Episode 070: 2 Tips to be More Productive (without your Monger)

These two tips are easy ways to bypass your Monger, bring in your Biggest Fan AND get more done. Win-win!

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Today I want to talk about two tips I have to increase productivity. One thing I've noticed with my journey is when I first started; I had all these rules for myself and my clients. Such as you need to be speaking your needs, you needed to be showing up for your life, you need to be setting boundaries. And there were all these different "lessons" quote-unquote that I would teach people and talk about in practice.

And then, over time, I realized that all those lessons are great and all that stuff is necessary. But all that stuff is completely useless if you don't accept yourself where you are, if you don't have the belief that I'm doing the best I can with what I have. And if you don't have that belief, then it doesn't matter how much you speak your needs or doesn't matter how much how many boundaries you set. And in actuality, setting those boundaries and speaking those needs is even more challenging when you don't accept yourself where you are. So I figured out for me, everything starts with accepting myself where I am. And once I started doing that, things shifted in my life, and it became less about following the rules quote unquote and more just about living my life to the best of my ability, and sometimes that means I have crappy days, and sometimes that means I have awesome days. But I'm not questing all the time. I'm just living my life.

So back to the conversation I was having with this client, and we were talking about when did I come to that realization, you know, was there a moment in time where I was like, yes, you know this is the key. And you know it never goes down like oh how I wish they would just be an inspiration that would hit us. But I did share it with the client, and I want to share it with you that in my life, I found two things that started shifting. They made a big difference in my productivity and my general, like just giving myself a break and not having my Mongar speak quite so loudly.

And the first tip on that is just to do the next thing, and that sounds simple, but it is very challenging when you have a big project. Whether it's something as simple as baking a cake or something as large as writing a book, our Monger tends to get us hopped up ten steps down the road. And so we say, oh my god, I can't do this. It's going to be too hard.

We get all hopped up and all these different steps way down the road. And my biggest fan will step in and say what's the next step. Just do the next thing, and that even if it's just put the eggs into the batter. It helps me realize OK it's just the next step that will get me to where I want to go if I just keep doing one step after the other. So it's a form of talking about the baby steps cause it's having your brain come up with what's the next best step. So it's a little bit of a different take on the baby steps thing because it's just what's the next step here. What do I do next?

You know this came up this week for me, and my husband lovingly pointed out the what's your next step mantra. I have the last round of edits on the book, and I'm getting ready to do a big marketing push, and I'm very excited about that. And nervous marketing is not my strong suit to toot my own horn is hard for me. But I'm laying out a really specific marketing plan, and my Monger is all fired up about that. And this week, I had planned to wrap up the edits, and then next week, it was going to start on this marketing plan. And so, of course, my Monger was ten steps ahead, already working on the marketing plan and beating myself up because I hadn't gotten the marketing plan that I shouldn't be wasting my time doing these edits I should be able to do both and blah blah blah.

You know how it goes. And so, finally, I was downstairs lamenting the marketing plan to my husband. And he said to me, what's your next step. I thought we were doing edits this week, and it was so like yeah, that is what I'm doing this week, I am doing edits. That's my next step. And then I can get into the marketing plan, and I could take that one step at a time rather than constantly being like, oh my God. So you need to see the big picture but then also be able to break it down into little baby steps. So that's my tip one, just to ask yourself what's the next step here. And then tip two is one that was hard for me to implement and that is celebrate the wins, and you know for those of us who are perfectionists and control freaks and all that stuff which I'm one of them it's really hard to celebrate. Celebrate the wins, and I'm talking the little wins like I'm talking you put the cake in the oven when. Baby wins, and the more you can celebrate those wins. I think the more the biggest fan comes into your life. Because the biggest fan is all about celebrating those wins and all about you owning the victories, and so the more we can celebrate and own I did something cool today and the happier we're going to be, and the more productive are going to be because the more likely we're going to want to keep doing it.

So every day, at the end of the day, I try to celebrate the win. So literally, I will say, ok, what went well today. And not just in a grateful way but in a what did I do today that was challenging for me. Did I make a phone call that was hard?. Did I send an e-mail that felt uncomfortable? It doesn't have to be a huge victory. And that's where our Monger steps in to say, oh, we have to be worthy of celebrating.

Well, getting out of bed every day making coffee can be worthy of celebrating if you're having a really bad day. So to be honest with yourself, to be like I am up and moving, and I have my coffee, and the kids are out the door. And you know the days starting I want to celebrate and by celebrate I mean to do a little dance or wiggle. Do something physical in your body that that's acknowledging the celebration. Not just write it down, check it off the list but celebrate it a full-body celebration. That's why I like the weekly ritual challenges because they give us a way to celebrate that. Some of them with the wiggling and the dancing, and you know this week's ritual, it's going to be some jazz hands. I'll talk about that in a little bit.

You know, a fun way of getting in your body and celebrating. So not just a mental celebration but a full-on physical celebration of the little things, the little victories in your life. Those two things have greatly increased my productivity. One is just asking myself What's the next logical step and just doing that. And two is celebrating every little tiny thing even when I go to the grocery store, which we all know I hate doing when I'm done a do a little celebration because that was something I didn't want to do and did it. And that is I need to honor the celebration of that. OK, now it's time for the favorite part of the show, the weekly ritual challenge. And I have found that getting in your body and this will be helpful with the celebration piece is very important to living happier and bringing in that biggest fan.

+ 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: Jazz Hands

I love the rituals that are a little silly because they help me not only get in my body but to laugh while doing it. You can do your Jazz hands up high near your face, or you can do them down low by your legs if you don't want to draw attention to yourself.

The point of these challenges is to get you out of your everyday thoughts (the thoughts of your Monger) and into your body so you can more easily tune into yourself. (the wisdom of your Biggest Fan.)

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Episode 067: A Few Thoughts on the World Today

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the tragedy and trauma that has been in the news lately. I thought you might be too, so I wanted to share my thoughts on how we can navigate this time in a kind and productive way without getting caught up in fear and blame.

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Today, how could we not, we've all been thinking about how crazy the last few days have been. Honestly, I feel like I could have said that at any period in the past year about how crazy the past few days have been. With the mass shooting in Las Vegas, and the hurricanes that have ravaged Houston, Florida, and Puerto Rico, it's just like we keep having these traumas and tragedies, and then we just keep moving on to the next one.

We're all in Vegas with the individuals that have been shot and killed out there by a madman, and meanwhile, people in Houston are still recovering from a hurricane that hit what? Two months ago? I don't even know the timeline anymore. It just feels like there's just been one trauma after another, and the news just keeps hammering us down. That's not even taking into account the events of the summer with Charlottesville and different activities with North Korea. Off the top of my head, I can just name all of these scary, traumatic things that have been happening in our news. Regardless of your political stance, or how you feel about our leaders, there has just been a lot of stuff happening. I wanted to touch base on that stuff. My job is helping people deal with stress and overwhelm, and this outside news is extremely stressful and overwhelming.

I have so many messages on my Facebook and Twitter, and even Instagram, of people telling me what I should be doing and how I should be feeling about these different events. It's really easy to get caught up in this is where I should be, this is the side I should be landing on all this, this is how I should be feeling, and there is so much criticism in our culture today that even when people take a stand, and they go and do something, it's immediately met with "Well, that's not enough" or "You're doing it wrong." From where you decide to give your money, that you're giving it to the wrong organization to that you're keeping people in your thoughts and prayers, and you should be taking more action. You shouldn't be just thinking and praying. You should be action. Then, if you take action, it's the wrong action. It is Monger-heaven out there, and I, myself, have been feeling very inundated by all the messages that are coming at me about how I should be feeling.

I just wanted to tap into that with all of you because I'm sure if I'm feeling it, I'm not the only one that's getting a little overwhelmed. I wanted to slow this down and just touch base that it's really important to be turning off the 24-hour news coverage. I, for one, I watch a lot of news and I pride myself on staying up-to-date on what's happening in the world. I have had to make a concerted effort to shut off the 24-hour news coverage, turn off text alerts on my phone. You can stay aware of what's happening. You don't have to be inundated with all the information. Monday morning, when we woke up and found out about the Vegas shooting, my husband and I were just glued to the TV. I had a bunch of work I needed to get done that morning, but I just was watching the coverage until finally, he was like they aren't telling us anything new. We're not learning anything. We're just becoming more and more anxious by watching this.

That is what happens. It just becomes this thing that we keep feeding to have more information and feel more outraged, or more upset. To turn off that 24-hour news cycle, and what I have started doing is limiting myself to print media. I do it online, but print media news that I have a certain amount of time that I can read news articles because I can go down the rabbit hole of going from this link to that link. I give myself a set period, and that's the time that I'm paying attention to what's going on. Between that and talking to my husband and hearing what he's finding out, I learn information. I'm not without information, but I'm also not getting hopped up by everything I'm reading and everything I see because I'm so overwhelmed. We are not designed to have this much constant despair and trauma coming at us. It is okay to take breaks. I encourage you to take breaks.

Watch some cat videos, play a game, do something fun. Take care of yourself and those around you. A lot of times we get in this belief system, and our Monger contributes to this, that tell us wow, all these people are suffering. How dare you be having a good time? They can't take a break in Puerto Rico from the trauma. How can you take a break? Well, you suffering alongside them here wherever you live isn't helping the people in Puerto Rico. If you think about it in another way, if you were in Puerto Rico suffering, would you want someone else to be suffering as much as you were? Probably not. You would be very encouraging of them that they have the freedom to do something else. They aren't stuck in that trauma. The idea that we can't take a break because that somehow a way we're showing our support is a warped thought process. Pay attention to how much that happens, and I'm going to watch all this news because at least I'm doing something.

You're not really doing anything. You're just upsetting yourself to no end. Nothing positive can come out of that, so step away from the 24-hour news coverage. Step away from Facebook. Step away from Twitter. Step away from all of it and get into your life, your real life. Which takes me to the next thing I want to talk about, which is really to acknowledge how you're feeling. For those of us that practice this soldiering on belief and suck it up buttercup thought process, this can be a time when we lace up our bootstraps, and we just keep powering through. We don't acknowledge that the pain that we've been consistently seeing here over the past few months affects us. We are affected. These are fellow human beings. Even all this trauma that I mentioned today took place in the United States; there have been things happening all around the world that have been traumatic. It's not just because these are "our fellow Americans," it's that these are human beings that are being inundated by things out of their control.

That makes all of us feel scared and vulnerable and fearful. That's a hard place to live when we have kids and elderly parents and people we want to be protecting. Here, they're so much out of our control. Nothing brings that home like the number of traumas that have been happening. Nothing brings that home-like someone firing down on concertgoers. I think of all the time my husband and I have gone to these concerts. You're hanging out. You're drinking beers. You're dancing with your fellow concertgoers, and then poof, your whole life is shattered. That is something all of us can relate to and put ourselves in that exact spot of being at that concert. Then, the thought of the gunfire raining down on you. I mean, it just brings tears to my eyes as I'm describing it right here. Yes, we are all feeling that very deeply, so allow yourself to feel that. Allow yourself to be sad. Allow yourself to acknowledge that this is scary and unknown and there's a lot of fear out there right now.

It's even scarier because as human beings, we want to find a motive. Why did this happen? What was he thinking? We don't have a motive, and that makes us even more scared because we can't stop it in the future. We try to convince ourselves well, if we know the motive then we know it won't happen again. Eh, we don't know that even if we know the motive, but not knowing the motive creates even more fear. Give yourself a lot of room to be kind to yourself and to understand that there's stuff coming at us that is scary, and to acknowledge those emotions. Don't just suck it up and go on. Don't just be grateful that you have a wonderful family or it didn't touch your life. It did touch your life in an abstract way, so to be aware of that. When we don't acknowledge what's going on with us, it turns into overwhelm. It turns into stress because what happens is we soldier on, we suck it up, we push down those feelings, we push down that doubt, and we try to maintain a greater sense of control.

It's futile. That doesn't happen. We can't keep a greater sense of control, so our anxiety goes up and our stress goes up. It's this whole big compiling mess, so give yourself some room to acknowledge how you're feeling.

Then, the last thing I want to say is to take action. Figure out, after you've stepped away from the news coverage after you've acknowledged how you're feeling, after you're giving yourself a lot of room and you've talked with friends and family, and you're feeling a little more grounded in yourself, take some action. That could be volunteering wherever you live. That could mean giving to charity. That could mean fighting for gun control or fighting for different laws to help, so this doesn't happen again. Fighting against those boosters that made the semiautomatic into an automatic. Helping to figure out what you can do that feels like you're contributing to the problem, and that might just be having some honest conversations with your kids about what's going on, and figuring out as a family what are you going to do? How are you going to help?

I encourage you to take some action but make sure it is an action that feels right to you. It's not what you should be doing. It's not what someone else says you should do. It doesn't make you a good person if you take action. It's something that you decide as an individual, as a family, "Hey, this is something I want to do that will contribute to this out-of-control feeling I have and lessen it." If I know I can take action, I know that I can help. Then I won't be feeling as vulnerable and out-of-control. The one positive that has come from all of this news coverage is hearing these heroic stories of strangers helping strangers, from Houston, in Vegas, in Puerto Rico and Florida. How the human heart is just so full of kindness, and that's what we need to be tapping into right now is remembering we can make changes. We're not these vast red states and blue states, and this huge stereotype. We are just people helping other people, and when we get down to that basic, we are very generous and kind and good souls.

As I said, I've been feeling a little overwhelmed. I've been feeling scared and unable to know what to do, so I just thought I would gather my thoughts and I wrote a letter to you all, and I just kind of read from that as I was recording this to get out everything that I wanted to say. Just writing down all my thoughts, and acknowledging all my different emotions made me feel better, and I hope it has provided some ease, as well as some concrete strategies for how to handle all this stuff coming at us as we move forward.

+ 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: Feel your Feet

The seasons are slowly changing here in Ohio. Slowing down to notice the subtle changes in the leaves, the flowers, and even the sky remind us that there is a bigger world out there. This time of year goes so fast as we make the quick slide into the Holidays.

This week the weekly ritual challenge is to go outside and look around. Slow down, look around and notice the changes all around you.

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Episode 066: Counseling vs Coaching...What's the Difference?

Lately, I have been getting a lot of questions about the differences between counseling and coaching. Today I attempt to answer those questions.

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Today I'm doing a little different of a podcast because I'm going to be getting into the profession of counseling versus coaching. I wanted to do this because I keep getting a lot of questions about it, from people emailing me or when I talk to potential clients. What's the difference between counseling and coaching?

If you ask 10 counselors or 10 coaches, they will give you 10 different definitions of the difference between counseling and coaching. So part of the problem with this difference is it isn't spelled out in anything specific. I'm going to give my thoughts on what I think the difference is and the positives and negatives of both, I guess.

I just want to go over some myths or some common stereotypes of both professions and flush this out a little bit. One of the common stereotypes is that coaches have no certification. That is not true completely because there are lots of well-respected coaching certification programs. It is true that coaching has no licensing body overall. So counseling has been around for years, and we have a licensing body. I'm licensed through the state of Ohio; I have to do a certain number of CEUs a year, and I had to sit for a licensing exam. The board kind of controls what I can and cannot do, so I have a lot of stringent rules and ethics that I have to compete with, or comply with, I'm sorry.

But the coaching profession has a wide array of certifications. So you could have someone that has gone through year-long certification processes and taken an exam, and they are certified coach through the licensing body of coaching, even though there isn't a licensing body, but there is one that's a little more respected than most. Or, you could have someone who just went through a divorce a year ago, and they feel like they have a lot to share about going through a divorce, so they throw up a coaching shingle, even though they've had no certification or anything.

The idea that there is no certification for coaching is wrong. There is a certification for coaching, but as a consumer, it's up to you to pay attention to what is that certification. If I say I'm a licensed counselor, it's a standard process of what I've gone through. If someone says they're a certified coach, that certification isn't standardized. So to find out what does that mean, and to ask a few more question, probably would be helpful when it comes to flushing out, "Do I want coaching or counseling?"

Another myth of coaching and counseling is that counselors keep you stuck in the past, and coaches move you forward. This stereotype drives me absolutely crazy because you can talk to any one of my clients; we do not get stuck in the past. I do not. I move my clients forward. I try to make their lives better. To make your lives better, sometimes you have to go into the past and look at what happened to unhook a pattern that happened with your dad, a pattern that happened with a sibling, or a pattern that happened at school. The past has clues for us; it is not something that we should be avoiding.

That's kind of an old school trying to find the differences between coaching and counseling, is that counseling only works in the past. It depends on the counselor and who you're talking to. There are counselors out there that want to believe that the past portrays the present and the future. I am not one of those counselors personally, but I believe that there is stuff that happened in my childhood, there is stuff that happened in your childhood that affects us now. So we may need to tap into that briefly to unearth that, but we're not going to get stuck there as far as our work together. That's something to pay attention to.

Another question to ask is, what is the philosophy of the counselor or the coach when it comes to working in the past? Sometimes, the danger with coaching can become, if they have not had a true certification process and start going back into the past and unearthing stuff, it can get a little sticky. I have had training in doing that, and I continue to get training through my CEUs, as do all counselors. Coaches sometimes don't have that training. The coaching profession is taught to refer to a therapist who's had more training in unearthing if there's been trauma or something sticky in the past to help you process through that. That's something also to pay attention to, where are you in the healing of your past. If you've had some real trauma, it may be helpful to see someone that's had a little more certification, a little more education in that piece.

Another myth is that counselors have to diagnose you, or counselors keep you stuck in a pathology. So if you see a counselor, I'm going to try to figure out your diagnosis and decide if you have anxiety or depression, and I'm going to pigeon-hole you into this diagnosis. Then we're only going to work on whatever that diagnosis is. That could not be further from the truth. Yes, it is true that counselors can diagnose. That's part of the deal, is counselors can give you a diagnosis. The only reason I think that diagnosis is helpful is that you can get insurance reimbursement if you have a diagnosis.

I don't take insurance, but I do help clients who want to. I'll fill out a form to help clients who want to refer to try to get insurance, I call it out of network insurance. When I do that, I have to give them a diagnosis, that's how the health insurance world works. If a client comes in to see me and they want to fill out their insurance forms, I will diagnose them with anxiety or depression, and that's it. We don't obsess about the diagnosis. We don't talk about it all the time. That is just something we do for paperwork and health insurance.

A coach will not diagnose you at all. It won't even come up because it's not something they have to do for insurance purposes. Now, that said, it depends on the counselor that you see how much they're going to be talking about the diagnosis. An old school counselor that has been around for a long time may be more focused on diagnosis and may be more focused on treating the depression, the big diagnosis pathology. My personal belief is, I don't get stuck on the diagnosis. It's a diagnosis, we all have anxiety and depression any given day, any given moment, we just kind of type in and out of it.

For me, that's just a means to end to get reimbursement from insurance. It is a diagnosis, it is true, it is something that you're struggling with. But it's not something that I'm going to label you and pigeon-hole you in and put you in a box in. It is one piece of this huge puzzle which is your life and the struggles that you're having.

I think that it has become a stereotype or a myth, is that coaching is more for the worried well, people that are just needing some help in moving forward and achieving a goal and kicking some stuff to the curb. Counseling is more hardcore, you need to dig into your past, and you're feeling terrible, and you have this depression and anxiety, and you need help with it.

To some degree, that's probably true, but I also want to encourage you, and the biggest message I want to send on all of this is counseling and coaching are very similar and very different all at the same time. Each counselor and each coach you talk to is very similar and very different all at the same time. It is also up to you, the consumer, to chat with each coach, counselor, whoever it is that you want to talk to, and see if you have a fit with them.

That's the most important thing, to ask them the questions I talked about. What's their licensing? What's their certification? What's their opinion about diagnoses? How do they work with clients? How are you going to make progress? How are you going to move forward? All those things, you need to be asking those questions of each person you talk to. Because this is an intimate process of working with another person and talking about your life and trying to unhook some stuff and move your forward, it's hard, and it's challenging. You want to make sure you have someone that you connect with, and you agree with, and that you like their philosophy.

So I guess the biggest message I'm going to send on this, counseling versus coaching, is it doesn't matter. What matters is that you have found someone you connect with and you trust, and you believe that they can help you and move you forward and that you know that if it isn't working, you can back out and move on and find somebody else.

The idea that you have the control here of figuring out who it is that you most want to work with. The name they call themselves is not as important as their licensing, certification, experience, continuing education, how much they care about you, and their connection with you. That's my take on counseling versus coaching.

+ 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 Leaves

The seasons are slowly changing here in Ohio. Slowing down to notice the subtle changes in the leaves, the flowers, and even the sky remind us that there is a bigger world out there. This time of year goes so fast as we make the quick slide into the Holidays.

This week the weekly ritual challenge is to go outside and look around. Slow down, look around and notice the changes all around you.

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Episode 055: Stay in Your Own Car

A simple (but not always easy) way to avoid drama in our lives.

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Hey, everyone. I am excited to be here today to talk about one of my favorite analogies and one of my favorite life-changing topics, which is the reminder to stay in your own car. Often, I hear the phrase, "Stay in your own lane," which means when you're driving like, keep your eye on the road and stay in your lane. Don't be swerving into other people's lanes, but I like the analogy of Stay In Your Own Car because it takes it one step forward.

Stay in your own car means to stay in your own car, in your own lane. When we get overwhelmed in our own cars, we tend to get into other people's cars and tell them how they should live their lives. So instead of dealing with what's happening in our car, the kids that might be screaming, the radio that might be too loud, and the phone that might be ringing, we decide we're going to flop cars. Hop in the passenger's seat of the car next door and eventually start driving it because we think we know better. Or we think we can fix them, or we think we can help or whatever positive reason in our brains telling us to do that.

It is never helpful to join someone else's car without being invited, and the main reason we find ourselves doing this is because we can't handle what's happening in our own car. So we like to jump over and help someone else in their car. We get bored in our car, or we get overwhelmed in our car, and so we want to jump over and help someone else. This can show up in a variety of ways. This could be you are the kindest person in the world, and you're watching your girlfriend who is struggling in a relationship. Maybe you have gone through a similar struggle, or you might have dated a guy you struggled with, so you want to help her. You want to give her advice and tell her how to drive her car, and at times even take over driving for her.

The bottom line is, she needs to learn the lesson that she needs to learn, and that lesson may take her car careening 80 miles an hour down a curvy road. It may take her close to the brink. It may be scary to watch her drive in that car, but that is her lesson to learn. Now, if you are invited into her car, and she asks you, "What do I do? How do I get around this?" then you can calmly sit next to her and support her as she's driving 80 miles an hour down the road, freaking out. Your job is to simply ride next to her and support her.

Your job is not to take over driving for her. We come at it with these kind intentions of, "I want to help someone not have to go through all of the stuff that I've gone through, and I know better, and so I can save them from heartache by jumping in their car and starting to drive their car." When in reality, I believe we all have lessons we need to learn in our own time. Sometimes you might have learned the lesson of the guy that cheats on you one time. You might have had a guy cheat on you once, and you got the lesson. Your friend may need that lesson five times, and you don't know how many times she needs that lesson, and it's not up to you to protect her from the lesson. It's up to her to protect herself from the lesson. That's one of the ways it shows up. We're just really kind.

Another way it shows up is when we get super stressed, and we're overwhelmed in our own lives, and we're feeling really out of control in our own cars. We will start to look around for other cars that we can control because our car is a lost cause. We are out of control. We seem overwhelmed. There's just nothing we can do, so let's look around to find other cars that we can solve their problems and make ourselves feel better about life. You have to know what I mean here. I mean, we're all guilty of this. We think we can fix it. We do it with our kids. We do it with our spouses. We come up with these great solutions to all their problems. Meanwhile, our car is careening down the road at 80 miles an hour, and everyone is screaming, but we're over in the next car telling them what they need to do and how they could live their lives better.

That's a great time for us to realize, "Whoa. Whose car am I driving here, and why have I exited my vehicle? I need to get back into my own car." I use this analogy all the time when I'm worrying about my husband, and I'm concerned about something that he's going to be doing. I need to remind myself, "Stay in your own car.", "Just do you" is another one of my favorite phrases around that. Just do you. He is responsible for himself, and if something happens, he can handle it. He is a grown-up. You know, just do you. Paying attention to how often you get out of your car and get into someone else's car uninvited, A, but also get into their car and start driving, start taking over, that you know better, and that can get us in trouble.

When we're at work, and we think we can teach someone how to do their job better. Or we start monitoring other people that we work with, we monitor the hours they work or how long it takes for them to do a project, and we get stuck in this comparison thing. That's getting out of our own car because then we're comparing our cars to other people's cars rather than staying in our own car and just seeing what our own car has to offer. It does not matter what the other cars are doing. It's what your car is doing. That's the important part of life. You need to stay in your own car and take care of it, and everyone else needs to stay in their own car and take care of it. And then if we need to get in other people's cars when invited, we can do so in a calm, gentle way, riding next to them and support them in their journey, wherever that may take them. I love this analogy because it provides a clear way of thinking about the idea of staying in your car.

Another place that shows up a lot is in families. When your mom is having an issue with your brother, and so she calls you to talk to you about your brother. And then you call your brother and say, "Hey, mom is having an issue," and there's this whole big triangulation. A telephone game that happens rather than staying in your own car. When your mom calls you to complain about your brother, for you to say to your mom, "You know what, mom? That's between you and my brother. That doesn't have anything to do with me, so you need to contact him. You need to talk to him. It's your two cars that are having the issue." But what happens other times is we get that phone call from our mom, and we immediately jump into our brother's car and start driving for him and hijacking his car to head over to mom's when he's like, "I got my own stuff going on. That's my relationship with mom. I don't need you to take over this," so pay attention.

Get curious how often you feel the need in the spirit of helping and taking care of and being kind, how often you feel the need to get into other people's business and teach them your better way. Sometimes your way isn't necessarily better. That's a hard pill to swallow. Sometimes we need to give other people the journey of figuring it out. Your mom, in that scenario, needs to learn how to talk to your brother, so for the rest of your life, you're not triangulating that whole mess. She needs to learn how to talk to him so that she can call him and have a conversation without you.

We think we're helpful, but we're stunting the people in our lives and not giving them their own journey. We're not allowing them to grow and change and become stronger people. So this week, I want you to pay attention to how often you get out of your car and hop into someone else's. And how hard it is for you to stay in your own car and how amazingly freeing it is to have the realization of, "Oh my gosh, I don't have to solve this problem. I just have to stay in my own car. I just have to stay here." It's freeing not to have to take on all of the world's problems, not have to be curing everybody, to just take care of yourself.

+ 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: Place your Hands Over Your Heart

When you catch yourself feeling overwhelmed and ready to scream, take a breath and place your hands over your heart. The warmth of your hands naturally calms you down. You can do this when you are feeling stressed or randomly throughout the day.

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Episode 050: Live Happier Through the Holidays Part 6: Renewal

Part 6 of 6 Living Happier Through the Holidays: Renewal

Links Mentioned:

Elizabeth Gilbert Happiness Jar

Values Handout

+ Read the Transcript

Hey there. I'm so excited to have you here. We are here for the last episode of the Live Happier Through The Holidays series, and we are talking about renewal because it is the last week of the year; oh my gosh, 2016 is almost behind us. That's just so amazing. So we are talking about resolutions and renewal and what we're going to do next as 2017 looms here right in front of us. I want to touch with you about resolutions because I hate resolutions.

I think it's wonderful that we have this natural time, that we're reflecting on our lives, and we're figuring out what we're going to do differently and how we're going to change. But in reality, January 1st is no more magical than January 15th, or March 30th, or April 7th. If all of us could pledge, as our resolutions, that each day we're going to show up and be present, true, and intentional, and have grace and compassion as we move through our day, to ourselves and to those around us, oh my gosh, the world would be such an amazing place. That's resolutions.

That's REAL change. So, the huge resolutions we have of, "I'm going to lose 50 pounds," or, "I'm going to find a new job," or, "I'm going to get out of this crappy relationship," or, "I'm going to meet the man of my dreams," or whatever it is. These huge resolutions that we force ourselves to make come January 1st just sets us up for failure. So, I hear you if you want to lose weight, or you want to find the love of your life, or you want to get out of a crappy relationship, I hear you.

But my challenge to you, as you are looking at this new 2017, is, what are the baby steps you're willing to take to do that? So when we get on these crazy diets that limit us and we take ourselves all the way down, that we're going to go gluten-free, and sugar-free, and alcohol-free. That's not realistic because come January 9th, when we're ready to kill someone because we have no sugar, and no wine, and no gluten, it's unrealistic. So, what do you want to start cutting out of your life, or adding into your life, to make it better and more compassionate?

So maybe you want to start eating more vegetables, that's your resolution, that you're going to eat more fruits and vegetables. And when you start eating more fruits and vegetables, you're going to pay attention to how your body feels when it gets fruits and vegetables, and it'll feel better, I guarantee it. So part of the downfall of resolutions, and part of the reason they don't work, is we make these huge, large, sweeping, ginormous plans for ourselves. And the reason we do that is it's a lot easier to say, "I'm going to lose 50 pounds," than it is to be intentional and break that down to be like, "How am I going to lose 50 pounds? How am I going to face it come January 9th when I have not eaten any sugar for nine days, and I'm ready to kill someone, and I have learned that my whole life up to this point, that I eat my feelings. And so right now, that I've taken away sugar, I'm ready to flip out."

How are we going to handle that? That's the baby step. How are you going to start, if you want to lose weight, how are you going to cut out the emotional eating? What are you going to do when you're out to dinner on a date night with your spouse, and you guys normally split a bottle of wine, and it's just all these empty calories, and you want to change that. How are you going to do that in those little tiny moments? And that's what I challenge you to look at this week. When you're thinking of resolutions, how am I going to show up for my life in little tiny ways?

And I have an exercise that I will include in the show notes; click on this episode 50. I will have a values exercise there where you can get clear on what your priorities are. What are your values that you want more than anything in 2017, and how can you start living your life based on those? So I encourage you to do the values exercise and then go back and say, "Okay, based on my values, what do I want to change for 2017? What are the little baby steps I wanted to make in 2017?"

I'm also going to steal an idea from Elizabeth Gilbert, and she talks about the happiness jar that she does, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. And happiness jar, it's simply a jar that you have that you can decorate with your kids, or decorate yourself, that you have in a prominent place in your house, where you fill it with all the little things throughout the year that have made you happy. From huge, big trips you might take to little tiny incidences that happen throughout the year that have made you happy. And this is a great way to start building intention in your life and noticing the things that help drive you along and make you happy. Happiness is another thing that we want big, sweeping changes around happiness. We say I'm going to be happy as if it's going to be this level that once we attain, we will always have, and it doesn't work that way.

Happiness is something that comes and goes, and it moves through us. And so, we need to be intentional about seeing the happiness in our lives. We can see the happiness in our lives when we show up for it. And so that means showing up for the sadness in our lives, as well as the happiness in our lives. And the more we can show up for everything, the more we will live happier, and the more we will attain that piece of happiness. So I encourage you to look at that link on the happiness jar because I think that is a wonderful resolution to start and a great way of bringing intentional happiness.

And then the last tip I have for this week of the final week of 2016, and I know tomorrow is the 31st, so I really, we just have one more day, but tomorrow, part of the ritual I encourage to do is a burning bowl exercise. There is a link to that above. A burning bowl exercise, if you don't know what that is, is just a fire, you can have a fire in a bowl, or you can put a fire in your backyard. I don't care. But then to write down the specific things you want to either let go of, that you want to leave behind in 2016, kind of that symbolism of, these are the things that I'm going to let go of. And then also, what are the things you want to add to your life in 2017? So what are the little things?

You know, it might be things you want to let go of, and it might be things you want to add. So to give yourself the symbolism of burning that stuff is so powerful. So to write down, "What do I want to let go of and burn up?" and put on a piece of paper and burn it. And "What are the things I want to add to my life?" and put that on a piece of paper and burn it up and let it go out into the universe. I encourage you, if you do exercise, to be specific on what the things are.

A lot of times, again, like resolutions, people say I'm going to burn all of my people-pleasing. So I'm going to leave people-pleasing in 2016. Okay, that's not going to happen. The burning is symbolic. It's not magical. But who do you want to stop people-pleasing? Where do you want that specifically? I'm going to stop people-pleasing at work, or I'm going to stop people-pleasing with this co-worker. I'm going to bring attention to how often I people please with my mom, get specific on where is that thing that you want to let go of, where is it showing up in your life, and how can you, in an easy, simple way, let it go. Instead of this big, broad, huge, sweeping, change, challenge yourself to get specific. To get intentional about what is it I wanted to leave behind in 2016, and what is it I want to pull forth for 2017?

So that's the show. Thanks for listening to this podcast, and also this whole series on Living Happier Through The Holidays. If you missed any of them, please go back and listen to them, because even though it's the end of the holidays right now, they all pertain to life in general. So, please go back and listen. I can't believe we're at episode 50; that's so awesome that we have done 50 shows here. But, I appreciate you showing up, and I appreciate you listening. I wish you a blessed New Year's Eve, a safe New Year's Eve as well, and a wonderful 2017.

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Episode 049: Live Happier Through the Holidays Part 5: Peace

Part 5 of 6 Living Happier Through the Holidays: Peace

+ Read the Transcript

Welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. This is episode 5 of my Live Happier Through the Holidays series, and we are talking about peace. I wanted to talk about peace this week because tomorrow is Christmas. Oh my gosh, isn't that crazy? It's actually Christmas Eve is tomorrow, and it's also the first day of Hanukkah, or the first night of Hanukkah I guess I should say. We need a lot of peace coming at us this time of the year because we're hitting the climax of the holidays.

These next few days is what it's all about and why we have been so stressed out in the past few weeks. I want to touch on peace because to me that's what the holidays are about, is having peace and finding peace and all of the other stuff that comes with the holidays. This is just my few tips I have for how you can touch into peace and tap into that for your holidays over the next few days.

The first one I'm going to have for is when we spend time with the holidays we spend time with the family, and for some of us that can be very, very far from peaceful. I really want to give you the tip of being curious about your family rather than judgmental. What I mean by that is so many times our families know how to push our buttons most of the time because they've installed the buttons there so they know exactly where to push. I really encourage you to remember the saying which is challenging I realized but it really has helped me so many times, is that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have.

Even though our families might disappoint us, and they might drive us crazy with being passive-aggressive or judgmental, they are doing the best they can with what they have at that time. We may want them to be doing better or differently and they just can't. To remember that saying, but also to remember to be curious. Why, why did they think like that? Why are they acting this way? Why did they feel that way?

It is especially important this year because we are so divided as between families politically with what's happening in our country based on the election, and so there is going to be some arguments I'm sure going back and forth of people that voted differently. To bring to the table curiosity rather than judgment would save some sanity and bring some peace. We're not going to convince everyone to think the way we think, and we're not going to convince everyone to feel the way we feel, but we can be curious and approach it ...

Sometimes I like to approach family as if I am a researcher who's stepping into my family for the first time and observing them as this neutral third-party. Rather than stepping in with all of your buttons right there and all your triggers right there, and just allowing yourself to kind of observe what's happening. Then to remember when you do get triggered which you inevitably will because we all do, to give yourself a break around that. Triggering does happen, we do get upset with our families, and that doesn't make us less of a person or not self-actualized enough, that makes us human.

When that happens, and you find yourself getting triggered by family, take a walk, step back from what's happening. Take a walk, take three deep breaths. Remind yourself, "Does this matter?" In five years from now, or five days from now, will this conversation matter? Will the fact that my stuffing got burned or the mashed potatoes are runny, will that matter in five days?

Giving yourself a chance to step back and take a break when you inevitably get triggered, and when you inevitably get upset with one of your family members because that's going to happen. Peace is the goal, but that doesn't mean it's a state of being all of the time. Give yourself a break, take a walk and take some time to do some deep breathing. One of my favorite breathing exercises is to take three long exhalations and then making them twice as long as your inhalation. When you're taking your breaths to let all that air out. A simple one that you've heard me talk about before too when it comes to meditating in the moment is the five sense meditation.

You can do that while you're sitting there and your uncle is yammering on about something that drives you crazy, you can sit there and go through your five senses. What am I seeing? What am I hearing? What am I feeling? What am I tasting? What am I smelling? The holidays are a great time for the sense and to tap into that. You can do that mediation without anyone even knowing that you're meditating. It's a great way to kind of tune out to what's happening and tune into your senses, to tune into yourself, so that gives you a way to savor more of the holidays.

My last tip is one that may not be possible for every family, but you could do it individually, and that is to make your holiday celebration technology-free. Technology is wonderful, it does give us a break and allows us to kind of disconnect from the world. Sometimes when we're involved in family and overwhelmed by family, it's nice just to scroll through Instagram and see what other people are doing. At the same time, technology also can add more anxiety and stress to the situation.

If you want to make your holiday celebration technology-free, you can put a basket by the front door and have everyone just put their phone in the basket. That forces everyone to connect with each other instead of connecting with their phones and gives that idea of a technology-free holiday celebration. If no one in your family wants to participate in that which I can imagine, there are some families that don't; then it's okay for you just to do that yourself. Keep your phone at home or put your phone in a drawer and turn it off, and make Christmas or Christmas Eve a technology-free time where you're shutting off your phone.

For me, last weekend, my husband and I took last weekend and had our separate holiday celebration just the two of us at home; we had a staycation so to speak. I shut off my phone, I shut off my phone, I shut off my computer; it was a technology-free time, and it allowed me to connect, and stay present and not immediately be jumping on technology or pulling myself out to check email or whatever. It allowed me to stay present. Around the holidays, not much is happening on Christmas ever or Christmas, so it's okay to turn off the phone and just be present, and savor your holiday.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas, a wonderful Happy Hanukkah, whatever it is, happy solstice, whatever it is you're celebrating this time of year and gathering with family to have peace and joy. I wish it to you in spades and lots of abundance. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast, and emailing me and engaging with me. I appreciate it, and I can't imagine doing this without knowing all you people are out there listening and it's just so much fun for me to be here recording and knowing you're engaging out there.

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Episode 048: Live Happier Through the Holidays Part 4: Grief

Part 4 of 6 Living Happier Through the Holidays: Grief

+ Read the Transcript

This is part four of my Live Happier Through the Holidays Series and its grief. We're looking at grief this week so let's get into the show.

This week's theme we're looking at grief as we move through the holidays series, and if you've missed the previous episodes, which have been on priority setting and boundaries and joy, please go back and listen to those previous episodes. This week, we're specifically talking about grief, and I wanted to cover grief in the series because grief and sadness are a big part of the holidays for many people. It's a part that we don't talk about very much because, you know, like last week's episode, it's supposed to be about joy and happiness and, "Yay, it's the holidays."

For many of us, anytime we have that forced merriment, the opposite comes out, and that's grief. The holiday season is tough. It brings up traditions and memories, and we think of loved ones that we've lost. Either maybe we've lost them this year, or we lost them in years passed. We think of holiday traditions that have died or moved on, or we don't do them anymore. The holidays bring up change and grief, and sadness. That pressure of having the Norman Rockwell holiday that many of us don't have because you know it honestly doesn't exist, but we still have the pressure to have it; it brings up some sadness.

My first tip for you in living happier through the holidays with grief is to allow it. Give yourself permission not to be super merry all the time. Last week when we talked about joy, I stressed the importance that joy comes when we're intentional and when we're paying attention and looking for the moments of joy. So often, we push down our grief because we think we should be joyful or we should be happier; we shouldn't be feeling sad when in reality, we already are feeling sad—giving yourself permission to feel, to feel the sadness, to remember the loved one, to say their name, to bring up the memories.

The thing I've learned about grief and feelings is that it comes and goes when we allow ourselves to feel sad. With that idea that it's okay to feel whatever it is you're feeling and to just give yourself permission because when we don't allow it, we push it down, and it becomes harder. It becomes worse because we've pushed down the feelings rather than just allowing them to come up and have that bubbly surface. For me, I know I'm going through my grief. I've talked about my father's illness with dementia and Parkinson's, and it's so challenging to have someone, to watch someone disappear with such a terrible disease.

Someone can ask me, "How is it going with your dad?" I can tap into that grief in a second, and then I tap out of it in a second too. Just because someone asked, "How's your dad?" I may tear up. It doesn't mean the rest of the dinner is ruined because I teared up or I'm going to be in grief the rest of the time. No, when you allow that feeling, you can tap into it and tap back out of it. You move through your feelings. It does feel a bit like a roller coaster, but it also can smooth out and be like, "This is okay that I'm tapping into my grief, and now I'm tapping back out, and I'm going to be joyful."

That is the concept of living happier, that our feelings flow, and when we allow them, it doesn't become this huge spike or trough. It's just, "I'm feeling this right now, and then it's going to go away." The roller coaster of up and down and up and down is gentle and rolling. When we live in the place of I can't feel grief, and we hold ourselves from feeling it, then inevitably, we're going to enter that trough because it's too much to hold back. When we allow our feelings to come and go as they are, they roll around, and it becomes so much more fluid and loose. I encourage you to allow your feelings. I talked a bit about memories and having the memories.

I love the idea of a memory box or a memory stocking where if you've lost someone really important to you, you can write out those memories that you are thinking of when you think of that person around the holidays and then put them in the stocking or put them in that specific box. Then have time during the holidays to take those out and read them and share them with others so you can bring the memories alive and share them with other people so they can learn more about the person you love. It's a great way to bring the family together around someone who's gone and a great way to heal yourself through sharing stories. Then, the reminder that it's okay to skip holiday events.

Back in the previous episodes, I talked about making a plan for your holiday and getting specific about what you want to take part in or not take part in. As we move through the holidays, you may decide that the neighborhood party sounded fun at the beginning of December, but now it doesn't sound really fun. It's okay to skip holiday events or go for an hour and leave because it's just too much. Honor where you are with your grief and sadness and give yourself a break that you don't have to be holly jolly all the time.

Then just a simple tip of moving your body. I know that sounds easy, and a lot of times, when we're in grief and sadness, the last thing we want to do is to get out and move, especially when it's so cold outside. I encourage you to stretch or take a walk or do something that's honoring your body. Same with avoiding all, balancing out cookies and sweets and making sure that you're getting some foods and vegetables in addition to all the fatty foods that we eat around the holidays, and making sure that you're not over drinking because that just brings out more grief and sadness.

Give yourself a little balance and putting your physical health first. Then, finally, I have these two simple things that I want you to do just have in your brain and remember, and one of them is that everyone has a story. My favorite saying is, "Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides." The holidays are ripe for that. We spend a lot of time comparing our insides to everyone else's outsides. We see all these people around us being holly jolly and having a festive time and a wonderful holiday with all their friends, and we aren't feeling that internally. We allow ourselves to get sadder and more stuck in grief because we're in this comparison that isn't accurate.

What we're seeing on everyone's outsides is not the true story. Remind yourself that it isn't accurate to compare your insides to everybody else's outsides, and remember that everyone has a story. Everyone is suffering. Everyone is going through a loss or sadness or grief around this time of year, and so remember you're not alone in whatever it is you're struggling with. There are other people out there that also are struggling, and that's okay. Then, the final tip is embracing the do-over. A lot of times, when we're in sadness and grief, we get stuck in, we beat ourselves up for doing it wrong or not having the right response or feeling sad or whatever but allowing yourself to embrace the do-over means you can go back and say you're sorry.

You can go back and be like, "I wish I would have been able to come to that party, but I just couldn't do it," or, "I wish I would have said such and such, but I just didn't, and I apologize." Embrace that you can go back and do it repeatedly and say what you wanted to say, and not everything needs to be done perfectly right out the front door. You can take some time to embrace that do-over. Mostly, I just wish you a lot of grace and compassion for yourself around this time of year and going through the grief and the sadness and experiencing everything, the grief, the sadness, the joy, the holly jolliness of the holidays.

Give yourself permission to experience all that the holidays offer, which is joy and sadness and peace and sorrow and the whole thing. Every gamut of emotions is what this holiday brings up. Giving yourself the permission to ride that role that happens in life and allowing it to be, because when we do that, we don't get stuck in all of the drama and conflict because we're avoiding our emotions, so we throw them up on other people. When we allow ourselves to feel sad, when we're feeling sad, then we don't push it away and then yell at the dog because they did something wrong when it was that we were sad.

Give yourself permission to just be wherever you are and give yourself a lot of grace and compassion around it.

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Episode 047: Live Happier Through the Holidays Part 3 Joy

Part 3 of 6 Living Happier Through the Holidays: Joy

Links Mentioned:

Send a Handwritten Letter: MoreLoveLetters.com

+ Read the Transcript

Hey there! I'm so happy to have you here. I'm on the third part of my Live Happier Through the Holidays series. If you've missed episodes one and two, you can go back and listen to episodes 45 and 46. They're not in any particular order; it's just each week, I have a different theme. This week we're getting into joy, and I think that joy is a crux of the holidays. It's something that we want to be feeling throughout the holidays. Unfortunately, we don't always feel joy. I'll be talking more about that in the upcoming episodes, but we're concentrating on joy this week.

Everyone says to me, "I want to be feeling more joyful, and I want to feel happier." To feel joy and to feel happiness, we need to be intentional. Every single day we need to be intentional. Not just looking for gratitude or looking to be positive, but, intentionally, trying to find joy in our lives. I have some ideas that I'm going to throw at you, but I also want you thinking, as you move through this week, where do you find your joy? What are the things you do that give you joy? What're the ideas and places where you can add more joy to your life?

Here are some of the ideas that bring me joy and bring people I know joy and might be a place for you to tap into the joy of the holidays. My first one is, throwing a dance party. I love to dance, personally. It's my thing. Often we think we have to have some big event, a wedding, or a party, or someplace to be dancing. You can dance in your kitchen. You can dance in your living room. Put on some Christmas music or just regular old dance music and throw a dance party. Grab your kids or your cat or your husband or whoever and let out some fun and joyfulness of dancing. Just throw yourself a dance party.

Along those same lines is the idea of planning a family game night or a silly movie night. We need to be intentional about gathering our family around us. We are all busy and running from thing to thing. Planning ahead of time, we are going to be doing this event and having this time. We always have these ideas of stuff we want to do around the holidays, but we never really make a plan. We talked about that in the first week of really being intentional. This week we're implementing that plan. What is some of the stuff you want to do that brings you joy? For me, I want this year to be about enjoying some of the Christmas lights. Our zoo does a big wild lights event. I want to go to that this year. I want to walk along our downtown riverfront and enjoy the lights. To get Christmassy and embrace that holiday period with my spouse and enjoy being outside and be in that moment.

It's not just about planning the event. It's about being present in the moment when we plan the event. We may decide, "Oh. I want to go look at Christmas lights." Then, we go to look at the Christmas lights, and we're so busy thinking about how many gifts we still need to buy that we're not present to the Christmas lights. That's hard to find joy when you're not present. If you decide to do a family game night or a silly movie night, or a Christmas movie night, to be present at that time where everyone's gathered around and your laughing and being joyous, that's where joy comes from. One of the pieces we miss about joy is we're not present to joy. We are always, in our heads, onto the next thing or onto the drama that's taking place around the table. We're not present to our joy.

Another idea for adding more joy into your life is making a date with someone who brings you joy—spending time and being intentional about finding that person. Maybe it's your spouse (hopefully, if you have a spouse, they bring you joy), maybe it's your kids or your aunt or a relative or your best friend. I don't care. A co-worker. It doesn't matter. Make a date with someone who brings you joy and savor time with them. Get a cup of coffee or a cup of hot chocolate. Look at Christmas lights or go out to dinner. It doesn't matter, but be intentional and make a date with someone who brings you joy. That's such an easy one. We miss these opportunities for joy. To be savoring that time with that person.

My next tip in bringing joy is to write a handwritten letter. You take some time, again, we're into that savoring and write a handwritten letter to someone. You could write to a service person. You could write to a friend or a co-worker, your mom or your dad, letting them know how much you care about them or even if this person isn't even around anymore. If they're gone, and you're missing them during the holidays. Writing a letter to them, letting them know how much you miss them, can tap into that grief, but it can also tap into the joy of the memories of having that person around.

In the show notes above, I'm also going to be including a link to a wonderful website called moreloveletters.com. Every day they have a story of someone who needs a handwritten letter and then the address of where you can send that letter. This is a brilliant idea to bring more joy into someone's life, simply by writing a letter. Check out the show notes, and you can find a link to this moreloveletters.com program, which is amazing and a wonderful way of bringing in more joy.

My final tip, which is really about dealing with stress, sometimes joy is hard to come by when we're running from thing to thing to thing, and we're having a hard time staying in the moment. For me, letting out a big sigh, just one big deep sigh, allows me to release some stress. It allows me to be present. I find myself, during the holidays, letting out a lot more deep sighs than other times, which is fine. Just allowing your body to completely relax and letting out that deep sigh gives our bodies some more oxygen and a chance to regroup and a chance to tap into that joy. Letting out a sigh is my weekly ritual challenge for the week of joy, but it's a way for you to tap into, "How can I be more joyful?" One of those ways is recognizing when you're stressed and taking a counteractive measure to that.

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Episode 046: Live Happier Through the Holidays Part 2

Part 2 of 6 Living Happier Through the Holidays: Managing Your Energy and Boundary Setting

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Each week throughout the holiday season, I'm going to be releasing a podcast. This is episode two of my Live Happier Through the Holidays series. If you missed episode one, flip on back to episode 45, and you can listen to Live Happier Through the Holidays: Setting Priorities. I'm just going to be helping you figure out ways to live happier through the holidays.

This week's theme is energy and boundaries. This is such an important theme because managing your energy is important during the holidays. If you listened last week, we talked about making a plan, communicating, and figuring out what you want and need for your holidays. Even if you make a plan, there will be stuff in that plan you don't want to be doing. There's going to be stuff in that plan that drains you. All of us have a glass of energy that we walk around with all day long, and there are activities that we engage in that add energy to the glass, and there are activities that we engage in that drain us. It is our job to make sure that our glasses aren't bone dry. For most of us, we walk around with bone-dry glasses, especially during the holidays. When we have to go to a party or do a work function that we're dreading, and we know it will drain us, it's important that we then add something back into our lives that fill us back up so that we don't live in this perpetual state of drained energy. "Okay, Wednesday I'm going to the work party, so that means Thursday I need to do something that's going to add back into my life. I'm going to make sure that I have a fun activity with my family, where I can add some energy back in." Making sure that you are looking at your energy flow and managing that throughout the holiday season.

Now I want to talk about boundaries because setting boundaries is important in the holiday season. We talk a lot about setting boundaries, how important it is, speaking up for yourself, and talking about what you need. Still, it's hard in life to set boundaries because it makes us uncomfortable. Because many of us want to make everyone happy, we don't want to disappoint anyone. The problem with that is, it's impossible. We're going to make people mad at us; people aren't going always to love us. That is the myth that we tell ourselves, that if we do everything right or say yes to everything, people will love us. I want to give us a couple of things to think about when you're moving through your holidays, when you're going through your week and your life as well, to paying attention to how you're viewing stuff.

One of them is, you can't make everyone happy. It's okay to disappoint people, and that's an important one to remember. A lot of us think, "Oh, if I say no to that party, then the host is going to be disappointed." Yeah, they might be disappointed for a period. They might be disappointed all afternoon, and that's okay. It's okay to disappoint people. We don't have to make everyone happy, so it's okay for you to say no to a party, and it's okay for the host to be disappointed that you're not coming. Both are fine. We don't need to step in and make sure everyone feels okay. Remind yourself; it's okay to disappoint people.

Another one that I found helpful is the idea that saying no is a form of self-care. When we can say no to someone, when we can tell them, "Yeah, I can't do that or I can't come to that party. I need to blank. I'm just overwhelmed." We don't even have to give them a reason, but if we did to say, "I'm overwhelmed. I have too much going on. My glass is empty. I need to add more into my life, to my energy pool," and saying no is a way to do that. It's a form of self-care, so reminding yourself that you are taking care of yourself by limiting all the activities you're engaging in.

You don't have to justify, prove, or defend, or as a client added, atone for any decision you make. Any time you say no to someone, you don't have to justify why you said no. You don't have to make it up later or atone for it. If you say no to the neighbors Christmas party, you don't have to explain why or defend your reason, and you don't have to make sure you suck up to her in some great loving way because you're atoning for the fact you said no. When you say no clearly and succinctly, then she can be disappointed, and you can move on. When we muddy it all up with justifying, and defending it, and atoning it, it just makes it muddy, versus making it clear that, "You know what? I can't go to that party." That's okay. You don't have to go to every party. As I said, it's okay for the host to be disappointed. Both are valid, and it's okay.

For a lot of us, the holidays are about giving: giving gifts, giving of ourselves, giving to charity, giving to other people. I want to throw in the reminder that giving to the point of resentment isn't giving. When we are giving, and we're keeping score, or we're resentful, or we're bitter, or we're mad, or we're angry at whoever it is that we're giving to, that's not true giving. To monitor yourself when you are resentful about going to a party or resentful about giving gifts once again at the family Christmas party, to remind yourself resentment isn't giving. How can I get creative and come up with a different way of doing that?

This brings me to the last point I have: getting creative. It doesn't always have to be a yes or no. If you want to go to the neighbors Christmas party and your husband doesn't drive separately; you can leave early. If you don't want to do the whole big family, extended family, Christmas gift exchange that is just crazy and you hardly know each other, and it's just way too much money, figure out a way around it. Maybe it's a white elephant gift; maybe it's giving to charities in each other's names; maybe it's doing random acts of kindness for each other. Getting creative and thinking out of the box on the activities that you are resentful around is a great way to set some boundaries in a fun, creative way. I can make some changes to how we do the holidays without making some super blunt, "No, I'm not doing that," rigid boundaries. I can get creative, and I can make myself happy, and the other people around me happy too, and that's what it's all about. The whole time you're going to be managing your energy and checking out how full your glass is.

The question I want to leave you with is, as you move through the holidays and get ready to get moving, as here we are on December 2nd, where do you need to say no? Where is it you need to say no to parties, to gifts, to Secret Santa events, to singing carols, to whatever? Where is it that you can get creative and start thinking outside of the box? Because you recognize saying no is a form of self-care, and you need to make sure you're paying attention to how full your glass is.

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Episode 045: Live Happier Through the Holidays Part 1

Part 1 of 6 Living Happier Through the Holidays: Setting Priorities.

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Hey, everyone, I'm so excited to be here. I will be doing something a little different for the next five episodes than I normally do in. What's going to happen is every week for the next five weeks, I'm going to be putting out a podcast on Fridays that will give you the theme for that week and some tips on how you can live happier through the holidays. This first week is setting priorities.

This week we're going to be talking about setting priorities. The reason I wanted to start with that is that we're starting the holidays. Often, we're rushing into the holidays, and they're here before we know it. I want to set some time aside to slow down and ask ourselves a couple of key questions, so if you can grab a piece of paper, that's awesome. If you're in the car, just make some mental notes of how you want your holidays to feel. It's an odd question. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions so if this question doesn't fit, you can move on to the next one, but how do you want this holiday to feel?

I had one person call me, and she said, "I want this holiday to feel magical," and I know exactly what that means. For each of us we have a different feeling. I want this holiday to be content, or I want this holiday to be peaceful; I want this holiday to be grounded. I want this holiday to be happy. I want this holiday to be memorable. Whatever, how do you want your holiday to feel is one of the first questions. Once we can figure out how we want it to feel then, we can set our priorities around that feeling. That's the first question.

The second question I'm going to ask you is, what is your absolute no list? This is asking you to get clear on what are the things you are not willing to do? For some people, it's like, "I don't want to bake cookies," or, "I don't want to go to the large neighborhood party that has 500 people at it." "I don't want to make gifts for anybody, or, "I don't want to buy gifts for people," or, "I don't want to go caroling." I don't know, whatever it is for you. We all have things that we think we should do, so this is getting to the heart of that. What is your absolute no list, and what is your absolute yes list to that same degree?

That third question is, what is your absolute yes list? What are you willing to do at all costs? What do you want to do? Maybe it's going caroling in your neighborhood or making your famous fudge bars, or doing cookie cutouts with your kids, or maybe it is the Christmas tree and decorating that or watching your favorite movies. Whatever that is, what is your absolute yes list?

Then, the last question I'm going to ask you is a little harder, what is it you need this holiday season? This is a challenging time. There are so many expectations and so much pressure on us of how we should be feeling, so we're forced to feel joyful and merry. Instead, we might be sad, we might be missing someone, we might be going through a tough time. All of that gets heightened this time of year.

What are your needs? What do you need to make this holiday special? Maybe you need more time. Maybe you need more time with your husband. Maybe you need more family time, or you need more social time. "I need a break, or I need more space," but we're craving social time. To make and bargain out our list of where we're going to set our priorities, we need to be clear on the importance of the level of the need.

Then, the last thing is not a question, but it's the plan, and that is for you to set a plan. Who do you need to chat with about your priorities for Christmas, for the holidays, for Hanukkah, for Solstice, for whatever it is you celebrate? Who do you need to chat with about your plan? Do you need to chat with your mother-in-law and figure out how Christmas Eve will go down? Do you need to chat with your mother to figure it out, or your father, brother, or sister-in-law? Who do you need to be chatting with to get it laid out and figured out?

So many times, we have all these expectations of what the holiday is, but we're not communicating with each other on what those expectations are. In making that plan, I want you to figure out who you need to sit down with. I bet in your immediate family. It needs to be your partner, husband, wife, and kids; you need to be including them. If you have grown children, are they coming home for the holidays? Are they planning on hanging out with their friends? What are their expectations? Getting some of the stuff hammered out at the beginning of the month can make the rest of the month so much better. We need to figure out these answers because the holidays are coming whether we like it or not. When we bury our heads in the sand, it increases our stress, and I'm all about reducing our stress.

The main way to do that around the holidays is to communicate. When you are clear and answered the question, how do you want this holiday to feel? You have answered your absolute no list, your absolute yes list, and what are your needs? You can then set your priorities. You can meet with those in your immediate family and figure out, "Okay, what's our plan going to be? What are our priorities? What's most important to us? What's this holiday going to look like?" Then you can branch that out to talking to your mother-in-law, your sister-in-law, or whoever it is that you need to be making plans with—talking to the neighbors, RSVPing to the events. Now you'll know what the plan is to start implementing that, which can help you reduce your stress.

Usually, I do a weekly ritual challenge. For these next five episodes, I'm not going to be doing that as much because the whole podcast is the weekly ritual challenge. I want this whole week you to be sitting down and doing an action plan for your holidays. Getting clear on what it is you want your holidays to look like and how they're going to come alive for you in a way that fits what you feel, what you need, what's most important to you.

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Episode 040: Living Without Drama

The cause of drama can be summed up in one phrase: lack of direct communication. In this podcast, I explore how to have a tough conversation without the drama.

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I confess. One of my favorite ways to unwind is watching Real Housewives on Bravo TV. I love it because it's so unlike my life, and then sometimes, my nearest and dearest will walk in while I'm watching it and say, "Ugh. How can you stand to watch this? These women are so full of drama." He's so right. The show is all about drama. But I think I love watching it because it's a great insight into how drama works. How easy it is to get sucked into it and how truly, truly devastating it can be to relationships and self-esteem. If you ask anyone if they enjoy drama in relationships or at all, they will share a resounding no.

Why would any of us want drama in our lives? You see those quotes like, "I hate drama in my life. No more Drama. I'm dumping all the drama." In reality, drama, in varying degrees, is a real part of life. The drama of, "I can't believe she just did that," or, "What if she's mad at me?" or, "Oh my God. What are we going to do?" That drama, anxiety, worry, and oh my gosh, can be summed up in one phrase, lack of direct communication. When we communicate directly and honestly with the people in our lives, there's honestly little room for drama. That's easy enough, right? I mean, just directly communicate. However, this lack of communication can be due to a number of things: our fear of conflict, our shame, our perfectionism, our lack of trust, our lack of integrity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

What drives me crazy about this self-help industry is that the insight ends at more direct communication equals less drama. Yeah, that's true, but the act of direct communication is freaking scary because direct communication requires vulnerability. It requires a strong sense of self. It requires overcoming rejection, setting strong boundaries, and holding them over and over and over and over. Not to mention having to do all of that when you were awash and shame because someone has thrown their drama all over your shame triggers. So, yes, more direct communication is the key to less drama, but learning how to communicate directly is a process that takes time. It also takes trial and error, self-compassion, and lots and lots of baby steps.

If you have drama in your life, you're not a terrible person. You're a human being who struggles with being vulnerable, and that's normal, and it is possible to limit the level of drama in your life. There's a lot underneath drama, needs, shame, speaking up, boundaries. One of the biggest things is having a difficult conversation with someone without drama, without getting stuck in the "he said, she said" or the blame or all that stuff. During this tough conversation, it's helpful to think of the drowning person analogy.

If you've ever done any lifeguard training, you know that when a person is drowning, their instinct is to fight back, to fight for their survival. As someone comes to rescue them, the drowning person who's acting instinctually will try to save their life at any cost, even if that means taking down the lifeguard. To keep his head above water, the drowning person might push the lifeguard underwater as well. Lifeguards are trained on how to rescue this person without drowning themselves.

This also happens when we engage in a difficult conversation with someone. When we approach our boss, coworker, or spouse with a need to approach something differently, no matter how loving, kind, or open we are with the other person, on some level, instinctually, they may feel like they're losing control. When we lose control, we feel attacked. When we feel attacked, we tend to lash out, enter drama. Like the drowning person who is overwhelmed by the water, feeling out of control can overwhelm people, and they go on the attack.

A typical conversation will start with person A. Let's call person A Fran. Fran lovingly explains that they want person B, let's call person B, Sam, to talk directly to them, rather than going through a coworker. Sam feels attacked. Maybe Sam knows they have been engaging in this behavior. Maybe Sam even feels bad about it, but Sam initially doesn't like being called out on this behavior. He feels uncomfortable and really out of control. Sam attacks back and calls Fran for taking too long at the staff meeting. Then, on it goes back and forth. Tit for tat. They are not making any movement because Fran doesn't even remember why they started the conversation in the first place.

Rather than causing a spiral of craziness, the next time Fran goes in for a tough conversation, she can remember that most likely, no matter what she's talking about and confronting, it will be initially hard for Sam to hear it. Even the most enlightened among us, when initially feel attacked, sometimes that feeling can last for thirty seconds. Sometimes that feeling can last for thirty years. The trick is for Fran to have a clear purpose for what she wants to get out of the conversation.

Some examples could be that she wants to be heard. She wants to develop a new way of dealing with the situation, or she wants to be understood. Fran also needs to remember that Sam will flail. He will try to attack, just like the drowning person, and it is Fran's job just lovingly to understand that. To not try to attack back and keep coming back to the intention that she initially set. Fran's job is to keep the conversation as calm and positive as possible and keep the intention first and foremost. It is not Fran's job to be attacked, to be abused. She can walk away at any time, but for Fran to yell back and cut below the belt and engage in all that drama is not necessary. She needs to take care of herself but also keep coming back to that intention, first and foremost.

Let's go back to the original example. If Fran wants Sam to talk to her directly, she can brainstorm a way to make that talking easier. It might just be a functional issue. Maybe Fran's door is always closed, or she might need to dig a little deeper and brainstorm why it is challenging for Sam to do it and how to make it less challenging. The bottom line is that Fran needs to keep the intention of facilitating direct conversation forefront in their conversation and open to brainstorming ways to do that.

Tough conversations go much better when we, as the instigator, can have a clear intention in mind and recognize before we start that we are catching someone off guard. We are instigating a tough conversation, and we need to give the other person a lot of room to flail. To some degree, it's our job to recognize our tendency to flail as the person who's been confronted in a tough conversation. It's our responsibility to notice our tendency to go on the attack. When you noticed yourself attacking like the drowning person, it's okay to admit you're uncomfortable. Apologize for attacking or just ask to take a break and if you do ask for a break, make sure you set aside a time to begin that conversation again.

Tough conversations are hard, and they are the root of drama. Doing them wrong leads to drama, but the more we practice, the better and easier they become. I promise you, but you have to start with intention. Being clear on what it is you are there for and why you want to have the conversation. Noticing when you're getting triggered, notice when you're flailing and put a stop to the conversation. But also making sure you start that conversation up again.

That is my two cents on limiting the drama in your life. This conversation could go on and on and on. Living without drama is an ongoing process that starts with intentionality and vulnerability. Plus, awareness of how we're entering into the world and what we're doing, and the behaviors we're engaging in.

+ 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: Mindfully Enjoy Your Morning Cup of Joe

I have taken this idea from an article I read in The New York Times about noticing your cup of coffee in the morning or whatever beverage you enjoy in the morning. It's taking the five senses meditation that I've talked about in the past and focusing it deeply on your cup of coffee. What am I feeling? What am I tasting? What am I smelling? What am I noticing about my cup of coffee? As you start your morning, it's a great way to add mindfulness so you can face your day more connected and ready to go.

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Episode 036: Anxiety as a Badge of Honor

Anxiety is a habit. We can become addicted to the “high” anxiety gives us of being productive, accomplishing a lot, and looking “altogether”. But at what price? Our health?  Our relationships? Anxiety is not something to be glorified--it is something to build resiliency around.

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Frequently when I'm out, and people ask me, so what do you do? I say I'm a therapist, and I help people reduce their anxiety and stress. And I met with the response of, oh my gosh, I totally need that. I have so much anxiety followed by an ever-so-subtle smile of pride.

I remember that smile of pride. I remember wearing my anxiety as a badge. And unfortunately, we are living in a society that encourages that belief. The belief is that anxiety makes me grouchy, exhausted, and stressed out, but it makes me productive. It disconnects me from my friends and family, but I get a lot done.

It leaves me with indigestion, headaches, neck pain, but I'm seen as having it all together. Anxiety can be a result of neural biological hardware. I come from a long line of anxiety sufferers. And anxiety can also be a habit we can become addicted to. The "high" anxiety gives us for being productive, accomplishing a lot, and looking altogether.

But at what price, our health, our relationships, anxiety is not something to be glorified. It is something to build resiliency around. Anxiety resiliency starts with admitting that anxiety is not serving you. True confession. It took me a long time to admit that, but I started building a life of anxiety resilience once I did.

So today, I want to talk about how we can let go of that. Anxiety is a badge of honor, and it starts with each of us individually. We each have to take on the charge of stop valuing the thinking that anxiety is a way of life. So I want you to start noticing how many times you get stuck in this busy mentality.

How often do you lament? Oh my gosh. I'm so busy or litany off your to-do list to someone or yourself and the hopes of looking busier. I read somewhere that the word busy has become the new fine. When people ask, how are you doing? We're like, oh, we're so busy. So it's become this new normal to be like, oh, I'm so busy.

And then we even have taken it to the next level where we start shaming each other if someone else isn't as busy as we are. So if someone says, oh my gosh, I got nine hours of sleep last night. That was so amazing. And they'll be like, what, how did you get nine hours of sleep? My life is so hectic; I can only average five hours asleep. We belittle each other for the fact that we are taking care of ourselves. It's just crazy. I tell you, crazy. So I want you to start noticing how often you get stuck in that busy mentality because busy is a comfortable habit for many of us.

I've found that helpful. That's why I do these weekly ritual challenges to build a natural stopping point throughout the day so that I can check-in and see if I'm falling victim to my to-do list. Again, I talked about it a couple of weeks ago in the Addiction to busy-ness podcast, a similar concept, the idea of posting sticky notes around the house. When you see a sticky note, you check-in, or one of my favorite ideas is setting the alarm on my phone, and it randomly dings; when I hear that ding, I know I need to check.

Start noticing how often your Monger is hammering you when you decide to enjoy some play and rest. Notice what she says, notice the themes of the messages and lovingly ask her to be quiet because you're playing right now, and that's okay.

It is okay not to be going all the time. We are not wired for the constant fight or flight that we put our bodies through. Notice each time you catch yourself getting caught up in the belief system that the more I do, the better I am, and remind yourself that you are good enough.

You are just fine. No matter what you accomplish, that does not make you a better person. The more we accomplish does not equal better. That's just the more we've accomplished. And then ask yourself, what do I want my life to feel like? Is doing helping me feel that way? Does feeling anxious, stressed, and busy make me feel good? Can I step out of this busy mode for five minutes? Just to pause. And as you practice building awareness and taking a break from the go, you will be able to take longer and longer breaks. Five minutes. We'll be 10. We'll be 45. We'll be 90. And over time, your body will recognize how wonderful. How just amazing. It feels not to be pushing yourself all the time.

I was just talking about this with my husband. I value my sleep, and it is something that I take very seriously. I get between eight and nine hours every night. I schedule it that way.

And if I don't have eight or nine hours, I'm a mess. So a couple of weeks ago, we were out late, and I got six hours of sleep, and I was just a wreck. And I said to my husband, I remember back in the day when I would just average six hours of sleep, and I would be totally fine.

Because here's a secret, I have a lot of shame around the fact that I get eight or nine hours of sleep at night, even though I know I feel better. I'm a better person when I get that much sleep. It's better for my body when I get that much sleep. But the looks and the anger that I get from people when I tell them that I get eight or nine hours of sleep is, oh, must be nice to get that much sleep. You must not be doing anything.

Instead of being like way to go, I wish I valued sleep that much! Or how do you do it? Give me some tips on how you get that much sleep each day.

And so I get eight or nine hours asleep, and I belittle myself for it, but I know when I don't get that much sleep, I'm a mess.

My husband and I were talking about how over time, as we've practiced letting go of the busy and jumping off that merry-go-round of busy, we have less capacity to do that. So I think of 10 years ago, I was constantly going, constantly moving.

If I had a headache or a stomach ache, it didn't matter. I just was on to the next thing. And now, I can't do that. I need more breaks. I need more time to rest. Maybe cause I'm ten years older, but also because I just don't have the desire to live like that. It just doesn't bring me joy to be that pushed.

And I think when we get into that habit of pushing, we forget what it feels like to be rested, calm, and have those moments. And so that's why I think these weekly ritual challenges are so important because they remind our bodies what it feels like not to be in fight or flight. They remind our bodies what it's like to be, just to relax.

+ 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: How often do you use the term "Busy"?

Pay attention to how often you use the phrase, busy in your day-to-day life. "Busy" has become the new "fine". Notice how it infiltrates your life, take a breath and a pause.

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Episode 035: Living Happier in a Quick Fix Society

Tips to Living Happier when we are overwhelmed with life.

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So let's face it. Life moves fast all day long. There are millions of pieces of information flying at us on how to be better and be more successful. And, of course, how to be happier. Unfortunately, there is so much talk of instant gratification, fad diets, quick fixes, and fast money.

And with all that fast-moving instant messaging Snapchatting, there's a pushback. There's a yearning for quiet meditation, simple pleasures, and enjoying the little things. These two polarities constantly present in our lives. They almost drive me crazy. These two polarities, I am constantly pushing myself to go faster, and on the other end, pushing myself to be quiet, take some time, sit in the backyard, and relax and enjoy the simple thing.

So, on the one hand, we know to engage with life and live happier, we need to disconnect. And on the other hand, we know that society and our inner critics tell us to keep up, get stuff done, be successful. It is enough to make even the calmest person, anxious and heaven forbid you're like me, and you already struggle with anxiety.

So what are we supposed to do? And we know that getting quiet and listening is the key. And yet, we're afraid of the answers that might come up. We know that living in life based on our values is life-changing, yet living our values might anger a lot of people and disappoint them. So living our values might cause a major upheaval in our lives.

We know that meditation and mindfulness is the number one way to decrease anxiety and increase health. And yet, sitting in that quiet is scary. We know that speaking about our needs and setting healthy boundaries are important. And yet, sometimes, the pushback from setting a boundary is just too exhausting.

We know admitting we aren't as perfect as we appear and don't have it all together is important to living happier. And yet we're scared to death to be that wrong. I believe all of those are true. That is the crux of living happier. The dichotomy of both, of those, of admitting that we know healthy boundaries are awesome and they're needed to be happier.

And yet they're hard to set and knowing that we need to live a life with our values. But knowing that living that life sometimes is uncomfortable and makes other people uncomfortable. So to counter those, I believe we are supposed to do three things.

Number one, give yourself a break, understand that living happier, decreasing anxiety, and being authentic aren't going to happen overnight. They aren't a quick fix, and they aren't easy.

They are lifelong practices, and they're going to be days that you don't want to engage in that practice. So remind yourself. That is okay. Tomorrow is another day. The one thing I hear so much from people that say I want to live happier, and they come in, they talk to me, and they are shocked to hear that I don't have the perfect set of boundaries.

I don't have a life that's constantly engaging in my values all the time. My inner critic runs the show some days. I am actively learning how to decrease that, which is why I'm, doing what I call my year of self-compassion and learning more about self-compassion for myself. We are all learning as we go.

So give yourself a break that it's okay. That you may know these practices and you may do them more days than not, but on the not days, that's okay. Give yourself some time. The second thing I want to say is to counteract this busy world is to show up, just show up, shut down the autopilot mode, and show up for your life.

Notice when you're feeling anxious. Notice when you keep saying yes, but. In your head, notice when you're running into old patterns, notice when you're looking for the easy out, just notice that show up for your life and be imperfect. We spend so much time trying to get it right, trying to do it perfectly.

And we don't show up and notice when we're doing when we're stuck in old patterns. A common example, we read a self-help book, we get inspired. We listened to this podcast where yeah, I'm going to make some major changes. And we head down the road to make some major changes. And gradually fall off the road, and we get back into our old patterns, but we don't notice that we're running into old patterns.

We're just engaging in the old patterns. And so we do the old patterns for a while, and then eventually we remember I was going to be doing this stuff differently. I was going to do it another way. And so we start beating ourselves up and hammering ourselves. If we noticed when we started running into the old patterns, if we had stopped and just paid attention and said, whoa, today I'm engaging in some old patterns, we could have stopped the action there.

We could have recognized the old patterns and been like, oh, today's just been an exhausting day. I don't have it in me to draw the boundary where I should. I'm going to notice that I'm going to move on, and tomorrow is another day, but instead, we run on autopilot and let the old patterns take over the drama.

The resentment, the ridicule, all that stuff comes playing out. And then we start turning on ourselves because we weren't able to make the real change. So when we show up for our lives, when we show up in all our imperfectness and notice when we engage in a pattern and when it's more challenging for us or when it's harder or when we can just be in our lives. That's when change occurs. That's when it gets easier.

The third tip I have for you is to ask for help. We can't do this stuff alone. We can't live happier without the support of others. Ask your people to give you what you need to keep you on the path, whether a kick in the butt, support, or words of wisdom, ask others for help. I have many clients who say to me, I want to make these changes, but my husband just doesn't get it. And he's not that supportive. And I've said to them, have you asked for help. Have you asked him if he's interested in this stuff? And 90% of the time, they say no, I haven't.

Or if I have mentioned it to him, he just gives me advice. And then I say, have you asked him not to give you advice? Have you asked him to give you support? And they say no, I haven't done that either. So pay attention to how often you're like, wow, my, my people won't give me support and then come back with, have I asked them for support?

And if I have, have I told them the kind of support that I need? So often, I'll say to my husband, I need you to just to listen to this. I don't need brainstorming or suggestions. I just need you to listen. Or I'll say I've just had a tough day, and I just need a little support because we don't know how to show up for you. And so when you ask for help, be specific on what it is you need from other people. So those are my three tips for living happier and a quick-fix society when the go has gotten too much.

Give yourself a break, show up for your life and ask for help. I'm going to leave you with a wonderful quote from Geneen Roth, a phenomenal practitioner in helping women deal with body image and emotional eating. And she's come up. This quote she says is, "for some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, that criticism will lead to change. If we're harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true. Not for a moment. That shame leads to love. Only love, leads to love."

Oh, that's so incredible. So I guess I would add that as my fourth tip is love leads to love. Love yourself through all of this craziness.

That is the life we live in. Give yourself lots of love and compassion for trying to live happier, trying to be present, trying to live by yourself. And on the days you win, celebrate those days, celebrate them big time.

+ 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: Do Something Creative

Draw, paint, write, sing, play an instrument, dance, or get out in the garden. Expand the right side of your brain!!

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Episode 028: Meditation Isn't for Everyone (and that's ok)

Meditation is amazing...and it isn't for everyone. This podcast offers tips and ideas for adding more mindfulness and peace into your everyday life.

+ Read the Transcript

Today I want to talk about meditation, not being for everyone. And I'm a little nervous about talking about it, to be honest, because there's so much buzz out there about meditation and how amazing it is and how it is the key to everything when it comes to happiness and compassion. If you Google, self-compassion the first thing that pops up is self-compassion and meditation.

So I want to start by saying I'm not against meditation. Meditation is fabulous and wonderful. It is a tool that can help us become more centered and grounded. There are a lot of tools to do that. And the reason I wanted to do this podcast is so often I hear from clients; oh my gosh, I just need to start a meditation practice.

So anything that we start discussing or bringing up, they're like, oh yeah, I need to start that meditation. And so meditation becomes this block or this excuse for what, why they're not implementing the things we're talking about, because if only they did meditation, then everything would be healed.

And so meditation becomes that new magic button that you think that, oh, once I start doing meditation, then everything I talk about with Nancy and everything I learned about when it comes to getting centered and compassionate will come true. But until I do that meditation thing, I'm not going to get anywhere near that stuff.

In the quest of being honest with ourselves, sometimes meditation won't work for you with where you are in your life, and that's okay. It is okay not to have a meditation practice. So if you are one of those people, that thinks when I get the meditation practice, then everything will be okay. I want you to stop and ask yourself. Can you implement a meditation practice right now? And if the answer is no, if the idea of stopping for five minutes or two minutes, or even a minute to pause and think, and be calm for five minutes to sit in stillness for five minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes makes you want to poke your eyes out, which it does for me right now and that's okay. Find something else.

So this podcast is about figuring out other ways to add mindfulness and centeredness, and peace into our daily lives that may not involve—sitting still for five minutes and doing a traditional meditation practice because a traditional meditation practice may not be for you.

And so, if you are using that as an excuse not to be centered and grounded and find peace every day, then you're just using it as an excuse. It's saying the only way to exercise is to run. And the only way I'm going to be able to exercise is to run—lots of ways to exercise. There are lots of ways to get the benefits that come from running in a variety of ways.

And so that's what I've spent the past few years of my career doing. When I realized no matter how hard I tried, I could not implement a meditation practice sitting still for five to 10 minutes every day. Or every other day, it just wasn't in the cards for me. So I had to get serious about, okay, if I'm not able to do that right now, how will I add mindfulness, groundedness, and peace into my daily life?

Because that is the key to being intentional and mindful about your day, that is the key to self-compassion. It's when we runoff in our day and we let our brains just take over, and those thoughts just become a way of life, and we don't have any way of grounding it into our body.

That's where we get into. And so that's why meditation is so amazing and why everyone says, oh, we should be meditating. But even as I talked to a yoga instructor this week who has an active meditation practice, she said, "I still have to do intentionality all day long. I still have to get grounded. That meditation practices, I love it. It's a great way to start my day. It's a great way to quiet my mind. And I still have to be intentional all day long."

So meditation is not the silver bullet. It's not the only answer. There's a lot of things we need to be practicing in our day-to-day lives. That's why I wanted to do this podcast. I want to talk about some other ways of meditating or adding mindfulness into your life.

So the first one is I want you to think about changing the rules. So let's redefine what meditation means to you? And hands down. One of my favorite ways of getting mindful, and it radically changed my life, is the five senses meditation. It's a five senses mindfulness exercise, it takes 30 seconds, maybe a minute, but man, does it drop me into my body so quickly. And it allows me to get out of my head. And I've talked about it here before, but the five senses meditation simply goes through your five senses to stop what you're doing and go through your five senses. What am I seeing? What am I hearing? What am I feeling? What am I tasting? What am I smelling?

And the beauty of this meditation is it. You can go as deep as you want. You can sit there for as long as you want and get into what am I smelling? And you can just start to smell things you weren't even aware of, or what am I hearing? And you start to hear things you weren't even aware of. So the power of that meditation is that you can do it for 30 seconds, and a quick way to get you back on your body.

An easy way to go a little deeper is to observe what's happening around you. Without going into this, I'm going to go into meditation for five minutes.

Another mindfulness practice is to engage in one activity at a time, limit your desire to multitask. When you're washing dishes, wash the dishes, just be present when you're vacuuming, vacuum, whatever you're going to be doing. Just do that activity one activity at a time. Another great one is, be fully present. The most awesome place to do this is when you're in the shower.

How many times are you in the shower? And you get out of the shower, and you're like, whoa, what just happened in there? Or you'll wash your hair, and you won't be paying attention that you washed your hair. So you have to think do I need to wash my hair again? Practice being fully in the shower when you're drying off when you're in the car, when you're stuck in traffic. Instead of being, oh my God, I'm stuck in traffic, blah, blah, blah, blah, catch yourself and practice being fully present there when you're stuck, waiting in line. How can you be fully present wherever you are? One of my favorite ways of getting into that mode is parking far away in a grocery store or wherever I have to go. If I have to go to Target or the mall, I can park as far away as possible. And that allows me to walk into the mall. As I'm walking, I'm just concentrating on my breathing. I'm concentrating on what's going on around me. I'm not stuck in, oh, we've got to get there as fast it's possible.

And then the last one I'm going to talk about is, there's a big buzz these days about crayons and coloring, but that truly is an awesome way to become more mindful. I've found that to be an awesome way of slowing down throughout the day.

It takes no time at all. Earlier this week, I had a day where I was grouchy, and I didn't know why. I had a break between clients. And I happened to glance over and see the crayons that I have sitting in my office for this very task. I pulled out a picture, and I pulled out the crayons, and within five minutes, I felt better because I was focusing on the crayons and the coloring and being creative.

It works a different part of your brain. And that is so helpful. And that's what we're talking about here, just getting out of your head, into your right brain into a more creative and relaxed place. And there are lots and lots of ways to do that. That isn't necessarily five minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes of meditation.

So that is my small spiel on creating an active meditation practice that's a little non-traditional.

+ 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: Jam to Your Favorite Song

Recently I had the house to myself and I decided to put on some music and dance. As I lip-synched my cares away I decided to make this a regular practice in my life. So whether in the car, your living room or office get lost in your favorite song!

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Episode 017: I Think I am Addicted to my Phone

Do you spend too much time on your phone? Is your phone controlling your life?  Last week, I realized mine is more prominent in my life than I want it to be so I declared this month a “Screen-Free Month”.

+ Read the Transcript

This episode is going to be a little different. I wanted to talk about a personal struggle of mine, and that is my phone. I have struggled off and on with being addicted to my phone and using it to escape when I'm in a social situation, using it as a way to deal with my anxiety, using it as a way to stay in touch.

It is my best friend and my worst enemy all at the same time. On Sundays, my husband and I always watch CBS Sunday morning; it's one of my favorite shows. I like the last 10 minutes of the show where they do a nature scene. It's the last 30 seconds, but sometimes I'll watch the whole show just for that last 30 seconds, or I'll fast forward through the whole show for that last 30 seconds.

But this week, they had a piece with Paula Poundstone, who was talking about cell phones and iPads and the whole gamut of things that we use to distract ourselves. She was specifically talking about kids and what all this screen time is doing to our children. It was profound and just knocked me into my senses to be like, wow, you are addicted to your phone. If I am not on my computer, I'm on my phone, or I'm on my iPad.

My husband and I will joke that I can sit in front of the TV watching a TV show while playing with my iPad. So it's not just one screen, but two that I need to relax. So after watching that show on Sunday, I was thinking to myself, okay, I'm going to do a screen time vacation for the month of December. And so here we are, it's December. I'm recording this on December 2nd.

And so two days in actually yeah, two days in, so I started that on Monday, November 30th. This is my third day, and this has been challenging for me. So I just wanted to share my reactions and what's been happening for me in hopes that it would help you if it's something you struggle with.

I've been surprised by how addicted I am. I almost wanted to start the show by saying my name is Nancy Jane Smith, and I'm addicted to my phone. It is like a jonesing almost to have that distraction, especially in the morning, because in the morning, the first thing I do, I get up, check my phone, and look at my email.

I look at my Facebook. I look at Instagram. I read blogs. I do this stuff while watching TV, while eating breakfast, while walking around the house, taking care of the animals. I'm also on my phone looking at what's happening in the world. And so to come downstairs and just be with my animals and do the chores in the morning and not have my phone has been fascinating.

It's been nice to have that relaxation time and that time just to be doing one thing at a time, rather than constantly multitasking. But it also has been hard because I realized that I am always looking for it. I'm always wanting that fix of being on my phone. So it's been an interesting experience.

And last night I went out with a friend and she was late. She was about half an hour late actually to meet me. And I was at a wine bar, and I was sitting there with my glass of wine and had my phone in my purse, but I couldn't touch it because of this December phone ban, and it was interesting.

I can't tell you the last time I sat at a restaurant by myself, and I had nothing. Usually, I have a journal or something in my purse, but I didn't bring that purse this time. I just brought a little wallet. And so I didn't have my journal. I didn't have my phone, and I could just sit there and breathe and look around and take in the Christmas decorations and the lights and the beautiful wine shop that it is.

And it was amazing how hard that was to sit there. And I kept thinking, what are people going to think of me? Do they think I'm staring? What are people going to think about me just sitting here doing nothing?

And that was uncomfortable for maybe a minute or two, but then it just became nice. I'd had a hectic day yesterday. So to be able just to sit there and relax and think and not be on my phone all the time was refreshing. So it's helped me. Relax. It's helped me be more present in my life.

It's helped me recognize that I'm not all that important. Facebook is surviving just fine without m constantly checking and liking and seeing what everyone's doing. And I am doing just fine in my business. Because I used to use it as an excuse that, oh, I need this for my work, I need to be checking all these blogs.

My business has been just fine without checking all the bogs and seeing when everyone else is writing out there. I don't think I've lost any brain cells because I haven't seen the latest and greatest blogs. If anything, I think I've become more connected with myself and my life. And what's happening right here in my little home in Columbus, Ohio, and with my little family that I have here.

And that's been nice. So like I said, I'm only on day three, so it's just beginning, and I will keep you all posted as this goes along. I wanted to announce it somewhere, and I didn't want to announce it on Facebook because I thought that was ironic. So I thought this podcast was a great place just to share this journey.

Because this is where I share my stories on living happier, I think this recognition of how much screen time I use to escape from my life and then just being present to it without the screen time will be impactful to this live happier journey that I'm on. And I would love to hear if that's something you can relate to, or if that's something you're struggling with as well.

And you are welcome to join me for the December free of screen time event. And I'm hoping I can last the whole month. It will be interesting to see. So that's my insights on living without screens and living without Facebook and email.

For the record, I am still on all those things. I'm just on them, only on my computer. The next thing will be the challenge of not running upstairs to my computer all the time, which I don't think that'll be a challenge. The rule is I can get on Facebook and email, but I can only do that from my main computer, which has been challenging and helpful.

+ 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: Ask Yourself Does this Really Matter?

I have been doing this more in my everyday life. While sitting in traffic or in line, I ask myself does it matter if there is traffic? Can I do anything about this? Nope. I can’t. Reminding myself to breathe, relax and remember some things are out of my control (ok most things are out of my control) is helpful.

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Episode 008: Reducing Stress and Enhancing Energy

 Reducing Stress and Enhancing Energy is the most popular topic for my speaking engagements. The problem is we know how to reduce stress. We just don't do it. In this podcast, I look at, why that is the case and what we can do about it.

+ Read the Transcript

Welcome to this podcast, where I share my stories and lessons I've learned and continue to learn on my quest to live happier.

So first off, I have to apologize. My voice is a little funky. I'm getting over a cold, and it just keeps hanging on. It's not making me any happier, but I'm recording anyway and powering through.

If I sound a little stuffy, that would be why. So today, we're gonna talk about reducing stress and enhancing energy. And one of the main reasons I wanted to talk about it is because it's by far the most popular topic for any of my speaking engagements. So if I get called to do a speaking gig, it's usually around this topic and the issue I have with this topic, and I love this topic, but the issue I have with it is that We know how to reduce stress.

We know how to relax. We know what we need to be doing. We're just not doing that. So in this podcast, I want to look at why that is the case and what we can do about it. The concept of self-care is not a new one. Watch the today show any morning, and they have something on self-care. Watch Oprah, pick up a magazine everywhere we look; there are tips for us on how we can reduce stress, we know to breathe.

We know when you eat, we know we need to exercise. We know we need to sleep, but we're not doing that. And so it's not so much a lack of knowledge. It's really a lack of implementation. And so then when there's a lack of implementation, you really gotta look at why what's underneath that what's really going on.

And so we all know. But the glorification of busy the glorification of busy is pervasive in this society. So we gain status from less sleep. The longer to lists, the busier that our lives are you. It's counter-cultural to value peace and space in our time. Facebook is filled with posts about memes, about valuing peace and space.

And we all want that. And we all think it's great, but none of us are really doing it. And there's really a commonplace that we feel shame and guilt around when we're not busy. There's a competition around how little sleep I got six hours. I only had to do it in four. Or how long were you were at work or how How late we stayed up or how little we've eaten or any of that stuff.

The glorification of busy really is a challenge to us in the idea of reducing stress and enhancing energy because it is hard to go against the culture to say "no" to say, "I don't want to do that," to say "I'm gonna take some time for myself." So for me, I know that just the proactive approach doesn't really help in reducing stress.

I'm not real great at Taking care of myself proactively, but I am much better at being reactive to my stress than I used to be. I'm much better about paying attention to when I'm stressed and then working in some stress-reducing behaviors. And as I've done that more and more in my life, stress becomes less and less because I can nip it in the bud.

So much faster. So there are three things that I really pay attention to. One is, and I'm gonna talk about each of these in a little more detail, but one is, what are my stress behaviors? The second is what are my messages around stress? And the last one is what are my stress triggers? So what are the things that cause me stress?

And I have a great handout on stress triggers, but let's go back to what are your stress behaviors? If you start paying attention to what are the things you do when you're stressed? Once you start noticing, these are the things I do when I'm stressed; then you can start implementing a stress-reducing activity, which, as I said, we already know eating right sleeping, going on a walk doing meditation or mindfulness activity breathing.

We know what we need to do just in stress. And one of the ways. To implement that is to be more reactive around our stress behaviors. So stress behaviors can be numbing with food, alcohol, work, TV, shopping, stress behavior can be to go, go, go. That is my favorite stress behavior. So the more stressed I am, the more, the harder I push myself, which is really counterintuitive.

And I know a lot of especially women, have that mentality of I'm just going to keep pushing so I can keep getting a lot accomplished. And so we pushed down what it is we're stressed about, and we just go. Even when we're exhausted, that's a stress behavior. When we have physical headaches, stomach aches, chest backaches, those are all stress behaviors.

So the minute I notice since mine is go, go, go that I am pushing myself. I now know to ask myself, Whoa, what's going on. You're a little overwhelmed. Let's back that up a little bit. And do some deep breathing or let's back that up for a little bit and do some stretches or let's back that up a little bit and go for a walk.

When I noticed that I'm numbing out to the TV and playing on my iPad at the same time, I might be like, okay, let's put that down and pick up a book or let's do some journaling and pay attention to what's really going on here. So noticing your stress behaviors and then being able to work it backward into a stress reduce reducing activity is a great way to enhance energy.

Another one. That's a big one for a lot of us. So one of our messages around stress. For a lot of people, the reason we're not reducing stress is because stress is a pride point. So one of our attitudes around stress is life is stressful. You just have to get through, or this is how it's supposed to be, or grit and Barrett or better to be busy than not.

Or one of the worst is I get more done. The more stressed I am. So if you have those messages around stress, it's really important to notice. When those start getting triggered. Cause they usually get triggered. The more stressed we are. So we convince ourselves that it's not okay to take a break. It's not okay to stop because life is stressful, and you just have to get through, or it's better to be busy than not.

Or we get more done, the more stressed we are. And so the more we push on those messages, the more stressed we get. So it's really important to notice how you feel when you're engaging in self-care or when you're practicing mindfulness. What are those messages that come up that, that tell you, keep pushing those messages around stress can be really detrimental to reducing stress?

So when you notice those messages, that's the time to be reactive and put in a stress-reducing activity. And then the last one of the three is, what are your stress triggers and what are the behaviors, the tasks, events that cause you the most stress. And I actually have a great worksheet that I will attach to the website.

live-happier.com backslash podcast that talks about these stress triggers and really helps you get a handle on it because I believe the number one way to deal with stress. And the theme of all of this is to be intentional. And when you're intentional about how you spend your time, what your priorities are what's most important to you.

You can plan your day better and manage that stress a little better. So this inventory exercise that I have. I call it how full is your glass? And if you think of your life, energy, like water in a glass, you can, and as you go through the day, you have things that totally deplete your glass that leave you feeling less energized and miserable.

And you have things that fill your glass up. And throughout the day, you have those things they're doing that are filling you up and those things that are depleting you. And then there's a middle category that I think is really important. And that category is the things that don't really change the energy level of your glass very much, but they just leave you feeling peaceful and calm.

This is like your spouse or your partner or your best friend, someone who's there for you. You're there for them. And they don't really ever take too much or give too much. It just evens out the level. And so it's nice to have those people that we can just be around, and we don't have to worry about giving, or we don't have to worry about getting, we're just being. So this inventory is really awesome on two levels.

It's awesome on a macro level because it helps you look at the big picture of your life. And a lot of times, when my clients do this exercise, they recognize how much of their lives is being depleted energetically. And so they're engaging in a lot of what I call obligation tasks, and obligation tasks are those that We do out of obligation, and we don't have to do them.

There are definitely things we all have to do, but there are some things that we tell ourselves that we should do that really, we don't have to be doing them. And so to make, be asking which of these obligation tasks can I get rid of which of these tasks? And I give someone else to do, which of these obligation tasks are just tests that I'm telling myself are important, and they're really not.

So getting a handle on the big picture of your life and then on a micro level, getting a handle on the day-to-day. So what activities can you add to your day that will fill your glass up again? And how can you be more mindful of your glass throughout the day? So when you look at the day, when I have a day that I know is going to be particularly draining all day, then I make sure at the end of the day I add in something that's going to fill me back up.

So I make sure I have, at the end of a crappy day, I might make sure I have a date night planned with my husband or at the end of the crappy day. I know there's a TV show that I'm going to look forward to watching or at the end of a crappy day. I know At the end of a draining day, in particular, I know that I'm going to have a good book that I'm going to be reading, something that is treating myself kindly.

That's going to help bring that stress level back down and enhance my energy. I think that's key is asking yourself throughout the day, how full is my glass light? Right now, where is my energy level? It really can help you reduce stress and enhance energy. So, in summary, when it comes to reducing stress and enhancing energy, I think it's really important to remind yourself that you know how to reduce stress and enhance energy.

You know what to do to be more in control of your life. It's about being reactive to when you're feeling stressed and implementing some stress, reducing behaviors—so paying attention to those triggers and those behaviors and your attitudes about stress and where your glorification of busy is falling into play.

And it's also about paying attention to, how full is your glass? It's where your intentions are and your priorities, and what's your energy level going to be for the day. And how can you add in some stuff to make your energy better, to make your stress less? That's what it's all about—being intentional about your day, your stress level.

+ 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: Setting an intention for the day.

So at some point, before you get too crazy with your day, take three deep breaths and set an intention for the day. You can do this before you get out of bed each morning; before you get out of your car to walk into work; as you pour your morning coffee. I don't care when as long as you're clear and setting an intention.

Sticky notes are really going to be helpful for this one. Whether you need one to remind you to set an intention or to remind you what the intention is. Some of the intentions, examples can be compassion or kindness or breathe, move towards peace, speak up for myself, show up and be brave or be vulnerable.

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Episode 006: Making Lasting Change: Closing the Loop

The process of making change involves making mistakes, which is followed then by shame, guilt, and fear. Closing the loop looks at how to move through the process so that real change can occur.

+ Read the Transcript

One of the greatest lessons I learned from working with Brené Brown’s teaching is the concept of resilience. We are all building resilience against fear, shame, anxiety, or whatever negative thought process we have. The kicker is we aren’t going to MASTER these processes; we are going to build resilience around them. Discovering that mastery isn’t going to happen allows me to practice more self-compassion when shame, doubt, and fear take over.

So many of us want to learn the lesson and move on. We want to master the concept and never again be taunted by Mongers, Shame or Fear. But that is not how it works. The key to Mongers, shame and fear, is not mastery (because that just doesn’t exist). The key is building resilience; or shortening the Loop as I call it.

The Loop is the timeframe from when you notice that you have gone off track (experienced disappointment and failure) to when you implement your support team and coping mechanisms.

Growth occurs as this Loop gets smaller and smaller. The quicker our response time from failure and disappointment through shame into making a different choice, the more we will make change in our lives.

REMEMBER, even loop closing is not a linear concept... Some days you will be really good at closing the Loop, and some days you will the Loop will drag on and on. That is ok. All of this is a practice.

Whether you want to change a habit, attitude, or behavior, there is a PROCESS to change that inevitably involves disappointment and failure. So how do you move beyond that?

Clarity:

The first step is to get extreme clarity on what you are changing and how this behavior shows up and to pick a few small areas of your life where you can implement changes.

Awareness:

Building awareness involves noticing when you engage in the behavior and intentionally making a different choice.

Disappointment Failure occurs when it doesn’t go as planned

Shame/Guilt/Etc inevitably follow

Compassion:

You are Clear on what you need to change, and you are aware that you are backsliding and losing focus. You are engaging in the “putting

Curiosity:

You have successfully navigated your shame and mongers, and now you are ready to work your way back up and close the gap.

You start asking yourself WHY it went so south AND what action you can take to do it differently next time.

Make New Decision/Plan:

After your curiosity session, you realize maybe you are “biting off more than you can chew” with this one. So you decide to re-visit clarity and make a new plan.

Spiraling Up:

Something we tend to forget about life lessons is that we keep learning more and more until we have them mastered. I call this phenomenon spiraling up. Spiraling up means we might come back to the lesson, and it might FEEL like we are re-learning the same lesson, but really, we are experiencing it at a new level with new insight, a new situation, a new challenge. And then, when we have that mastered, we will spiral up to another place.

When you think about life lessons as spiraling up, it gives a new perspective. While we do repeat lessons, we don’t unlearn all we have implemented before. We repeat the lesson one step up with a new perspective, new challenges, and new information that we didn’t have the last time the lesson came into our lives. So the next time you have a sense of deja vu when it comes to a life lesson, don’t beat yourself up. Remind yourself that you are just spiraling up. Then remind yourself all you have learned about this topic.

+ 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: Find the furthest parking spot

As you are running errands, pulling into work, or basically anywhere, there is a giant parking lot. Avoid the temptation to circle until you find the closest spot. Instead, park as far away as possible. As you are walking to your destination, intentionally slow down, watch your breath and pay attention to what is happening around you.

As someone who tends to rush through errands or rush on to the next thing, this practice helps me slow down and be more present with what is around me. Any time I can add an easy way to reconnect with myself, it is a win for me. I hope it is as helpful for you!

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Episode 003: Why Positive Thinking is Keeping You Stuck

In this week's episode, I ask the question:  Is positive thinking keeping you from fully engaging in your life?

+Read the Transcript

Growing up, whenever things were hard, I would hear the phrase “count your blessings” and be grateful for what you have. You know, basically saying quit our bitchin’

It is common wisdom that increased gratitude leads to increased happiness. Which is true gratitude helps us gain perspective on our lives.

Being grateful can be used as you are going through a challenging time.

You are getting a divorce, a deadline at work is looming, or you are caretaking for a loved one.

As you are moving through change or transition, or even trying to become “unstuck,” being grateful is an awesome way of gaining a new perspective and feeling some positive energy in your life.

The danger comes when we choose to think positively to avoid dealing with the truly negative areas of our lives.

For example, you hate getting up every morning, you struggle to go to work, and you are a walking zombie throughout your day.

Thinking positive and being grateful,

might put a nice spin on your day,

might give you some peace for a temporary time,

but it won’t make things better in the long term.

It won’t improve your job and make you feel like less of a walking zombie. It is a Band-Aid for an open wound.

Thinking positive keeps us from asking the hard questions:

What do I want my life to look like?

What changes do I need to make in my life, both big and small?

What is holding me back?

Sometimes we just need a Perspective Band-Aid. For example, I have a bad day, a conversation with my brother doesn’t go the way I like, and I am not as productive as I want to be.

So rather than coming home and vomiting my bad day all over my nearest and dearest, I choose to think positively about the things that went well. I choose to think positively about my day—because overall, my life is good. Thinking positive allows me to change my mood in the moment and feel better for the time being. I also choose to analyze my day and look at what things I can make different tomorrow.

What about the interaction didn’t go well?

Why wasn’t I as productive?

Sometimes life is out of our control, people become sick, we have to stay in a job to make money we need to survive, or the transition out of a relationship takes longer than we thought it would.

Thinking positive helps us move gracefully through these times. However, we need both; we need awareness of the muck and grief, and we need to be grateful for the other areas of our lives that are full of joy and promise.

Thinking positive is a way to help us gain a new perspective and be happy about the things in our lives we love. However, we still need to take stock of our lives, be intentional about our choices, and make the necessary changes to Live Happier.

When thinking positive keeps us in denial or stuck, it isn’t serving us—it is trapping us in a cycle of pain, shame, and hiding ourselves from the world.

Are there places in your life where you are using positive thinking as a coping mechanism?

Is positive thinking keeping you from fully engaging in your life?

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