Episode 071: Holiday Reminder: You Don't Live in a Norman Rockwell Painting

It's the Holiday Season, and our Monger LOVES to remind us of all the ways we aren't perfect. My #1 tip for enjoying the Holidays, getting along with challenging family members, and having a happy Thanksgiving even if you aren't living in a Norman Rockwell Painting.

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Hey, everyone. I'm excited to be back here on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I just wanted to do a quick podcast to remind you all that the holidays are upon us as if you didn't know. And with the holidays comes a lot of Monger-chatting. So our Mongers love this time of year because it is ripe with people-pleasing, and perfectionism, and getting everything right. And that is our Monger's mantra. So, it's also ripe with family who tend to fire up the Monger because they have put the buttons in us that get us fired up. So, if there is ever a time that we resort to our default patterns and get lulled in by that Monger, it is when we are hanging out with our families.

There are so many tips out there about how to get through the holidays and what you should do. And so, we get all wrapped up in doing the holidays right, from a personal development standpoint. So then we're spinning our wheels the other way. So, we're spinning our wheels because our Monger is making us run 1,000 miles an hour to please everyone in the family and to make everything right. And then, we decide, okay, we're going to be looking at our lives from a personal development standpoint, and we start spinning our wheels that we're not doing that right. So, it's just this Catch-22.

So the main thing I wanted to tell you was a phrase that I was sharing with a client of mine recently that really, radically changed my life, especially when it comes to family, which is where we're going to be hanging this holidays most likely. And that is the idea to remind yourself repeatedly, "You are not eight years old." I will say to myself, "I am not eight years old. I am 44. I'm 44." And it snaps me back to, "Oh, my gosh. I am an adult who has a mortgage and a car payment. And I am doing things in my life. I am an adult."

And so, it isn't so much that the family members in our life, or the people we're surrounded by in our life, make us feel eight years old. We make ourselves feel like we're eight years old. More accurately, our Monger makes us feel like we're eight years old. And our biggest fan steps in to remind us, "You are an adult here. You have opinions; you have needs; you have the freedom to do what you want because you're a freaking adult!" So, I just want that to become your mantra for this holiday season. "I am not eight years old. I am (fill in the blank, however old you are.)."

And it is crazy how often, when I do that, that there's kind of like this, "Oh, yeah." It's like I literally have to remind myself that I am 44. And a piece of my brain goes, "Oh, yeah. You are. You are an adult here." So it is a very simple little quick piece of advice that I just wanted to give you, something easy that you can take into the Thanksgiving holiday and say, "Okay, I'm not eight years old." When you're standing there, and you're trying to mind-read your mom, yet again, or you're beating yourself up because the stuffing didn't turn out perfectly, or your kids are acting up, or whatever's happening. And your Monger is just slamming you to remind yourself, "Wait a minute. I am not eight years old here. I am an adult. And there are lots of ways to handle this. I don't have to go into my default patterns."

+ 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: Name 1 Thing You are Grateful For

Okay, gang. Now it is time for the weekly ritual challenge. And I really encourage you, in addition to asking yourself or reminding yourself, "I'm not eight years old here," to really engage in a weekly ritual challenge. It doesn't have to be this week's. It can just be touching your toes, or wiggling, or jazz hands. I love jazz hands, by the way. Whatever it is that gets you back into your body, because that's going to be so important during this holiday time, as the reminder to get out of the Monger's brain and into your biggest fan. So, that's what these rituals are all about.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'm going to have you name one thing you are grateful for. And that is just going to be simply taking a breath in the middle of making the stuffing or listening to your father ramble on about football, say one thing you are grateful for. And bonus points if you can name three. But sometimes, you can only muster one. So take a deep breath, name something you're grateful for. Make sure that it's something deep if you can. It's better, when you're doing gratitude, to go deep and really be specific.

Let's take the example of you're listening to your dad go on and on about football. Take a breath, and remind yourself, "Okay, I'm grateful for the fact that my dad is so passionate. I'm grateful that he's so passionate, and he's passed that on to my kids. Even though it's football, and I don't really understand football, I'm still really grateful for that personality trait in my dad." So it's a way to reframe the situation and see it from a place of genuine gratitude, not just painting it pretty, but genuine gratitude. So, that's my challenge to you. But, as I said, feel free to do any weekly ritual. Anything that gets you into your body, for five seconds or thirty seconds, will be helpful this week of the holidays.

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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 069: I Did Something Good, But...

Learning how to celebrate our wins and not diminish ourselves is the topic today. Too often I hear clients cut themselves down when they should be celebrating their success.

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Before I get started on this week's topic, I wanted to thank everyone for all of the comments. I got text messages. I got people in person, and I got emails that commented on the grief podcast that I just did a couple of weeks ago was the last, it was episode 68.

And that was a very hard podcast for me to do, and I felt very vulnerable and very out there. And so I appreciate it. All the people that commented and how it had helped them and touch them. And it's a topic that we need to be exploring more and being more honest about. So I just wanted to do a quick thank you.

And the more we can share our stories and get them out there and get the support and love that they deserve, the happier workers. So okay. Onto the show. Okay. Welcome. I'm so glad to be back here. I went to the smokey mountains with my mom and my husband last week, and it was an amazing trip.

We were a little early for the leaves, but which is hard to believe. Because it's the last week of October, but we still had a wonderful trip, and we got to go horseback riding, and we did some painting. Super out of my comfort zone and wonderful all at the same time. But today, I want to talk about something that I hear a lot in my office, and that is the phrase of I did something good, but, or I feel like I'm enough, but in that, but comes in there.

Wipes it all away. So I have a couple of examples of what I'm talking about. So let's say you have a great day laughing and playing with your kids at the beach. And after seeing yourself in the mirror, you beat yourself up for how you look at a bathing suit, or you get up early, you work out, you make a healthy breakfast, and you even set an intention for the day, but you don't allow enough time for traffic.

And you end up late to work later. As you sharing your day with your friend, you only talk about how you relate to work. No mention of all you accomplish that. You have a great time with your girlfriends, but you end up drinking too much. And as you share with your husband about the weekend, all you mentioned is how stupid you were for drinking too much.

And the last example I have is you find a great new job, and you're so happy that you left your old one, and all you can keep telling yourself is what an idiot you were for not leaving sooner. Can you relate to any of those examples? I'm sure you can. Because I know, I can. So in all of these examples, something great has happened.

An opportunity at work, putting your health first and during time with girlfriends or getting a new job. And those are all great activities that make you shine. There's something to be proud of. They're fabulous activities. And then you notice, and the retelling of these amazing events, you immediately play them down, focusing on the negative or regret they took so long.

In essence, you're intentionally dimming your light. And I had this happened to me with a client this week. I'm seeing a client, and she was talking about how she'd had this great aha with recognizing every time her monger steps in and tells her where she's failed or brings up some fear or some doubt she steps in and says to herself.

Yeah. And I would argue her biggest fan steps in to say to her, okay, what if I'm enough right now? What if this is enough? And just saying that to herself and returning to that over and over again has made a big difference in her life. But as she was telling me this victory in this thing that needed to be celebrated, because she figured out this way of channeling her biggest fan, and it was defeating the monger, and it was this positive thing.

She would counter everything she said with, I come in, and I say, I'm enough, but I'm not perfect. I'm not doing it perfectly, or she'd say, and then I'd come in, and I tell myself I'm enough at this moment. I'm not saying I have a huge ego or anything. So everything she did, even in session with me, she was still want me to think she had a big head.

She didn't want me to think she wasn't modest. She was dimming her light here. She'd figured out this awesome way to counter her emonger, and instead of celebrating it, she's making sure I know that she's not perfect. She doesn't have any ego when that isn't the point. The point is she figured it out away.

To get through the day without being attacked by the monger. This constant dimming of our light and not celebrating our successes is an epidemic. And it's something that I'm guilty of. It. Something I see in my clients all the time. I see in my girlfriends the number of women who diminished, disregard, and flat-out disrespect.

There wins rather than celebrating through immediately onto the next thing. We're bullying ourselves for how it could have gotten better. We've discussed this a million times. We are our own worst critics. And so when you ask yourself, what are you gaining by diminishing? And so here are some things we say to ourselves, Keep us in the diminishing stance.

One is don't shine too brightly, good girls, quote, unquote, stay humble and small. That's something a lot of clients have that the good girl is humble and small, so we want to be a good girl. So you diminishing your light, playing small, or staying humble doesn't shine the light on someone else more brightly.

It just keeps you small. That's back to the idea, I talked about a couple of podcasts ago about People in Puerto Rico that are suffering from the hurricane. And when we feel guilty that we're not suffering, that isn't helping the people in Puerto Rico, so you diminishing your light isn't helping anybody else.

You're just diminishing your light. So another thing we say if we celebrate a win. Somehow stop striving. And I've talked about this myth before. This is the myth that we need the monger, if we need to keep driving ourselves and if there's something to be accomplish, then there's no room for celebration.

We just got to keep powering through and keep going so that, or doesn't make us accomplish more. She just makes us miserable. Wow, we're doing it. So softening her voice will make us less. But it will make us happier. So keep that in mind. The biggest fan does not stop us from striving. It just stops us from hammering ourselves all day.

And then the last thing we tell ourselves, we believe that we have to be perfect to celebrate that a victory, unless spotless is not a victory. Oh, I can so relate to that one. So there's no such thing as perfect. Like my clients saying I'm enough. I'm not perfect, but I'm enough.

And we had this whole discussion around how enough doesn't have anything to do with perfection. Being enough means you can show up at a situation and you can feel empowered to handle it. You may not handle it perfectly. You may not even handle it no 50% perfectly, but you're handling it. And that means you're enough.

So no matter how hard we strive, we have swallowed the belief. We have to be perfect. And so really keep that in mind that perfection is so dangerous. So here's three things I would say to help unhook this diminishing or cutting out the celebration is surround yourself with celebrators.

Surround yourself with celebrators encourage your friends. Celebrate with you and call you out when you aren't celebrating. And this has been a big thing. My husband has done this for me because I'm not a big celebrator, and he will frequently remind me we should be celebrating this. That's a good thing.

Keep that in mind. He'll call me out on the celebrations. So it's something to do with your girlfriends, or your partner is really to encourage. You to celebrate and also for you to be encouraging them when they need to celebrate, stop, you need to be celebrating this, doing a reminder.

Notice how often you diminish or disregard a win and force yourself to celebrate, no matter how small. So that's another way of bringing in that celebration. Throw a dance party for one in your office. Enjoy a cupcake or tough friend about your victory. Vocalizing it out loud, sharing with other people, allowing the victory to be, and the victory can be, I made it to work on time, or I got up this morning and worked out, or I recorded the podcast.

They can be little tiny things. They don't have to be these huge momentous. I did something perfect. And it was amazing. No, I've got up out of bed, and I got dressed victory. That could be a victory for some people. And then the last thing I want to say would, you've heard me say this before, but it is so powerful.

Remove the word, but from your cab vocabulary and instead use the word. And so if we go back to the example that I talked about, where let's take the, one of you have a great time with your girlfriend. And you ended up drinking too much. So instead of saying, you have a great time with your girlfriends, but you ended up drinking too much.

You can say you have a great time with your girlfriends and you drank too much. So if you could go back, you probably wouldn't drink that much again because you were hungover and you still had a great time with your girlfriends. Both are true. One doesn't take away from the other. And so, adding and into the vocabulary has made a big difference for me and my clients and recognizing I can be holding two opposite truths at the same time and one isn't diminished the other.

+ 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: Clench and Tighten All your Muscles

So scrunch your face up. Squint your eyes, and country fists do that for five, 10 seconds. However long you can hold that. A lot of times, when you're doing that, you're holding your breath. So to remind yourself not to do it too long, or you won't be able to breathe. And then, after you're done, release everything with a big exhale you realize how tightly you were holding your body before you crunched everything. And then B, it allows you to release all that tension.

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Episode 068: My Dad, Grief and Living Happier

Today I am sharing my story about the loss of my Dad and my grief over the past few months. It is something I haven't talked about much, so I wanted to share what I have learned about grief. It was a hard podcast to record and hopefully will be helpful if you are dealing with grief or know someone who is.

NOTE: The sound is a little goofy at times, I apologize for the mic issues.

Links Mentioned:

Megan Devine Website: http://www.refugeingrief.com/

Megan Devine book: It's Ok Not to Be OK

+ Read the Transcript

Today as I sat down to record my podcast, I realized I'd been putting it off and hadn't been 100% in my diligence around the podcast. Part of that is just that I've been writing a book, as I've mentioned to you guys before, and so that's taking a lot of my energy and hopefully going to be coming out the first part of 2018. I will keep you posted as I start unveiling that and showcasing that more and more because it's going to start happening, building up to it in the next couple of months.

As I was sitting down, trying to think about what I was going to talk about today, one of the things that popped up was grief. It is a big part of my life right now that I have not been sharing about in my blog or newsletters or anywhere on my social media, talk about here and there, but for the most part, I avoid bringing the grief around my father and into my professional life.

Today I just kind of wanted to touch base on that. I think part of the reason I've been kind of stuck and what I want to talk about and share about is that this kind of huge thing is left there, and I'm not talking about it. I tend to be very authentic and open in my life when it comes to what's happening, and transparency is a big part of what I think is live happier is all about.

Unfortunately or fortunately, I haven't been showing this part of my world, mostly because I just want to keep it kind of private and because it's a very personal event, but I thought it might be helpful just to kind of share my experience and just give my personal take on stuff. I'm taking off the counselor hat for a little bit. I mean, everything I do kind of has a counselor hat, but I'm not coming at this like an expert because I am by far not an expert when it comes to grief. There are many fabulous experts out there who know so much more, but this is just my personal story, and I'm hoping to share it that it will help others out there who are dealing with grief and all that encompasses.

Okay, so my dad died on January 29th of this year. I had shared openly about his disease with Parkinson's, with Dementia, that he had for many years, and he fought very diligently, and did regular exercises, and was a warrior when it came to this disease, and he was a warrior his whole life. So not surprising that he was a warrior when it came to this disease. We were, he wasn't in the greatest of health, but it was a definite surprise when my brother pounded on our door at 3:00 a.m. to tell me that he had died and just really wasn't expecting it at all and actually he had gotten up to go to the bathroom and fell and didn't live much longer after that.

Fortunately, he died very quickly and in his home, which is where he wanted to go, and all those things were really fabulous that he got to die where he wanted to and pretty much how he wanted to. I don't know that he wanted to die quite then, but he was ready to go, and watching him suffer from Parkinson's and Dementia it was very much a blessing to us and also very hard to lose him. He was very important to me. He still is very important to me. My dad was just kind of like my person.

This process. That was in January. Here we are, almost October, and the whole thing has just been really surreal. I think that's the hardest part, is sharing that with people and helping people understand that the person dies and the funeral happens, and everyone rallies, and it's, family and friends came into town, and everyone rallied. And then, as everyone says when you read grief, everyone just disappears and goes back to their life, as they should. I'm not saying that something is wrong with them, but everyone goes back to their life, and here the person that's grieving, here I am, and I still have this giant hole where this larger than life person was, and he's gone, and I'm supposed to figure out how to function in the world without him. Meanwhile, the rest of the world keeps moving on. That is such a surreal experience. Here I am months later, still trying to reconcile that.

The death of my dad wasn't traumatic; it wasn't unexpected. I just keep thinking about all the people in the world who have traumatic deaths of 20-year-olds or 30-year-olds or babies, and that person is just ripped out of their life. One day they're perfectly fine, and the next day they're gone. I can't imagine trying to make that fit into your schema when I'm struggling so hard to fit into my schema that my 78-year-old dad died. It was his time. He was sick. It was a shock the day he died, but that he died was not a shock.

But the level that it has taken me, and still I struggle with accepting it, and still I struggle with facing it every day and being like, "Oh, my gosh, he's never coming back," and having that thought on a daily, multiple times a day basis is jarring. So my empathy for those who are listening, or those that you know who have traumatic deaths that are just out of the blue, is just even more so.

My biggest takeaway from this experience, there's been a ton of takeaways, to be honest, but my biggest takeaway is now when I know someone who has lost someone, I regularly, I know to check in with them, regularly months later to call and just say, "How you're doing? What's happening," checking in, because the tendency is you don't want to check in with them because you don't want to remind them that someone died, which is just so ironic. And I catch myself doing it too. I don't want to email this friend because she might be having a great day, and then if I email her how you're doing, she might be like, "Oh yeah, my dad died," and it may jar her.

Here's the thing. It isn't ever going to jar the person. They are always thinking about the fact that someone died. Maybe not always, but in the day, they are thinking about it, especially if they're in the first year or two of dealing with the grief. So you calling them or checking in with them isn't going to suddenly remind them and make them feel like, "Oh my gosh, you're right, I forgot, my dad died." No, it is going to be like, "Oh, wow, you are really thinking of me. Thank you. I appreciate that."

What is fascinating to me is how even though I know right now how important that is and how powerful that is when someone reaches out to me, I'm still hesitant to do it. I think we convince ourselves that we don't want to be too out there, we don't want to be pushing them, we don't want to remind them. And that's crap. We just need to be reaching out to people and touching base with them and seeing how everyone is doing in the world, but more so when someone is dealing with grief, because there's nothing more lonely in the world than grief and feeling like you're the only one in the world who is suffering or you're the only one in the world who is dealing with this. To recognize, know there are a lot of other people out there who are going through their day-to-day lives with a giant hole in their heart and trying to figure out how to keep going, even though this huge piece of their lives has gone.

There has been a quote that has been really helpful to me, thinking about the idea that what grief is is taking something that you had on the outside and could touch and feel and talk to, and moving that person so that they only exist on the inside. That's the process of grief, is transforming them from an outside person to an inside person, and I think that is just so powerful. That process takes a long time because here, 44 years, I had my dad. I could call him. I could hug him. I could chat with him. I could tell him my day. And then suddenly he's gone. To figure out how I am going to move him to the inside is hard.

I wanted to talk about this today a) because I feel like it's a big part of my life that I'm not sharing, but also because I think as a society, we need to get better about talking about grief. We need to get better about talking about our losses, and our pain and that grief is a big part of living happier. It doesn't have to be losing a parent, or a child, or a friend, or sibling. It could be divorce, or a loss of a relationship, or a loss of a job. We go through little griefs all the time, but we also go through these bigger griefs, which losing a parent or losing both of your parents or the traumatic deaths I mentioned. All of those are impactful in our day-to-day lives, and we want to move on, push it down, keep moving, keep checking, keep soldiering on, suck it up, buttercup, and that isn't how this works.

This grief has strongly influenced my work in the sense of realizing we have to be acknowledging what we're going through; we have to be feeling what we're feeling, we have to because this one, my friends, was so huge. I can't not.

The other thing I would say is here I am, almost nine months since dad died, and in so many ways, it feels like it was just yesterday. I can remember three months in being like, "Okay, so in six months I'll feel better," or, "In five months I'll feel better." And now the thing that I feel better, I guess if I could say I feel better about something, is that it's just the acceptance that this is just going to be here. This giant hole and daily shedding tears, and that may cease, but that hole is always going to be there.

I think I thought, "Oh, once I hit the three-month mark or once I hit the six-month mark, I'll go back to life as it was," and the recognition sets in that life will never be what it was. Figuring out that new normal and all that stuff, that all the grief people talk about, which as you can tell I find annoying because I don't want there to be a new normal, I want it to go back to the way it was, and I think that resistance is hard in grief of fighting the new normal and fighting the reality.

I guess I want to say if you are going through grief right now and have lost someone close to you, whether traumatic or a natural death, I'm sorry, and I feel you, and I hope that you can find some solace somewhere. And if you are not, and you know someone, I encourage you to reach out to them and just say, "I'm here. How you're doing," just to check-in.

For months I had a friend who would just text me and say, "How you're doing," and I would unload how I was doing, and she would just respond with, "I love you." It was just absolutely perfect because I just needed to be able to dump how I was feeling and she was just and know that I didn't have to then justify it to her or explain it to her. I just was going to throw it up at her, and she was going to respond with, "I love you," and we'd move on. It was just awesome.

I never knew when she was going to send the text. I think she set an alarm to remind her to send the text, which was even more amazing because she just, she planned ahead. I didn't find that offensive. I actually found that heartwarming because she knew she wouldn't remember, and so she reminded herself, which is even cooler. Really show up for people.

Then the last thing I really want to say is if you are grieving or know someone is, Megan Devine, and I will put her link to her website in the show notes, is an amazing resource around grief. She actually lost her finance in a drowning accident, super traumatic. She is a therapist who has done amazing work and just actually came with a book on It's Okay Not To Be Okay, and her work has really given me the permission to just be wherever I am and feel whatever I'm feeling and just kind of do this messy, messy, messy, messy, messy process of grief in my way, and it has really been freeing. So I highly recommend her, and back when I talked about an expert on grief, I believe her to be one. That's my recommendation if you want some additional resources on this subject.

Thank you for listening to this unusual podcast. I realize, and I appreciate it. I'm hoping to, as I move through this, it's still really raw for me and hard for me to talk about my dad and the reality of what happened. As this moves on, I think I will come back and revisit this in a different way. I'm still really in the middle of this process, and so sharing about it is hard to be that vulnerable.

I think that is wisdom is knowing when to share and when not to share. I wanted to share today to kind of showcase like, hey, this is what I'm going through, but I'm not all the way through it. So sharing super honestly and openly and showing all the raw details isn't where I'm at, but I am at a place to be able to share this is what helped, and this is what didn't help, and this is what is helping and this is what is not as helping. Hopefully, you can gain some wisdom from that and some comfort from that if you're going through this as well.

+ 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: Alternate Nostril Breathing

This week's weekly ritual challenge is a yoga technique that was recommended by a reader after she saw it on the Today show. Take your thumb and cover your right nostril and exhale and inhale through the left nostril. Then cover your left nostril and repeat the inhale and exhale through your right nostril.

Try this weekly ritual when you first get in the car in the morning, in the morning before you have your coffee, or before a stressful meeting.

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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.

+ Read the Transcript

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.

+ Read the Transcript

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 065: You Don’t Need to Make Yourself Small

Recently someone said to me "I am done making myself small for people." It struck me how often we do this and how it is linked to the way we talk to ourselves. Are you making yourself small in your life? Tips to show up in your life fully.

+ Read the Transcript

Today I wanted to talk about the phrase "you don't need to make yourself small." Someone recently told me that she'd heard this phrase, "you don't need to make yourself small," and this was her new mantra. Occasionally I'll hear a sentence that strikes me, and this one, "you don't need to make yourself small," was one of those. I've been thinking about it for a couple of days now, so I wanted to do a podcast. Because I think for a lot of us we do that, we make ourselves small and couch it in the "well I don't want to fight that fight, " or "Oh, I don't want to get into a big debate about something, so I'm just going to make myself small."

And I think it harms us more than it helps us. So what do I mean by you don't need to make yourself small? If you think about it, I think we make ourselves small in a variety of places. When we don't speak up when we know something about a project that we think will add to the conversation and we don't say anything, we don't speak up. At home, when we don't ask for what we need, and we just keep plowing ahead, keeping our head down making the To-Do list just going through the motions of life, and we don't speak up to say we need help or can someone do this or asking does this need to be done?

Those situations are how we play small or just say what I want is to go out to dinner. I don't want to have to cook. Those are ways that we can speak up and then even with our friends when we let's let things slide, or someone says something that we don't agree with, and we just let it go rather than standing up for ourselves. I think there are little ways that we make ourselves small all the time. Sometimes you hear that saying, you think, oh, you know I don't let people abuse me, or I don't let people talk to me that way, and that's not what I want you to think on.

When did you think of the little tiny ways that you don't show up as truly "you" are in a situation in your daily life? So as I mentioned, one of the reasons we play small is because we're afraid of making a fuss and it coming back on us in a bigger way. For example, we say, "I don't want to cook the meal tonight," then we decide to go out, and it becomes a bigger deal than if we would just cook dinner and not have to worry about it. But another reason I think is more important as is to we make ourselves small is because of our Monger. All roads lead back to where Monger. Our Monger shames us and convinces us that we aren't ok as we are. We need to make ourselves small to fit into society, and this can show up in you're too emotional you're too much, or too loud you're too whatever. Our Monger wants us to tone down whatever it is you are.

That's too much. So you can fit in and not have that same feeling come over you. An example of this for me it's small, it's tiny, but it's still an example of when I make myself small is the idea of really showing up to the fact that I am an introvert and I don't really like to do a ton of social things. I am perfectly happy having a weekend of just me and my husband hanging out at the house, in the backyard. Just putzing and around doing my own thing, and I don't need a lot of social activity.

My husband is more social than me, not a ton more, but he's more social. He frequently says, "We should be going out. We should be doing something so-and-so invited us to do this we should do that." And I have a tough time saying no. I just want to stay home. I don't want to go out. I just had a long week. I just want to be by myself at home, and the reason I have a hard time saying that because my Monger convinces me that that is true. I am too sensitive, I'm too quiet, I'm too introverted, and I need to be a good person. A good person would be social and get out there and do stuff.

And because I am such a loser who likes to stay home, that means I need to force myself to do something different, and so for me, a way that I need to show up in my life and not make myself small is to say no I don't want to go out and that's okay. No, I don't want to meet a bunch of people at a bar. No, I don't want to, you know, hang out with these people and spend hours making small chat. I don't want to do it. And so and then not shaming myself for the fact that I don't want to do it. When I make myself small, I go along, and making myself small, I ignore what I need and want, and I do that to the detriment of myself. Because then I go and spend more of my energy that I don't have in making small talk and being social.

So paying attention to the idea that making yourself small means you're just not showing up to the innate traits that you have. You know you're not honoring who you are, and especially as women, we are taught we need to diminish ourselves a little bit because that just makes life go easier. And so we diminish ourselves and don't take up as much space. I know there's going to be pushback on the fact of well, if I am constantly showing up for who I am and I'm constantly not making myself small, isn't that a little selfish.

And my pushback is always going to be no because if you are struggling with making yourself small, you are way over here on the left side of the continuum. You are far-reaching. I'm pushing my hand all the way across the room right now as far as I can stretch, and selfish is clear over on the right hand as far as I can stretch, so the reality of you moving from making yourself small all the way across the room to selfish probably not going to happen. And it'll feel like it in the sense of your Monger will convince you that you are becoming way over here in the selfish world, but you aren't.

So a prime example of this is when I actually stand up for myself, and I say, "you know what? I don't want to go out to that party. I don't want to go just hang out at the bar and make small talk", and I'll tell my husband you can go. You can do that. But I want to stay home. And that to me feels ginormous like I have made such a fool of myself, and my Monger just chimes in tenfold to tell me no you're selfish just suck it up and go. And the more we just "suck it up and go," the more stressed out we get, the more overwhelmed we get, the less we're taking care of ourselves. And that's what this is all about that, in my opinion, is what living happier is all about figuring out how to decrease that stress and overwhelm so we can really enjoy our lives.

And when I don't spend a Saturday night out with a bunch of people making small talk, my Sunday is so much better. And my Saturday is always better because I'm not dreading going out with people on Saturday night. So paying attention to what is it you need to show up for your life? Where are you making yourself small so that you don't have to and face that Monger? As you know, I'm a big proponent of the Biggest Fan. And so when my Monger does attack me for saying no to some event going out. My Biggest Fan usually chimes in to say we don't want to go. And that's OK. You know I tend to make a mountain out of a mole. I tell myself if I say no, I'm a terrible person. When in reality, what I did was so minuscule.

And so when my Biggest Fan can come in and be like, "honey bear, this is nothing. You are not demanding a lot here. You have moved two steps down that little continuum, and you were not anywhere near selfish." So I need to constantly be reminding myself of that. And as I do that, it gets easier and easier and easier for me to show up and take up space and not make myself small. So that is the theme of the day, and I hope you can kind of implement some of that not making yourself small as much as I'm trying to implement that in my own life.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

This week's ritual: Be Creative

This week's weekly ritual challenge is to be creative. And I got to say being creative is not my strong suit. I'm creative in many ways in my teaching and writing, and I do have creativity. But the traditional ways of being creative of drawing and painting, and coloring are not my strong suit. Just five minutes or even two minutes of getting out of that analytical brain and stepping into the creativity side.

It has been incredible. So I encourage you even if you have many red flags or a lot of resistance as I did which is one reason I picked it. A lot of resistance to this week's weekly ritual challenge all the more reason for you to challenge yourself to do a couple of minutes. And I think that's what's been so powerful about it is I've just challenged myself to do a couple of minutes. When I think of being creative, I believe that it has to be this whole big thing spending the afternoon painting coloring when it's just showing up and flipping your brain a little bit to the other side. And that's what this is all about changing things up.

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Episode 064: The Downside of Gratitude

Practicing Gratitude is an amazing practice that allows us to see the world through a different lens and regain some perspective. Too often I see people take this practice of gratitude and use it as a weapon on themselves. In this episode, we look at the Downside of Gratitude and the 3 ways you can avoid it.

+ Read the Transcript

I’m excited to be here today talking to you about gratitude. It is one of my favorite topics. I also have to confess; I’m a little nervous to talk about gratitude. It is a passionate topic for a lot of people who love the practice of gratitude. Honestly, I love the practice of gratitude and have used it a lot in my life. I use it every day or try to say the five things I am grateful for as I end the day.

I also see it this week as Houston has gotten hammered with the rain and all the tragedy that is happening there; the number of people that have been interviewed that have used gratitude as a way to keep going. To say they’re so thankful to have their family, they’re so thankful they have their health, they’re so thankful they got out. And so, I think gratitude is an extremely powerful practice that we can use to live happier. And I think that for some of us, I was one of these people, gratitude becomes a way that we hammer ourselves. And so I have seen it happen way too often in my office and in talking with friends and family that something comes up that we’re not feeling good about in our lives. Maybe we don’t like our job. We’re unhappy with our spouse. We want our kids to be doing something different, and we meet it with “I should be grateful for my health, or I should be grateful for my job.” “You know for everything I have, I shouldn’t be complaining.” I sometimes think that idea of “I shouldn’t be complaining, I should be grateful” keeps us stuck in these situations that we could change.

So gratitude is great. It works well; as I said with the example of Houston that there is a lot that is out of control in the lives of people being struck by that hurricane in Houston, so going to gratitude is an awesome way to get a new perspective.

Calming yourself down, getting into the moment, and recognizing what’s happening here. That’s why I use gratitude when I go to sleep at night. My brain is firing very quickly, and I have a little insomnia, and I’ll lay there and just slow myself down to think of the things I’m grateful for. It is an awesome way to use gratitude. The way it keeps us stuck is when we use it as a way to shut down our experience. So I may be saying to my husband, “oh, you know I’m stressed out because I have this book deadline coming up and but I should be grateful I have the idea to write the book, and I have the opportunity to write the book, and I should be grateful.” Well, that gratitude just comes in and overrides everything I just said.

You know it just pushes it all away. So I see a lot of times with clients who come in, and they want to make some life changes, they want to stop hustling so hard, or they want to switch their jobs around, or they want to figure out a new way of communicating with their spouse. And instead of making the changes, they’ll just say, “I should be grateful I should be grateful I’m even married. I should be grateful that I have a job; I should be grateful I have a roof over my head.” OK. But you want to make those changes, and you can make those changes if you own the fact that you want to do it. So it’s back to my favorite podcast episode, which was called Own it because I think that is the key that we have to own our experience.

So I have three tips that I want us to look at when it comes to gratitude and its practice. To switch up how you may be practicing gratitude. Implement these three tips. The first one is to go deep, not wide. So when you’re driving home, you’ve had a stressful day, and you think, OK, I’m going to practice gratitude. It’s not so much “I’m grateful for my car, I’m grateful for having a house over my head, I’m grateful that my husband, you know, exists.” It’s getting specific. “I’m grateful that it’s a beautiful day. I’m grateful I can feel the air conditioning on my skin. I’m grateful that my husband is cooking dinner tonight.” You have some depth to what’s happening when we just go wide with “oh, I should be grateful.”

It doesn’t have the same impact and the same perception shift as one we can go deep. Because going deep requires us to slow down a little bit and get present, and that’s where I think the power of gratitude comes in. When we can slow down and recognize the perception shift, that’s where it’s powerful. Just pushing out all the negatives in our life because we should be grateful isn’t making any shifts, but slowing down on the way home from work when stressed out and saying, OK, what happened today that I’m grateful for. Let’s slow this process weighed down.

One of my favorite examples of this as I was at the grocery store. This was earlier this year, and I was bitter about having to go to the grocery store. You know I had to run in and get Cat Litter, And I hate going to groceries anyway, but I even hate it more when I have like two things I need to get. So I ran in to get the cat litter, and I’m standing in line at the clerk, you know, waiting. And as I’m looking around, I’m like, OK, what can you be grateful for here. Let’s slow this down. What can you be grateful for, and instead of just being like, “Oh, I should be grateful that you know I can run in and get cat litter, or I should be grateful that it’s a beautiful day.” I was like, “Oh, I am grateful that I can run into this spot and just get cat litter, or I don’t drive all around the city looking for cat litter like it’s right here. And not only can I get cat litter, but I can also get meat for dinner, or I can get fresh vegetables all the same spot” and so I started then expanding, “I’m grateful for all the people that are here that work here. I’m grateful for all the farmers that create all of our food. I’m grateful for the systems that they have in place to make sure that it’s so easy for me to get it.” And so that depth happens instead of just being, oh I should be grateful cause nowhere I could walk into Kroger. I should be grateful that I can just come in here. Well, let’s go a little deeper. So that’s my first tip. Go deep. Not wide.

The second tip you’ve heard before. It’s one of my favorites. It is practicing the and. So often, we will say, “Oh, I had a really bad day I don’t really like my job. I don’t know if this is the right fit for me, but I should be grateful because I have this job, and it’s bringing me money.” Well, if you can just throw one ‘and in there, “you know I don’t know about this job is it making me happy it’s not fulfilling. And we need the money right now, so I need to figure out a way to do both. How can I switch and keep the same amount of money.” So the and opens your brain up to a little more possibilities. “I don’t like my job, AND I’m grateful that I have the job.”

And then you look at a different way of doing this because this isn’t working. Being stuck at this job. And opens up the possibilities in that one shift of adding AND into my life has just made so much difference to expand. Because I tend to be black and white/ right and wrong by adding in the, AND I can allow myself to be like, “I am grateful that I have all these blessings in my life. And today was a rough day.” Both are true. “I am very grateful for all the blessings, I’m very grateful for the privilege that I have in my life, and I need to be aware of what that privilege is so that I can use it for good, instead of using it for evil. So AND is a powerful, powerful word. I encourage you to start embracing that in your life.

The last tip I have for you is to recognize that it’s OK not to be grateful it’s OK to feel bad. So gratitude rushes in as a way to stop us from feeling those negative yucky emotions that we don’t want to feel. I have this with my Dad and the grief that I’m experiencing with his death. It’s been seven months. And I think OK, I should be past this. I should be moving on, and I’ll say, “I’m feeling sad about Dad or I’m missing dad today.” And then in rushes, “you should be grateful you know to be grateful you had such a great relationship with your father, and so you shouldn’t be feeling sad.”

Well, actually, I might it might be feeling sadder because we did have such a great relationship. And so recognizing that grief is OK, it’s OK to feel that way. I don’t have to push it over with gratitude. And I can throw in the AND there and say, “Gosh, today’s a really hard day I’m missing Dad, and I’m so grateful we had such a close relationship. I’m grateful that he was my Dad.” So both are true. And that’s the practice of AND and recognizing that it’s OK to feel bad. So the downside of gratitude, in summary, is that we use it to push away all of our feelings. We use it not to honor where we already are, and it keeps us stuck because we don’t make changes because we’re just feeling grateful all the time.

So to recognize when that’s happening to you, when you’re not allowing yourself to feel anything because gratitude is rushing in and the three tips I have are to go deep, not wide. So really, get some depth in there on what you’re feeling grateful for. Practice that lovely word AND so take out the buts and recognize it’s OK to feel bad.

+ 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: Start the Day With a Glass of Water

Coffee is my go-to morning drink. On the rare days that I drink a glass of water before my coffee, I feel so much better. This week the challenge is to drink a glass of water first thing in the morning. Bonus points: While you are drinking, take time to tune into your body and set an intention for the day.

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Episode 063: Even More Myths of the Monger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

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

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

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

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Episode 062: You don’t have to be Zen to fight your Monger

For years I thought I had to be a super yoga zen woman to deal with this nasty inner voice. And being the Type A person I am that wasn't going to work. Today a few thoughts on dealing with your Monger when you aren't Zen.

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Hello, all. I'm super excited to be here for yet another episode. Today I wanted to take a break from the regularly scheduled program talking about myths of our Monger and just address the process of going after and quieting our Monger and what that process has been like for me, and what it might be like for you if you are similarly a type A, non-zen personality. The Monger is that nasty voice in our head that tells us, "Oh, you're not doing it right. You're failing. This isn't working. You need to be perfect. You need to be on top of things."

Today I was going to talk about two more myths that I have unearthed in my working with the Monger, but before I get into that, I just wanted to connect with everyone and thank you for listening to the podcast.

I also just wanted to touch on Monger in general. What I love about the Monger is she is never boring, for sure. As someone who tends to get bored easily, working with Monger has kept me entertained, I guess, for lack of a better word, because the Monger is so wily.

I just wanted to reach through the microphone and say: This work is hard. A lot of people, when they start working with their Monger, and initially they're like, "I don't have a Monger. I don't have that voice. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have that voice," and then, as they start unearthing it, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I have that voice, and it chats all the freakin' time." Then there's this wash of shame that comes, like, "Oh my gosh, I am constantly just hammering myself."

Once you realize that's happening, you want to fix it right away, and you want to get rid of it right away. The danger of that is: we can't. That's the part I hate about this work the most, is that there is no way to get rid of the Monger completely because it is biologically there, I believe, to help us survive in the world, to help us recognize danger. But it has run amok, and so we've gotten stuck in this cycle of perfectionism and people-pleasing and procrastination and all those lovely "p" words, as well as just beating ourselves to a bloody pulp that we're not experiencing things in our lives the way we want to be. I think everything comes back to the Monger, and that's why I love this work so much.

But to the same point, I think it's discouraging for people to be like, "Oh my gosh, I've done all this work on my Monger, and it's still there." Yeah, it's still going to be there, but I can testify that the more you do this work and the more you channel in that biggest fan, the more it helps and the quieter that Monger's voice gets. When I started this work, I was totally under the trance of the Monger. Tara Brach talks about in Radical Acceptance the trance of unworthiness. It was all-encompassing to me, and I never got out of it. Now, after working on it and bringing awareness to that Monger and channeling in the biggest fan, it's changed my life in so many ways. I've seen it in clients where they've become less engrossed by this Monger voice that's just always there.

The piece of all of this that drives me the craziest, and I wish I could figure it out, to be honest, is how do I love myself. I've been going back through and reading some of the books that I've read on inner critic and compassion and all that stuff as I've been writing my book and recognizing how often I would read things. I will think, "Yes, I agree with this. I need to love myself more, or I need to be more accepting of myself," and then to turn around and be like, "But how do I do that?" It was such a foreign concept to me: How do I love myself?

Even today, it's a bit of a foreign concept. It's not my first thought to pause, give myself a break, own what I'm feeling, get in my body, and do all the things I teach. It is not my first response. Hijacking that first response and recognizing, "Wait a minute, this isn't going to be the first thing I think of. I'm going to have to work at this," is really what radically shifted for me, I think because when you read the books and when you listen to podcasts and when you do the Ted Talks, it sounds really easy. It sounds like, "Just love yourself," or, "Just accept where you are," or, "Notice how often you don't accept yourself and change that," and it's not that easy.

I guess I just wanted to give some support to those who have been doing this work and struggling with this stuff, that it's not like you can just flip a switch and suddenly you love yourself. It is a process of learning what the biggest fan's voice sounds like and figuring out what it feels like to be in your body, and noticing how often the Monger talks to you. All of that stuff plays out and takes some time. So often we'll read these books, and we'll listen to these things, and we'll be like, "Yes," and then we don't implement what they tell us to implement. I'm encouraging you to REALLY implement this stuff.

Part of the reason I'm so excited about it is because it worked for me. I am the test subject of someone who drug my heels kicking and screaming into this work. I did not want to get into my body. I didn't want to pause. I didn't want to do any of it. I just wanted to be fixed and to have that instant gratification of loving myself. These little weekly ritual hacks and figuring out how to channel that biggest fan and what she looked like and how she talked to me shifted everything for me. That's why I'm so excited about teaching it because I was so resistant to it, and if I could find something that worked, I think it might help you find something that worked.

I'm not a yoga girl. I'm not a zen girl. I am a type A, driven, balls-out girl. The idea of slowing down, I knew that was key, but I didn't know how to do that in my life because it wasn't my first response. That's where the weekly rituals came in. That's why the idea of randomly slowing down throughout the day came in. Those ideas were ways of shifting and making the concepts of accepting yourself work for my personality because I am not a zen girl. I don't have it in me. But I have figured out how to tap into that zen in my lifestyle while blaring music on the radio. I think that's what makes this work so powerful for me is that I figured out a way to make it work for me. I hope you can find a way to make this work for you too.

That is the end of my rant on this stuff. Next week I will be back to pick up where I left off and talk about even more myths of our Monger. I just wanted to do this interlude because it's on my mind, the idea of Monger and the challenge of them. I've been getting emails from people saying, "This is harder than I want it to be," and I hear you. I just wanted to be like, "I hear you. Keep at it. This stuff works." I am not the guru. I am just someone who is sharing my process from years of research and study and what's worked for my clients and me. I encourage you to take it and tweak it and make it work for you, is all I'm asking, just to take all the knowledge you have and figure out how it works for you.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

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

Now it's time for the weekly ritual challenge. This week's weekly ritual challenge is to focus on making eye contact with people. I notice for myself I spent so much time looking down. I'm either caught in my head, or I'm reading my phone. I'm not engaging in the world around me as I'm walking around. This week I want you to practice looking up and making eye contact with people, and for bonus points, greeting them and saying, "Hi." I tried this yesterday. We went to the doctor's office. It didn't go well because people are not used to making eye contact with strangers, and they're not used to greeting them. It's going to be a continual struggle for me this week. I'm going to have the challenge of: Can I get people to interact with me?

This exercise will get you out of your head and those important thoughts and into your body. Plus, it helps you feel even more connected to the world around you. For me, I ended up "failing" at it yesterday when we were at the doctor's office, but I was able to implement it with my husband because I noticed how often I look at my phone when I'm talking to him. It's pervasive in my life, and I'm sure in other people's lives. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

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Episode 061: More Myths of the Monger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

This week's ritual: Massage Your Hand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

This week's ritual: Notice the Trees

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

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Episode 059: The Power of Language

How we talk to ourselves and others has power. In this episode, I talk about 3 phrases that we use on a regular basis that we can tweak in order to give ourselves more compassion and expansiveness.

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I'm a little late this week. I promised I would do a podcast every Monday, and here it is Wednesday, but in the spirit of compassion, I'm trying to go easy on myself. I just had a hard time coming up with what I wanted to talk to you about this week, and I finally realized that I wanted to talk about language. I remember when I first started my training and my practice, and that was a big theme. A lot of people talked about the power of language and how we talk to ourselves. I was like, "Yada, yada, yada. Whatever, I don't see how I talk to myself makes a big difference. Like you're just kinda splitting hairs when it comes to this stuff."

In reality, I do think some of this stuff is a little ridiculous. But I think there are some key things that we say to ourselves that really can make a difference in how we feel about ourselves and how we make changes and how we move through this, kind of the quest to live happier, as I talk about. One of the big ones is the idea of, and you've heard me say this one before, so this probably isn't going to be new to you, but it's worth repeating, is the power of "and" versus "but." And this one is really powerful for me because it has dramatically shifted how I see things.

I tend to be very black and white. I grew up in a very, "Things are right. Things are wrong. It's set in stone." The idea of using "and" really allows me to open things up to a broader perspective. I started doing this because someone had told me that anytime you say "but," it negates the first half of the sentence. "You're a great friend, but I hate the fact that you never call me." So you're a great friend isn't true anymore because all the person hears is, "I hate that you never call me." They only hear the second part of the sentence. They only hear the negative part of the sentence. That's where it started for me, so I would start saying, "You know, you're a great friend, and I hate the fact that you don't call me." Both are true. It isn't that one is more powerful than the other. It's that both statements are true.

I think that phrasing and language are powerful, and it happens a lot in my marriage that I use it. You know, "I appreciate that you do the dishes, and I wish you would put them away." Both are true. When we throw in that "but," it diminishes the first part, which is equally true as the second part. We say it to ourselves, too, in how we can see possibilities. "I am feeling tired today, and I've got a lot to get done." Both are true. "I'm feeling tired today, but I have a lot to get done," means we diminish the fact that we're tired, and we just push right on through in getting stuff done. Owning both, giving both the same power, I think is powerful. That's one of mine, the "and" and the "but," is the first one I want to talk about.

The second one I want to talk about is the idea of adding a "yet." This has been powerful for me in the idea of, "I am not eating ... I didn't eat all my fruits and vegetables yet." It's an idea that if I want to eat more fruits and vegetables, I still have time to do that. I'll come in and be like, "Oh, I didn't do that yet. I still can do it." Maybe not in the day, but I can still do it in my lifetime. "I haven't worked out yet. I haven't written that book yet. I haven't finished my podcast yet." The idea that there's still room gives us a little more expansiveness. I think that's what's powerful.

Some phrase that I use a lot, my husband kind of makes fun of me for it, is I'll say, "Oh, I've made a lot of progress." Because I am a black and white thinker, because I have that right and wrong mentality, let's say I'm trying to eat better, and I'm trying to get more fruits and vegetables. I'll say, "Oh, I haven't done," if I make a rule like, "Oh, I'm gonna eat four fruits and vegetables a day," and I'll be like, "Oh, I haven't eaten my four, but I'm making really good progress because I've done two yesterday and three the day before." To own kind of what's been happening versus, "Oh, I haven't done that, so, therefore, I'm a loser who hasn't done it," giving yourself some room. That's a double whammy, adding "yet" to the end of the sentence and also doing the, "But I'm making a lot of progress." "And I'm making a lot of progress." Both are true.

Then this last one that I want to talk about is one that took me a long time to see. Now that I'm paying attention to it, I can see the damage that it's doing. That is the idea of saying the word, "I deserve. I deserve this; I deserve that." I remember probably a year ago, or two years ago, my brother and I were talking, and he's very strict and kind of black-and-white thinker, more so than me, and not woo at all. He was saying, "It just drives me crazy when people say the phrase, 'I deserve. I deserve.' You know you don't deserve anything. None of us deserve anything." I was like, "Wow. That is a harsh way of looking at that."

When I started thinking about it, I realized that I tend to say that because when I say that, it takes away any responsibility. I'm not making a conscious decision whether this is a good choice or a bad choice for me or if this decision fits my values, or if this decision is something that I think will support my life. I'm just saying, "Well, I deserve it." This week, I was getting my mammogram, and I ran into my doctor while I was in the waiting room. She said to me, "Oh, I'm so glad to see you're doing this, and it's good for your health, and now you deserve a Starbucks, so make sure you go next door to the Starbucks and get a Starbucks because you deserve it."

I was thinking, "Really? I deserve a Starbucks for taking care of myself?" Yes, mammograms suck, don't get me wrong, but I don't deserve a Starbucks because I did something good for myself. I might want a Starbucks. I might even need a Starbucks, but I don't deserve it. Because if we deserve something good, then naturally, we're going to deserve something bad. I think that's where the word "deserve" and the subliminal messaging get us confused. Because then if someone treats us poorly, we must have deserved it because "I deserved something good," so therefore the counter to that is "I deserved something bad."

To be paying attention to and we do that a lot when it comes to anything we want to do that's good for ourselves or feels good. We'll say, "Well, I deserve this." We'll use it as a justification. "I deserve." You know, Mcdonalds: "You deserve a break today." Or, "I deserve this ice cream sundae," or, "I deserve dessert. I deserve a vacation." No, do you want it? Do you need it? Take ownership, and I think that's where "deserve" hurts us, is we stop taking ownership of our lives. That's the whole point of living happier, is being intentional about what's happening.

If I say to myself, "Well, I deserve an ice cream cone, so I'm going to stop and get one," then I'm just eating that ice cream cone out of a place of deserving rather than enjoying the fact that I decided to get an ice cream cone. So everything becomes kind of unconscious with that deserving. When my brother said he doesn't deserve a new car, he either needs one, or he doesn't is a very valid argument. You know, "I deserve a new car." Okay, but do you want a new car? Can you afford a new car? Does it make sense for you to buy a new car right now? All of those conscious decisions, and when we lump in the "Well, I deserve it," we lose all that ability to be intentional about our lives.

Whenever I hear myself saying, "I deserve," and largely for me, it's around food or taking a break, or, like I said, doing something good for myself, I'll ask myself, "Oh, you deserve that Starbucks?" And I did go to Starbucks after I got my mammogram because I wanted Starbucks, and I'll be like, "I want Starbucks." It's not that I deserve this. It's that it tastes good, and I want a coffee right now, and I got a muffin as well. The deserving, I think, keeps us from showing up for our lives and taking some real responsibility.

Okay, so those are my three and a half examples of the power of language. In summary, I talked about using "and" instead of "but," paying attention to saying the word "yet," and also owning, "I'm making some progress" on certain things that you're trying to change. Then the last one is paying attention to the idea of "deserve."

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

This week's ritual: Take 2 Trips

My Monger strives to make me as efficient as possible. Why take 2 trips when you can load yourself down with 1? This week the ritual is to slow down and take smaller trips. Need to carry the laundry upstairs? Take 2 trips. Need to bring in the groceries? Take multiple trips. Have a long list of things to do? Slow down and break it into manageable (more pleasant) tasks. This one is a challenge for me, and I am always amazed how much better it feels to take 2 trips :)

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Episode 058: What are your rules?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

This week's ritual: 5 Little Things You Appreciate

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

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Episode 057: The Slippery Slope of Emotions

So many of us believe like feeling our emotions will send us down a slippery slope into wallowing and negativity.  In reality, NOT feeling our emotions leads us to more negativity and drama.

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Hi, everyone. I'm excited to be here today to talk about emotions, feelings, that dirty F word that none of us want to deal with, and I'm guilty of this as well. It's one of the things I definitely work on, and one of the keys I have found to living happier is acknowledging what it is I'm feeling. Recently, in one of the groups that I work with, we were talking about emotions and the slippery slope. How it feels when we start to feel sadness or anger or resentment or any of those, what we consider to be yucky, ugly emotions, it feels like we're heading down this slippery slope. Into this pit that we're never going to get out of, and so we'll stop ourselves from heading down the slippery slope, and we prevent ourselves from feeling the emotion.

You know, I think of the visual of someone that's headed down into a hole, and they have all their arms and their legs are up bracing themselves and preventing themselves from sliding all the way down. The ironic part of that is that bracing that causes us so much more pain. A couple of episodes ago, I talked about how emotions are like the beach ball that we keep trying to push down into the ocean instead of letting it pop up and flow freely. I love these visuals because they help me figure out where I am in my desire and quest to allow myself to be more comfortable with feelings and emotions and whatever comes up. One of the things that that slippery slope implies for us is the idea that "Oh, if I head down into that feeling, then I'm going to be stuck in wallowing and I'm going to be feeling sorry for myself or I'm just going to get stuck there."

There are many reasons for this, for this feeling of, "Oh, I can't go there because I'm going to get stuck there." It's very normalized in our culture that we're supposed to be positive all the time and not be feeling any emotions and not be processing any negative stuff, so we are culturally pushed to be happy all the time. What happens, I think, is that piece, that slippery slope; the fear of going down that slippery slope leads us to getting stuck. When we get stuck, creating drama is socially normed to be okay and more comfortable. That drama creation is what prevents us from going down the slippery slope.

What happens is, we head down the slippery slope. Something traumatic happens. One of my easy examples was in my 20s. I was constantly in a relationship, and it'd be going poorly. I wanted to be in a serious relationship, and I would be upset that it didn't go well. Instead of feeling the sadness and the fear of and the, "What if I'm alone," and, "How am I going to do my life if it doesn't work out the way I wanted it to?" and sitting with those emotions of fear and sadness and anger and disappointment and all that stuff that came up. I would pretend that I was sitting in those emotions, and if you asked me, I would have told you I was, but I was sitting in drama. I was in my head constantly figuring out what I did wrong and what went wrong and what he did wrong, and why it didn't work out. There was all this analysis and drama and feeling sorry for myself, but it was all in my head.

There wasn't any actual acceptance of the emotion. There wasn't any actual, "Oh, baby, this is hard. This breakup thing and this insecurity thing is really hard." When you feel yourself heading down that slippery slope, the thing that is missing is a) permission, and I've talked about that in previous podcasts with just owning it, so just owning, "Okay, here we go. I'm feeling sad. Here it goes," so owning it, then the second piece of that, real acceptance and love for yourself of, "Oh, gosh. This is sad. This is painful. I understand I am resentful of this experience that I just had. That's okay," so giving yourself that love and acceptance will kind of cut that idea of, "Oh, if I go down the slippery slope, I'm going to be wallowing, and I'm going to be feeling sorry for myself." That feeling sorry for yourself that wallowing piece is the drama. That's when we're in our heads.

Yes, we all know the people we get tired of talking to because every time we talk to them, they discuss the drama they have in their lives. We're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so tired of their negativity. I'm so tired of hearing about what's going on." That isn't processing emotions. That is sharing your drama intellectually, intellectually analyzing, and just that idea of watering your hurts. "I'm just going to keep bringing up the pain, never really dealing with it. I'm just going to keep bringing it up." Someone might ask, "Okay, I get that. I understand the difference between negativity and being in your head, and I don't want that. When we head down the feeling of the slippery slope, that's where we're afraid we're going to go, so really, what's the difference between what I'm talking about and that yucky mental drama gymnastics, you know, watering your hurts?"

For me, the big difference is love and acceptance. Someone who is the negative person at work constantly talks about how everyone has done them wrong and creates drama, and being negative and judgmental about themselves and other people is missing the love and acceptance. When we pour on love and acceptance, that is when we're like, "Oh. I'm feeling sad. Okay. I'm feeling sad," and we allow ourselves to cry, we allow ourselves to journal, we allow ourselves to just express that emotion, just to name it and own it and not figure out why or is it justified or is it okay? Just to be like, "Okay, I'm angry today" or, "Wow, I am so resentful for how long my to-do list is compared to my husband's." We don't have to justify that. We don't have to explain it away. We just have to say, "Oh, there it is. There is that resentment. Oh, I hate feeling resentful. It's really hard. Let me own how I'm feeling."

Instead of creating a passive-aggressive argument with our husband because we're resentful of the to-do list, to own, "I'm resentful of this. What can I do differently here?" There is a difference, in recognizing when we are headed down that slippery slope, to give ourselves permission to head down the slippery slope and not put up the brakes of our hands and our feet, and not brace ourselves for, "Oh my gosh," and secondly, to give ourselves a lot of acceptance and love, and recognizing, "This is okay. This is just a feeling. This isn't the end of the world." But that monger in our head tells us, "Oh. No, you don't, girl. Do not go down there. You're going to be just like the annoying person at work that's negative all the time, and no one wants to be around the negative. No one wants to hear it, so just keep sadness and your resentment and your anger, and just shove it, shove it, shove it so no one can see it."

What happens is, we get with our girlfriends, and we create all this drama, and we analyze things, and we get all fired up in our heads, and we're never really dealing with the emotions. Those are the moments when we're eating a pint of ice cream, not knowing what happened. We were having a perfectly good day, and then all of a sudden, we're eating a pint of ice cream sitting on the couch, crying our eyes out. Yes, because we haven't dealt with the emotion in a loving, kind way. Instead, we have stuffed it down, and we continue to stuff it down with the pint of ice cream or whatever it is.

For me, my thing tends to be food. Still, it could also be that you're on Amazon going online shopping or you're buying a new purse or whatever the thing is that you do. We all have them that keep us from really feeling and accepting ourselves and what's really happening, and then recognize, "Oh my gosh. Here I am, and I'm eating this pint of ice cream, and I'm not hungry. Oh, babe, what's going on? What do you need right now? What's feeling?" Start naming those feelings that are coming up, and that has radically shifted things for me when I can recognize, "Wait a minute. You are not hungry, and you're eating" or, "You are not hungry" or, "You don't need anything, and you're shopping. What's going on here?" I can recognize that I'm trying to brace myself from that slippery slope.

The more we can be kind to ourselves when we head down that slippery slope, and we can feel, "Oh my gosh, we're hitting into emotions," the more we can give ourselves love and compassion and kindness, the easier it'll be. Secondly, the more we can show up for other people and normalize, "Hey, what's going on here? What's underneath?" When our girlfriend comes to us and is upset about her relationship, to say, "Wow, that must be scary not to know what's going to happen next in your marriage" or, "That must make you angry to recognize that your husband's cheating on you again." To name the feeling instead of getting stuck in all that drama that's up there.

When we can show up for other people and let them know it's okay to be feeling things that aren't always positive when we can do it for ourselves and we could do it for other people, the world will shift, I swear. We will have less drama and less negativity and all that stuff because we won't be in that endless cycle of, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh." We'll be talking about stuff that's going on, that matters: the fear, the anger, the sadness, whatever that is, so I encourage you to head down the slippery slope. Just pull off the braces and just go down, and see where it takes and give yourself lots of love and acceptance in that process.

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

This week's ritual: Take a Social Media Break

Now and then I notice that I am spending more and more time on social media and a break is in order. So this week I challenge you to step off social media (FB, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) Each time you notice yourself reaching for your phone or opening the website, take a deep breath and stretch. The goal is to get out of your head and into your body

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Episode 056: Confessions of a Day with my Monger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ Weekly Ritual Challenge

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

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

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

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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 054: You are Going to Do it Wrong

A new way of looking at your Inner Critics favorite phrase "you are going to do it wrong."

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Hey there, so glad to be back chatting with y'all. Today I want to talk about a jarring statement, the phrase "you're going to do it wrong," and how that phrase changed my perspective on a lot of things. Recently I was out with a friend; we were at happy hour chatting about live happier stuff and how to be better people (which is the geeky stuff that my friends and I do.) And she said to me it changed everything for me when I started thinking the phrase "you're just going to do it wrong." At first, it was jarring to me to be like, "What, do it wrong? Why would you be telling yourself you're going to do it wrong" and then I realized she's saying it in a let me take the expectation that it's going to go 100% right, let me take that expectation off the table.

Instead of the idea of your inner critic saying, "you're going to do it wrong." Say to yourself, "This is probably not going to go well. It's probably going to go wrong; I'm going to make the wrong choice because I don't know what's going to happen next." "I might say the wrong thing. I might pick the wrong baby step. I'm shooting in the dark here, so I don't the correct way, so I'm just going to pick something, and it might be wrong."

When you can give yourself permission that whatever you pick next might be wrong, and that's okay because at least you're picking something. You're making a move. You're taking a baby step. So often, our inner critics convince us we have to pick the perfect next step. That whatever we do next has to be right on target, the perfect plan, the perfect thing to say, the perfect phrase.

Instead of saying the perfect thing (because there is no such thing as perfect), we tend to do nothing. It shows up a lot in our lives when we're going to try something new, or we're meeting a new friend, or we're branching out in some way, and we'll convince ourselves not to do anything rather than do it wrong.

I think that's just such a fascinating way of looking at it, that if you can tell yourself, "I'm going to do this wrong, but I'm going to take a step anyway. I'm going to have a good intention of getting all the facts I possibly can and making the most informed decision moving forward, and when I do it wrong, I'm going to make a new step. I'm going to go a new way; I'm going to do it differently. "

That idea that if I can embrace the fact that I'm going to do it wrong anyway, I might as well try something, we get a little further.

If you're in a spot in your life where you're feeling stuck, and the inner critic, the monger as I call it. It's very wily, and it convinces us not to make a move until it's perfect, not to do anything until it's perfect. That is why procrastination is one of the big signs that you are being infiltrated and overrun by the monger. If you are feeling procrastination and you're waiting for the perfect time, or you're waiting for the perfect thought or the perfect voice or the perfect words, you'll never make any moves at all.

It shows up in little tiny ways, this idea of oh my gosh, I have to do it perfectly, and I can't do it wrong. It shows up in conversations we have with our loved ones; it shows up in projects we have at work; it shows up in creative projects that we want to engage in, in our free time.

It shows up all the time that we silently convince ourselves we can't move forward; we can't do that because we might do it wrong. When you notice yourself saying one thing but not taking action on it, so you say, "I want to be doing more art."

Or

"I want to be connecting differently with my spouse." Or

"I want to be at work fully engaged, and showing up, and putting my hat into the ring and entering in the work arena 100%."

And you notice yourself saying those things or thinking those things and not acting on those things that usually means you have been attacked by your inner monger who's convincing you that you have to do it perfectly right before you do anything.

That's where that phrase of "Oh my gosh, I'm going to do it wrong, I'm going to do it wrong," and that's okay. I'm going to do it wrong and make a new choice. It's not, oh my gosh, you're going to do it wrong, and you're a terrible person, it's I'm going to do it wrong, and then I'm going to figure out how to do it differently after that. I'm going to move on. It's taking back the phrase "I'm going to do it wrong" and taking it back in an empowering way to say, "Yup, you go it I'm going to do this wrong, and because I'm going to do it wrong, I'm going to figure out the best way to do it."

To make any steps, make any changes, and engage in anything, we have to embrace the fact that it might not go well right off the bat, and that's okay. We're still going to be okay because it's okay if we do it wrong because we have control and can take it back. When that message plays there over and over and over again, you're going to do it wrong, you're going to do it wrong, you're going to do it wrong, and we don't take it back in an empowering way it keeps us stuck. It keeps us in procrastination mode. It keeps us from making and little, tiny changes in our lives, and that is why we have to challenge that monger voice that tells us you're going to do it wrong and say yes I am, and then I'm going to figure out how to do it even better.

+ 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: Wiggle

I know it sounds crazy!! Stay with me. When I hear my Monger (inner critic) chiming at me, I will wiggle my body to remind myself to get some wiggle room. Our Monger tends to think in black and white, right and wrong, and life is gray. So to get some wiggle room, I wiggle my body and ask, What Would My Biggest Fan say?

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Episode 053: Asking for Help...Why is it so Hard?

One of the ways to decrease overwhelm is to ask for help, and yet we are SO resistant to it. In this episode, I explore that resistance and what to do about it.

+ Read the Transcript

Hey, everyone. Welcome. I'm so excited to be here. It's a beautiful sunny day in my corner of the world. Today I want to talk about asking for help. Why is it so hard? This has been a theme that's come up in my world lately, and it was triggered by a conversation with my cousin. We were talking about just asking for help and why we struggle so much with it. So I want to cover a couple of reasons why I think we struggle. And encourage you to get curious as to why you struggle, if you struggle with asking for help, why you struggle and busting out of that mold. Because what happens is, we are so overwhelmed. We're overwhelmed and stressed out because there's too much on our plate. If there's too much on our plate, there are two things you can do about it. One, take some stuff off. Learning how to say no. Learning how to set boundaries. And two, asking for help; asking someone to take a little bit off your plate. Today we're just going to be talking about option two, the asking for help piece, because there's so much resistance to that.

One of the reasons I have come up with is the myth of being strong. Many women believe that we're strong and independent and we don't need anyone, so we're not going to ask anyone for help because we're strong and independent. But, when you get curious about what's underneath that strength, and I know this is true for me and many of my friends, we're afraid of taking up too much space in the world. We're afraid of being too demanding, too in charge, too large and in charge, too out of control. So we learn that we need to be "strong," and we take on this myth of strength to handle it. We've got it all taken care of; it's all fine. Underneath that strength is a huge fear that no one cares. No one's going to show up, so if I take care of everything, then I don't have to worry about getting hurt when people say no to me or when people let me down, or when people don't do it the way I want them to. Paying attention to what's underneath that myth of strong, if that's something you can relate to.

Another piece of that is wanting to do it right. I hear this all the time, "I can't ask my husband to do the dishes because he won't do them right," or, "I can't ask them to go to the grocery store because they won't do it right." I hear that. Trust me; I totally hear that. But the idea that there's a right way to do everything let's get a little curiosity around that. Like, what's that about? That we think there's only one way to do everything. So, that idea of perfectionism and that inner critic chiming in that there's a black and white way to do everything in the world. And so, your husband may load the dishwasher differently than you, and that's okay. He may go to the grocery store and forget some stuff. That's okay. It's figuring out ways around that and allowing room for the gray and the mess-ups and the mistakes, rather than just jumping in and trying to fix everything in the perfectionistic inner critic way.

Those are two ways. The third way I came up with is just plain old the resistance we get when we change our ways. If you have become a control freak and don't ask for help, and you've set the dynamic in your life that you just do everything when you start to change that, and you start asking for help, it will be a bumpy road. You're going to get some resistance because if you've taken care of everything in your house, suddenly people are going to be like, "What's happening? Why isn't she doing everything?" That resistance sometimes can be challenging, especially if you're dealing with perfectionism and that inner critic because you want to jump in and fix it. To pay attention to how much, instead of sitting in the resistance and allowing time for your family to catch on or your coworkers to catch on that they are going to have to pick up some slack here, you jump in and fix it. Or that they may not do it the way you think they should, or the way they may flail and flop around and not know what they're doing. That's all part of the process. Allowing room for growth, from you and the people that you're used to helping, or you're used to doing everything for, I should say, allowing that space.

Those are the three main things I came up with of why it is so hard. One is the myth of strength. Two is perfectionism; they won't do it right. And the third one is resistance. I encourage you to get curious about what comes up for you around this, asking for help. Maybe those three don't pertain to you, and you have a different one. That's cool. The idea here is to kind of start getting underneath, "What is this? Why is this so hard for me? Why am I struggling with this asking for help?"

Okay, so taking those reasons that we've come up with, I came up with some reasons why, how to get around that. You know, what can we do? Yeah, I know I don't like asking for help. I know I'm resistant to it. So, what do I do about it? Well, the first thing I would say is to embrace the gray. It isn't black and white. There's no right way and wrong way to do stuff, so when you ask for help, it is challenging your sense of a thousand ways to do something. You may ask your kids to take out the trash, and they may not do it the way you would. My husband, one of his jobs is to take out the trash, and he inevitably, every time, does not put a new trash bag in. Like, he just doesn't do it. He forgets. He takes the trash out and then moves on to the next thing. And so, that has become my job to put the new trash bag in. Now it's become kind of a joke between us. It was a major annoyance at the beginning.

But to recognize, you know, it just isn't on his radar screen to put the trash bag back in, and that's okay. I can do that piece because I'm grateful that he takes the trash out, to begin with. Instead of jumping all over, like, "I'm gonna do the whole thing and take the trash out because he doesn't do it right." No, he just misses this one little step, and I can pick up that slack. Recognizing that they don't have to do it perfectly right every time, they're easing the burden, and that's what this is all about.

The other thing is, when we ask, we're changing the pattern, and we're asking for help, and it's a relatively new thing. We might ask once, and if it doesn't go the way we think it should, we quit. That's a challenge there, too. Again, with the embracing the gray, that you're going to have to ask multiple times, and it's going to get bumpy, and it's going to get lucky. So, recognizing that this is a process, asking for help is when you haven't been asking for help. Learning how to ask once, and then maybe you'll need to remind them again. That's okay. It's getting the new pattern built. It doesn't mean it's failing or you're doing it wrong. That's the inner critic. It just means that this is a process. So, embracing that gray.

Then the question to ask yourself is, "What's the priority here?" If your goal is to decrease your plate, pick the tasks that you can ask for help on. Probably are going to be pretty low-priority tasks for you. They're not going to have as much importance. To pick the low priority tasks, like taking out the trash for me, and to recognize, "Okay, it's okay if he doesn't do it perfectly correctly." You know, loading the dishwasher. My husband and I have very different ways of loading the dishwasher, but I don't want to load the dishwasher. That's a low priority for me. The fact that he doesn't do it the way I want him to, that's okay. Recognizing what's the priority here, the tasks. Going to the grocery store, I want certain food, so even though my husband has offered me multiple times to go, that's my priority to go to the grocery store. I like getting the food. To recognize that's not something I'm going to ask for help around unless I'm desperate.

There are a number of tasks that I have dropped the priority level. This is a challenge. If you're like, "Oh, all my tasks are the same priority," I'm going to ask you to push back on that a little bit and say, "They're probably not." You probably have a variety of levels of priority. We have just told ourselves that everything is super important, and it's not. When you're asking for help, really get clear on what's the priority.

The last one is compassion. Have compassion for yourself that this is a hard process to change. Have compassion for those around you who you are challenging to change, probably against their will, that it's a process. It's going to be hard. It's going to be sticky. You know, really being kind to yourself and others, and being persistent that this will take some time and it takes multiple tries. So really, the idea of embracing that gray, getting out of the black and white because that is your inner critic. Anytime you have a right or wrong thinking, remind yourself, "Where is the gray here? Where can I see some fuzzy lines?" And then prioritizing. What's the priority here? What can I get rid of, and it won't make a difference? And then having some compassion with yourself and those around you who are trying to change.

+ 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: Doing a Chore? Be Fully Present

From laundry to doing dishes, we all have "chores" we HAVE to do. Because we are basically stuck doing these activities, this is a great time to practice being mindful. This week as you do your chores, bring yourself fully in the moment. Take some deep breaths and ask yourself, What do I feel? What do I see? What do I smell? What do I hear? Put on some good music and fully embrace being present.

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Episode 052: Own It Part 2...Now What?

I received some pushback from last week's episode. I love pushback because it allows me to clarify these concepts. Talking about getting stuck and feeling selfish when we own it.

+ Read the Transcript

Today, I want to do a part two. It wasn't in the plans, but I've gotten a lot of feedback from part one, last week's episode 51 called Own It, and so this is part two called Now What? Because a lot of people push back a little bit on just owning it. I thought I might get some pushback because, although it sounds awesome and something we all strive to, just owning it and putting that pause into whatever it is we're feeling is challenging.

So to do a quick refresher, if you want to hear the whole episode, go back to episode 51, but a quick refresher. Last week, I talked about the idea of really owning it and just owning whatever it is you're feeling. So often, we rush past the feeling to get to the other side, so we're feeling sad. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel sad, we rush past it. We're feeling tired. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel tired or own that we're tried, we rush past it. Sometimes we even beat ourselves up for being tired, or we'll excuse it away instead of just really embracing and owning that we're tried.

The own-it piece is just a small part, a small but mighty, and I think it's a piece that goes missing a lot because, as I said, we rush past it. We want to get into fixing it mode before we've experienced it. So this idea of just owning it is triggering for a lot of people and extremely, extremely challenging because I think the idea of owning it makes us feel powerless.

The feedback I got this week, both in my session and from people who had listened to the podcast, was two main pushbacks. One of them was "I feel selfish if I do this," and the other one was, "I don't want to get stuck in whatever it is I'm owning." I want to talk about the selfish piece first because I think that is a huge message that many women have. What if I own whatever it is I'm feeling, and I'm not happy 100% of the time. Or I'm not on it 100% of the time, or I'm not doing for others 100%. So if I admit that I need help, or admit that I'm sad, or admit that I'm tired, then I'm selfish.

I wanted to go to Google to dictionary.com to say the definition of selfish, and selfish means devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one's interests, benefits, welfare, et cetera, regardless of others.

The idea that you are selfish if you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, "I'm tired, and I need to get a nap in at some point, a 20-minute nap, two-hour nap. I don't care. I got to get a nap in, or the very least I got to go to bed early tonight because I'm too tired and I can't keep doing this." Nowhere in that, you being tired and trying to decide how you're going to fit in a little extra sleep does that make you devoted to or caring only for yourself regardless of others. That makes you tired. That's all. But, we have piled on all this, meaning that if I'm sad or not 100% of what everyone else thinks I should be, then I'm selfish.

99% of the people that are listening to this podcast, you could be more selfish. You are without self. Meaning you are devoted to others beyond what you are devoted to yourself tenfold. If there is one way to decrease overwhelm, stress and anxiety, it is to take back a little bit of that devotion that you're putting on others back to yourself.

It's recognizing, wow, when I own something and I admit that I'm tired, or I'm not feeling it, or I'm stressed today, that the minute you do that, the Monger is going to come rushing in that's going to tell you you're selfish. And that is when your biggest fan needs to chime up and say, "No, no, no. I am not more devoted to myself than something else. This is not me saying that my way is the best. This is me saying, 'You know what? Right now, I'm tired.'" That's all it's saying.

We put all of this stuff on top of it, but all we're saying is I'm not feeling it 100%, and that's okay. Pay attention to how often that "selfish" word comes in and put that definition on a sticky note on your mirror to remind you of what selfish is and how far you are from being selfish.

The next one that I got a lot was feeling stuck. I don't want to feel stuck, so if I do this owning-it thing you speak of, I will be stuck in this sadness. I'm going to get stuck in this stress. I'm going to be stuck. So I need to figure a way out of this, not be owning it.

There are two things I want to say about that. One is the owning it piece is so tiny. I'm not saying you need to own it for days on end or own it even for an hour, but you at least need to acknowledge that it's happening, so it's at least saying, "You know what? I'm tired." We spend all day pretending that we're not tired. We drink a ton of caffeine. We jump from thing to thing to thing. We immediately get up and get on social media to help ourselves up. We do all these things to artificially pretend that we're not tired. Instead of owning, "You know what? I'm tired."

When we can own that we're tired, then we can do something about that. Then we can take action. When we own that we're tired, we can decide: Do I want to take a nap? Do I want to have more coffee? What do I want to do? Tired is an easy example.

One of the more challenging ones, the ones that we get afraid of getting stuck in, is sadness, or anger, or depression. If I own that, I'm sad, I'm going to get stuck there, and you're not. You're not going to get stuck there. You might be there longer than you want to be, but you're not going to get stuck there. If you are practicing the ideas of owning it, and awareness, and acknowledgment, then you'll constantly be checking in with yourself to see where you are in trying to move past it, or through it, or around it, whatever.

Let's say you wake up one morning and you're feeling sad, and you don't know why it's unexplainable. Unexplainable sadness is the worst because there's no logical reason, and we love logical reasons. You're unexplainably sad, and so if you follow this happiness hack, you're like, "Okay. I'm going to own it. I'm going to own that. I'm sad." Owning it. I'm sad. I feel sad today.

Okay. What do you do with that? Well, first of all, you just feel sad. That's it. You go through your day. You get the kids breakfast. You go to work. You drink your coffee. You have your breakfast. You do whatever it is you're going to do, and you just have this little piece of sadness in the back of your brain. Maybe you cry after you drop the kids off at school between school and work, or maybe you listen to a sad song, or maybe you call a friend, and you say, "Gosh, I'm just sad, and I don't know why." Maybe you do some journaling, and you just own it that you're sad. That's it. That's all I'm saying. It's just owning it. It's just acknowledging that the sadness is there.

But what happens when we don't own it is we wake up, and we feel sad, and we immediately say to ourselves, "You shouldn't feel sad. There's nothing to feel sad about. Stop feeling sad." And so, we pour on more coffee. We rush the kids out of the house. We jam the music the whole way there. We rush to school. We rush to work. We pour ourselves into work, and we're busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, overwhelmed, overwhelmed, overwhelmed, overwhelmed. The sadness is still there, but we're pretending it's not because we don't want to feel that because we shouldn't be feeling that. It doesn't make any sense to feel that. That's a silly thing to feel.

We rush through our day piling all this stuff on, and the sadness is still there, unacknowledged. It's still there. We get to work, and it might dissipate because we have stuff happening or whatever, and we lose track of it. But, by the time we get home, we are so stressed and overwhelmed because we've been running so hard from that sadness that we are grouchy with the kids. We snap at our husband. We lose it. That is why it's so important to acknowledge it way back at the beginning. That acknowledgment piece that happened at the very point when you woke up eliminates all that drama and that conflict that happens when we ignore what we're feeling. When we pretend it isn't there, when our inner critic takes over and tells us that we're stupid, or idiots, or wasting our time by feeling something.

It's okay to feel the sadness. We don't have to get stuck there. We don't have to call all of our friends and tell them how sad we are, that it's a terrible day and drama, drama, drama. No, we just have to own that it's there and move on. Those were the two pushbacks I got: selfish, and am I going to get stuck in it? You're not going to get stuck in it if you acknowledge it and then just take a small action to express it: journaling, talking to a friend, listening to some music, dancing, working out, something that brings it to light. If you're angry about something, figure out do I need to have a conversation with someone? Is there someone that I need to forgive? Is there something that needs to happen here that will release the anger? The idea of exploring it a little bit more.

I think the myth that we can control our feelings by thinking our way out of them is not valid. Our feelings are there. We can choose to get stuck in them. We can choose to ignore them, or we can choose to let them flow.

It's the idea that our feelings are like the ball that bounces on top of the water, and it just bounces there all day long different feelings. We just need to own that they're happening rather than continually try to force them down underwater. This is the idea the more pressure I put on the ball to force it under the water, the more the feelings will bounce back, and we've wasted all of our energy keeping that sadness at bay rather than letting it bounce along the water as we go through our day. Or, we try to cheer ourselves up and get rid of the ball. Move the ball away. Move the ball away. No, the ball is part of life. We just need to learn how to own it and acknowledge it and move forward.

Those were the two things: getting stuck, feeling selfish, and addressing owning it.

+ 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: Smile

Smiling can fire up the 'happiness centers' in your brain. It is also a great way to move you out of your mind and into your body because it naturally changes your perspective. Not to mention that it makes other people feel awesome too! So this week, when you are feeling stressed take a second and smile.

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