline instead of a hard and fast rigid rule.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: 5 Little Things You Appreciate

I have seen this one suggested a few places so I am using it for our weekly ritual challenge. Each day this week write down 5 little things you appreciate/enjoyed throughout the day. The key here is LITTLE. This ritual allows you to pause and regroup.

---

Episode 056: Confessions of a Day with my Monger

Sometimes despite our best intentions our Mongers camp out in our heads. Today I had a case of the Monger Mondays...listen to how I regrouped and found my Biggest Fan again.

+ Read the Transcript

Hey all, so glad to be here. It is a Monday, and I have a definite case of the Mondays. I have had the goal of doing this podcast most of the day. I was supposed to do it earlier last week and ended up getting sick. It's just been a hectic, unfortunate couple of days. So today, I just found myself totally beaten down. I took a nap, I have done many things to procrastinate, and now my allergies are driving me crazy. There is just a lot of stuff that's working against me.

I've been thinking about what I was gonna talk about on this podcast. I wanted to talk about feelings and feeling your feelings, and I wasn't feeling that topic. (HA!) So I decided to save that for another day.

I wanted to share my process of what happens when my Monger takes over, which has happened today. Even I, who practice this stuff all the time, I teach on this stuff, I believe in this stuff. Now and then, my Monger just takes over. So I wanted to share what that's like and to give you, hopefully, some comfort in that you are not alone in this process. That our Monger's can just, they're wily, and they can get in there, and they can take a foothold on our process. So it's really important not to let that happen.

I confess today; there will be a lot of true confessions on this podcast. I have let that happen. My Monger has taken up residence in my brain. She's got in there yesterday and camped out, and by this afternoon, I had this whole story of what a terrible person I was. I didn't even realize how much she had taken up space until I talked to my husband. I was like, "Oh, I'm just really struggling today. I'm having a hard time motivating, and I just don't feel like doing anything. I'm just kind of blah!" "What is the point? We are all going to die. What's the point?"

That tends to be my overly dramatic statement when I get attacked by the Monger. It is great awareness for me to know, "Okay, whoa, the first step you are overly dramatic, so something else is going on, okay. So let's start paying attention."

I just started saying to my husband, "All I keep thinking about is how I'm a terrible daughter, I'm a terrible wife, and I'm just a terrible friend. I'm a terrible business owner, and I'm not helping anybody." I just started listing off these terrible things I was saying in my head; I was listening to today, I believed all these things. When we start saying that stuff out loud, it is humbling, shocking, and crazy-making that that's the stuff we say to ourselves, and we believe it!

When I said out loud to my husband, he was like, "What? You are a great wife, and you're a loving daughter. How could you possibly? NO, none of that is true. Come on, stop with that!" He hugged me and went on about his day, but the thing that was jarring was, wow, not only was I saying them to myself, but I believed that of myself. So then I was like, "Okay, stop, let's challenge, let's channel in that biggest fan. Let's bring in my biggest fan and let her do some chatting around here."

That is always the moment whenever I say, "Okay, that's enough." I need to hear from my biggest fan, and the first thing my biggest fan says is, "Oh baby doll, it'll be okay." She always just calmly says, "It'll be okay. We will get through this, stop, stop, stop!" Because my monger push, push, push, push, push, push, pushes, all the time. And this constantly has me in this go, go, go, go, go, go, go. My biggest fan feels like a giant exhale. It's just like, "Okay, let's take a chill pill here, we got this, let's relax, let's check in here.

That's the recognition for me, that's the teaching point for me, to recognize, it is a choice for me to listen to my Monger. It's a choice, and a lot of times, what happens is, although I know it's a choice, I'm not actively making that choice because I'm not aware that the Monger is chatting. That's the glitch we run into, is that the Monger, because it is so comfortable, because it is, comfortable is totally the wrong word because it's not comfortable, but it's something, we are so used to it.

When it's chiming there in our heads, it doesn't stand out to us as anything unusual. It doesn't stand out to me that, "Of course, yes, you are right, I am a terrible daughter. Yes, you are right. I am a terrible wife, I should be doing all these things that I'm not doing, and I'm just a terrible person."

Although when I said that out loud to you right now, it's just like, "Eww!" But in my head, I'm just like, "You're right, you're right, you're right." And so that's the work of these inner critics and the Monger, is to recognize, "Wait a minute, why am I listening to this? Why am I allowing that voice to run the show here?" And so it's not only the idea of channeling the biggest fan and all that great stuff that I firmly believe in, but it is that very first step of recognizing, "Wait a minute, I am being attacked by my monger here." That's the hardest part.

That's the place where we can get stuck, like I just confessed; it has been almost 24 hours of hammering here. It used to be; it would be a week of hammering before I would even recognize, "Whoa! What's going on here?" So that's where we need to start doing the work, and that's why all these, you know, I get annoyed by all these motivational sayings and all these wonderful, feel good and feel better because it's not that easy.

The inner critic is such a part of us, and for so many of us that are struggling with this monger work, it is comfortable. It's something we are used to; it's something we think we deserve. It's something we think motivates us. On a Monday, it is so natural for me to wake up and have a monger hammering me because I, in my brain, somewhere thinks that that's motivating.

When I go off duty, so to speak, and go through the motions in my life, that's when the monger chimes in. When am I not actively saying, "Okay, where's the biggest fan? I need the biggest fan today. I know today is going to be a Monger day, so we need to get our defenses up; we need to step in there." So that idea of doing preventative, kind of, "Let's get in the biggest fan, and let's build her up."

For years I did this work about mongers, and I didn't talk about the biggest fan because I was just talking about mongers and identifying mongers, and what are your mongers. Then I got to the idea of, "Wait a minute, we don't have the opposite; we don't know what the opposite is." Because I'm just so used to hearing my Monger, I didn't even know there was a biggest fan. When I started tapping into that biggest fan, that is that exhale of, "Oh, baby doll, oh! Back up the bus here; let's relax a little bit."

When I started chiming into her voice, that's when I had a counter to the Monger, so I could get past that point of recognizing, "Okay, I'm getting attacked by the Monger. Whoa!" And then I could be like, "What's the opposite of that? What's the comfort that I can bring myself because this Monger is uncomfortable right now."

That's my insight to my confession of the day, of my process in dealing with the Monger, going through that process. I hope that you found that helpful to recognize you are not alone. So it is, kind of, we've talked about this before, I know, but it bears repeating. It is the process of recognizing, "Oh my gosh, this constant hammering of myself is not helping me. This is a choice that I'm making, and there is another thought I could be having right now."

There is another more comforting thought that comes from the biggest fan. That is bringing in the biggest fan and saying, "Come on, girlfriend, let's do this differently."

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Enjoy a Meal With All Your Senses

Eating is an easy way to get into your body. Too often eating is something we do while multi-tasking. This week pick one meal or one food a day and eat it with all your senses. Take the time with this meal to enjoy it fully.

---

Episode 041: Your Suffering Isn't Helping

We convince ourselves that suffering is a necessary part of life.  Pain is a part of life; suffering is optional.  Listen and learn how to stop unnecessary suffering.

+ Read the Transcript

Today I want to talk about how we all engage in the act of suffering. Suffering is something that we get because of our inner critics. Our inner critics, or our Monger, as I like to call her because she uses propaganda. Our Monger convinces us that if we're suffering, at least we're doing something. This shows up in big ways and little ways all day long. A big way would be, let's say you're doing a job search. You've lost your job, and so you have to do a job search, and job searching sucks. It's hard to do a job search.

You do it for a little while, and then you decide, okay, I've submitted my resumes, or I've made some phone calls, and I've made some headway this morning. So I'm going to enjoy my afternoon, but the whole afternoon that you've taken off, your Monger is just hammering you and hammering you and hammering you. You convince yourself that's the price you have to pay. That's the price of doing business. I've taken the day off. Therefore, I'm going to get hammered by my Monger because that's the suffering I deserve for not being the perfect person.

It also shows up in little ways. For me, it shows up in, I might be procrastinating on doing a certain task, and so my Monger just starts beating me up for all the procrastination, and I think to myself, well, I'm not doing the task, but I am suffering. This is the cost, the price we pay for not doing whatever we think we should be doing.

The suffering is unnecessary. It's the idea of when you decide, oh, I'm going to get up in the morning, and I'm going to set my alarm, and I'm going to start working out every morning. The alarm goes off, and you're supposed to get up and get dressed and workout, but you hit the snooze alarm. Instead of going back to sleep, you lay there and punish yourself for the fact that you haven't gotten up. You're Monger says you didn't get up, so you're such a loser. You don't go to sleep, and you're not working out. You're just in this weird, limbo, middle area of suffering. The more we can cut out that weird middle area of suffering, the happier we're going to be.

What happens is we have to get in the habit of recognizing this suffering isn't necessary. I don't need to be beating myself up here. I've made the decision I'm going to sleep, so I'm going to sleep. If you can't get back to sleep, you need to get up and go work out or get up and do something. Forcing yourself to suffer is unnecessary, and that's just making ourselves more miserable. We do it all the time.

When I started paying attention to this concept of how often I engage in suffering, it was radical to recognize that I engage in suffering, even from the idea of, "Oh, I should go to the grocery store." Then all day long, I'll be playing in my head, "You should go to the grocery store, you should go to the grocery store." And I don't want to go to the grocery store, and I don't have time to go to the grocery store that day, and instead of just saying, "You know what? This suffering isn't necessary. You're not going to the grocery store today. You're going to go tomorrow." I hammer myself repeatedly that a more responsible person or a more on top of it person or a more perfect person would have time to go to the grocery store and do it all today. The more I've recognized the suffering isn't necessary, the happier I'm going to be.

When you hear this idea of, hey, suffering isn't necessary, you're like, "Duh. I know this. I know that suffering isn't necessary. I hate that I do this to myself. It's just so annoying, and I wish I didn't hammer myself all the time." We get the idea that it's stupid in so many ways that we're doing it to ourselves. What happens, and the tricky part about this whole concept of Monger and inner critic and self-ridicule is that it feels, like a warm, cozy, really itchy sweater. Because there's a part of it that feels warm and cozy and familiar and comfortable, our Monger lulls us into this safety net of comfort and support, and we feel like, "Yes, I should be suffering. You're right." We kind of become those little minions that were in the box in the Toy Story Movie that said, "Yes, master. Yes." We become that tranced person based on what our Monger is telling us, and that's the warm, cozy, fabulous part of the sweater.

Then what happens, especially as we start getting more aware of it, it starts getting itchy, and we're like, "Wait a minute. I feel uncomfortable, and I don't like how this is feeling," but we're still stuck in the trance. We don't realize that we can take off the sweater. We don't have to wear the sweater, so even though it's warm and cozy, it's itchy, and so we don't want that in our lives. That's the super challenge of dealing with this idea that you don't have to suffer.

It's recognizing when are you wearing that sweater? When are you in that trance of, oh, a good person does this, and I should be that we are justifying and proving and defending and atoning for everything we're doing. When we get stuck in that space of I, have to justify why I'm doing this. I'm going to lay here in bed miserable and justify why I'm not getting out of bed. We get stuck in that warm, cozy sweater feeling. Then it gets itchy, and we're annoyed because now we've lost 45 minutes of sleep, and we didn't get to work out. All we did was suffer for nothing.

To kind of start building awareness of when are you stuck in that trance? When are you wearing that sweater? When are you stuck in the itchiness and saying to yourself, "I don't have to suffer here."? There's no need to suffer. Then the biggest thing is to choose to decide: I'm going to get up, and I'm going to go workout, or I'm going to get up, and I'm going to enjoy my cup of coffee because I'm up 20 minutes early. Or I'm not going to work out today, and instead, I'm going to take a walk at the end of the day because, you know what, working out in the morning, that's not what I like to do, so I can't do it in the morning. I'm going to find out another time. Then find another time.

Making a choice of, I'm going to sleep, and I'm going to enjoy every minute of these 45 minutes of sleep because I went to bed late and I'm exhausted. See you later, Monger. I'm going to go to sleep. You may have to repeat that five or six times over five or six days before you get to the point of making the decision and not getting stuck in the trance of the Monger.

A few episodes ago, I talked about your biggest fan, and that is the idea of when we recognize that we're suffering to kind of call on that biggest fan to be like, okay, what do we do here? How should I be treating myself here? Because suffering is not something our biggest fan would want us to do. You don't need to be suffering—bottom line.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Running Errands? SLOW DOWN

When you enter a grocery store or run an errand that you have to do where you're running in and out of the car and being manic, as we tend to do when we're running errands, every time you shut the door to your car as you get out to go do something whether it's the grocery store or CVS or Target or whatever, to remind yourself, "I can slow down." And slow down.

---

Episode 037: Quieting the Inner Critic

I am finally back from break!  I had quite a battle with my inner critic these past few weeks.  Listen to my latest trick to quiet that belittling voice.

+ Read the Transcript

Oh, it has been a long time since I've been here. I think my last episode was back in late June, and my goal was to just take July off as a break, but here we are in the second to last week of August, and I'm just now getting ready to start recording again.

So I had each week in August. I told myself, you need to do a podcast, you need to do a podcast. And in that break time, I came up with a ton of ideas of things I wanted to talk about in the podcast, the experiences I had, and stuff that had happened. And but each week, I just kept putting it off and procrastinating and procrastinating as we tend to do.

And so this morning, On my list today, I had a chunk of time. I had it on my list. I was going to do my podcast, and I woke up not feeling so great. And so I laid down for a little bit and did a bunch of other stuff related to my work and putzed around and procrastinated.

And in true honesty, I need to leave the house in 20 minutes to get to a client meeting. And here I am, recording a very last-minute podcast, which was my one super big goal for the day. So at least I did it, but man, I tell you! The reason it took me so long is my inner critic. My inner critic has been hammering me for much of the day.

And I wanted to talk about that today. It is ironic that here I was in this attack by my inner critic all day. And it took me a while to figure out that's what was going on. And it wasn't necessarily related to podcasting. I took a break, so it was always hard to come back into something and be like, is anyone going to listen?

Is this wasting your time? You shouldn't have taken a break for so long. Any time we are reentering the arena, it is hard. But also, I've been working on a lot of stuff behind the scenes dealing with overwhelm and stress and inner critic stuff and perfectionism.

And I'm honing in on the message that I want to be talking about. And so, the more we hone in on something and the closer we get to our authentic selves, the louder the inner critic gets. And so that is the struggle for me and almost everyone I know. We all want to be more authentic, and we all want to live in the flow, but in honesty, the more we get authentic, and the more we start to flow, the more we have to deal with the inner critic. That is an inevitable thing that happens because that authenticity causes vulnerability, which causes our inner critics to freak out. My inner critic has been in hyperdrive lately. And so, that's why I want to talk about quieting your inner critic.

For me lately, the thing I have been talking a lot about with clients and practicing with myself is the idea of your biggest fan, and the idea of your biggest fan came to me because I've been practicing self-compassion. And that has been a big theme for me, that this year of 2016 and specifically the summer, the idea of self-compassion.

So a common thing in when people talk about self-compassion the example they tend to use is what would your best friend say to you? How would they support you? How would your best friend talk to you? Because their inner critics talk to us so mean and belittling and shame-filled.

And then our best friends, hopefully, talk to us with love and support and kindness. And the glitch for me has come that, so this morning I wake up, I want to do this podcast. I have some other stuff that I want to get done that requires a little more putting myself out there and more vulnerability.

And so I know the inner critic is probably going to go a little crazy. And so my best friend says to me, don't worry about it. Just relax. Take the day off. It's no big deal. A lot of the people that I'm following on blogs and friends I know are taking vacations. So they're slowing down their businesses and taking some time off for the rest of October and part of September.

And, I already did that in July, so I had my time off. Fabulous. And now it is time for me to get back to work, but my best friend's voice is telling me, just relax and take it easy. It's a beautiful day. Take the day off. You don't need to be doing this, which is great, but our best friends tend to be the enablers, even in our lives.

Our best friends are the ones that support us no matter what; they constantly think whatever we're doing is fabulous, and they give us that wonderful unconditional support. So my challenge for myself the summer has been to find that middle voice. Not the super shaming belittling inner critic and not the wonderful you are amazing, perfect in every way best friend, but that middle voice. And I call that middle voice my biggest fan. And the reason I call her my biggest fan is because my biggest fan wants me to succeed. They really want what's best for me. And sometimes what's best for me is to push myself a little bit, to get out of that comfort zone, to face the inner critic and be like, no, I'm going to go beyond what you're saying.

So the best friend encourages me to back down and take it easy. And my biggest fan encourages me to keep going. But the way they encourage me, that voice is a loving kind, the mix of both in the sense of this morning, as I was, I took, worked out, I took my shower. I didn't feel great.

So I laid down, and my best friend was like, ah, just take the day. You don't feel well. You don't want to work on your podcast today. Maybe that's a sign. Maybe you should take it easy. Everyone else is taking a break. You should too, all that best friend. And then gradually as I lay there and thought, okay, what would my biggest fan say to me?

What would that person that wants me to succeed say? The biggest fan would say, Okay, you don't want to do this podcast. You've got a lot of doubts. You got a lot of insecurities, but you have to do it. You have to put one foot in front of the other. If you don't, if you keep procrastinating on this podcast, it will never get recorded.

So you need to do this, even though it's uncomfortable. And we can do it together with support and love, and it doesn't have to be this painful fight against the inner critic, but it isn't a reason for you not to do it. And so, for me, that is a big shift in how I view the inner critic world. Because now I have this cheerleader in there, that's giving me the acknowledgment that this is hard and this is challenging.

And we got to keep going and doing it anyway versus the best friend that is always encouraging me. I'd always gone between inner critic telling me how much I suck and the best friend telling me how great I was but not pushing me away. And so I think finding this biggest fan gives me some wiggle room to be like, wait, there's something else in there that is helpful.

So our biggest fan is our cheerleader. They want what's best for us, and they can lovingly push us to do more, and they can lovingly encourage us to slow down. So to the same degree that our inner critic says you got to keep going, keep ahead, keep up. That push, push, the biggest fan is going to say, whoa, we've done enough today.

We need to take a break. You need to relax. You need to slow down. And so she's going to give us both the push and the slow down, and that voice is always wise, kind, and loving. So it's always wise, kind, and loving. And I think that's the piece, the inner critic is not wise, kind and loving, let's be honest, and the best friend is wise kind and loving too, but they're not as wise, they're more on the kind and loving part.

So that wisdom of you got to keep going, even though you don't want to, or you need to slow down because you've been pushing so hard. So the wise voice, it sounds something like. Wow. Today was hard. Next time, let's not procrastinate on that assignment so much. We got it done, but wow. Was it stressful?

These donuts were delicious, and we enjoyed every bite, and that sugar crash was brutal. So I'm not going to eat them every day, but I'm so glad we had them and to see how that biggest fan voice has that mix of both. It's whoa, we made a mistake there. It was really good. But we learned this from that, or, wow.

We shouldn't have been procrastinating so much. The positive is we got it done, but the hard part is that it was exhausting in the process. So the biggest fan gives us a little wiggle room in there, and I have liked that truth and grace and compassion that the biggest fan is giving me. She doesn't let everything slide like a best friend would. She's whoa, we had all those donuts.

That was awesome. I loved every bite, like the best friend. She speaks to the truth, but she doesn't use shame and belittling like the inner critic does. So I think the biggest fan is that mix of both. It's the truth like the inner critic has, and it's the loving-kindness like our best friend has, but it's all mixed together.

There's no shaming and belittling, and there's a little wisdom, and there's a little grace that comes in. So I encourage you to practice harnessing that biggest fan and see if that helps you in your quest to quiet the inner critic because it has made a massive change in my life.

I'm trying to concentrate on being intentional and asking, Hey, what would my biggest fan say? What would someone in front of me who wanted the best for me but also was going to be willing to speak the truth with kindness and grace, what would they say? And I think it will change your life.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Be in the Shower

We are going back to basics. I have noticed that recently my mind is NOT in the shower so I thought I would bring back this oldie but a goodie to remind us to fully be present in the shower.

---

Episode 031: Coming Alive

Coming Alive...or more importantly, what is keeping you from Coming Alive. Thoughts on one of my favorite quotes:  “Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman 

+ Read the Transcript

Today I want to talk about a particular quote by Howard Thurman: Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself. What makes you come alive and do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

I love the inspiration of that. I just couldn't agree with that more. What the world needs is people who have come alive. Sometimes, when I've shared this quote in the past, people have said, oh, that's selfish. Like we shouldn't be thinking about ourselves. We should be giving the world what it needs, and we should be out there serving.

He's not saying don't serve the world. He's saying, ask what makes you come alive and then serve the world from that place. If we were all acting out of what makes us come alive, oh my gosh, the world would be such a grander, better place.

I've talked in the past about how I notice it when I'm feeling annoyed or resentful or just angry at the world.

Often, it stems from the fact that I am not doing what makes me come alive. I am stuck in some pattern of doing for others and giving what I think others want and way gone off the rails on serving other people. And when I can pause and stop and say, okay, what is it that makes me come alive and do that.

I become a happier, better, more generous person. So this week, I want you to be thinking about what makes you come alive. And this quote is used a lot when it comes to career, but I want us to step back from that, not just career. If you want to think about it in terms of career, that is awesome. But more so in your everyday life, what makes you come alive and do more of that to bust out of the everyday mundane.

Suppose you're dreaming of going to travel and do something wonderful across the country. Figure out a way to do that here, figure out a way to engage in something unique here. I love traveling and going to different places, seeing the national parks, and getting outdoors.

And so that made me realize, okay, rather than just waiting to go outdoors in a national park, Go outside here in your hometown and explore different parks and see different areas. So I think that's beneficial when we can start asking ourselves what makes us come alive and then pay attention to what that feels like when we're alive when everything's clicking, when you're in the zone, and you're feeling really good, that's when we're at our best, that's when we're living our best life.

And that's when our inner critic comes out. So the dark underbelly that's the part that no one talks about when it comes to these quotes is that piece where we don't give ourselves the permission to be alive. We are constantly saying you don't deserve that. Who do you think you are to do what makes you come alive? You should be blah, blah, blah. Fill in the blank. We don't give ourselves permission. To come alive because our inner critic takes over the minute we start coming alive and coming into our own. Because we also start becoming more vulnerable. And when we're more vulnerable, our inner critic freaks out because it wants us to keep us safe and protected.

So this aspect of coming alive has this dark underbelly that we don't think about as much. And so, we don't actively have a way of dealing with that. We're like, yeah. I want to come alive. I'm going to do something great. I'm going to go today. I'm going to go to a funky coffee shop, and I'm going to sit there, and I'm going to enjoy it.

I'm going to not having a regular schedule and doing something different. And the whole time we're there, unconsciously is playing our inner critic saying, who do you think you are to take the morning off and come to this coffee shop? You don't fit in here. This isn't where you should be. You are such a fake person. Oh my gosh. I can't believe you're sitting here doing this. Just hammering away.

And so we don't come alive. We walk out of the coffee shop feeling like idiots. And so, that aspect of what makes you come alive is still there. It just got beaten down by your inner critic. So as you spend the next week thinking about what is it that makes me come alive.

Also, have some curiosity and pay real attention to that inner critic playing there and bring it to the light. Bring that inner critic out into the open and say, baby, I got this. I don't need you to be belittling me or making fun of me. This is what I want to be doing. I want to be coming alive, and I will be okay.

We'll be okay. So lovingly remind that inner critic that you got this. Also, just pay attention that the downside of coming alive is your inner critics going to get chattier. And that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. That just means you have to be extra vigilant in how you deal with that inner critic.

And a lot of times, what happens is we decide we're going to do something we're going to bust out. We're going to do something unique. We go to do that. Boom, incomes the inner critic to tell us how much we suck, and we don't pay attention to that inner critic playing there; we let it win, so to speak.

And then our next response is to be resentful or angry or go, kick our dog or yell at our spouse, or be resentful that here we try to do something new. It didn't work out. And so, it is just a self-affirming prophecy that we're just meant to be losers. And what happened there was the inner critic. That was the piece that we missed. That piece of self-compassion of, okay, I'm trying something new, I'm doing something different. I'm going to bust out of my zone. All that means is the inner critic is going to be going crazy. I need to be on high alert for that and be extra loving to that inner critic.

So that's the point of today's podcast to remind you of the power of that inner critic, that when we try to do something and bust out and when we're on the right path, and we're getting closer to that wise voice and getting closer to what comes makes us come alive. That's when her inner critic gets the chattiest, and that's when we need to step up and lovingly remind it. We got this. It'll be okay.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Take a Different Route: Dare to Get Lost

Shaking things up get's us out of our ruts and allows us to see life differently. Where can you shake things up in your life? One of the ways to shake things up is to take a different route to school, to work, to home. Dare to get lost, turn off the navigation system and go exploring :)

---

Episode 020: The Simplest Most Challenging Advice to Living Happier

How to deal with your inner critic...the simplest most challenging advice to be happier and silence those Mongers.

+ Read the Transcript

Hello there and welcome. Today I wanted to talk about a couple of different topics. First, I wanted to give an update back in December. I had done an episode called, I think I'm addicted to my cell phone, and I wanted to give an update on that because I'd had a couple of people email me to hear how that was going.

I'm happy to say that December went well as far as not using my phone and not being as addicted to my phone. One of the great saviors for me was the ultra-power saving mode option on my cell phone. By doing that, you only have access to your phone and texting, which are the only two things I have to use on my cell phone regularly.

Every morning, I'd put it on ultra power-saving mode, and I leave it there throughout the day. And that was amazing in helping me stay less connected to my phone. Because it is hard to get it out of the ultra power saving mode, I wouldn't check it all the time. Now, sad to say that in January, I went back into super use of my cell phone and my iPad, but I have pleased to announce that I've come back to somewhat of a middle where I use the ultra power saving mode, but not all the time. I'm not sitting on the couch all the time with my husband, playing on my iPad while we're watching TV. I allow myself to play a certain number of games at the end of the day. Because it's a great way for me to wind down, and I enjoy it. It's become more balanced for me. Probably a little heavier on the addictive phase, but better than it was back in November, where I practically had the phone in my hand all the time.

When we leave the house now, I tend to leave the phone at home more often. If you are struggling with this, I encourage you to try to break that habit a little bit because it is just a habit, and it has definitely helped my anxiety level because I'm not constantly looking at my phone. I'm more engaged with what I'm doing. I'm more present. And I, now I can notice when I start going crazy with checking the phone, and I can be like, okay, what's going on here? What else is happening? Having that pause has helped me a lot.

Today I want to talk about the simplest, most challenging advice to living happier.

Recently, I've been doing a lot of work with the inner critic, which I call a monger. I did a podcast about it last week about your 4:00 AM visitor. I wrote about it on my blog a couple of times, and it's something I'm working on a lot with clients. I would say since I started working more with the inner critic and talking about that more in my work and with clients, my inner critic has been more intense for whatever reason. I don't know why. But my Monger has been there screaming at me a lot, and I've had a really hard time disconnecting and putting into practice the stuff that I teach.

In my desire to learn more about the inner critic, I've taken out a lot of books, and I have read a lot of blogs online, just figuring out what other people are saying about quieting the inner critic. It is similar to what I've written about in the past that you're supposed to notice your inner critic and separate it from yourself and give it a name and talk to it lovingly and ask it to leave and all these wonderful process things that you're supposed to do.

And I've done that ad nauseum. I have talked to my inner critic a thousand times. I think yesterday, when I was particularly getting hammered by my inner critic, I think I talked to it 50 times. And finally, I just was like, I'm going to practice kindness, and I'm just going to be kind to myself.

And it reminded me that's the bottom line. The bottom line is we need to be a little kind to ourselves. And once I was able to practice, just being kind and compassionate to myself, the Monger went away. Every time it would pop up, her head back up, or every time she would tell me how much I suck. I would think I'm going to practice a little kindness right now. And I think, wow, this is a tough day, and you're struggling right now. And that's okay. Let's keep plowing ahead.

I wanted to throw out that challenge. It is the simplest, most challenging advice is to be a little kind to yourself. When I say to clients, we need to be kind. Clients say I am kind. I'm a very kind person. But we're not kind to ourselves. When you think about it, yeah, I do a lot of kind things to others, but internally I'm downright cruel to myself, and I know my clients are downright cruel to themselves, and I would venture to guess if you're listening, you are downright cruel to yourself.

The life-changing realization is that the anger and the cruelty that we have with ourselves does nothing. When we're unkind to ourselves, we're not serving ourselves. We're not serving the universe. We're not serving anything but our stuckness. And that's what I've been feeling a lot lately is that stuckness, and that stuckness keeps us unhappy.

It keeps us anxious. It keeps us full of dread and fear. It's downright miserable. I am a big believer that sometimes we need to be stuck because from that place of stuckness comes growth and change. If you're stuck in your life between two choices, you're stuck figuring out what's next, or you're stuck.

In the meantime, that's a place to practice being a little kind to yourself because our Monger comes out in full force when we are stuck, or we're feeling unsure, or we don't know where to go next. The counterintuitive response is to be kind to ourselves. Our first go-to response is to beat ourselves up and to tell us to move on, get a grip, pick a choice, do something, don't just sit here, move along.

But when we're gentle and we take that pause. And allow ourselves to breathe. That's when the real change happens; that's when we can find clarity. That's when we can find a place of love and gentleness. That's where I think the key is to all of this Monger stuff, and this inner critic stuff is to be kind to ourselves, and we can genuinely get in touch with what we want by being a little kind.

I think our Monger comes into play more often when we're feeling unsure. That's the nature of the Monger to come in when we don't know what to do next and tell us how much we suck. Or because the Monger gets freaked out because we're doing something different, something new, or we're on the verge of doing something different and doing something new, and our Monger doesn't like that. She tends to get a little freaky, and she yells at us, screaming at us to tell us how much we suck. When we can pull back and just simply practice kindness to ourselves, that makes a huge difference, and the Monger gets more quiet because she's not panicked about what's going to happen next because she knows there's time and space.

I think that has become more of the key for me. And I know when I practice it with clients, it's easy to get bogged down in these are the things you need to do, for your Monger

You need to label them; you need to name them; you need to come up with all this stuff.

But what if it's really just as simple as noticing the Monger and being a little kind to ourselves.

And I think it might be that simple and challenging to do both because, for a lot of us, our Monger becomes a place of comfort. We get comfortable in that hammering of ourselves because we've done it for so long. We don't even notice that we're doing it. Building that awareness of, oh my gosh, I am hammering myself right now and then flipping that on its head by saying I'm going to be kind. And kindness means I'm going to show up for myself, and I'm going to give myself whatever I need right now. So I'm going to say, yeah, this is hard. And this sucks.

Yesterday my Monger was hammering me because I wasn't feeling well. I have this head cold that is just all wrapped up in my head, and it's making me tired and cranky. I had a lot to get done yesterday. I had cleared my calendar to do writing and record this podcast yesterday, and all this stuff was supposed to happen. And it didn't because I felt so crappy, and instead of just giving myself the kindness and the nurturing to be like, okay, we're going to take a day, and we're going to regroup. We're going to feel better. We're going to relax and enjoy. I hammered myself all day long with how much I sucked because I wasn't getting enough done, and now I'm sick. And that means I wasn't taking care of myself. And I was feeling physically and mentally beaten up because I just didn't feel well, and then I beat myself up for it. And that was when I turned it on its head and said, okay, we're going to practice radical kindness. Here. We are just going to say, whew, girlfriend; this is hard. You're not feeling well; you have a lot you want to get done. That's okay. It's not going to happen today. Let's just try not to be beating ourselves up because we've made the decision to relax and rest, which is what we need. Let's give ourselves that. My challenge to you is to see how you are hammering yourself. How you are talking to yourself and just build some awareness around that. And then do a little kindness, that was the weekly ritual challenge for last week was to be kind, and what's gotten me spinning on this.

Maybe it's as simple and as challenging as being kind. That's my challenge for you this week is to notice when you're hammering yourself and then practice turning that on its head. Head and doing some radical kindness and see what happens.

And that's the show. Thanks for listening.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Schedule Time For Yourself

Grab your calendar and make a commitment to yourself. Schedule time to do something you love: read, exercise, watch your favorite show, take a walk, dance. I don't care what you do or how long you do it for but I DO care that you take the time to commit to yourself and honor that commitment.

---

Episode 019: The 4am Visitor

Tips for dealing with that nasty inner critic/Monger voice that shows up uninvited at 4am.

+ Read the Transcript

Today I wanted to talk about the 4:00 AM visitors. So let me set the scene for what I mean when I say the 4:00 AM visitor, which sounds much more fun than the actual 4:00 AM visitor I'm speaking of.

Slowly you roll over, and you look at the clock, and you think, Oh good, it's 4:00 AM. I have more time to sleep. That's like the best feeling in the world. And you realize you have to go to the bathroom, a risky proposition because sleep is a valuable commodity these days. And you know that if you go to the bathroom, you run the potential of running into your 4:00 AM visitor, also known as "the, what were you thinking, Monger?"

Now, a Monger is my term for that inner critic or inner bully. By definition, the Monger promotes a specific activity situation or feeling, especially one that is undesirable or discreditable. So your Monger is there to promote the fact of how much you suck.

You're afraid you're going to run into the, what were you thinking Monger? So you stumbled to the bathroom. Careful not to think about anything, run into anything, or wake up more than necessary. And as you lay back down thinking you have successfully dodged the enemy, you have a flashing thought of the party you went to the previous night, and the Monger starts, what were you thinking wearing that dress? You look like you were begging for attention. I can't believe you said "fill in the blank" to Mary. She's going to think you're a freak. You totally should have said more to the host. You're so rude. As you lay there, swimming in thought, your breath quickens, your skin gets clammy, and your chest tightens.

You pull yourself out of bed. Knowing sleep is futile. At this point, the 4:00 AM visitor is a particularly brutal one. It is one thing to deal with our Monger during the day when we were at full capacity, but at night, our defenses are down, and we're completely caught off guard. Not to mention how important the actual act of sleeping is to our systems and how well we feel when we're sleeping.

And when the 4:00 AM visitor comes, we can't get any sleep because we have a more difficult time separating the truth from reality at night. So the messages of the Monger seem even more powerful and even more accurate.

Earlier this week, my 4:00 AM visitor, showed up and I let her just hammer me. My heart was racing. I was freaking out about stuff I'd said and done earlier that day. And I was falling for her words, hook, line, and sinker. She was winning the game. She was beating me down. She told me how much I sucked and how I had totally messed up the situation and how I just had done it wrong.

I couldn't unhook from her. And I was just about ready to give up and head down to turn on the TV at 4:00 AM. When I thought, wait a minute, is this even true? That brief thought turned the, what were you thinking Monger on her toes? But she quickly replied, of course, this is true and spun the story one more time back to how terrible I had been and how I totally messed up and done everything wrong. But simply by asking myself, is that true? I created a gap between her and myself to recognize that she was no longer my voice. She was merely the voice of the 4:00 AM visitor. After creating that gap, I worked to change my thoughts.

She was persistent, but each time her voice filled my brain, I shifted to one of my go-to thoughts. And my go-to thoughts are the saving grace. Getting rid of your 4:00 AM. visitor is two-fold. One recognizing, and this is the hardest part, that voice in your head is not your voice. Instead, it's your inner Monger. Who's there to tell you how much you suck. I believe the Monger is here to protect us and keep us safe.

She is getting fired up by the fact that you might've looked stupid or you might've looked bad the way you handled the situation. Her anxieties are at her highest, and she can jump in there at 4:00 AM and go to town. And it's your job to recognize, "Wait a minute, this isn't even true. You are spreading crap. Here you are, spreading propaganda by filling your own need to be stressed and concerned instead of looking out for what I need right now, which is sleep."

So asking, is this true, is a great way to separate your voice from the Monger's voice. Now let's pretend and say, you're laying there, and you're like, you know what? I didn't mess up. I did make a mistake. I did handle this situation wrong or that situation wrong.

If the Monger's right, then figure out a way to make the situation better. So let's say you did say something inappropriate to your friend at a party, or you didn't bring a bottle of wine when you were supposed to. So make a mental note that you're going to apologize to the host for the fact you didn't bring wine, and you're going to apologize to your friend. But laying there at 4:00 AM letting your Monger hammer you is not okay. It doesn't help anyone.

If you have made a mistake, you can fix it. If you are just laying there and letting her beat you to a bloody pulp over something that you cannot fix or may not even be true, it's time just to let it go. It isn't helpful to anyone. So when you can recognize, is that true?

And let's say the answer comes back. Yes. The next question is, how can I fix it? How can I make this better? Who do I need to apologize to? What do I need to do to make it better? Because sometimes our Monger, even though she does spread propaganda, part of what she is saying is true. And so we can take that tiny kernel piece of truth and make it into something better for ourselves and make amends.

Now I talked about the go-to thoughts. So this is the second step of getting rid of your 4:00 AM visitor, the go-to thoughts, and these are the thoughts I use to help myself fall asleep. You can come up with your own go-to thoughts. It's whatever works best for you. But some of the ones that work for me, and you're going to laugh, but that's okay.

I go through, and I name the 50 States, or I name the presidents or walking through my high school, college dorm, or any other familiar place. I intentionally walk myself through a place that I feel fondly about. I replay a fun vacation and walk myself through the different places we went, or I relive a fun day.

So it allows me to fully activate my brain into a different place by walking through my college campus and walking around and trying to remember what my college schedule was or where I was on a specific day or particular year.

I can fill my brain with other thoughts, and it silences, the 4:00 AM Monger. She isn't there blaring on about how much I suck anymore because I'm putting myself in this completely different place. So eventually, and much quicker than you'll think possible, you can fall asleep. And this happened for me in the example that I'm sharing that I walked through my college campus.

I went through what my freshman year looked like and tried to piece that altogether because it was a while ago. And eventually, I fell asleep. And I woke up the next morning. I was thrilled that I had successfully turned off my 4:00 AM visitor. I wasn't up watching reruns of Three's Company or watching the news at 4:00 AM. I was actually asleep where I should be in my bed, relaxed.

So I encourage you to practice this the next time you have the 4:00 AM visitor.

A two-fold process one, putting some distance between you and your Monger and asking is it true, did I do something wrong? And if I did, then how do I make amends for it?

And then to changing your thought patterns so you can fall asleep. The best way I found to do that is to walk through and relive a part of my life physically, whether that be a high school or college dorm, a familiar place, a fun vacation, or we're living a fun day. So those are the ways I think of getting rid of your 4:00 AM visitor.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Be Kind

Be kind? How is that a weekly ritual? In an ideal world, we put kindness first. But in the reality of life, we are in a hurry, we are trying to get to the next thing, trying to get stuff checked off our list, and the idea of kindness temporarily goes out the window. So this week the challenge is to bring kindness to the front of our minds. Yes, we all think we are kind. We all want to be kind. But this week I want you to be intentional about being kind.

*Hold the door for someone.

*Let someone in your lane even though they SHOULD have planned ahead.

*Give someone the right away.

*Let someone go ahead of you at the grocery store.

*You can take it one step forward and do a Random Act of Kindness.

And don’t forget yourself in your be kind mission

---

Episode 009: Dealing with the First Responder

 Tips on how to deal with your first responders AKA shame, inner critic, bully, mongers, gremlins etc.

+ Read the Transcript

Tips for dealing with the First Responder:

Remind yourself that it is probably a First Responder. When our Mongers jump in guns blazing, lovingly remind yourself that it is just a First Responder trying to keep things safe and secure.

Remind yourself of the old saying 'first thought wrong.' Frequently when you can tell yourself that the first thought is wrong, you can then ask yourself to come up with a new thought. This new thought should be an easy, loving phrase that you can repeat to yourself in order to remind yourself that you are ok. Such as, "I got this." "Self-care is ok." "I am qualified and competent."

Remember, courage is not the absence of fear. Anytime we make a change, we are going to be scared and fearful. Our Mongers serve us by pointing out where bad things might be happening (admittedly, their approach is at times quite mean); it is our job to chose to listen or not. Remind yourself that you have a choice. You don't have to accept everything they say at face value.

Basically, we are all driving our own bus, and our passengers are our Mongers. Our job as the bus driver is to be clear on our destination, and the Monger's job as the passengers are to keep us safe and protected and, therefore, to basically stop the bus. As we are driving the bus, one by one, the Mongers will come up to the front of the bus and let us know why we shouldn't continue to our destination. They will take turns giving their particular reason as to why we should stop the bus. Each Monger has a different job, self-doubt, 'who do you think you are,' fear, or 'you can't do that (to name a few). Our job as the bus driver is to be really clear about our destination, not listen to the Mongers and keep driving the bus.

I love this analogy because the number one way I have found to deal with the Mongers is to physically acknowledge and diminish their power. This bus driving analogy gives me an easy—practical, visual and physical way of acknowledging and diminishing. In my own world, the Mongers tend to come out and play more when I am trying to write. As I sit down to write and begin my process, I will eventually be inundated with 'you can't do that,'' who are you to write that, 'you have had no real training.' And before I know it, the last thing I want to do is write, and I find myself sitting in front of the TV watching Real Housewives. Recently I have tried this visual as I have been writing. When I am sitting at my computer, it is like I am driving the bus, and as the Mongers come up to whisper in my ear, I can turn to them and ask them to take their seat and visualize them returning because I am driving to the completed book destination!!

Having this image in my head, combined with the physical act of turning and telling the Monger to sit down, has made a HUGE difference in both my writing and my Monger defeating.

Remind yourself of what is most important to you. Check-in with your wise self to find out what type of life you want to be living and whether the actions you are taking fit that life. If the answer is yes, and you are still getting hammered by your Monger, return to lovingly reminding your Monger of your priorities.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

One thing that has really helped me reduce anxiety is adding regular ritual practices to my daily life, so each week, I am going to be sharing a ritual with you and challenge you to complete it.

This week's ritual: Savor a Meal

Pick one meal each day and savor it. Take the time to sit down and enjoy the meal. Savor each bite, pay attention to how it tastes and feels in your mouth.

Too often we rush through our meals and multi-task through them. This week try to savor at least one meal a day.

---

Episode 001: Want to be Happy? Stop Searching for the Magic Button

The concept of the magic button is one of my favorite topics and one I discuss with my clients frequently. In this episode, you will learn about why letting go of the magic button was a life-changing move for me and what I do when the desire to find the magic button pops up.

+Read the Transcript

The magic button is the belief that something OUT there will fix me if only I can find it.

For YEARS I believed that if I found the right book, the right counselor, the right information, I would be fixed. I would be whole and happy, and everything would be ok. I swear I could have made a killing if I would have purchased stock in Barnes and Noble because I have my own private library in self-help books. To be clear, self-help books I only skimmed, never actually read. I swear that if osmosis with books worked, all my issues would be HEALED!

In my 20s and 30s, I had created a life where I looked outside for most of my answers, from my parents to my professors to my friends to societal norms. Everything I did was because someone told me it would be a good idea. I didn’t have the ability to look inside. I honestly don’t know if I didn’t have the ability or if I didn’t trust myself to look inside.

And then eventually, after ending up in tears on the porch of my new home, I thought to myself, I SHOULD BE HAPPY; what is my problem. I practiced gratitude which we will talk about my love-hate relationship with gratitude in another episode, but that gratitude was hollow because even though I was grateful for my life and all its many blessings, it wasn’t MY life…it was designed around someone else. My quest for the magic button had ended up leaving me bitter, sad, and resentful. Fortunately, I found a therapist who helped me learn that it is ok to trust myself, and she gave me tools for how to listen to myself and stop looking for a magic button to fix everything.

And it has been a work in progress. Whenever I want to make a change, my first inclination is to ALWAYS look outside myself. Even this weekend, I have been on a quest to make peace with food. Long story short, I am tired of gaining and losing the same 30 lbs, and I want to finally make peace with food and weight.

So I spent much of the weekend reading about intuitive eating (something I know about already), and I was tempted to buy all these programs about intuitive eating so someone could tell me HOW to eat intuitively. I talked to friends. I talked to my husband I asked around. NOW I am not saying getting help is a bad thing, but this is how you know you are looking for a magic button you aren’t looking for just help. You are looking for THE easy answer…a magic button.

I have at least 5 books on this subject and have already paid a health coach a couple of years ago to help me on this subject. But I hadn’t implemented anything. SO my quest this weekend to find MORE information was a QUEST to find the magic button.

The thing is, And as long as you are on the QUEST to find the magic button, you aren’t not DOING anything. I wasn’t acting on any of the principles I know about intuitive eating; I was waiting for an easy answer, a simple solution, a magic button.

I spent much of the weekend consumed with anxiety and angst, and then this am, I woke up and said, ok, you need to implement. You need to put into action what you know and do it pick one action. So I picked being present in the moment. Sounds easy, but it is far from it. To be honest, it is no magic button, but the angst, anxiety, and perfectionism have vanished, and instead, I am left with me just me trusting myself and being present. So this morning, I have been pulling myself repeatedly back to being present. And each time, it has brought me a sense of peace and action. The quest for the magic button is on pause (for now).

SO I am curious am I alone in this? How much time do you spend searching for the magic button? Food and diets is an easy example. But we also do it with living happier. We look for a quick fix to live happier, the perfect job, more money, the dream home, etc. Here’s a clue whenever you are saying if only _ or When I _, you are on a quest to find the magic button.

Most of us want to live happier. The quest to live happier starts with us. It starts by asking yourself what are my priorities, what do I value, how am I spending my time, do I want to be engaging in these activities. Living Happier is built on small intentional steps that you take every single day. Not a magic button.

---