Episode 095: Feeling Invisible

So many of my clients talk about feeling invisible. The issue isn't that they aren't showing up in their lives or that they don't feel seen. The problem is they feel seen not for themselves but for how they SHOULD be performing. Do you agree? Listen and let me know.

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Hey, gang. I am so excited to be back and chatting with you guys today about feeling invisible, and this is a trait I've seen frequently in my office and something I've felt myself. A lot of my clients will say, "I just feel invisible." A lot of people will say that in the sense that no one sees me, or I can go through my life, and no one is paying any attention whether I exist or not. There's a song in the musical Chicago called Mr. Cellophane that talks about how people just see right through him. But that isn't what I'm talking about because the people that I'm talking about have very active lives. They're very engaged; people respond to them and show up. They're very powerful in their positions. They're very active in their communities, but they still, in the depths of their being, feel invisible.

The reason for that is not that they aren't loved and supported by family members, not that they aren't seen and appreciated for all they do. It is that their Monger convinces them they have to perform a certain way, and so they can't show up in their lives just as they are, just for who they are in all their idiosyncrasies and mistakes, and traits, and being human-nesses. They have to show up as the perfect whatever, so the perfect mother, the perfect sister, the perfect friend, the perfect bridesmaid, the perfect board member, the perfect worker, the perfect boss. Whatever fill in the blank, perfect role, and that's why they feel invisible because they're not showing up fully for who they are. They're showing up as a role, so they never really get to be seen for who they are.

It developed as a defense mechanism. As we're growing up, we get a lot of attention if we follow the rules and if we do everything right. If we get straight A's, if we are quiet in school, if we do the right things, we get rewarded, and so growing up, we learn how to fit ourselves into the different roles that we play. We morph and change and shift ourselves to make sure we're pleasing others, and when that happens, we forget who we really are. In essence, we're like, who we really are doesn't matter as long as I can keep getting the approval from the outside world. But then, at some point, we wake up, and we realize, wait a minute, I'm performing all the freakin' time. I'm constantly scanning the environment, trying to find out what I should be doing next. What do they expect from me next? We do that all the time, and that leaves us feeling exhausted, and it leaves us feeling empty because we're doing all these things for everyone else.

By the time my clients come in to see me, their anxiety is high. They have high functioning anxiety, and they get to the point where they just can't keep pretending anymore. They can't keep acting like they have it all together, acting like they can fit into these different roles perfectly.

I wanted to talk about this trait because I've seen it more and more, but also because I think it is an under-appreciated problem that a lot of us high-functioning people have, that we are so good at reading the environment. We're so good at walking into a room and reading what needs to be done next that we miss out on what we want to do next. What is it that we feel is most important?

I want to let you guys know, A, it's normal if you're feeling this way. I get it. I can relate in so many ways. But also, I wanted to talk about how to start unhooking that for you because it's a process to start unhooking it. Obviously, the first step is to recognize that it's happening, so to recognize that you're feeling invisible and then to start recognizing where that is happening. It might be everywhere. It might be at work, it might be with your kids, it might be with your spouse, that you've gotten so good at putting on the hat of mother, or the hat of wife, or the hat of daughter, that you forget to ask yourself what is it I really need here?

This has come out for me really strong recently, and this is a personal example I'm going to give is that I've been having some stomach issues and have been dealing with some health problems when it comes to stomach pain. It's been going on for a couple of months, and I've been trying to get it figured out, running tests, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing that keeps coming up for me is that I need to be the perfect patient. I need to be a good patient, and a good patient doesn't make waves. A good patient goes along with what the doctor says. A good patient is agreeable. A good patient is calm.

They keep saying, "We can't find anything. Everything's fine. You're fine." But I know everything isn't fine, so that fight, I've had to tap into trusting my intuition. I've had to tap into my own wisdom to fight for myself to say, "No. I don't care that I'm not the perfect patient. I don't care that I'm not playing the role that I think I should be. I'm fighting for myself because this isn't right that I'm feeling this way. This isn't okay."

That has thrust me into this area of really kind of fighting for myself in a way that makes me uncomfortable because I have to get out of the good person role, the good patient role. Anytime I start to fight, my Monger comes in to be like, "No. Don't fight. We all know you're just faking this. This isn't a real problem. Just be quiet. Sit down quietly and shut up, and it'll be okay. You can't be making waves like this."

Because remember, our Monger is there to make sure we don't make a mistake, we aren't too vulnerable, and we don't stand out. All of those are what I'm doing when I'm standing up for myself when it comes to my health concerns. I'm standing up for myself. I'm being a little vulnerable, saying, "I know you can't find anything, but there's something there, and I'm demanding more action." I'm demanding people look at me. I'm not invisible anymore.

That's a big example of it, but it also can show up in little ways in your home. That you decide, "You know what? I'm going to take Sunday afternoons off, and I'm going to sit on the couch and watch a movie, and you guys can join me or not; I don't care, but Sunday afternoons, I get the TV. It's my time to sit in front of the TV and do a movie." You're kind of demanding showing up and being present and being fully there.

As I said, the first step is showing up and recognizing that you're feeling invisible. Then the next step is really getting in touch with your feelings. And I know you guys get tired of me saying this, but it is kind of acknowledging what's coming up, acknowledging those feelings. How does it feel to recognize that I'm invisible? Do I feel scared? Do I feel angry? Do I feel happy that I finally figured out what's going on? Just going through what it is I'm feeling right now, so you notice that this pops up.

And you're at work, and you notice that your boss asks you to do something that isn't really in your job description. Instead of being like, "Yeah, sure. No problem," you start being like, "Wait a minute. This isn't in my job description. This isn't something that I need to be doing." Then you start acknowledging the feeling of, "Wait a minute. I have been taking on way more than my job description for a long time now, and I'm really angry about this."

Feel that anger. Let it go. Just acknowledge that that anger is there. Ninety seconds to biologically feel that anger, and then slow down and get into your body, and figure out, okay, what am I going to do next? How am I going to start confronting this bit by bit by bit? How am I going to show up to my boss, and how am I going to say to him, "You know, this isn't really in my job description, and I'm not comfortable doing this." And then, bit by bit by bit, you start taking on those different roles, noticing where you're not showing up, where you could be more visible, how you are playing it safe and calm, and just going along with what everybody else needs.

I guarantee you, preparing you, what will happen as you start noticing how often you play the perfect role, anger will start coming up because you'll start getting mad about how long you've been playing the perfect role. I tell you the anger's going to be there because I don't want you to get stuck in the anger. The anger is a perfectly normal response. It's a feeling. You should feel it, absolutely. We tend to get stuck in anger and then start blaming everybody else for why we are feeling invisible, and that they've kept us here, and blah blah blah.

I want to be clear. It isn't that anyone forced you to be invisible. It isn't that you forced yourself to be invisible. It is a survival mechanism that you have used to excel in life. It has left you very high functioning. A great way to calm your anxiety is just to concentrate on the other person and to look at them, and figure out what they need, and give it to them. As long as you're not concentrating on yourself and you're concentrating on them, your anxiety can go down.

It's a two-fold problem. On the one hand, we've developed this idea that I can please other people by figuring out what it is they need and giving it to them and playing these different roles, and remaining invisible. But on the second part, and that's the part that we tend to miss, is then why are we doing this? Why has this defense mechanism kicked in?

I argue the reason this defense mechanism has kicked in is that we have so much anxiety, and because we have so much high functioning anxiety, the way to calm that is to start concentrating on what everybody else needs, and then I don't need to pay attention to my anxiety.

As you start recognizing, oh my gosh, there I go again. I'm wearing the hat of whatever they want me to wear, and I'm acting how they want me to act; you will start then to recognize, oh, if I start paying attention to myself, I have more anxiety. If I start paying more attention to myself, my Monger gets louder. When I start paying attention to myself, my Monger and my BFF fight more, so then you're going to need to start pulling that apart and practicing ask and acknowledging what you're feeling, slowing down and getting into your body, and pulling back to see the big picture. You're going to need to start recognizing where the anxiety is showing up because you've developed this defense mechanism of playing the role for everybody else and being invisible to keep your anxiety at bay.

I think that is why, a lot of times, we hear this, "Don't be invisible. Speak your needs and show up for yourself," which is awesome. That's what we should be doing, so yes. But when we start speaking our needs and showing up for ourselves, the anxiety comes ten-fold, and that's when we get into trouble because then we jump in, right back into, okay, I can't handle this anxiety anymore. I'm going to start going back to being invisible and playing a role because that squelches my anxiety and numbs out my Monger. It is, again, back to Mongers, back to BFFs, back to figuring out what that Biggest Fan is saying.

Because the Biggest Fan is going to say,

"Oh sweet pea, this is hard. You've got to figure out what you want at this moment, and we've got to be calm and collected. How are we going to confront the boss and say, 'Dude, this is too much work. I can't do anymore. I need you to help me figure this out because I am well outside of my job description right now, and it's hurting my relationships at home, it's hurting my relationships at work. I'm struggling.' We need to be able to figure out how to do that without all the anxiety."

I guarantee, as you start this process, you're going to start listening to this podcast, and you'll be like, "Oh my gosh. I totally do this. I totally wear these hats, and I totally feel invisible." And then the next feeling you're going to feel is probably anger when you start recognizing, "Oh my gosh, why do I keep doing this? I'm such a loser. I can't believe I'm doing this." And then your Monger's going to kick in, so don't listen to your Monger. Slow down, practice A.S.K. get into your body, pull back to see the big picture, try to bring in your Biggest Fan, and be like, "Okay. I developed this defense mechanism to squelch my anxiety and it's not working for me anymore, so I need to start feeling my feelings and trusting what comes up for me because I have the answers within me, I just have to start getting used to saying them without all the anxiety."

It's a process. It's not like you can simply flip a switch and suddenly 30, 40 years of a defense mechanism is going to go away. You need to be intentional about how you handle this, and that is why it's so important to be kind to yourself and give yourself a little room around learning a new way of doing it in the world. But I wanted to do this podcast to give you a different way of thinking about this invisible thing because I think it's a problem for a lot of people out there, women and men. We play a role, and we put on a hat, and we pretend like we've got everything okay when inside we are just not connected at all to what's happening in the world around us.

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Episode 094: Lessons Learned in Iowa

In early August my Mom and I took a trip to visit friends in Iowa. The trip brought me so many ah-ha's about life priorities and living happier I wanted to share a few of the lessons I learned.

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Hey friends. I am, as always, excited to be back. Today I'm talking about (I think I've promised this for a couple of episodes now) my trip to Iowa, which was back in early August. I think it took me so long to talk about this trip because, A, it was impactful to me, and B, I couldn't unpack why it was so impactful. And so it took me a little time to gather my thoughts and figure stuff out and be able to share it with you all in a somewhat organized fashion, so I'm going to try my best. I still don't think I have it down, but I think I have the lessons synthesized and organized, so it'll make sense to you, even though you didn't go on this trip with me.

So back in early August, my mom and I headed to Iowa to visit friends of our family, and years ago, when we were little kids, we would go to Iowa every year and visit this family farm. And the husband, his name is Ron, served in the Army with my dad. They were close friends, and my dad loved being on the farm. He grew up on a farm, and so, ironically, we would go to the farm, so my dad could take his "vacation," working with Ron on a farm.

And we would go and hang out as kids and run around the farm, and my dad and Ron would work together. I have a lot of fond memories as a kid. I hadn't been there in a long time. I mean, literally, I hadn't been there since I was a child, so it was fun to go back in time and to see this place and to hang out with these people that I hadn't seen in probably close to 30 years.

So the first thing I want to share about the trip was the stereotypes of, "Hey, we're going to Iowa." And the number of people that said to me, "Oh, Iowa, wow. They must be huge Trump fans." Or, "Be careful going to Iowa; you're going into the Red State there." I heard all these stereotypes about people in Iowa. And I just found that so fascinating, because when I got there and arrived there, they were just regular people. Some were Trump fans; some were not. And we had some great cultural, political discussions. And that was the first takeaway for me was how quickly we are to judge other people based on assumptions and based on stereotypes. And so, to check that. And it was a powerful lesson for me on that, is that we make up these stories in our heads about people and ourselves, and learning how to have some respect and curiosity about where people are coming from.

So that's the first thing I wanted to get out of the way because I realized that people make a quick judgment when they hear Iowa, and so I challenge you to check that stereotype and open yourself up to some curiosity around that.

The second thing I learned and figured out while I was there was the number of things they did that just brought them joy. They did it for no other reason than it brought them joy. And this came as an aha to me because I realized in my own life how little I do that brings me joy for no reason. It's not helping someone. It's not benefiting anyone. It's just because I enjoy doing it. And one of the things that brought this to my attention was, they had a beautiful, I mean absolutely gorgeous flower garden that was just right outside their kitchen window. It was a gorgeous flower garden that Marilyn planted every year from seeds, and it was full of bees and butterflies and just so amazing.

And the first thing I thought of was, "Wow, if this group was younger, and they were big on Instagram and Facebook, this flower garden would be all over Instagram." Like, "Look what I'm doing for the bees! And look how I'm benefiting the world with planting flowers, and I'm helping the butterflies." And all of this "Look at me!" tendency about it. And really, they just planted the flower garden because they loved the flower garden. And yeah, they wanted to support the bees, but that's just what they've always done, for 50 years, is planted this flower garden. And the bees came, and it wasn't this big ecological, climate change, taking back the world kind of thing that we all get into, that even if we love doing something, we have to explain it as that it's doing something better for people. It's strengthening the world. I'm helping the world. I'm giving back. "Look at me! I'm giving back!"

Instead of just, "I'm doing this because this brings me joy. I'm making homemade muffins and homemade rolls because it brings me joy. It's not because I'm going to post it on Instagram later and have everyone see how amazing I am in the kitchen. Or it's not because I'm going to take them to all my neighbors, and they're going to tell me how amazing I am. It's just that I like doing this because it brings me joy."

So I want to challenge you guys, and I've been challenging myself on doing things simply for the reason they bring me joy. And paying attention to that intentional joy that pops up in our life. You know, I talk a lot about being intentional, about our feelings, and feeling the sadness and feeling the anger. But we also need to be feeling the joy of the little things in our lives that we choose to do, whether that be spending time with family or planting a flower garden or baking bread or knitting or coloring. I don't care. Anything that you can do that's just purely for the sake of doing it because it makes you happy. And that was something I saw a ton of when I was visiting Iowa.

The other takeaway I had was the clarity of their values and living them. I always say the test for, "Are you living by your values?" is if I was a fly on the wall, observing your life, could I find your values, based on what I observed, being the fly on the wall? And it was striking to me the clarity of their values. They were very clear that it was giving back to the community. It was their religious beliefs. It was family. It was the farm. Everything was very simplistic. And so, if it didn't fit into their values, they didn't do it. And they didn't even question if they should have. They just were like, "Why would I do that? That's not part of my value system."

And so, that piece of living their lives based on their values, in a thousand little ways, just brought so much clarity to me. And it was such a simple way of living. And they weren't caught up in, "What should I be doing? What would so and so think of me doing this?" They were living by their values, and it was simple and clean. And so that was a powerful thing.

The other piece that I took away was the power of community. It was clear that community is very important to them, from their family to their larger community to the church community to asking for help and being there for others. They valued where they came from, and they valued giving back. And it was again simple because "This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm called to do this." There wasn't this overarching feeling of "I should be." Or "I'd be a better person if I." Or all of that sort of stuff that we get caught up in. It was just very simple and values-based and was just so refreshing.

Ron was sharing with me about how he went out with his friends, and they would do these tractor rides, and just spend the day doing the tractor rides, and they stop for lunch one place, and you'd stop for a snack. And the joy on his face of describing this ride, which honestly, to me, does not sound appealing. I don't want to ride on a tractor all day, but I don't have the love of tractors that Ron does. I didn't grow up riding tractors and knew every in and out of a tractor and love the community and the people. And he just explained it with such joy. You had to love it too. You just felt that love for it.

And I think, "How often in my life do I not share the things I love with other people because I'm afraid of being judged or ridiculed or made fun of?" Or because I shouldn't be doing that, I think in my head, because my Monger takes over. And so to recognize, I'm going to start talking proudly about the stuff that I value, what's important to me, and sharing that with people. And that idea of, we need to stop editing ourselves so frequently. We need to stop dismissing ourselves and saying, "Well, no one wants to hear about that." Or "No one wants to talk about that." We need more conversations about what our passions are and what our joys are, and what our values are. And what's important to us. We need to be sharing that with each other, rather than the constant complaining about being hurried and rushed and too much to do and checking on that to-do list all the time.

I would love if my conversations were more about, "These are the things that get me jazzed," and less about, "This is how long my to-do list is, and this is all the stuff I have to get done." But more about the joys of our lives.

And then the last thing that I wanted to touch on that was key to this whole thing. I did a Happier Approach Book talk while I was there, and I said to the group, "You know, I could get a bus and say, 'I've figured it out. I've figured out where happiness is, and it's in the middle of Iowa. Like Field of Dreams. And I'm gonna take you all there, and everyone's gonna arrive, and they're gonna be like, 'Oh, this is it?'"

Because this life is hard, they were struggling, and they were in the middle of a drought, and they were struggling with water and getting their crops ready, and they were by no means rolling in the dough. They lived very intelligently and frugally and all that good stuff. And so it was hard. And it didn't mean that living by what brings them joy and living the clarity of values and knowing the power of community, that didn't mean their lives were easy. And that wasn't my takeaway. Because they still had major Mongers showing up. They still were very worried about were they irrigating, right? Were they irrigating wrong? Were they doing the right thing? Were they doing the wrong thing? Were they good Christians? Were they not?

And they still had all of their struggles, but at the end of the day, the piece that I found was comforting was they were very solid in how they knew what mattered to them. And so that solidness, that's the only word I can think of to describe it, that total security in this is how we live our lives. These are the values. Returning to those roots, back again and again and again. That was the piece that I took away. It doesn't mean life is easier. But it does mean it's more solid, and it's more simple. And you know what's important.

So those are some of the lessons I learned in Iowa. I really wanted to share them with you because you go on these vacations sometimes, and they're wonderful, and they're fabulous, and then you go on a vacation where it just uproots everything you've been thinking about and turns your head around in a different way. And that's totally what this trip was for me. So I'm still trying to process what I learned in Iowa and apply it to my life, but I have been striving to slow everything way down and checking in. Does this fit my values? Is this bringing me joy? Why am I doing it, then, if it isn't? And being clear on what's the priority here? Because I think it's so easy for us to get caught up in "I should be" and orchestrating our lives for social media or an imaginary audience. You know, I always joke about the imaginary cameras in my house, that someone's going to see if I'm doing it right or not.

So when we get stuck in that orchestration, remember what's most important here. Where are my values showing up? And what brings me joy? Gaining clarity on that is priceless, and I hope that I have inspired you to kind of look at your life a little differently.

And I want to say thank you to Ron and Marilyn for taking us into their farm and allowing my mom and me to crash at their house and spend the long weekend with them, and for being such amazing friends for our entire lives. And also just letting me see their lives in such a wonderful way. And I'm so thankful for that weekend. It has radically shifted some stuff for me. And I hope it's given you some ah-as too.

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Episode 093: Anxiety and Acceptance

This week's podcast came out a little late, listen to find out why. Sharing my own 'default patterns' and how slowly but surely we can change them.

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Hey, everyone. Today I want to talk about anxiety and acceptance. I think last week I promised I was going to talk to you about Iowa, my trip to Iowa. But, this week, a personal thing happened, and I wanted to share it with you guys because I am committed. The one thing I am so committed to on this podcast and in the work that I do is to showcase how living happier is not something that is just a simple one-two-three process. It is something we need to be committed to on a daily basis and make a focus of our lives, if that's something we want to be doing, because it isn't just like you can, poof, fix it. It is an ongoing process. So, something happened this week that really showcased that for me. I wanted to be able to share it with you guys because I think it will also hopefully help you and give you a new way of looking at stuff.

But before I get into the story, I want to talk about anxiety and how I believe that anxiety is caused by how we talk to ourselves and the Monger voice that we have. I always say the Monger has three missions: don't stand out, don't be too vulnerable, and don't make a mistake. This story that I'm about to tell you is really about the don't be too vulnerable piece, which I think is a big one for those of us with anxiety because we don't like for people to see us sweat, and we don't like people to see us not at our best. So, that's where the anxiety comes from, as a way to make sure our external image looks better than how we're feeling on the inside.

So, I wanted to talk about not being too vulnerable, but I also wanted to talk about that the danger of our Monger is not so much that we have this negative voice talking to us (which is annoying), but the danger of the Monger is that the Monger makes us think someone else knows better. The Monger pulls us out of ourselves and pulls us out of our own loyalty to ourselves. That's where we get into trouble, and that's where anxiety comes from, is the idea that someone else knows better, and if we can just find that answer, everything will be okay. It's counterintuitive to turn it back into yourself.

Using those two things, don't be too vulnerable and the idea of self-loyalty, and I want to tell you a personal example of what happened to me this week. It actually happened to my husband, but it also happened to me. If you've been following me for a while, you know that my husband is dealing with seizures and has had epilepsy since he was around eight years old. It's a regular part of our lives. It's something that affects us on a daily basis. While he doesn't always have grand mals, he frequently has what we call little mini seizures and the side effects of his meds. It's just a very complex disorder.

But this week, out of the blue, he had two grand mal seizures. It was a real big blow to us because we were trying to get his meds regulated. We had this delusion that we were going to get his seizures under control, and he wasn't going to have any more grand mals. So not only was it a blow because he had the grand mals, it was a blow because the grand mals came differently than they normally do. They were harsher than they normally are. So, there were a number of setbacks from these two grand mals that happened this week, not even to mention the setbacks of what they do to my husband and how crappy they make him feel.

But when the grand mals hit this week, I was in the midst of a very busy week, and a lot of stuff was going on. So, I didn't deal with it and told myself to soldier on and suck it up, and it wasn't that big of a deal and an all that self-talk that we say to ourselves. What happens when we do that, and what happened to me was then the anxiety comes out in other places. I was very fired up about stuff that is totally out of my control. All of this stuff that was not related to my life at all, I was super opinionated about and extremely aggressive about.

I noticed that pattern for me that I do the drama, drama, drama. If you've read the Happier Approach, that's in there, that one way we deal with our anxiety is we put it onto something else. So, we create drama around stuff that isn't there. Every time my Biggest Fan this week would kind of say to me, "Hey, sweetheart. What happened to your husband is a big deal. " Whoa, that's a lot to handle. I would quickly come in with, "No, no. Think positive. This is no big deal. We expected this. It's part of the meds," and I would tell myself to, you know, suck it up and move on.

I see that all the time with clients that no matter how hard we try with this acknowledging-your-feelings piece, the default is so strong. The default of, "No, suck it up. We don't have time for negative feelings. We can't feel sad. We're supposed to feel happy. Be positive. Be grateful." All of those messages are so strong, and there's nothing wrong with those messages. Absolutely nothing wrong with the messages. The problem is when we only listen to those messages is when we get in trouble. So, this week, I was pushing, and pushing, and pushing, and working, and working, and working, and ignoring how hard and how devastated I was by these seizures. How painful it is to see my husband struggling, how sad it makes me, and how defeated I felt, and all of those negative, yucky emotions I did not want to feel because I was soldiering on and I was positive.

I wanted to share this story because last night, I had this aha. Three days later, I had the aha that I was doing that, that I was ignoring my feelings, and I wasn't acknowledging them as soon as I realized, "Oh my gosh. I am totally ignoring my feelings, and I'm not acknowledging them," I thought, "I have to share this on my podcast," because that shows the power of the default. My default is very strong toward the soldier on and think positive, very, very strong especially when it comes to repetitive feelings.

We've been dealing with these seizures for a long time, and so my Monger steps in to be like, "Babe, you know this is happening. This is your life. You have these seizures. Just suck it up and move on. You can't be getting upset about it every time, or you'll be upset every time." I didn't give myself any grace. There was no room for kindness, or acknowledgment, or any of that. It showcases the strength of the defaults, and I wanted to share that with you because don't give up. Don't stop this work because your default is strong. Don't pretend that it isn't important because your default is strong because it works.

I can tell you that because last night, literally last night, I was saying to my mom in a tongue-in-cheek way, "Oh my gosh, this feeling stuff, like really? I'm supposed to acknowledge my feelings about how hard this is with Doug and how much I'm struggling with it, and to what end? To what end? Why is that helpful to acknowledge it? I mean, I know I say that's what I'm supposed to do, but why is that helpful to acknowledge it?" I swear to God, just that little piece, just that little window of acknowledging how hard it was for me, even though I was being tongue in cheek and bantering with my mom, that little window allowed me to feel how hard it was.

When I hung up the phone, I started crying and was like, "Oh my gosh. This week has been devastating. It has been challenging. I have struggled this week." Being able to say that out loud loosened my neck muscles. It loosened my chest muscles. Everything kind of relaxed a little bit. That didn't mean that instantaneously I was happy again or instantaneously everything felt better. I think that's where this myth of, "Oh, if I acknowledged my feelings, then everything will be magically wonderful and positive again." No, that isn't the case. But what happens is because you are acknowledging your feelings, and once I started acknowledging what was going on, all that drama that I was making up, all those smoke screens, and stuff I was throwing out into the universe to block the feelings, all of that melted away. It was just me, and my feelings, and the loyalty I had to myself, and what am I going to do moving forward.

I think that's the power of acknowledging what's really going on. What are you really feeling? And it gives us this clarity, this crystal clear clarity that comes through to be like, "Oh Babe, this is hard right now, and that's okay. We can move forward." The energy is so much more calm, and relaxed, and less anxious. But when we are putting up all these smoke screens, and we're trying to be like, "It's happy. It's fine. It's no big deal. I mean, I knew we had seizures when I married him, so this is just one more thing we got to deal with. We're moving on. Here we go. We're going to be choosing happiness. Maybe I need to meditate more, and maybe I need to journal more because I got to get through this somehow," notice how my energy goes up like this when I start talking like that. It's anxiety.

When I can be calm and say, "Oh, sweet pea, this is hard right now. We can get through this though, but it's hard," that's such a different, more calm energy. I think that is the key to building acceptance of what comes up for you. I noticed this week that it would come up, and I would be like, "Oh, this is so hard." Then, immediately in would come, "Don't go there. Don't go there. Just be positive. Soldier on. You do not have time to deal with these feelings right now." That message of ignoring what's happening to you, do not have acceptance, keep throwing up the smokescreen that just builds our anxiety tenfold. So, that's why the title of this podcast is called Anxiety and Acceptance because I think part of the key to dealing with our anxiety is having some acceptance of what's happening in our lives because we spend so much time trying to mask that with the shoulds, and the shoulds bring the drama. All of that is why we don't deal with what's going on in front of us.

So, just to recognize the power of acknowledging your feelings and noticing the defaults you have. I know one of my big defaults is I tend to get very hopped up about politics and what's happening in the culture around me when I'm not acknowledging what's going on in my life. So yes, there is stuff to get hopped up about, but it doesn't have to take over my entire life. So instead of dealing with what was really going on in my life, I'm dealing with something that's completely out of my control. That for me, I know that's a default. I can recognize now when that happens. I need to check-in and find out what's really going on.

That's what I encourage you to do is to start figuring out what your defaults are. What are the things you do when you don't acknowledge your feelings? When your anxiety is hopped up, what is it you do? Then, how can you put a stop to that default and start changing the way you're programmed. Because the defaults are there, I believe, the part that's missing in the self-help personal development growth world is we don't talk enough about those default patterns that are hardwired. They were put in when we were kids, and we have just used those methods to survive our lives. They have helped us, and they're hurting us at the same time. So, we need to figure out what those default patterns are so we can start putting in stops and doing a different way, changing the default a different way.

So, where I used to make this pattern that I spoke of today for weeks or months at a time, now I can do it in a couple of days, and I can recognize, "Whoa. You're a little out of control here. Let's slow down." I can go back to the methods that I have that I know that work for me, you know, cutting off social media, taking some time out, doing some journaling. I can come back to the place of acceptance and understanding of my anxiety instead of trying to fight it, fight it, fight it.

So, I hope that story was helpful.

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Episode 092: Your Monger isn’t a Bitch, a Mean Girl or a Gremlin. Why Hating on Your Monger Won’t Help

So often we hear that our Monger is a Mean Girl or a Bitch. On this episode, I share why calling your Monger that doesn't help. You can't fight shame with shame.

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Hey, everyone. I'm excited to be back, and this week, I am very excited about the topic we're going to be discussing. It is about the name and why I chose the name 'your Monger' when it comes to talking about that voice in our head that is constantly spreading propaganda and telling us how much we're failing and how we can't be doing things etc., etc., etc. One of the top questions I get is, "Why Monger, why did you pick the word 'Monger'?", and followed by, "Well, isn't this that the gremlin or the mean girl or the bitch or ..." there's a lot of other names for the Monger's voice. I love the name Monger because the definition of a Monger in the dictionary is someone who is spreading propaganda. And that's what I truly believe the Monger is doing. The Monger is spreading propaganda to keep us safe.

She follows three rules, don't stand out, don't make a mistake, and don't be too vulnerable. She intends to keep us safe. It is her delivery that could use a little help. The Monger tends to use shame in how she delivers stuff to us, shame and guilt, negativity, all that yucky stuff. Frequently, when you hear about combating this voice and thinking about this voice, you'll hear the words, "Oh, that's my inner mean girl or that's my inner bitch," or, especially, you often hear the term, "That's my gremlin."

I always struggled with those names because, to me, they were so cruel, and it was almost like we were using shame to combat shame, and that just never works. You can never use shame to combat shame. I would say that's why the work I do around the Monger is a little different because it is about loving your Monger, loving yourself through the Monger. I think that's a confusing concept for people because here's this voice in our head that is belittling, shaming, guilting us, and our reaction to it is then to want to shame and belittle and go after it negatively. "There's that bitch again. There's my inner mean girl." I'll even call it the demon. And when we are talking about ourselves in that way, it doesn't help us. It doesn't help us feel positive about ourselves.

I have a silly example, but I think it illustrates this concept well. We are dog sitting at our home, and we have two cats and a dog and our dog is very gentle, she's very calm, she barely moves at all. We exchange dog sitting services with our friends, so it works out well, and we absolutely love our friends, and we love their dog, and everything works out well, but their dog has a lot of energy and is a German Shepard and lots of energy. Our cats don't get along well with the dog, as you can imagine.

Last night, our cat came downstairs and was trying to be brave, and there was a lot of hissing and arm throwing, etc., etc., trying to stand his ground, the cat was. I started cheering for the cat, and I was like, "Go, Gus. Go, Gus. Get that mean dog. Get that mean dog." And I noticed the more I started cheering for Gus and demonizing the dog, the angrier I was getting at the dog. I love the dog; I don't want to be angry at the dog. I consider this dog to be my dog in so many ways. But my cats will always trump my dogs, no doubt about it. As I noticed this, I was like, "Oh my gosh. That's what happens with the Monger." When we are demonizing the Monger and calling it a gremlin, calling it this mean girl, calling it a bitch, we are turning on ourselves in a really bad way, and it ends up leaving a sour taste in our mouths about ourselves because that voice is an internal voice.

It's only when we can bring in the Biggest Fan and bring in that voice that is like, "Okay. I don't need this commentary right now about how terrible I am and how much I suck. What I need to do is put one step in front of the other and figure out how to solve this problem." Or, "I don't need this commentary right now about how I messed up yet another project at work. What I need to do is figure out how I can make it better."

Go back to the dog analogy. If you think about yourself as the whole being, you are the house, and in the house, there is Gus and Gus is the Biggest Fan and Gus is trying to make his way downstairs and engage in the rest of the house. And then you have the Monger, and the Monger would be our friend's dog, and that voice is also a part of the house. Like, both of those voices are valued in the house, both of those voices are a part of the house because the house, as a whole, is valued. When you are thinking of yourself, you are valued, you are important. The voices in your head are also important; they're also a part of you. When you start demonizing one of those voices, you are, in essence, turning on yourself. Similar to how when I started cheering for Gus and also, at the same time, demonizing the dog, I ended up creating some negativity towards the dog, which was unnecessary. And that's what we do with ourselves. To pump ourselves up, we demonize a part of ourselves to get rid of that inner voice. I think it starts with how ... what we call that voice.

Just naming that voice the mean girl or naming that voice a bitch, we are then turning on ourselves on some level. That, for me, was a missing piece of all of this work. Before I came up with the Monger concept, when I would talk about the inner critic, and I would use the terms mean girl or bitch, it always felt yucky to me. Because here I'm talking about myself using such negative terms, and I don't want to be talking about myself in such negative terms. I want to start noticing when the Monger is talking; okay, that's a voice whose intention is to keep me safe. She intends that I don't stand out, that I don't make a mistake, and that I'm not too vulnerable. Those are lovely intentions unless you want to do anything in the world, unless you want to take risks unless you want to live a full life.

If you want to live a full life, you're going to have to break some of those rules. You're going to make mistakes, you're going to be vulnerable, and you're going to stand out. When those things happen, the Monger's going to get riled up. That doesn't mean she's a bitch; that doesn't mean that she's nasty. That means that she's getting riled up because her intentions are messed up. It's our job to lovingly stand up to her and say, "I got this. You don't need to be all hopped up today; we can handle this." That doesn't mean that she's bad or she's a bitch, or she's a gremlin; that just means it's a voice we don't want to listen to. It's a voice that's spreading propaganda that we don't have the time for right now. You're not fighting with the Monger; you are choosing not to listen to it. You're making a choice not to listen to it. It's active. It's not even that you're ignoring the Monger or pretending it doesn't exist. Nope. You're acknowledging it's there, and then you're saying, "You know what? What I'm feeling is scared right now. All of this propaganda you're trying to spread about how I'm a terrible person doesn't fit into what I'm feeling. I need to move past this; I need to move beyond this. I need to stop listening to this propaganda so that I can move forward with my life."

That is why, even in the illustrations that I have, and I'll put them in the show notes, the illustrations I have of the Monger, of the BFF, of the Biggest Fan, they are cartoonish, but the Monger isn't mean or bitchy or gremlin-like. When they designed the characters, they asked if I were to identify a television character, who would I say is the Monger. The television character I came up with was Karen from Will and Grace. And Karen, yeah. Okay. I'll give you. Karen can be a little bitchy, but mostly, Karen is annoying. Karen can be funny, Karen can be biting, Karen can be a lot of things, but when she has her people, she loves her people, and she fiercely defends her people, and she's there for her people. That is what the Monger is as well. The Monger is well-intentioned, but her delivery can be a little mean sometimes. Her delivery can be harsh. But we still need to be kind and appreciate the Monger; we just need to choose not to listen to it.

This is a subtle, subtle shift, but, in my mind, it is a huge shift in the road to helping us have more kindness for ourselves. If we are practicing self-kindness and then all of a sudden we're turning on ourselves when we hear the Monger's voice, and we're calling it a bitch, or we're calling it a gremlin, or we're calling it nasty, that doesn't make sense to me. That doesn't fit. We need to love all of the voices that are in our heads; that makes us sound a little crazy. But we need to love all of us, all of us, even the part of us that is scared and the part of us that is doubtful, and the part of us that is insecure. That part may come up through the voice of the Monger, and it may be nasty, it may be mean, it may be shame-filled, but that's still a voice that's coming from within us. We need to be loving of that voice and acknowledging that voice, and kind to that voice. We don't need to be cutting off a piece of ourselves.

And, in essence, that's what I was doing last night when I was cheering so much for Gus, and then I was being belittling about Nixon. I was negatively yelling at Nixon, that just made the whole situation worse because that made me not like Nixon as much at that moment. I realized, I sensed that was coming up. I was able to cheer for Gus and Nixon at the same time. I want Gus to win that battle because Gus needs to show his dominance, just like I want the Biggest Fan to win the battle in my head. But I also know that me demonizing the Monger isn't going to make the Biggest Fan any faster or any better. It probably makes that process slower because the only way the concept of the Biggest Fan works is when we acknowledge all of ourselves. When we're kind and loving about the whole picture, which is Monger, BFF, Biggest Fan, all of those characters come out to play, and we need to be kind about all of those characters. We don't call the BFF a bitch, and she can be bitchy too. She can be snippy and judgmental, and "you deserve" and cutting people down and gossipy. But we're not referring to that person as a bitch, and we shouldn't be.

But it's a societal thing that that negativity that we feel inside, the shame that our Monger keeps telling us, we are told to shame it back. The only way to get rid of the Monger's voice and the shame that it gives us is for us to shame it. That does not work. We cannot shame ourselves out of the Monger; the Monger will not be quiet just because we're belittling her or shaming her. The Monger gets louder. The only thing that combats the Monger is when we are honest with ourselves and loyal to ourselves, and we acknowledge what's going on, and we practice ASK. We acknowledge our feelings, we slow down and get into our bodies, and then we kindly pull back to see the big picture. Those things bring forth the Biggest Fan, not shaming, not belittling, not yelling at the Monger and reasoning ourselves out of it, that stuff doesn't work.

If you had the question of why do I call it the Monger, I hope that answers that question. But more so, I hope this helps you think about this concept in a different way. Rather than just the stereotypical inner bitch, inner gremlin type work, this is a little bigger, and I think this is a different way of looking at it that has been dramatically helpful for my clients and me to be able to see that all of them deserves kindness, all of them deserve some love. That is the answer to that question, and I hope that's helpful.

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Episode 091: What is Scarier Praise or Criticism?

Frequently when we refer to our Monger (inner critic) coming out to play it is in response to criticism, but she also gets loud when we are being praised too much! What is that about and what can you do about it?

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Hey gang, very excited as always to be back. Welcome to August. I feel like this summer has flown by. Even though we have taken a lot of trips and did a lot of fun things, created a lot of awesome memories this summer, I hope you have too. We have a couple more weeks before schools start back, and we head into the fall and then the quick dive into the holidays. Let's focus on August though, let's not get into the holidays too quick. I was a little depressed yesterday when I was walking through the grocery store, and they were selling tick or treat candy already. Oh, how did we get there? But I digress.

Today I want to talk about the idea of the Monger getting riled up whether we have praise or criticism. The idea of what is scarier, praise or criticism because our Monger gets riled up with both of those. Usually, when I talk about the Monger, I tend to talk about it in terms of making a mistake or when things aren't going well, but in reality, when things are going well, and we're experiencing a lot of praise, our Monger can get just as loud.

Recently I was talking to a friend, she got a new job, and she was feeling great, except her Monger kept beating her up all the time because everything was going so well. Her Monger got more freaked out, and she was like, "Why does this keep happening to me?" And I had a couple of clients this week who were saying the same message, and so it had me thinking like, "Oh yeah, the Monger gets riled up whether things are going well or things are going poorly." That is because there are three things the Monger doesn't want you to do: don't stand out, don't be too vulnerable, and don't make a mistake. When things are going well, we tend to stand out, we tend to be vulnerable, and we tend to make mistakes, so that tends to get our Monger a little louder than normal.

If things are going well for you, you may have a loud Monger, and it's a sign to recognize, "Wait a minute, what's going on here that my Monger's getting loud?" Because inevitably, what happens when our Monger gets loud is that our BFF comes in to save the day and to give us a little break, and that can be dangerous. Because when our BFF steps in when things are going well, her message is to get you to slow down, stop working so hard, stop pushing, take the day off. You don't need to worry about that deadline; forget about it. Therefore we are less successful because our BFF is telling us to slow down to counter the Monger. That is the piece where the Biggest Fan can step in and give us some kindness and wisdom.

Here's what happens. You're in this season where everything's going well. You start a new job; you're getting all the praise; it's working out well. Then your Monger steps in to be like, "Wow, this isn't going to last forever, I'm gonna freak out here, we need to make sure you're okay, hypervigilance, hypervigilance, hypervigilance." The BFF steps in to be like, "It'll be okay, don't listen to your Monger, just slow down in what you're doing, stop pushing so hard." Then we end up not achieving as much success as we should and then we have all this anxiety. That's one answer to why this is happening. But there are a couple more caveats that I want to throw down to you that may be the belief system you have around work.

The one belief system is that work has to be hard, that I cannot achieve success without pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. That isn't necessarily true all the time. Yes, we need to work hard; yes, to achieve the goals, we need to put some work out there. But sometimes that work is enjoyable; sometimes we're just good at it. When we find work that we are good at, it comes easy; it comes easier, I should say. So it's easier to get success because it's a gift we have. For example, for me, when it comes to teaching or counseling, those are gifts I have, those are things that I can do relatively easily, so they come to me easily.

Now, if someone asks me to sit down and do accounting or math or economics or any of those business skills, that does not come easily to me, so that would be work. For me to achieve success in that, I would have to work very, very, very, very hard. But for me to achieve success in teaching and counseling, as long as I'm listening to my gut and my Biggest Fan is running the show, that comes easily to me, and that is very counter to what society tells us. I want you to ask yourself about your belief systems about work and what comes easily, and when we should suffer.

The idea that our Monger keeps giving us is that everything should be suffering. We should constantly be pushing and striving, and that's the only way to succeed. I have come to find that the more we can let go of that mentality of push, push, push and lean into our Biggest Fan, she can help us manage that success differently. She helps us see the gray; she helps us connect with our real selves and do the stuff that comes naturally to us. When we start connecting with ourselves and doing the stuff that comes naturally to us, it's going to feel uncomfortable, especially if you have this default belief that work has to be hard. So start paying attention to that. I challenge you to notice what happens for you when you're doing something that's innately easy for you. Is it something that brings you joy, or is it something that you question?

This friend of mine this week was saying how she finally found this great job, she absolutely loved it, all of her gifts were being used, and she was freaking out because she didn't know the formula for how to do the job because it was so natural to her, it just came out of her. And her whole life, she had struggled and had to struggle with jobs and had to learn the formula. Once she mastered the formula, it got more comfortable, 'cause she always knew, "If I do A, B and C in that order, everything will go smoothly." But when you're living and working from your innate gifts, it just innately works. There isn't a formula; you do it. So it's harder to guarantee success because you're innately doing something; you're not following a root formula. That's another thing that I want you to think about, is that a belief you have that, "I can't be successful just innately, I have to be following someone else's message, I have to be following some formula." So pay attention to that belief.

The next belief that came up recently with this client; we were talking about her success at work, and she was saying, "I don't know what to do because you preach that we're supposed to accept ourselves where we are, but there's so much more I want to learn, there's so much more I want to grow and develop on." And I said, "Yeah, absolutely." Accepting where you are and loving yourself where you are does not mean you're not gonna grow and learn and become a better person. It just means that you're gonna do both at the same time. Once we attach the belief that, "I will only be worthy once I become a manager," or, "Once I become a VP," or, "Once I earn that degree, then I'll be worthy," that's when we get stuck in Mongerville.

But when we have the belief of, "I'm perfectly fine right now, and I wanna learn more about this topic. I wanna grow in this area," then we're acting out of the place with our Biggest Fan. Once we can say, "Hey, I wanna grow and learn, and I'm okay as I am, but I wanna keep growing and learning," that's when our Biggest Fan is stepping in and talking for us. It's a subtle difference, but it's really important to make sure you notice, "Hey, wait a minute, am I accepting where I am or am I believing that I'm only gonna be worthy once I do blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank." That's what I want you to be paying attention to.

To summarize, let me go over the highlights of what we've talked about today. The idea of what is scarier, praise or criticism? I want you to be paying attention to when your Monger gets riled up when you're doing something that's bringing you success because our Monger wants to prevent us from standing out, being vulnerable, and making a mistake. We get into that nasty dynamic between the Monger and the BFF, going back and forth and back and forth, stuck in this pattern. The Biggest Fan has to step in and give us some kindness and some wisdom and to remind us that when we are working innately and out of our strengths, then success will come.

Paying attention to your default belief around that because that's when we get stuck. We have been taught that we can only be successful if it's a struggle, and that isn't necessarily the truth. And then also paying attention to your belief system around worthiness and achievement, and how those two are hooked in together and how you can accept where you are and still be striving for more, and it doesn't have to be a bad thing to be striving for more, as long as it's not attached to your worthiness.

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Episode 090: Can’t Love Yourself? Practice Being Kind

For years I use to teach the common advice that you need to love yourself. And then I realized that the key to loving myself was to practice being kind to myself one act at a time.

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Hello, my friends. I am excited to be back and recording with you. We've done a little traveling, actually headed over to New York and Boston, so we've toured the east coast a little bit, spent some time with some family and friends. It's been an awesome way to spend the summer, and I'm excited to be back and recording episode 90; and today, we're going to be talking about the concept of practicing being kind.

A lot of times, we hear common wisdom; we've talked about this in the past, that if you're trying to get rid of your inner critic or trying to be less stressed or less overwhelmed, you're supposed to love yourself. And if you can't love yourself, no one can love yourself, and there are a thousand pithy sayings around loving yourself.

But when you start unpacking what it means to love yourself, it is counter to everything else we've been taught since we were little kids. You know, our whole lives, we have been taught that we can be better. There's a right way and a wrong way that we should constantly be striving that we should be pushing ourselves to the next level, and you can always build more strength, and you can always get better.

And so it's a counterintuitive message that I'm supposed to love myself, but yet I'm not okay as I am. How can I love myself and accept how I am, and still be striving to be a better person? And that message is whoo, hard to wrap your head around. So I have stopped saying we all need to love ourselves and just started with the concept of being kind, that we need to be more kind to ourselves, and that is a daily task.

So when I think about the idea of loving myself, that's like a huge general concept, that's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got to love myself." But when I think about practicing being kind, that's a little more challenging to think on a day-to-day basis; I need to practice just being kind to myself. And I can still challenge myself. I can still step up my game. I can still try to be growing and striving and be kind to myself. And that a-ha for me was mind-blowing, to recognize that I can be striving and pushing and be the best me possible and be kind to myself because my whole life, I had figured out that for me to be striving and developing and getting better, I needed to be shaming and belittling myself.

So what do I mean by practicing being kind? You're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what this means," but I want you to think about it. I want you to think about your day so far. How many times have you criticized yourself? How many times have you said I should put the laundry in? I should have driven faster to work. I shouldn't have left so late. I shouldn't have eaten that cookie. I should have had a salad at lunch. I should have finished that report before I left for the day. We do it all the time. We should all the time.

We're constantly reminding ourselves of where we fall short, but being kind is saying, "Oh, I'm going to have that salad because I feel better when I eat my veggies," or "Yep, I had that cookie, and it tasted great. I enjoyed every bite," or "I ran out of time today. That just wasn't in the day to get that report done. I'll do it first thing in the morning," so we can be kind to ourselves and be pushing ourselves to be better.

We practice kindness all the time to other people. You know, we let people cut in line, we hug our kids, we talk kindly to our spouse. We give people a pass all the time, but we don't give ourselves a pass, and so today, I want you to think about ways you are kind to yourself. When you brush your teeth, reframe that, that you are kind to yourself. You're giving yourself the love of taking care of your teeth. It's not checking another thing off the to-do list. Instead, it's I'm practicing kindness.

When I get my cup of coffee in the morning, and I make the coffee, it's one of my favorite things to do in the morning is make coffee, I know it sounds weird, but it's one of my favorite things. One of my favorite morning rituals is making coffee. When I make coffee every morning, that's a kindness I'd give to myself. The warm cup, My animals are around, the house is quiet. It's just one of my favorite times, and I can soak that in as a kindness to myself.

And those little patterns of recognizing when you take the stairs versus the elevator. You're kind to yourself, when you take the elevator instead of the stairs because you hurt your knee, you are being kind to yourself. You are not a loser who's taking the elevator. You are practicing kindness.

So to start rephrasing things in your life because I believe how we talk to ourselves is key to how we see the world. So a personal example of this and how I see it playing out in my life. I got back from vacation on Thursday, and then I hurt my back, and I've been having some stomach issues, and so I've kind of took the weekend off to rest and regroup and try to figure out what's going on with myself.

And yesterday I was beating myself up for being lazy. I haven't worked out. I haven't worked. I've been on vacation, and I'm sitting around watching TV and, "You're such a loser," was the constant message in my head. And then I walked upstairs to feed the cats, and I feed the cats and I'm like, "You're such a loser. You should have put away all the cat dishes. But no, they're just sitting here." I walk into my bedroom to grab a sweater, and I'm like, "Your closet is a mess. I can't believe you haven't cleaned up your closet. I walk past the bathroom and,think to myself, "Oh, the bathroom is such a pit. You haven't even put away your suitcase from traveling. You are so behind." And I recognize as I walked down the stairs and was critical of myself because my knees hurt and my back hurt, that I recognized how mean I was to myself just in that two minute time that I was paying attention and if I really was honest, most of yesterday I probably talked to myself a lot like that.

And it was like, "Wait a minute, you are not being kind to yourself. You were just harassing yourself for no reason." And so to recognize, wait a minute, I am taking this time because my body is screaming that it needs a break and I'm listening to my body and I'm giving it a break. I'm also going to challenge myself and do some yoga and be kind and stretch myself out because that may be why my knees are hurting. I'm also going to make sure that I eat right tonight so my stomach doesn't hurt as much because coming off vacation, that may be why it's bothering me. So I can practice kindness in little tiny ways throughout the day.

And notice how often I'm just critical at myself, just for the sake of being critical. It isn't providing me with anything. It isn't motivating me to do anything. It's just being critical.

So that's my challenge to you in this next week. This is one of those concepts that sounds so simple. "Duh. I know I'm supposed to practice being kind," you might be saying to yourself, because I probably would be saying it to myself if I was listening. But when you really break it down and really start thinking and listening to yourself talk and how much your monger comes out in his belittling of you in times of stress, in times of challenge to recognize, wait a minute, what can I do right now that would be kind for myself and sometimes when you ask yourself that question, the answer might surprise you.

Like I said, maybe you will get the salad because you need to eat more vegetables. Maybe you will work out even though your back hurts because you need to do some stretching. Being kind doesn't mean you always give yourself a pass. Being kind means, you do what's best for you. So I love the idea of practicing being kind because it really keeps my monger and my BFF in check because our biggest fan is always, always kind.

The one thing you can count on her is to be kind, and so when I know that I need to make a decision and I don't know which way to go and I'm jumping between the monger and the BFF, I know that I can simply just say to myself, "I'm going to practice being kind here. What's the kindest decision for myself?"

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Episode 089: Making the Beast Beautiful

Recently I read the book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful A New Journey Through Anxiety by Sarah Wilson. And I can't say enough good things about it. Today I explore 5 of Sarah's cruel ironies when it comes to living with anxiety. If you struggle with anxiety or know someone who does, I know you will be nodding your head in understanding as you listen.

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Hey, gang. I am very excited to be back again here at the Happiness Hacks podcast to be sharing with you about this wonderful book that I have found. I found it back in May when I was on vacation. I absolutely devoured it. It is called "First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety." It was written by Sarah Wilson. On the book jacket, she says, "Learning to view anxiety as her finest teacher rather than the enemy," which I just absolutely adored. I gained so much from this book and just new ways of looking at anxiety. She did such an amazing job of really showing what it's like to live with anxiety, giving a new voice to anxiety. It just is an absolutely fantastic book.

If you deal with anxiety or think you may have anxiety or live with someone who has anxiety, I highly, highly recommend this book because she comes from a journalistic background. She does an excellent job of researching and giving a lot of different voices, along with her amazing voice that is just so heartfelt and so authentic in how she describes anxiety. It's not exactly a self-help book, even though she has some great techniques on how she, personally, gets through anxiety. It is just more of an exploration of what it's like to live with anxiety. I bought this book because I got it from the library, and I wanted to highlight so much that I ended up purchasing the book so I could actually highlight it, but every page is highlighted or dog-eared. It just has been well, well worn. It's been a long time since I've read a book this impactful.

The part of the book that I love the most is she has these different things called the cruel ironies of anxiety. She has them spread throughout the book. She has 16 of them. Today, I want to look at 5 of the 16 and talk to you about them in hopes that you will pick up this book. I'm not getting any money from this or anything from Sarah. I absolutely feel like this is a great resource.

The cruel irony, the first one I want to talk about, is actually on page 27 of the book. She said, "Anxiety is rewarded in our culture, so we often miss the diagnosis." She goes on to say that being high-strung and so busy is a badge of honor. I have talked about this before that saying how busy we are has become the new 'fine.' someone asked you how you're doing, answering, "Oh, I'm just so busy." So anxiety and that feeling of go, go, go and push, push, push, and the natural way of living that comes with anxiety is rewarded in our culture, so the behaviors that spring forth because we're anxious are valued, and so it's very hard to get diagnosed with anxiety. I have so many clients that come into me and say, "I didn't know that this wasn't normal. I didn't know that this was anxiety." I think that's true because it's so valued in our culture.

Something I struggled with while reading this book was owning the label of anxiety. It's a word that gets tossed around a lot: "I'm anxious, or I have anxiety," but we don't want to have a label, a diagnosis. There's a lot of stigma with that. A lot of life coaches will say, "I won't diagnose you." One of the negatives of the mental health professional is that they diagnose you. But the part that I loved about this book, and it reframed it for me, was when you know that you have anxiety when you have that label, then you can start making the beast beautiful. It's back to that belief that if you acknowledge what's happening in your life, then you can start building coping mechanisms around living with it.

When we can say, "I struggle with anxiety, and it shows up in these ways in my life," then I can take anxiety and view it as something that's not holding me back but something that I'm learning how to carry and live with. So I think that there is a power in being able to label it and own it and acknowledge it instead of just pretending it doesn't exist and not wanting to buy into the stigma of anxiety. Anxiety is a very real thing, and it is crippling, and so being able to start learning and owning that label, I think, is powerful. Because as Sarah says in the book, it takes 9 to 12 years for people to get the diagnosis of anxiety. The relief that my clients feel when they're like, "Oh, this isn't normal. This isn't just a way of being. There is something going on in my life that's different from other people," that's where owning your anxiety is a very powerful thing.

The next cruel irony she talks about is on page 28. "We suck it up when we feel anxious, and soldier on until we tip off the edge and anxiety turns pathological and even medical." This goes back to what I was just talking about: the idea that we end up blaming ourselves. We blame our poor coping mechanisms well before we blame anxiety. We turn the feelings of anxiety on ourselves, and we blame ourselves, which is why I say for those of us with anxiety, our mongers tend to be very, very loud because our mongers are telling us to suck it up and soldier on and keep going. Our mongers aren't telling us to take care of ourselves and, "Oh, that might be anxiety." That might not be a normal way of looking at the world. We might have a lens that we view the world, but it is more hopped up than most.

So the idea of the happier approach and learning how to quiet those mongers goes hand in hand with this. I wrote the "Happier Approach" for those of us who have excessive anxiety because our mongers tend to be very, very loud. The longer we go without really dealing with our anxiety, the worse it's going to get, as with anything. The longer we leave diabetes or cancer, anything untreated, the worse it's going to get. That's why it's so important to start exploring anxiety and exploring the idea that maybe I don't need to live this way.

The next cruel irony I want to talk about is on page 31. She says, "The more anxious we are, the more high-functioning we will make ourselves appear, which just encourages the world to lean on us more." I mean, can I get an Amen from that one? That is huge. In reality, the more anxious we are, the more we would love for someone to come and take a bit of the load, but we keep sucking it up and soldiering on, is what Sarah Wilson says. I totally agree with that. I see that in my life all the time. I see that in my clients' life. I wrote about that in the "Happier Approach." One of the ways we know our mongers are in charge is the idea of, "I got this." We just say to ourselves, "I got this. I got this. I don't need to ask for help. I can take care of everything. I totally got it."

That mentality of let me keep piling more stuff on my plate is because of anxiety. The more anxious we are, the more high-functioning we become, I should say, the more high-functioning we appear, and so people continue to lean on us because we appear like we have it all together. When in reality, we are just awesome at making ourselves appear high-functioning. When inside, we're just crumbling. That is why I talk so much about the idea of building loyalty within yourself because we're good at being loyal to the people around us. We're good at leaning in and helping them and appearing high-functioning to the detriment of ourselves. The reason we can do that is because the anxiety becomes less because we're focused externally on getting all this stuff done, but in reality, we are spinning out. We're uncomfortable. We're pushing ourselves way too hard. We're getting ready to hit that place where we're just totally exhausted. That is such a cruel irony that we appear more high-functioning, so people lean on us more. When in reality, we need the help of people.

The fourth one I'm going to talk about was on page 121. She says, "We rush to escape what makes us anxious, which makes us anxious, and so we rush some more." We're worried about the future and finding a better life, so we rush ahead, constantly thinking, striving, trying to figure out what does a better life looks like, which only serves us to make us more anxious. So we push and push and push, thinking, "Oh, I just got to check off these things off the to-do list," or "Once I finish this, it'll be okay," and we're pushing and pushing and pushing and becoming more and more and more anxious.

I notice this in my own life when I start going into hyper-pushing, and I'm rushing ahead and not wanting to slow down because I'm pushing so hard. That is when I know I need to practice ASK, which is the acronym for acknowledging what you're feeling, slow down and get into your body, and kindly pull back to see the big picture. Because when you're an anxious person, the last thing you want to do is stop and take a breath, do some meditation, whatever that may look like. The last thing an anxious person wants to do is stop moving, stop working towards that end goal. But it is one of the best things an anxious person can do is to stop moving. That's why I love the idea of the happiness hacks because 10 to 20 seconds of getting in your body and taking a breath or moving your hands or wiggling your body or doing a dance in your office, something that allows you to pull out of that rush, rush, rush, push, push, push that anxiety puts on us.

Then the last one I want to talk about is on page 225 in the book, "I convince myself that controlling my life and aiming for perfection will cocoon me from anxiety, but it only causes more of the dreaded thing." That is another one. Can I get an Amen? We decide, "Oh, I'm going to just aim for perfection. I'm going to aim for doing it right. Once I can do that, then I won't feel so anxious. I'll feed protected." So we're aiming for this thing that is impossible in a way to cocoon ourselves from anxiety, when in fact, it causes more anxiety to be pushing and pushing and pushing for perfection. Again, ironic, catch-22, it's a double bind. It keeps us stuck in indecision. It keeps us stuck in spinning from thing to thing. It keeps us just stuck from moving forward because we just keep assuming that if we can get it right and do it perfectly, everything will be okay. So we get stuck in research. We get stuck in asking people and looking outside of ourselves for information, all with an aim to do it perfectly so we won't have anxiety.

Again, I talk about this in the "Happier Approach." This is why I love the concept of ASK because it allows us to acknowledge what's really going on in our lives and to look, is this a search for perfection? For those of us with anxiety, falling into perfection and the aim for perfection is almost like breathing. It just is such an easy default pattern to fall into. So I have been working on this in my life and with my clients that the minute that you start noticing perfection and the aim for that to be able to pull yourself back and recognize that isn't going to happen. I'm in the midst of anxiety. What can I do to take care of this? What am I feeling? How can I slow down and get into my body? And how do I pull back and see the big picture? So all of those things come in to play when we are living in anxiety.

Those are the 5 cruel ironies, 5 of the 16 that Sarah talks about in her book. I might come back around in a couple of episodes from now and talk about some more of them because I, as I said, love this book and found it very powerful. In the meantime, I highly encourage you to go out and buy the book or get it from the library.

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Episode 088: Are you a BFF, Biggest Fan, or a Monger?

A different look at The Happier Approach characters not just how we talk to ourselves but how we interact with others. Which character are you? How do you interact with those around you?

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Hello, gang. I am happy to be back here. I'm talking about the characters in my book from The Happier Approach in a slightly different way today. So if you have or haven't read the book, I think you will find this intriguing because it's a different way of looking at this concept. I have written a book called The Happier Approach: Be Kind to Yourself, Feel Happier, and Still Accomplish Your Goals. That book is available on Amazon. You can buy it, listen to an audiobook or Ebook or a physical book, whatever you feel like doing.

In the book, I talk about the Monger, the BFF, and The Biggest Fan, and these are the three voices that are in our heads and relate to our productivity and how we talk to ourselves. To give you a quick refresher on the voices and what the characters mean, I'm going to talk about the Monger first. And so the Monger is the voice of shaming and belittling, and this is the voice that a lot of us are used to. It's a voice that's telling us where we're not living up to snuff, where we're not doing a good job. This is the perfectionist's voice, and you could do it better, and who do you think you are and all of those messages that drive us all crazy.

So, the Monger is what a lot of people call the inner critic, and I called it a Monger because it's spreading propaganda and encouraging us to be better by using shaming and belittling. The counter to that voice, which can drive us crazy and make us feel crappy about our lives, is the BFF. The BFF is all about fun. She wants to support you and let you have fun. She's not so much into holding your feet to the fire, and that's why she's called the BFF because she is your best friend forever. She is going to make sure that you're having a good time, you're not taking yourself too seriously, that you can cut loose and do all that fun stuff. So, when the Monger becomes, that shaming and belittling voice becomes too much, in steps the BFF kind of as a pressure release valve to be like, "Screw it, have fun. Who cares?"

We get in trouble when we dance between those two voices. The middle voice that I like to call is the Biggest Fan. The Biggest Fan's voice is there to help us feel good about ourselves and to be kind to us, but also hold our feet to the fire. So the Biggest Fan is the voice that's going to be like, "Oh, sweetheart, oh, that was tough to get that bad feedback, but let's figure out a way to improve. What do we need to do differently? This goal is important. How can we keep working on it?" Whereas the BFF would say, "Let's have a drink, that was too stressful. I don't want to deal with it." The Monger would say, "I told you-you couldn't do that. Who do you think you are? You are such a loser."

So, the three voices are constantly playing out in our heads. Yesterday, I did a presentation. I was fortunate enough to speak at this leadership conference for women, and afterward, a few women came up to me to talk about how these voices play out in their work environments with how they talk to each other. It was an interesting way of thinking about it because I had always taught it from the perspective of the voices are in our heads. But we also personify these voices in how we interact with people around us, and so it's helpful to kind of think about it that way in the sense of in our relationships, am I a Monger to someone? Am I being a BFF? Or am I being a Biggest Fan?

Let me give you an example that might help reframe this. If you think about a Monger, and that is someone that shames and belittles someone, we tend to be Mongers sometimes to those we love when we see they're not reaching their potential or we see a bigger picture for them. So, we can do this with our kids or people we're mentoring, or people we are trying to pull along. We can use shaming and belittling as a way to motivate them. At least that's what our intention is. We think we're motivating them, but in reality, we're just making them feel like crap because we aren't encouraging them. We're just pointing out their flaws, and pointing out flaws is not a motivator.

So, to recognize am I being a Monger to my employees, to my kids, to anyone that I'm mentoring or trying to pull along. To that same extent, am I being a BFF? Am I giving my employees or my best friend a pass and not helping her hold her feet to the fire? Am I saying, "It doesn't matter. That's no big deal. Who cares that your boss said that"? When in our heads, we know it's a big deal. We know it matters that her boss gave her negative feedback, and we know that it would be helpful for us to help her figure out how to work past that. So, when we're acting out of the BFF, and we're just in the, "I want to make you feel better" mode or "I want to whip by this as quickly as possible so we can get back to the fun part of the evening," we aren't doing a service to our friends or our co-workers. Or anyone else that we know that are struggling when we're immediately trying to pick them up and pull them along and get them into the fun place.

This is where, if you've listened to me for a while, you know my favorite phrases of think positive and be grateful step in. So we as a BFFer (that's a new way of saying it) tend to scoot on by any of that negativity or anything that's bad. You tend to pretend it's not happening, and you're the one headed up to the bar to get another round rather than sit with someone and help them move through it. One of the women that came up to me yesterday was talking about the people on her staff and how they are all BFFing each other instead of encouraging each other to grow and learn. They're not giving each other that tough feedback.

I want to talk a little bit about what does that mean to be a Biggest Fan for someone. And the way this works that I hadn't even thought about, which I'm so excited about, is if you can learn to be a Biggest Fan for someone else, you can learn to be a Biggest Fan for yourself, which is the whole point of The Happier Approach. This may be another way of expanding on this concept. By practicing being Biggest Fans to those around us, we can also learn how to be a Biggest Fan to yourself. And so how do you become a Biggest Fan? And it's the same as you do it for yourself. You're going to acknowledge what they're feeling, "Wow, that must have been hard to get that feedback." Or you're going to acknowledge to a co-worker, "Wow, that must be hard to be supervising staff that isn't getting it, and it must be hard to give a negative review about that."

So, to be able to meet people where they are and listen to what it is they're saying without jumping in to give advice. Without jumping in to solve the problem, without shaming and belittling them, just listening to what it is they're feeling and mirroring that back to them to say, "Wow, that must really be hard to be that uncomfortable," or to be that sad or to be that angry or whatever it is that person's feeling. And then to help them pull back and see that there is a big picture, to see that there is more to the story and how can we solve this problem and I'm here with you and we're doing this together. Where do you need to go? Who can help you better than me? Who can give you better resources? How can we get in the nitty-gritty of this situation and tear it apart and look at it?

Another way of being a Biggest Fan is to ask the person you're with, "What do you need from me right now? Do you need me to be a BFF? Do you need me just to cut loose and have fun and let's not worry about this right now, or do you need me to unpack this with you and look at the situation and come up with some, some answers here? What is it you need?" When I come home with a problem, my husband will frequently say to me, "Do you need me to give advice, or do you need me just to listen? What are we looking for here? I need to know before we get diving in." And that's a great way of being a Biggest Fan because a Biggest Fan is empowering. They're going to give you the power back to say, "What is it you need in this situation right now and how can I give that to you?"

Figuring out how you're showing up for people is a powerful way to find out how you're showing up for yourself because those of us who tend to be Mongers to other people tend to have a strong Monger themselves. And to the same extent, those of us who tend to be BFFs for people tend to have a strong Monger for ourselves because we are tired of the Monger, and so we just want to comfort the person so much and give them so much love and have fun and we don't want them to feel bad.

We have a hard time being that Biggest Fan because the BFF is all about making the other person feel better. The Biggest Fan is also all about making the other person feel better, but they're also about helping them move forward, helping them figure out what needs to happen next, helping them solve the problem, not with advice, not with solutions, so to speak, but with kindness and discernment and wisdom and offering them grace and compassion. So, it's a harder concept to unhook the idea of the Biggest Fan, but it's one I want you to be thinking about. How are you showing up for those people around you? Are you being a Monger? Are you being a BFF? Are you being a Biggest Fan? And how is that? How would you like to change that? How would you like to show up for people differently?

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Episode 087: This Isn't Just About The Stigma of Mental Illness

This week my heart was heavy after the suicides of 2 famous people and the release of the CDC report saying suicide rates are at an all-time high. It is time for a revolution.

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This week we lost two successful, famous, life-touching individuals, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. But according to the American Federation for Suicide Prevention, every day, we lose 123 people to suicide.

The deaths of Kate and Anthony have left people stunned and saddened. This news combined with the CDC report released this week which said that suicides are up 30%

It is easy to feel saddened. To feel stunned. And to explain it away as a mental illness or as drugs and addiction. Anything to make us feel better that suicide won’t touch us. But at this rate. It will.

This isn’t just about the stigma of mental illness. Over 50% of suicides are by someone who didn’t have a previously known mental health issue.

This is about the stigma of any mental or emotional pain.

The stigma of being sad, depressed, anxious, and overwhelmed. The stigma of experiencing anything less than happiness and joy all the time.

We are so caught up in appearing happy, successful, and accomplished. All that keeping up with appearances keeps us busy. SO busy. Too busy for the real check-ins necessary to connect on a deeper level and see each other’s pain.

Twice this week, I chatted with friends who, when describing their pain, real serious pain, quickly ended their story with, “it’s no big deal. I should be grateful for all I have.”

We are so quick to move past the pain. Hurry right on past it.

I mean, life is good. I should be happy, right?

This isn’t just about mental illness. This is about the stigma of any mental or emotional pain.

We move through life at lightning speed. Too busy for anything beyond data sharing. Too caught up in the next thing on our to-do list to really settle down and check in with ourselves, let alone someone else in our lives. And the anxiety, sadness, depression, the pain just keeps piling on.

This isn’t just about mental illness. This is about the stigma of any mental or emotional pain.

You have chest pain? You go to the doctor. No one judges you for being weak or pathetic, or unsuccessful.

You have emotional pain? You push it down. You suck it up. You soldier on. Because emotional pain means you are weak. You are pathetic. You are less than.

Sounds harsh, doesn’t it. And yet, that is how we as Americans think. That is why we quickly follow any sharing of pain with “it’s no big deal, I should be grateful for all I have.”

This isn’t just about mental illness. This is about the stigma of any mental or emotional pain.

This requires a revolution. This requires demanding more of ourselves.

Here’s where to start:

Listen. Just listen. No advice. No problem-solving. No thinking positive, or be grateful, no brainstorming. Just listen.

When someone says, “this is no big deal.” Remind them it is their life. It is their pain. Therefore it is a big deal. Be curious. Ask them to share more. Show up for their pain even though it makes you uncomfortable or you feel like you are too invasive. If we are going to do this differently, we are going to have to get uncomfortable.

This isn’t just about mental illness. This is about the stigma of any mental or emotional pain.

Re-prioritize. Pause your to-do list and check-in with yourself. Is all this stuff worth it? Are all the to-dos and the mad scrambles worth it? At the end of your life, are these activities something you are going to look at with joy and fondness?

Earlier this month, I did a re-calibration of my priorities. Realizing that I was pushing too much. Scrambling too hard. For what? At what cost? We are prioritizing our to-do list over our friends and family. We are choosing checking items off the list over connecting with others. We are engaging in simply sharing data over sharing our pain, our dreams, our struggles.

This is a two-fold revolution.

First, we need to show up for ourselves. Step off the hamster wheel and check in with our lives, our values, and our priorities.

Second, we need to show up for others. Take the time and the patience to ask people how they are and listen for the answer. And then ask a follow-up question. And another. And another.

It’s time for a revolution.

This isn’t just about mental illness. This is about the stigma of any mental or emotional pain.

Let’s do this.

If you are feeling suicidal or know someone who is call: 1-800-273-TALK

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Episode 086: You are the Answer

It is human nature to look outside of ourselves for the way to feel more peaceful, content or happier.  But the truth is only you have the answer. Not the next promotion, guru or approach, you have to figure out what works and make it happen for you.

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Hey everyone. I am excited to be back here today. I have been on vacation. We went out to California and had a fabulous time. I was able to do a couple of book talks out there, and it was wonderful. And now I am back to celebrate the long weekend, which is just a mixed blessing.

This holiday always leaves me feeling a little mixed on the one hand, we're kicking off summer, and it's the traditional barbecue and parties and graduation and all those celebrations. And on the other hand, the holiday was really built around remembering the soldiers who have died for our country.

So as I've gotten older, I've grown more respectful, is the word or solemn, I guess is the word around this holiday? Because the real meaning of this holiday tends to get lost in all of the graduation parties and summer fun. And we tend to forget that really we are here and honoring on Monday those soldiers who have served and sacrificed the greatest sacrifice for all of us.

Anyway, little deep thoughts on Memorial day from Nancy today. I really want to talk about the idea that you are the answer and the reason I'm. I keep coming back to that as I'm doing more presentations on the happier approach, and I'm getting more questions about the idea of the happier part. I keep coming back to the idea that you are the answer.

One of the hesitancies I had about writing a self-help book or personal development book, or however you want to describe it was that people would think it was the answer. And I didn't want to give people here is this three-step process that is going to solve all your problems. I'm going to be the perfect answer for you no matter what.

And it took me a long time to get past that and to come to the realization that no book is going to fix anyone. And this is a book that's near and dear to my heart and is my process for how I have worked with clients and how I work with myself in answering the, getting the Monger to be quieter. I struggled with that when I started writing the happier approach, and it's coming out, and people are asking me questions about the happier approach and getting frustrated that ask isn't working perfectly and getting stuck in the minutia of the concept of A.S.K. and being militant about it and getting it perfect. And that is really where the idea is that you are the answer. We specifically look at A.S.K. it isn't how I teach you to acknowledge your feelings or how I want you to slow down. It's what works for you. It is how the process of acknowledging your feelings works for you.

It is how slowing down works for you. You are the only one that knows what your biggest fan sounds like. You are the only one that knows what your B.F.F. sounds like. I can help you figure that out and give you some ways that the B.F.F. and the biggest fantasy. But ultimately, it comes back to you even with the pull back and see the big picture.

You are the only one that can say what your priorities are, what your values are, what's most important to you only you can determine that. And so that ultimately is the frustration. I think with all of this work is that there is no finish line. There is no, once I get there, I'll be done. And I've talked about that before in the idea of, once I get married or once I get three kids or once I get my kids off to school, or once I get my college degree, or once I get a job.

Whatever we can litany those forever, the idea is that the answer is in, within me is a little harder to wrap your head around because we've been living for all these external things. And then the realization is I've hit all these external things. They've all come to fruition, or I've given up on some of them. I've realized the answer isn't there in achieving those external markers.

And so we turn internal, and we try to find some peace through personal development and self-help books and trying to, quote-unquote, lead better lives from that. Sometimes a lot of times leads this idea that I can find a system, a guru at belief, an idea that will heal all my. And will be the magic button, quick ticket way to get out of this pain.

The idea that I keep drilling into your head is that you are the answer. There is no guru. There is no system. There is no belief that can fix everything. You still have to deal with yourself, and you are the one that has the relationship with yourself. And that's what all of this is about is building that relationship with yourself so that you can go out into the world and build a relationship with other people.

It's not about being self-absorbed and looking at yourself and doing all this Naval gazing. But it is about getting comfortable in your own skin. And when we're constantly looking outward, we're constantly looking for the next promotion or the next thing. And when we stop looking for the next thing, we start looking for the next guru or the next belief.

So we're just doing the same action on a deeper level, but it's still looking external. I'm still looking for someone else, something. Just solve my problems. The freedom comes from you recognizing no one else has the answer to my life. No one knows the nooks and crannies and the little idiosyncrasies of your life except for you.

And so that is what I would hope that ask helps people do is to get closer to who they are. To get closer to what their priorities are, to get closer to what their values are, and then start living your life from that place. We don't need to do a ton of naval gazing and live constantly analyzing why is this happening?

And what does this mean? And what's going on here, and why am I having that? And is it okay that I'm having that? And should I be having that? And what's happening. That's all the navel-gazing that is just ad nauseum, and that's not helping anything. All we need to do is get really clear on what are my priorities, what are my values what's most important here?

And how can I live that out in the quickest way, easiest way, simplest way, kindest way possible? Yeah, it sounds really easy to get really clear on your priorities, and it's much more challenging than that because it requires. To slow down to get quiet, to check in with ourselves, to not get stuck in all that hoopla.

That's the analyzing and the navel-gazing, but rather to just be saying, wow, let's look at this in a simpler way. What am I feeling? How can I get into my body? And what are my priorities here? What's the big picture here? How can I look at this differently? So I wanted to come in and do this podcast because I've had so many people coming at me trying to really pinpoint and break down and get really crystal clear on the happier approach and ask and all the concepts in it, which I love. I absolutely love talking about the happier approach. I could do it all the time, but what I'm realizing is that, oh, wait, this is becoming another thing that people are trying to master that's outside of themselves.

If I can master the happier approach, then I'll be happy now, not necessarily. There is nothing to master quote-unquote. It's an ongoing process of looking at yourself and exploring yourself and seeing, having some love and kindness and grace and curiosity about yourself. So you will never arrive quote-unquote at a place where you're constantly happier.

I had a client, a potential client. Ask me. Would you describe yourself as happy? I don't believe happiness is a state that we achieve. I believe we go in and out of, happiness and as I said to this client, if you had talked to me this morning when I was having an anxiety moment with my husband, he would have been like, Nope, she's not happy, but I could get myself out of that.

And that's the difference. That's the piece I want you to be paying attention to is when. Can I pull myself out of it, and can I keep moving forward? It was funny earlier this week I was having an issue, and I was spinning off on something. I can't even, I can't even remember what it was that tells you how unimportant some of this stuff we're spinning off on is, and I was spitting out, and I thought to myself, years ago, I would have said before I got married, I would have said, oh if I was married, I wouldn't have this problem.

I lumped everything. Every issue I had, I lumped into the idea that I wasn't married. And then when I got married, there really was this moment of, oh, I can't blame it on that anymore. I don't have that thing to blame it on. We get something out of having the next thing that we don't have to be able to blame it on.

So I am not happy because I can't figure out ask or because this guru wouldn't take me or I can't understand what it is they're saying, and they have the secret. So the more we obsess and the more we look outside for the answers, it's to recognize, wait a minute, it's in me. It's in me. It isn't about if I'm married or not married or have kids or don't have kids or have a job or don't have a job.

It's about me. Am I living a life that is designed by my priorities? And am I happy doing that? And if I'm not, what changes do I need to make to better suit my own life? And that's how we start to live happier. I'm not saying it's easy, people. I'm not saying it's easy by any means. It's way harder than it sounds, but it's totally possible.

So this week, I want your mantra to be, I am the answer. I just need to have some curiosity and kindness myself, and I can move forward. And that's all that's necessary.

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Episode 085: What does a GOOD Day look like?

Today I offer a simple question to get your mind moving in different ways. We get so caught up in the 'hamster wheel' of life that we forget to ask ourselves are we living a life we want to be living? In this episode I explore the question...what does a good day look like?

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Hey everyone, excited to be back again. Today, we are going to be asking the question, what does a good day look like? I want to unpack that a little bit for you. I've been asking myself this question a lot lately, and it's such a simple question that has a lot of oomph to it. The reason I want to ask the question is in my tour for my book, The Happier Approach, and in working with clients and just talking to my friends and seeing it in my own life, we are so frenzied. I talked about this a little bit last episode of what I've been observing. We have so much coming at us and the number of people that have said to me, "I want some space. I want some time. I want some ability to be able to take an exhale and not have so much coming at us."

I know, even though I don't have kids myself, but I know May is a particularly hellish time when it comes to kids activities and getting ready, the end of the year, and all that stuff coming at us. This might be a fun exercise as you're running from thing to thing to thing with your kids, or it might just be something for you to ponder as we start the summer and hopefully a time where we can get some more space. Traditionally, summer is designed to give us a little more room to do our lives differently.

That was one reason I wanted to bring up this question. The other was the reason I think the question is so powerful because we spend so much time with our heads down, we're on the hamster wheel, or we're on the treadmill, and we don't really look up and look around to ask, Is this what I want to be doing? Is this how I want to be spending my time? Who said I needed to be doing life THIS way? Even to unpack every little thing in your life, looking at different habits I have or different expectations I have for myself to say, who said you need to do that?

You know, last week, I came out and said this podcast is just coming out twice a month because once a week is too much for me. I can't come up with the content and record it and everything. I spent much of the first part of this year beating myself up for the fact that I wasn't hitting the every week mark. Then, to say, well, you're the one that said it had to come out every week. You're putting that expectation on yourself. I think we do that in a lot of ways.

Obviously, there are things in our lives that we cannot control, and there are expectations coming at us that we have to set up, but some of them I think we really can push back on. The idea of, what is a good day, questioning yourself that way, is being able to pull back and say, what is a good day? When I've asked this to clients a lot of times, the answer that comes back involves a lot of space. But it also involves simple stuff of cooking breakfast with family or enjoying a home-cooked meal or going out to dinner together or taking time to go to the park. Those little activities that are built in that allow for connection and space and time and fit their values.

In my world, everything goes back to values. If we're going to decide on how we want to be spending our lives, we need to be looking at our overarching values. When we can see our overarching values, then we can pull stuff apart. I was at a book talk last week, with a group of moms. They were talking about all the expectations they have for themselves and all the different ways that the school tries to stay in touch. There are websites and list serves and messages coming at them.

A couple of the Moms said, "Yeah, I unsubscribed from that service. I am not on that listserve." The moms that said that said, "I can't do it. I don't have the time. It's too much stuff coming at me." The other moms who were still on the listserve, some of them had this aha of, "Oh, I didn't realize I could get off the listserve. I didn't realize I could say no to that."

It was kind of this freeing moment for them to realize, "Oh, I don't have to be checking that listserve all the time. I don't have to be keeping up with everyone on Facebook. I don't have to be constantly making sure that my kids get a home-cooked lunch every single day. That, I can shake this up a little bit. I can change the rules and still be within the parameters of society and my values." That's what I want you to be thinking about when you're answering this question, what is a good day because it gets us back to basics.

It's a different energy to that question than a question I used to ask my clients would be, "What does thriving look like to you? What is thriving?" That idea pulls you way out into this kind of surreal moment of what is thriving. The positive of that question, which if that question is easier to answer then go for it, is I can say, "What is thriving to me," and I can be like, "oh, it's having lots of space and lots of time with my family and tons of open time to think and write." Then being able to bring that stuff, break that down a little bit smaller so that I can say, "Okay, in a thriving world, I would have lots of space. Where in my life can I add more space? Where can I do that?" I can start deconstructing my life differently and looking to add in the stuff that I want to do to be thriving.

The reason I like the what is a good day question, is it doesn't have to be this huge thriving, this gigantic goal. It's just a good day. What's a good day? For a lot of us, I would question if we're having a lot of good days. I think we're so busy on that treadmill and the hamster wheel that we aren't checking in to say, "Is this the life I want to be living? Is this how I want to be spending my time? Do I want to be this engaged in every facet of my life? Do I want to be married to my to-do list? When I look at my to-do list, does it matter half of this stuff? Probably not."

Having the honesty that, if I said to work, "You know what? Every day, I'm leaving at 5:00. I'm not staying after. I'm going to leave at 5:00 every day." That may feel like, "Oh my gosh, I can't possibly say that to them. They're going to be mad at me." Then, when you set that boundary that may be an aha to your boss to say, "Oh, okay, she's going to leave at 5:00. That's what she said. She's going to get her work done because she's going to be diligent about getting everything done in the timeframe because she's leaving at 5:00." That may change how he does it. They may not even have the expectation that you have to stay past 5:00. That could be all in your head. Now, it might not be, but it could be.

That's where, just the idea of, I've been asking myself, "What rule can I bust here? What do I not have to keep doing the way I've always done it?" We get on these tracks of things; this is how I've always done it. This is the way I've always done it, instead of pulling back to be like, "Oh, well, does it matter if every Friday we do pizza night, or can we do Greek on Fridays?"

Then you can start asking yourself, "Oh, do I have to be at work every day by 8:00, or could I get in at 7:30 and leave at 4:30?" Or, "Do I have to make sure that I bring the coolest Pinterest latest snack to this classroom, or can I just be okay with boxed raisins?" Giving yourself some room to question how you're living your life. What are the expectations you're trying to strive for, and if you do want more space and time and more freedom, how can you add that to your life?

Now, something I'm going to talk about in a future episode is the idea that so many of my clients and myself included dream of lots of time to do whatever they wanted, and mountains of books and being able to read and being able to just think on things and journal, and have all this beautiful spa-like existence. When we get the time and when we have the time to do that, we don't take the time to sit and read in the corner or go outside and drink our coffee sitting on the back porch. We fill it with more to do list stuff.

Even when we get a chance to have space and freedom, we don't capitalize on it. That's something I'm going to just tease you about that because that's something I want you to be thinking about is, is that true for you, and why might that be? Why is it that the one thing we say we crave more than anything else is also the one thing that we set up our lives not to have? We crave space and energy, and we tell everyone we want space and energy, but we don't make it a priority. Why is that?

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Episode 084: Things that Have been Annoying Me Lately

There are a lot of things in my industry lately that have just been rubbing me the wrong way, and so they've been making me feel kind of quiet and small. So instead of continuing on that quiet and small mantra, I wanted to air them and see if you guys agreed with me or felt the same way or were equally annoyed or maybe it's just me.

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Hey, everyone. I am excited to be back. I initially wanted to say that I'm sorry because I said I was going to be here every week, and that hasn't been happening lately. And then I remembered something I'd heard from Mel Robbins, who wrote the 5 Second Rule, and if you haven't checked out that book or heard her TED talk or any of her information, I highly recommend it. But she talks about how we need to stop saying we're sorry so much, and we need to say thank you.

So instead of saying I'm sorry, I haven't been here for the past couple of episodes, I'm going to say thank you for continuing to listen even though I haven't been here as promised every week. So I appreciate that reframe in how to communicate because I think a lot of times we have heard the stop saying you're sorry, stop saying you're sorry, but the idea of stop saying you're sorry and instead of that say thank you was a real aha for me. Because a lot of times, we have a hard time changing based on how it affects us, so I know I shouldn't say I'm sorry because it diminishes my power, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, I think it was more motivational for me to change that habit because when I say I'm sorry, it takes away from the gift I'm giving the other person.

So last week, a friend of mine was hosting me for a book party, and she had invited me to come over early for lunch. We both got there a little late, and we were both rushing around, and here she had to come up with lunch. My first reaction was to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry that you're making my lunch. I should have brought my lunch."

And then, instead of saying, "Oh, I'm sorry," I said, "Thank you so much for making my lunch. This was so nice to be able to have lunch with you."

In saying thank you, I was able to give my appreciation. She was able to take my appreciation and feel good about herself that we were able to enjoy lunch. And had I said I'm sorry, I would have been like, "Oh, I'm sorry that you had to make me lunch," and then she would have jumped in to try to save me and make me feel better, and the whole gratitude piece of I'm really thankful that you're here and you made me lunch would have been lost in the sorries.

So I like that example. It took it home for me on how powerful this is. So that's my tidbit. I want you to practice that this week. See if you can make that change and take that pause.

So in that spirit of being transparent on doing it every week, it's probably not going to happen. So I need to be honest with you all that this podcast is going to be coming out twice a month, and I'm going to be doing regular podcasts twice a month. And that is something I can commit to because I really want to get back into writing more blog-type, long-form articles. So I'm going to be doing that, and I'm also if you're not familiar with the website medium.com, I suggest you check that out. I'm going to be over there, but also, there are some great writers on that site. So if you are a reader and like blog-type articles, head on over to Medium and check that out because I highly recommend it as a thing that's kind of cool.

Okay, so today, the theme is things that annoy me. It's an odd theme for me. I don't like to tap into the things that annoy me. I don't like to do that, and I'm finding that the reason I don't like to do that is one of the things that annoy me is the phrase "be positive," and I've talked about that here on this podcast before.

There's a lot of things in my industry lately that have just been rubbing me the wrong way, and so they've been making me feel kind of quiet and small. So instead of continuing on that quiet and small mantra, I wanted to air them and see if you guys agreed with me or felt the same way or were equally annoyed, or maybe it's just me. So it's just throwing them out there and a way of clearing the air for myself and also just to get the feedback from the group to be like, hey, yeah, I'm annoyed by this, too, or you're overly sensitive, which I could own that—all that sort of stuff.

So lately, what's been annoying me, and I wrote down a list of all the things that have been annoying me, and that was cathartic in and of itself. So I'm not going to get to all the things on my list because there are quite a few, but I am going to get to some of the highlights. The main one that has been annoying me, well there are two that are tied for the top, and the first one is "this stuff is simple" and that if only you knew the quick fix and the easy way and the simple methodology, you would be fixed.

That idea keeps us stuck, and it keeps our Monger fired up because of Facebook and Instagram and all of those messages; even Medium that I just recommended to you has the "Seven Ways to Feel Happier." Sometimes those are great and give us some ideas, but other times they just kind of trigger like, "Oh, I'm just supposed to be kind to myself. Poof! It's so simple."

And it's not simple. If you take those articles that say these are the seven ways to be happier and you pick one of those, and you work on it every day for years, you will become closer to mastering it, but you won't have mastered it. So that idea that we need to constantly be making these quick, easy changes and that there's something wrong with us if we can't is keeping us stuck in this anxiety and overwhelm.

You know, so much is coming at us on a day-to-day basis. I've been doing these book talks for my Happier Approach book and just watching these women that are coming that are exhausted and overwhelmed, and so much is coming at them from their kids to Facebook to Instagram to the PTA newsletter to where they need to volunteer to their jobs. I mean, it's overwhelming hearing their stories. And then, on top of that, it's supposed to be simple for you to make changes in your life. And it's not. This is very complex stuff.

So I even hesitated when I wrote my book. You know, I have this simple methodology. "It's just ASK, and you just do these three simple steps, and it'll be really easy." And that is not how it works. It takes diligence and time and looking at it in different ways, and there's complexity to it. So nothing in life is simple. We look at all the world's problems and all the stuff that's going on and racism and conflicts overseas and conflicts in our own country and say, "Oh, those would be simple to solve."

No. They're very complex because they involve human beings who are thinking and feeling and have stories and all kinds of stuff going on in their psyche. Same is true for the personal development stuff. It is not simple, and we need to stop this myth that it is because we use it to beat ourselves up even more. So that's the number one.

And number one A, so the close second, is the phrase "change your story," and that idea is that if I have a story that I'm telling myself over and over again, so a lot of us have money stories. So I'm never going to have enough money for retirement could be a story you're telling yourself, and it's a phrase you repeat over and over again. I'm just never going to have enough money for retirement. I'm always going to have to be hustling and working. I'm never going to have enough money.

And so that idea, and if you go to certain life coaches or therapists, even, or read any personal development, they'll say, "Well, change that story. That story isn't serving you. Move on." And that sounds great, and at the moment, I probably can move past that and be like, wait, that's a story, and I need to move past it.

But I think we need to unpack those stories. Your brain is not a switch you flip. There's a lot more to it. So where did the idea of I'm never going to have enough money for retirement come from, and what's underneath that? I don't deserve money. What are my issues with money? What did I have money growing up? What did that look like?

There's a lot more to it than just change the story, flip that script, that it's going to be something else because it's not that simple. So again, when we can't change the story, or when that story comes back and we're like, "No, no, no. Last week I changed that story. Last week I told myself to stop thinking that, so why am I thinking it this week?" 'Because you're human, and that's what happens.

The overarching theme of my work, of the happier approach of the live happier philosophy, is that we need to figure out how to trust ourselves, and the idea that it's simple or change your story pulls us out of our trusting of ourselves. It stops us from trusting ourselves because I can't trust myself if I have these freaky stories I'm telling myself.

So to recognize, know, I do have these stories, and they are a part of me, and I need to figure out how to do the world with this story. How do I do the world thinking I'm not going to have enough for retirement? I've got to figure out how that story's serving me, how that story's not serving me, and how I can move beyond the story. But it's not just flipping the switch and changing the story. It's moving beyond it, and that takes a little unpacking.

So those two go together because they both run in the same vein of oh, it's simple. Now you've heard me talk about being grateful and think positive and how those drive me crazy, and I think I've devoted a whole podcast to those two, so I won't go into that.

The last one that I want to say is a phrase that I find myself saying a lot to myself and also to other people, and I even know the damage of the phrase, and it's the phrase "at least." It kind of goes with the be grateful and think positive because it's a way to keep us out of our thoughts is the idea of "at least."

So I can go to someone, or I'll say to myself, "Oh, I don't want to go to work today." Or, "I don't want to go to this event tonight," and it'll be like, "Well, at least you can drive." Or, "At least you have a job you can go to." "At least you get to come home and do nothing for the rest of the weekend." Or, "At least you have the finances to be able to do this. Quit your complaining. Suck it up, buttercup, let's keep going."

So that idea of "at least" keeps us stuck in, again, not trusting ourselves. 'Cause I have to cut off the rest of the sentence when I'm like, "Well, at least ..." It's like a hard stop, and so it's telling me that whatever I'm thinking is wrong. Whatever I'm doing is incorrect. Instead of saying, "Wow, I don't want to go to work today, but this and this and this is going to happen at work, and that's pretty cool." Or, "I don't want to go to work today because I'm really scared about this meeting with my boss. Wow, let me look at that. What's underneath that? What can I do to make that meeting less scary?" Not, "Well, at least you have a job, so don't even think about the fact you have this uncomfortable meeting. Just keep plowing through."

See how the phrase "at least" keeps us from trusting our experience and trusting what's going on, and I think that is the main reason that the Monger takes control is if we don't trust what we're feeling, then we can let this voice kind of run the show. And when we start trusting of, "No, wait a minute, I'm scared, and that's okay," or, "I don't want to go to work today, and that's okay." That doesn't mean I'm a miserable person who hates my job. I just would rather stay home on the couch today. It's raining; it's gross; I want to stay home. That's fine. We don't need to be judging everything all the time.

So that idea of making sure that we're giving ourselves the full experience of what's happening and not trapping it with "at least." And we do it to our friends, too. They'll come to us with a problem, and in the spirit of trying to make them feel better, we'll say, "Well, at least your husband loves you." Or, "At least you have two great kids," or whatever we're saying is in a way to be like what you're feeling isn't valid because you have this other good stuff. Let's look over here at the good stuff.

So that's what we do anytime we're pulling ourselves out of the process of what we're experiencing is we're like, "Look over here. This is going to be great." And we skip over the stuff that's uncomfortable, and that gets us into trouble.

So those are some of the things that have been annoying me lately in my industry. I want to be talking more about that stuff because I think it's a danger in preventing people from really being able to move past some of their patterns. The stuff that I talk about is more complex, and it is heavier and harder, and more challenging to do. Absolutely. But it does make real change. It does work, and I think that the "change your story" and "oh, it's so simple" really keep us stuck in these ideas that this is easy to do, and it keeps us cut off from ourselves.

The whole point, I think, of personal development and self-help is that if I'm more connected with myself and I can trust my process, I spend less time spinning out on my process, and I can better serve the world. And I think that's the whole point.

When we're stuck in "it's simple" and "just flip the script," we get more mired down in our crap. And when we do the work, we can then better serve the world.

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Episode 083: Live Happier Q&A

I answering an important listener question. If you are struggling with acknowledging your feelings, this one is for you.

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Hey everyone. Excited to be back here for yet another episode of the Happiness Hacks Podcast. Today, we're getting into some of the Q&As that you have all submitted.

I'm only going to be doing one question today because it is a doozy of a question, and so I wanted to take some time with it. The question is around the acknowledging your feelings part of ASK, and that is the first step in ASK when you hear your inner monger talking, or you feel that anxiety is coming on, is to acknowledge what you're feeling. And so, they wrote it and said, "This feelings thing, you know, I'm not a fan. I get stuck in my feelings, so it doesn't work for me. Once I acknowledge the feeling, it goes on and on and on and on. Help."

So I wanted to say I totally understand that. I get what you're saying about the fear around acknowledging your feelings. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this person that struggles with this, particular acknowledging your feelings, and I'm sure there are a lot of us out there that struggle with this as well, the reason you're getting stuck, and I doubt you're getting stuck in the feeling. I bet you're getting stuck in the analysis of the feeling.

So, the A step is acknowledging your feelings. It's not analyzing your feelings. It's not justifying your feelings. It's not figuring out the source of your feelings. It's not debating whether the feeling is appropriate or not. It's not diving into your past to see where the feeling originated from or where the trigger came from. It is simply acknowledging that you're having a feeling and being able to label what that feeling is. That's it. It's very simple, and in its simplicity, it becomes complex, I realize.

So the simplicity of it is that something happens, and your monger starts chatting, so you start to feel the anxiety. Maybe your chest is tight, or you notice you're pushing, pushing, pushing, kind of in an almost manic state, you're pushing yourself so hard. Or, you notice you're procrastinating big time on something, and so you stop, and you acknowledge your feelings.

So let me give you an example. Let's say you're getting ready for a review at work. You've done your part of the review, and you're waiting to hear from your boss and have the meeting about how the review's going to go. And your monger steps in and is like, "This review is going to be terrible. You totally dropped the ball on this and this and this." And starts labeling all the stuff that you've done wrong or starts saying, "You don't have enough work right now, and so maybe they're going to notice that they're going to need to fire you." And is just sending you all kinds of messages.

And so if you stop and you acknowledge what you're feeling, up is going to come fear that you're going to lose your job, but also a feeling of lack of control, a feeling of insecurity, a feeling of unworthiness, a feeling of doubt. Those feelings are what's coming up for you. And so, that's all you need to do is acknowledge that you're having those feelings.

What we tend to do is say, "Oh, I'm feeling doubtful." Or, "I'm feeling insecure." And then we jump in with a justification as to why we shouldn't be feeling insecure, why it's silly to feel insecure, why that feeling isn't appropriate. Or, we jump in the other way in justifying exactly why we should feel insecure and all the reasons that prove we should feel insecure, so we get stuck in this debate of whether the feeling is valid or not.

And so, as much as you can, I want you to stop doing that and acknowledge, "Wow, I'm feeling insecure right now." That's it. The power of being able to say, "Wow, what I'm feeling right now is _ what's happening for me." That is the truth. Because what happens is, we don't trust ourselves, and that is the main reason that our mongers have so much power. We listen to this inner critic voice telling us how wrong we are, how terrible we are, how we missed the mark, where we've failed, what we haven't accomplished that we should've, and on and on. It's constantly being vigilant about everything that's going wrong.

And so, if we trust ourselves, we can honor what's happening for us. Because our monger puts us in this trance-like state, we don't trust what's coming up for us, and that's the point of ASK because the more we trust ourselves, and the more we respect where we're coming from, the less we need this voice telling us how terrible we are.

So part of the reason the monger is there is because we've unconsciously allowed it to run the show, and we're taking back control by learning how to quiet the monger. We're taking back the control, and I use the character of the biggest fan to represent what that control looks like. Part of the way we take back control is honoring what it is we're feeling, honoring our process, not constantly trying to hijack it and justify it. That's why, in the Happier Approach book, I talk a lot about gratitude and think positive, and have self-compassion, and how those exercises have, in a lot of ways, hijacked our ability to trust ourselves. Because instead of allowing the feeling to come and go all the way through, to say, "Yeah, I am feeling insecure. Oh, insecurity. Ick." That's hard to feel. Instead of allowing us to have that feeling go all the way through, we immediately jump in with, "Be grateful you have a job." Or, "Think positive. It's not going to be that bad. Come on. It's just a review. What's the big deal?" And that is not what the A acknowledge what you're feeling step is for.

That step is merely to simply say, "I'm feeling this." And so for me, as I've said in the past, that's why I like the idea of Oh Sweet Pea, because that's the voice of my biggest fan, and I get her started in the acknowledging piece. I bring her in with the phrase, "Oh sweet pea." And the minute I say that to myself, 'cause I've said it so many times, my body literally relaxes because I'm like, "Oh, I don't have to be on guard here. This is going to be nice and kind and accepting. I'm ready to get into that space." And so she says, "Oh Sweet Pea, no wonder you're insecure. This is a tough thing. It's a review. No one likes to be reviewed. Those are hard." That's it. You don't have to justify why it's hard. You don't have to prove that it's hard. The point is, you're feeling insecure, and that's all that matters.

So, you're feeling tired. You're feeling sad. You're feeling scared. Yes, you are. That's okay, and you don't have to get stuck in proving that it's okay or proving it away. You just have to acknowledge that that feeling is there, and so that is why to acknowledge is just one piece of this puzzle. A, acknowledge what you're feeling. And then you slow down and get into your body 'cause that allows you to relax a little, get into your body, see the world differently, and then it's K, kindly pull back to see the big picture.

Pulling back to see the big picture is then the place where you can say, "Okay, it's one review. Could it go that bad? Probably not. You just talked to your boss. He was friendly. It's probably going to go fine, and if it doesn't, this is what we can do." And you can pull back and see that big picture.

But if you have done that before you've slowed down and got into your body and before you've acknowledged what's going on, all you end up doing is fighting with your monger, and you end up getting in an argument with them. So yeah, you do get stuck in the acknowledge what you're feeling stage because you're justifying what you're feeling. You're not simply acknowledging it.

So that's the challenge, and that's why I wanted to give you some time on this subject. I've talked about it in the past, I realize, and this might be repetitive, but I think it really deserves a repeat. I'm so glad you asked the question because this is a key step in rebuilding that trust. Recognizing, I don't have to talk myself out of my feelings. I don't have to pretend they don't exist. I can acknowledge what they are and not be scared of them because they are signs. They are things that are happening in the world.

Now, that doesn't mean I need to act on them. That doesn't mean I need to jump out and say, "I can't take this. I can't do the review. This can't happen." No, no, no. You're just acknowledging. You don't have to take action at all. And so that's what happens, I think. A lot of times, we think if we acknowledge the sadness, or we acknowledge the anger, then immediately, that means we're going to have to go do something to express the anger, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm only asking you to acknowledge it. Simply label it, and see where that takes you.

So, I hope that that helped answer that question and gave you some different ways of thinking about it. Understanding that feelings are about trust and paying attention to what it is we're feeling because, for those of us who have a loud monger, we have spent our whole lives running from that feeling. We haven't acknowledged it. We haven't built that trust, and so that's what the ASK system is helping you do, is rebuild that trust.

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Episode 082: The Warm Cozy Sweater of Our Monger

In this episode, I share why Monger attacks are so hard and what our job is when we put on that warm, cozy sweater of our Monger.

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Hey, everyone. Today I want to share a personal story, something that happened to me yesterday. And I thought you all might find it helpful and interesting, and relatable. And what happened was I found myself in a full-on Monger attack. And it wasn't the typical Monger attack. I tend to have the Monger attack of "Oh, you're a loser" or "Who do you think you are?" But this was a Monger attack that was a full-on shame attack. Someone in my life triggered a very old button and accidentally pushed it. They didn't do it intentionally at all, but they accidentally pushed it, and it just sent me down a dark tunnel of a shame spiral.

What was so fascinating about it, I found myself in a shame spiral. I started crying. I said to my husband, "This is a ten response to a two situation. I know I'm way overreacting". But the beauty of what happened was I was in a new spot for me for looking at it. At one time, I could see that I was sitting in the shame, and I could also see there was a choice to be sitting in the shame, for lack of a better phrase. And even though I was in the middle of it and I could recognize I was in the middle of it and I was doing all the stuff that I teach people to do and A.S.K. and could name all my feelings and could pull back and see the big picture. What was fascinating about it was that it wasn't just let's practice A.S.K., and I'll immediately feel better. I had to practice A.S.K., acknowledge what you're feeling, and I could say, "I'm feeling sad, and I'm feeling angry, and I'm feeling triggered, and I'm feeling like a bad person," and I could say all the things I was feeling. My husband and I went for a walk. And did the slowdown and get into your body piece.

And I could see the big picture. I could pull back and give some other reasons as to why it was happening. And see what was going on. But I kept coming back to the warm, cozy sweater. And I love that analogy. And if you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard me say it multiple times. But the warm, cozy sweater is the belief that we need the shame. I wish I could come up with a better phrase for saying it, but it's like finding a warm, cozy sweater in your closet, and you put it on, and then you realize, "Ah, this is so itchy, and I hate how this feels." But for some reason, we're drawn into the sweater. And as I was standing in the park with my husband watching our dog play, I was like, "I can't get out of this." I would do A.S.K., and I would pull back, and I'd see the big picture. And then, eventually, the warm, cozy sweater would wash over me again. And I kept practicing A.S.K., and I kept getting the warm, cozy sweater. I'd get a break from the shame for five minutes, 10 minutes.

But I could very quickly flip the switch and come back to the warm, cozy sweater. Because the tape that I was playing over and over, the shame tape, the thing that got triggered, the incident that triggered me was so familiar. It was so old. It was so used to being triggered. And it was interesting to recognize this is just a tape. You're playing this over and over and over again. It's the first time in a long time that I've been that triggered, that I've been that awash in shame. But it also was really interesting to be able to pull back and just notice how the shame is so comforting and how we believe we deserve it and how it does feel like a warm, cozy sweater. And so it's like pulling yourself out of the muck like your feet are stuck in quicksand. And the shame is like quicksand, and it's just sucking you down. And it's being able to pull yourself out of that. And so I think A.S.K., I know A.S.K. is a great way to do that.

But I also know that it needs to be repeatedly done. I went to bed earlier than normal last night, partially because I was just so exhausted from trying to pull myself out of the muck. And I wanted the day to be over. I was tired of feeling and wearing the warm, cozy sweater, and I knew that when I woke up, I would feel differently because I had done all the work. I had seen the big picture. I was able to see where the other person was coming from and why they said what they said. I could see how I the reaction that I had. And it all made sense logically. But I just needed to have it make sense in my heart. And so my biggest fan was, "Just go to sleep. When you wake up tomorrow, it'll be different. We'll just keep practicing this." And that is what happened that today when I woke up, I could still go back to the same place, but it wasn't there as much.

The cool thing about what happened, and part of the reason I wanted to share this story, was this stuff just keeps happening, and we can either choose to put on the warm, cozy sweater and keep it on and never be able to pull out of it, which is what I did for years. And that was the realization that I had, and I said to my husband, "I wore this warm, cozy sweater all the time, and people could trigger me without them knowing it at any given moment." I was constantly feeling one step away from feeling like I was unworthy or one step away from feeling like a bad person. This is why this work is so important to me because that was such a terrible way of moving through the world. And I want to help people stop that terrible feeling from happening to them. But it also the idea that I recognized that I had a choice. And there was a switch I could flip. And the switch isn't that easy to flip. So, yes, I have a choice, and yes, I could pull myself out of the shame and pull myself out of the monger attack and take off the warm, cozy sweater, but the power of that muck and the power of that quicksand is huge and powerful.

I want you all to recognize how hard this work is and that it is challenging to pull yourself out of it. And if you are practicing A.S.K. and you're like, "This isn't working. I had to practice A.S.K. like ten times today to get out of the shame attack", I get it. And, it does work overtime. You may need to practice it. Yesterday I hit a shame situation. My Monger was in full-on attack. And that was a hard one. And yes, I had to practice A.S.K. a number of times before I could separate it out. But the other thing is that this shame stuff, if we choose to work it, it does teach us. We can learn, and yesterday when I was able to pull back and look at the big picture, I could see the situation so differently because when we are stuck in the shame and our Monger is in control, and we're wearing that warm, cozy sweater, we only see black and white. We are wrong. The other person is right. We're a loser. We're not worthy. We didn't do it right. Whatever it is, there's no gray.

And what was cool about yesterday's event is I, even though I was still wearing the warm, cozy sweater and there was a part of me that was really buying into the attack of the Monger, there was another part of me that was the biggest fan that was like, "You can grow from this. This doesn't have to be your trigger. You don't have to be triggered by this every time." And I think that's the piece that I want everyone to learn here. I just read this amazing newsletter from [Kelly Dials 00:07:43], who was saying how it used to be that we would get confident and be feeling good and be feeling really confident, and we would think, "Oh, I won. I'm confident. I've checked that off the list. I figured out how to have confidence." And now that she's in a different growth period in her life, and that confidence is gone, and she's feeling more insecure. And she was like, "I think it's a mix of both. I think we have the confidence, and then we have insecurity, and then we grow. And then we have more confidence, and then we grow, and we have insecurity."

And hopefully, as we're going through life, that's the key. We are constantly growing and learning new things. As we grow, we're going to hit these spots of insecurity. And right now, I'm going through some pretty hefty growth spurts in my personal and professional life. And my Monger has been louder. I talked about this a couple of episodes ago, but I think that's the point of life is to constantly be juggling that insecurity, confidence, insecurity, confidence as we move up the mountain of life. And the idea that you will get confidence and you will have arrived is not true. And anyone that is selling that to you is a liar.

It drives me crazy that that is out there in the world because that is not how life works. You never achieve happiness. You never achieve confidence. It doesn't stay forever. And what I try to teach is how to get through the periods of insecurity. How to get past the shame attack. How to take off the warm, cozy sweater so that you have strategies on what to do as you're moving through life. And these things, hopefully, inevitably will come to you because you'll continue to grow.

That is my message today and sharing my personal shame attack and all that stuff. I didn't want to get into all the details because I don't think they matter. What matters is how I learned and grew and my observations from the event. Okay, gang. That's the show. Thanks for listening.

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Episode 081: The Love-Hate Relationship with Our To-Do List

In this episode, I talk about the to-do list, our love of it, and how it keeps us trapped in the belief that WHEN we finish the to-do list we will be happier. (That's a lie by the way.)

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Hey gang, so today I want to talk about our to-do list. And this came up last week. I've been doing a book tour for the Happier Approach book, and last week I was in Kentucky at a private women's event. The big theme of that event was the to-do list and how a lot of people did not recognize that our to-do list was the way that their monger was showing up. And so today, I just want to touch base with you on what I call the to-do list black hole.

And so, I think a lot of us have a love/hate relationship with the to-do list. On the one hand, we love it because it keeps us organized and on top of things. And on the other hand, we struggle with falling into the to-do list black hole and becoming kind of a slave to our to-do list. And we attach our to-do list to our worthiness. And that's where we get into trouble.

So here are a few common statements when it comes to the to-do list. My to-do list is my bible. I mean, I can't live without my to-do list. I have a love/hate relationship with my to-do list. I feel chained to my to-do list. I'm constantly checking it. I mean, I can't remember a day without my to-do list. And finally, my to-do list helps me stay on top of my busy busy life; I just can't fathom life without it.

A to-do list is a wonderful tool because it guides your every day, and it allows us to know what needs to be done, what's coming up, it keeps us on top of things. But the problem is, is that it's a tool. It's a tool. That's all it is. It isn't attached to our worthiness. Finishing our to-do list will never lead to satisfaction. It may for a brief moment, but it never fully leads us there because we think that if we finish the to-do list, we're going to get there, and there doesn't exist because the to-do list just keeps growing and growing and growing.

So at this book event last week, one of the women was sharing a story about how she frequently, at the end of the day, finds herself cramming, trying to check everything off her to-do list. And one of the last items is frequently cleaning up the kitchen. And so, when she's in the kitchen scrubbing the counters and disinfecting everything, her husband is lying in the TV room watching TV. And a lot of times, she'll have some resentment against him because here she is, stuck in the kitchen, and he is relaxing in front of the TV.

And it wasn't until I had her go through the ASK philosophy that we talk about in Happier Approach of acknowledging her feelings, slowing down and get into her body, and kindly pulling back to see the big picture that she realized it was her monger telling her how much she needed to get everything done. If she got everything done, then everything would be okay. And she ended every night feeling crappy. Because A, she didn't get everything done, so she still wasn't worthy. And B, she was resentful of her husband because he was lazy and lying around and didn't have the same level of go go go that she did.

And it wasn't until through the group discussion that we pulled back, and she could say, wow, does it matter if the countertops are clean? Is that really what's important here? Or is it important that this is the only time I can hang out with my husband, is this brief hour at the end of the day after the kids go to bed. And so maybe letting it go, the to-do list, and spending time with my husband laying on the floor, easing into some of his rhythms, would be better, because yes, the kitchen is clean. The countertops don't have to be disinfected. It's clean. And so kind of reducing the standards of the to-do list.

And so that was going to be her challenge, was to loosen the reins a little bit around that to-do list and the mentality of everything has to be done perfectly on the to-do list, and I got this, and I'm the only one that can make the to-do list. And so there's a lot of stuff that gets wrapped up in this to-do list mentality, which is why it is one of the most common phrases in my office. Clients coming in to talk about checking stuff off the to-do list and how they are going to get everything done. So I think it's fascinating what our to-do list has come to mean to us and how much it is tied to worthiness and being enough, and that's become the measure of can we get stuff done.

So what are we supposed to do about this? How do we get around? We need the to-do list to get stuff done. And so, I think we need to take some time to step back and see the big picture. I'm a huge fan of that, as you know from my work, to see the big picture and to look at our values and say, does this fit into what's happening in my life right now? Is this really what's important? If I value relationships and I value spending time with my kids, does it matter how clean the kitchen is? Is that an important thing? And so to be able to not only fill the to-do list with our list of stuff but to also be able to rank how important is it that I finish this?

So one of the exercises I've done for years is ranking things by importance. And so I will know at the end of the day, these are the three to five things I have to get done because that's realistic. And so I put those at the top of the list. And each day I have, these are the three to five things I'm going to get done today. And then if something comes along that bumps one of them off, then I move it to the next day. It gets bumped. It doesn't get added. And so it's recognizing what's realistic here? What can I get done? And it's also making sure that you can add some spontaneity to your day, to recognize this is just a list, this isn't the bible. This isn't about my worthiness. If I don't get these three to five things done, life moves on. People may be disappointed. And that's okay.

Because our mongers tend to tell us everything on this list has to be done, it has to be done perfectly; you can't mess up, what will they think if you miss the deadline, you're a terrible person, et cetera et cetera. So we attach so much of our worthiness to a freaking list that is hopefully filled with stuff that fits our values and the stuff that we want to do, and the stuff, if we pull back, feeds our higher good. And if it doesn't and we're just doing the to-do list to check stuff off the to-do list, then we need to check in with ourselves and do a little come to Jesus on what's more important in our lives. Is this that important? And if it is, how do we make time for it and all the other stuff that's that important?

So this week, I want you to look at your to-do list. Have a to-do list come to Jesus to see, is the stuff that I'm filling my life with what I want to be doing? Is this important to me? And if it isn't, how can I start changing things up? Where can I start asking for help? How can I start pushing some stuff off my to-do list? How can I start changing my priorities? Because let's be real. There is stuff on the to-do list that we don't want to do that we have to do, A. And B, our to-do list overfloweth. And so we all have way too much on our plates. And some of that is expectations we're putting on ourselves. Some of that is societal expectations. And some of that is just, I have to put food on the table at the end of every day, and I have to take care of my kids.

And so, we need to get crystal clear on what is most important here. What am I doing because I think I should be doing it, or I think so and so will be mad at me if I don't, or so and so will be disappointed if I don't, or so and so is doing it so I should be doing it? Where are we losing sight of what's most important to us? And then once you've done all that and you've taken your to-do list, and you have fine-tuned it, and it is perfectly packed with your priorities and the stuff that feeds your values and is most important to you, and you're still overwhelmed? Then you have to ask yourself, where can I ask for help? Where can I reach out and get help from a friend, from a coworker, from my boss, from my family? Where can I get help?

And so it isn't that you need to silently suffer in this to-do list hell. We need to start unhooking ourselves from our to-do list equals our worthiness and get control over these to-do lists and make sure that it's fitting our priorities and not what our monger or someone else tells us we should be doing.

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Episode 080: Random Observations about Our Inner Dialogue

In this episode, I talk about 3 random observations about our inner dialogue, what causes our Monger to get fired up, why we have a love-hate relationship with her, and what we HAVE to do to quiet her.

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Hey everyone, excited to back here on a Sunday. Yay, I am back on track on my commitment to doing this once a week and having them released on Sundays. So this weeks' episode is Episode 80. I can't believe that we've done 80 episodes of these little Happiness Hacks podcasts, and today we're going to talk about some random observations I've found about the Monger and our inner dialogue. I was thinking about doing each one as an individual thing, and they might show up individually as I flush them out. But I just wanted to touch on them today as a summary episode.

And so there are three of them, three random observations. Okay, so the first one I want to talk about is the idea that our Monger tends to get chattier when we are taking risks that mean more to us. And so I want to give an illustration of that that comes from a client. She is a performer by nature, actress, and her Monger is very chatty when she's applying for different acting gigs and very, you know, telling her how much she's going to suck or who does she think she is, etc., etc., etc. Not surprising.

So the more she wants a part, the louder her Monger is, and I think that is the illustration of what I'm talking about because the more we are in line with what it is we want to be doing and where our heart's desire is, the louder our Monger's going to get. So this was illustrated clearly when she, on a whim, decided to apply to be in the pit orchestra for a performance. She was going to play her instrument, and she played the instrument in high school as she had experienced. It wasn't like she was a total novice, but she didn't have a ton of experience, and there were people that had more experience with her that were playing next to her. But the performance just needed band members. They didn't care. You didn't have to try out. It was pretty easy to become a member of the pit orchestra.

And she joined it, and she loved it. She had a great time, and her Monger was practically silent the entire time. Like, even though she knew she wasn't good and she knew she wasn't hitting the right notes all the time, she just had a great time. Her Monger was not a player in that activity.

So, it was interesting that we realized that here that activity brought her great joy, but it wasn't really what she wants to be doing. She doesn't want to be playing in the orchestra. It's a fun activity, but it's not one that she is tied to. It's interesting to observe that when your Monger is getting loud, it usually means you're on to something. To pay attention to those times that your Monger's talking up and getting loud.

And I know for me, doing this book, my Monger has been very loud. My husband jokes I don't have a monger, I have a demon because she's been particularly loud. I think my next book will be something about that topic because here I wrote a book on finding your Monger as my Monger has gotten even louder, but I think that is because I'm on to something.

Other people I know are putting themselves out there with their artwork, and they're exploring that particular vein of their work. Their Monger's super loud, and that's what happens. The closer we get to what it is we want to do, the louder our Monger gets. That was random observation number one.

Then random observation number two is as we learn to quiet our mongers and bring in our biggest fans, there is going to be a gap where we kind of miss the Monger. I know this sounds crazy and a little counterintuitive because why would we miss this voice that's totally shaming us all the time. But we miss that voice because that voice brings us drama. It brings us something to do. It brings us something to mull over and think on and obsess about. All of that activity that our brain does, it kind of occupies us, is stimulating and dramatic and kind of fun in a weird way. It's comfortable.

So, once we learn how to get rid of that constant obsessing, there's an empty vacuum that is created where there's like, wait a minute, I have just spent a long time, many years of my life being in this drama place, and now I got to learn how to function without that. So just to pay attention as you're doing this work of that concept, and sometimes we will go into the Monger just to get that drama because it is comfortable. You know, it goes back to that sweater analogy I always use that we put on the sweater of the Monger, and initially, the sweater is comfortable. It's familiar. We know what it's like to obsess and to worry and to constantly be playing all the different scenarios and kind of figuring out the right way, and that feels good.

Then, over time the sweater gets itchy because it's like I don't want to be obsessing about this so much. I don't want to be stressing all the time. I don't want to be checking everything off my to-do list. I want to be living my life. So, the sweater gets itchy, and we have to take the sweater off.

That's the concept of the Monger is that it's not all evil, and we don't want the Monger. We know it's bad for us, and yet part of it is comfortable. It's just like a glass of wine. We know that alcohol has no real redeeming value, and yet we drink it because it makes us feel good. Until we have too much, and then it makes us feel bad, just like the Monger. The Monger initially makes us feel good. It makes us feel safe. It makes us feel protected. It makes us feel comfortable until it doesn't, and then it starts to make us feel bad.

So I want to open up that conversation a little bit in your brain and make some space for that because until we can admit that we need our Monger and that we find it comfortable, it's really hard to quiet it. If we're constantly pushing it away like some evil demon, we won't integrate it into our whole being, and we need to integrate the Monger. It's one of the voices there, and if we learn how to live with that voice and integrate it into the biggest fan, then we can start making some real changes.

That random idea is that the Monger is comfortable, and that's okay, but it still hurts us, and we need to figure out a way around it.

Then the last random observation I have is the concept of intellectualizing versus practice. I think for a lot of us that have this monger work, we're used to intellectualizing. We intellectualize our feelings. We intellectualize a problem. We're problem solvers. We're constantly trying to come up with the next solution. When it comes to the workaround quieting your Monger and bringing in your biggest fan, there's a level of practice that has to happen. It's not just reading about it. It's not just reading all these books and getting all these 'ahas' which is wonderful and awesome.

You have to practice. You have to practice ASK. You have to sit down and acknowledge your feelings. You have to slow down and get into your body. You have to kindly pull back and see the big picture. You have to take it all the way through. And so that idea that it's not just intellectualizing, it's not just sitting there being like, oh I got to practice ASK and not actually practicing it. Or, there's my Monger again, but not actually doing anything about it. That's where we get in trouble.

And so, it's just like sitting around. If we're reading all these books on working out and stretching and how to stretch and the perfect yoga poses, and the great way to eight-minute abs and we weren't doing the workouts, it doesn't do any good. It's the same thing when it comes to our mongers. We have to do the work that is involved in quieting them. That's where the glitch comes from because, for a lot of us we don't want to do that work, and I get it.

Even after knowing that I need to do the work, I still am resistant to it. Earlier this week, I was pushing myself hard, and I had a bunch of deadlines I was trying to hit, and I was just manic in my jumping from task to task to task. It took all I had to step back from the computer, slow down, get into my body. I turned on some music. I did a little dance party in my office. And then I felt a thousand times better.

When I came back to my desk, my mind was clear. I was able to focus; I could get the task done. That's random fact number three, is that I need you not to be intellectualizing this process. I need you to be practicing this process and then bringing that practice and the questions you have around that practice up to the forefront. So then you can figure out new ways around them.

Okay, that's the show.

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Episode 079: Happier Approach Q&A

A new monthly segment for the show the Happier Approach Q&A. Answering listener questions about all things Live Happier and The Happier Approach.

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Today is the happier approach Q & A, and I've wanted to take one episode a month and turn it into a question and answer type format. I didn't put out any call out for questions, but I've been getting some questions. I thought, okay, I'll start it with this episode and turn this episode into the Happier Approach Q & A, and then on my website on the podcast page, I will put a link where you can go and ask a question.

The first question I have is, My Monger keeps coming back. What can I do? The easy answer to that is, yep, your monger is going to keep coming back, and so you can't do anything except keep practicing ASK. That's a disheartening answer, so I will give you more than just that because the bottom line is, your monger doesn't go away. This book, The Happier Approach, and my methodology are teaching you a way to quiet the voice of the monger so that your biggest fan's voice gets louder. It's simultaneously quieting the monger and bringing in the voice of the biggest fan and making that voice a little louder. Your default isn't always the monger; it's sometimes is the biggest fan. That's the idea behind the happier approach is not to get rid of the monger altogether, and that will just send you down a rabbit hole. I have been down that rabbit hole of, oh, my God. I'm practicing ASK. Why isn't this working? My monger is still here.

I can give you a couple of tips around that in the next question. I just really want you to know you are not going to be able to silence your monger completely. It's still going to talk there. I have found that when your monger gets loud, it usually means you're on to something. By on to something, I mean you're stretching your boundaries, you're pulling out of your comfort zone, you're chasing a big dream, you're doing something uncomfortable.

It's usually something good that you're doing for yourself or your life, but your monger is freaked out because it wants you to stay small. Your monger wants you to be protected, so the more you do that puts you out there, the more at risk you are, the more your monger is going to shame you. It's a counterintuitive thought process. I talk about that more next week in next week's episode that's coming up on Sunday. The bottom line is, your monger is going to be there, and the idea of the happier approach is to figure out how to slowly over time bringing up the voice of the biggest fan and diminishing more the voice of the monger is the plan. That's the goal of the work of The Happier Approach.

The next question I have is, how quickly do I move through ASK? If I am sad, do I wait until I'm done feeling sad before I move on to getting into my body? That's a great question. I just want to refresh what ASK is for a very new listener or haven't read The Happier Approach. ASK is the acronym I used to quiet the monger and bring in the biggest fan. When you hear your monger talking, you're going to ASK, which simply means acknowledge what you're feeling, is the A. Slow down and get into your body is the S. And K, kindly pull back to see the big picture.

The question is, if I'm sad, do I wait until I'm done feeling sad to move on, to slow down and get into your body? There is no hard and fast rule for how this ASK works. I encourage you to make it your own. My thought process on that is when I acknowledge what I'm feeling, and I can say, "Oh, I'm feeling sad about this." Then when I allow myself to slow down and get into my body, the emotion tends to come, so whether that's tears or my stomach gets a little upset, or I just feel more blah overall. When I start feeling that way, then I know I can feel the feeling all the way through. It's getting into my body, in the S, slow down and get into your body step, really allows me to feel the feeling a little bit more and to make it more real.

Now, the key is, and this is not in the question, but the key I have found, and I've done this with my clients. Sometimes, they'll just stop there in the process. They won't move on to kindly pull back and see the big picture. They'll acknowledge what they're feeling. They'll slow down and get into their body. And those two are just so hard to do in and of themselves that they don't do K, kindly pull back to see the big picture. The K one is, the kindly pull back to see the big picture, is the real monger fighter. Because when we can pull back and see the big picture, then that's the voice of our biggest fan giving us other options.

This weekend I had my book party. It was fabulous. Thank you to any of you who came out and who are listening. It just was a really fun celebration of the book, and the people, and The Happier Approach, and the whole thing. I was nervous about doing it, obviously. Very nervous about the book party and my monger was very chatty before that event. The idea of, okay, I woke up in the morning and I couldn't fall back asleep, and so I'm like, okay, I'm feeling nervous. I'm feeling excited. I'm feeling scared this isn't going to go well, or no one is going to show up, or it's going to be a failure.

Then, I slow down and get into my body. Then, the next step is kindly pull back to see the big picture. I have to do that because that's where the biggest fan steps in. When I pull back and see the big picture, I can be like, okay, I know five of my favorite people in the world are going to be there, so check that off, like, done. I don't have to worry about no one showing up because I know at least five of my favorite people in the world are going to be there. We have great food coming, and I know that's it's going to be surrounded by love and support. So I can start naming off the big picture of what that book party is going to look like. That's where the biggest fan lives.

I hijacked the question a little bit to really encourage you to make sure you take ASK all the way through to K, and not just stop at feeling sad if that's the feeling you're having. If you have acknowledged that you're feeling sad, and then you slow down and get into your body, the tears may come. You may feel it a little more holistically in your body, but then you can move on to K, the kindly pull back and see the big picture piece.

The last question is, someone asked me at the book party, and she said, is it bad that I want to keep improving? Are you discouraging that in me? Absolutely not. I'm not discouraging wanting to keep improving. I am encouraging you to not beat yourself up for where you are. There's a slight difference, and it's a fine line, but for a lot of us, we feel we're flawed just as we are. We tell ourselves when we get here, then we'll be okay. Believing in that, if I did it perfectly, my monger wouldn't be chatting. If a hundred people came to the book party, my monger would be happy.

That belief system gets us in trouble because it will never be true. Even if I had a hundred people come to the book party, then my monger would be beating me up because I didn't have enough food at the book party to serve a hundred people. There's always something the monger is going to find. It's the idea of, I'm okay as I am, and there's stuff I want to do. There's stuff that I want to accomplish. There are goals that I have for my life. If I don't accomplish those, I'm not a terrible person. Once we can just say, okay, I want to keep improving, I want to keep improving as a therapist. I want to keep improving as a podcaster. I want to keep improving as a speaker.

All of that is great and true, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to beat myself up for where I am now as a podcaster, or where I am now as a therapist. The power of the biggest fan is that it's helping you improve. It's helping you reach your goals. But it is doing that without beating you up, without criticizing where you're starting. That's the big point that you've got to make so that you can swallow is, that you're okay as you are, and your biggest fan is just going to help you keep getting better.

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Episode 078: Riding the Waves

Feelings. They get such a bad wrap. If there is one thing the psychology world has a lot of contradictory opinions on, it is feelings. Today I look at the benefit of stepping into the deep water and riding the waves of your feelings.

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Today I am doing things a little bit differently. I wrote a blog instead, and today I would like to read the blog to you because I know it will be helpful. So a little different format, same great content :)

Feelings. They get such a bad wrap. If there is one thing the psychology world has a lot of contradictory opinions on, it is feelings. Advice ranges from:

You HAVE to feel your feelings.

Don't let your feelings run your life.

Don't be overly emotional.

Don't stuff your feelings.

Anytime there is information coming from 2 extremes, the answer is somewhere in the messy middle. For so many years, that is why I avoided feelings because they are messy. There isn't a hard and fast way to deal with them; there is no 'right way.

Here's what I know to be true:

Feelings are messy

They are individual; each person experiences them, deals with them, and faces them differently.

Feelings are legit. They are signs of our internal wisdom.

Feelings can't keep us stuck, but our thoughts about our feelings can.

If we don't feel our feelings, they will show up in other places. They don't go away if we ignore them.

So given all that, how are we supposed to deal with feelings? Here is a story from Emily, someone I recently worked with (name and details have been changed)

Emily has had a tough year. Her ex-husband harps on her about every little thing when it comes to the shared custody of their sons. Her company is going through some restructuring, so there is a lot of unknowns in the workplace, and her Mom's breast cancer just recently returned. She is overwhelmed (to say the least). Recently I mentioned to Emily that she needed to FEEL her feelings. Her response was, "I have no problem being angry and sad I am the first to share all the hard times I am going through and complain about them. I feel like I get stuck in my feelings. I take them out on my kids. I feel stressed all the time. I need to get OUT of them, not have MORE of them." My response was, "You do a great job of justifying your feelings and replaying the events that leave you feeling stuck. But you don't ever allow yourself to FEEL anything. You just intellectualize them."

I use to be like Emily. I would feel stressed and then spend the rest of the day justifying why I was stressed, listing off all the stressors. But never allowing myself to soften into the anger, sadness, and frustration, just replaying it over and over. I would argue that Emily wasn't feeling anything; she was simply naming all the bad things in her life. She wasn't allowing herself to feel them. She wasn't owning her anger or giving herself a chance to experience it. She would just label the event that justified her anger and moved on.

When we spend our time justifying/intellectualizing our stress, we are dancing in the shallow end. Think of it like entering the ocean and the water is chilly. As you wade in you, you stand in the shallow end, and the cold waves keep splashing you. You just stand there getting slapped by the cold waves, never actually getting in the water. Similarly, when we replay all our 'wrongs,' we just keep getting hit with the cold waves. But when we wade all the way in and immerse ourselves in the cold water when we allow the anger to come over us and feel the pain completely, we WILL feel better. When we soften into what is happening head-on we can assimilate and find relief. When we accept our anger, it dissipates. When we accept the cold water and allow our body to adjust, it dissipates. But standing in the shallow end saying how cold the water it doesn't feel good and it doesn't help.

Recently Emily sent me an email. She shared how she did end up losing her job. The company was downsizing, and she was one of the casualties. Emily came home from work and was devastated. She called her partner for support, and he immediately jumped into problem-solving mode. Remembering our conversation, she stopped him mid suggestion and said, "You know today, I just want to be pissed off. I just want to be angry because I am. This sucks. Tomorrow I will solve the problem today I am pissed." As she was telling me the story, she said, "I was shocked that came out of my mouth, but I did just want one day to be angry." THIS is acknowledging your feelings. Emily allowed herself to feel angry because she was legit angry. In her email, she shared how skeptical she was about the process but how much better she felt. "I didn't feel like a victim (like I thought I would) feeling the anger empowered me. I am amazed how much it helped."

Feeling your feelings isn't something you have to DO it is something your body naturally does, you just have to give yourself permission. So the next time you notice yourself listing all the negatives in your life, ask yourself, "How does this make me feel?" With each response, just allow yourself to soften and give yourself some empathy and grace such as "Oh, that sucks." or "Oh Sweet Pea," and then ask yourself again, "How does this make me feel?" At first, you might have to ask yourself multiple times before you soften into the actual feeling. This process allows you to move past the shallow end and swim in the deep water. Ride those waves. It is life-changing.

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Episode 077: Judgment and Jealousy They Are Not ALL Bad

The quote "Stop comparing your insides to other people's outside." is a big ah-ha for people. But comparing ourselves is something we do ALL THE TIME. What can be gained from doing that? Can we engage in comparison without beating ourselves up?

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Today, I want to talk about two topics that are pervasive, and I think something that all of us can have in common, the idea of judgment and jealousy. Judgment and jealousy come from comparing ourselves.

One of my favorite quotes that I'm sure you've heard is, "Stop comparing your insides to other people's outsides." I love that quote because it is such an a-ha of, "Oh, that is what I'm doing. I'm looking at someone's snapshot of their lives on social media, or I'm listening to a story that's just one little piece of what's happening in someone's life. I'm comparing my whole life; I'm comparing my inner dialogue and everything that's going on with my life to the one that little thing that they're showing me."

We can get in trouble doing it. It is a toxic practice. The challenge about fabulous quotes like that is then you're like, "Okay. That's a great quote, and it's a great a-ha. Oh my gosh, that's so amazing, but what do I do next? I keep doing that. I know I need to stop comparing my insides to other people's outsides, but I'm still doing it." I want to dive a little deeper today into two of the things that pop up when we're comparing our insides to other people's outsides, and it's judgment and jealousy. Those two themes are what comes out of that comparison. That comparison can get our monger fired up. To protect us, our BFF steps in to be like, "Don't worry about it. They are this, this, and this."

We come up with all these different judgments on the person that we're watching. A common way that people do this comparison thing is, especially now, Valentine's Day is looking at other people's relationships. I have clients that will come in, and maybe they're struggling in their relationship with their partner. Then, they get on social media, or they go out with another couple, and they're like, "Oh my God. They have it all figured out. They have it all together. They're so annoying. They're all over each other. It's PDA all the time." All this judgment and jealousy starts coming up and raising its ugly head.

It's coming up because our monger is inside of us, telling us, "You should be like them. You should be that loving. You should be that wonderful. You don't deserve a partner that treats you like that. You don't deserve that." Our BFF steps up to protect us and is like, "No, no, no. They're the ugly ones. They're the gross ones. It's ridiculous. No, love like that doesn't exist. I mean, I bet he's cheating on her. He's cheating on her."

Our BFF steps in to ease that negativity that's coming from our monger. Both of those defensive mechanisms, the monger, and the BFF, aren't helping matters. We are still stuck feeling like crap. Now, we're sitting in judgment and jealousy, which doesn't feel that great either. I want to encourage you to use that judgment and jealousy instead of shaming yourself for having judgment and jealousy, to get curious about the judgment and jealousy. To ask yourself, "What is it about that relationship that I'm jealous of? What is it about that relationship that I want more of in my own life?"

Rather than just immediately stepping into judgment of yourself or judgment of the other people, to start getting curious about what is it that they have that I want? There was an interesting article that was written that said, "Envy can help us figure out what's most important to us." It was just an interesting spin on the idea that when we are envious of someone when we have judgment and jealousy, we can then be like, "Oh. What is it about that that I need to add to my own life?"

Sometimes when we dig a little deeper, we don't want what's required to get what they have. A client was telling me about how they were watching on social media someone who was traveling a lot. She was jealous of how much they were traveling. All these exotic vacations they were going on, how amazing it was. It just looked so fabulous. We started exploring like, "What is it about that you want in your own life? How can we start getting more travel?" Also, she came to the realization, "But wait a minute. I really like being home. I'm not someone who loves to travel around and go to a variety of places. I like going on my standard vacation of two weeks a year, but I don't want to be a nomad. I want to have my home base, and I value a home base."

Once she was able to get past shaming herself for the judgment and jealousy, she could start realizing, "Wait a minute. I don't want that in my life. That isn't for me." Once we can step back from the BFF and the monger fighting, we can recognize it's not a terrible thing to be a nomad. I don't have to sit in judgment of that experience. I don't have to sit in judgment of myself that I'm not seeking out different destinations and being adventurous in my life. Right now, that doesn't fit into my life, and that's okay. She decided that when they went on their two-week vacations and their small vacations throughout the year, she wanted to throw in a little bit more adventure. She didn't want to go to the same spot over and over again.

That's just a small example of how judgment and jealousy show up. The biggest way I see it is in judging other people's relationships and being jealous of other people's relationships. Also, judging people's careers and how far they're getting ahead and what they're doing, and how you should be further along with them. That is just a great reminder to be like, "Let me look at this differently."

Let me look at my judgment and jealousy and say, "Okay. A, do I want what they have? What do I want about what they have?" Like the woman who said, "I want to have more adventure and travel in my life in the two-week vacation slots that I have." She was able to discern what is it that I want from my jealousy and judgment? What can I pull from their experience into my own life? Then, what is it I don't want? What is it that they had to do? What are they giving up? What are they sacrificing? What are they willing to struggle with to gain that thing that it looks like I want?

The E-Trade commercials that have been out recently where they show a woman's waiting in line at Starbucks and she's scrolling through her social media. They talk about the person that she's watching and how she's doing. This person's doing all these amazing things and has this amazing life, and #nofilter, and all the sunsets that she watches. The voiceover is like, "You would be happier watching so-and-so on Instagram if you were making more money than her." You might be more jealous of all these things she has, but the bottom line, you just want to be making more money.

It's a tongue-in-cheek example of really getting to the heart of where the jealousy and judgment are coming from. That commercial does an awesome job of showcasing that you can be envious of someone, but that doesn't have to be toxic. It can just be a way to highlight the stuff you want to add to your own life. No, you don't want to be the person that's traveling around and doing all these crazy things and putting your life on Instagram. You do want to be making more money. Both are true, and so what's important when it comes to jealousy and judgment is recognizing what's underneath that.

Instead of going there and asking ourselves what's underneath that, we get all caught up in judging ourselves for being jealous and judgemental. We never get to unearth what it's really about. That is where our monger and our BFF keep us stuck. That's what I love about the power of the biggest fan. The biggest fan can step in and say, "You're feeling that. Let's look a little deeper at what is underneath it." Where our monger and BFF are constantly trying to be like, "Everything's okay. Everything's fine. We're fine, we're fine, we're fine," and keep things just on the surface.

To be happier, we have to be willing to dive a little deeper and offer some wisdom and discernment to ourselves. I love the term grace because we have to be giving ourselves the grace to recognize there's some wiggle room here. The all-or-nothing thinking of the monger and the BFF is not serving us. My challenge to you, as you go through the next week, is to start paying attention to when jealousy and judgment come up. I guarantee you; they come up quite a bit. If you have an inner critic, they are there. I encourage you to take it to the next level, take it a little deeper, and see what happens.

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Episode 076: Sneaky Ways Your Inner Monger Sabotages You

Now and then someone will say to me "I don't think I have a Monger." And my answer is always, 'Yes you do. Your Monger is just sneaky." We underestimate how much our Monger chats at us and how accepting we have become to her message. Today I am looking at some habits/behaviors you might have that are inspired by your Monger.

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Hey everyone, so glad to be back here. Today I want to talk about something that comes up quite a bit when we're talking about the inner critic and the Monger, is that people will say to me, "I don't think I have this inner Monger that you talk about." A lot of times when people are saying that it's either one or two things. One is we all have a Monger; I fully believe we all have a Monger. Sometimes the Monger is quieter than others. For some people, their Monger isn't as loud and belittling and shaming as it is for other people. I have a loud Monger, and she is very vocal in almost everything I do. Some people don't have that loud of a voice. But the other thing is, a lot of times, we have so minimized the voice of the Monger, or I should say normalized the voice of the Monger, that we don't even know it's there. So we don't even know where it is sabotaging us, so where it's keeping us stuck.

Today I want to offer just a little insight into how the Monger shows up in some sneaky ways that you may not be recognizing is the Monger that's holding you back. Today I want to touch on some of those. I was talking with a friend of mine earlier this week, and she was saying that recently she realized how much of a perfectionist that she is. I giggled because I had known for a long time that she was a perfectionist. I just thought it was something she knew. But in her mind, a perfectionist was someone who was prim and proper, and the house always looked perfect, and her hair always looked perfect, and they were perfectly put together. That is a version of a perfectionist, but another more common version of a perfectionist is someone who is pretty disorganized. I call it being an 80 percenter, meaning they do 80% of a job, and they leave the remaining 20%. So they might have a bunch of different projects going, but none of them are finished. Usually, that's a sign of someone who is a perfectionist.

You may be thinking like, "How can that be because they have all these different things going, and none of them are perfect?" That is exactly why they are a perfectionist. They can't finish anything because their Monger is constantly telling them how terrible it is, and so their defense mechanism against that is only to do 80%. Then the remaining 20% is there, and when they get to the task, whenever that may be, they will do that extra 20% perfectly. That 20% will be perfect. Because there's so much pressure on that remaining 20%, they never actually do it. This is one of those sneaky ways that your Monger shows up. If you find that you're someone that can't ever complete a task all the way through, or you struggle with that, then it might be because your Monger is shaming you so much that you can't commit to doing the last 20%. Because if you were to commit to doing the last 20%, the pressure would be too great to make it perfect, so you do 80% of a task.

My husband, he's actually the one that coined the phrase because he will run the vacuum and then leave the vacuum sitting out. So he doesn't put the vacuum away, even though the house looks beautiful, he's run the vacuum in the entire house, but he's Monger is constantly telling him, "Well, you missed this spot, and you missed that spot, and you missed that spot." So if the vacuum is out, he can convince himself that he's not done vacuuming, and so it quiets his Monger. Meanwhile, the vacuum's still out, and he never really gave himself the appreciation for the fact that he vacuumed the whole house, so his Monger still won. That's a sneaky way that our Monger sabotages us, is if it can convince us that we have to be perfect, and it's another form of perfectionism.

In that same vein, if you were someone that tends to be a procrastinator, then you probably have a problem with perfectionism because your Monger is telling you how perfect whatever task you're working on has to be, and so procrastinate on it. This is coming up a lot for me lately because I am trying to do more media and pitch my book and get it out there, out into the world, now that it's been made public. My Monger is constantly telling me the risks of that and the fear that I have around that and telling me how that could go wrong, and I could fail, and so I keep procrastinating on it, and procrastinating on it, and procrastinating on it. That's a way that I know my Monger's running the show because I'm procrastinating.

The last one that falls under this perfectionist vain is indecision. A common example of this would be what color am I going to paint my house? It's a big decision, permanent decision, it's going to be there for a few years, really gotta have to dive into that decision. We can't come up with it because the Monger is constantly telling us that it has to be perfect and we have to come up with a perfect color, and what will people think? So indecision is a big one, and it goes along in the vein of procrastinating because we put off making the decision because we don't want to make the wrong one.

The next behavior I want to talk about is in the perfectionism, procrastination vein. It is in the vein of being critical of other people. This happens a lot. When our Mongers are chatting at us all day long, our BFFs will jump in to ease that pressure valve, "You're not that terrible, Nancy, because look at your neighbor, they're 50,000 times worse than you at this, and this, and this, and this. This is a silly example, but I was driving home today, and it's been snowing here, so our car is covered in salt, and it's just disgusting, and I can't keep up with keeping it clean. I'll drive around and look at other cars to make sure if my car is not as dirty as their car, then I feel a little better because I'm not taking care of my car because they're not taking care of their car worst than I'm not taking care of my car. Which is just silly when you say it out loud, but that's kind of how our BFF works to protect us from this voice of this Monger, is to tell us, "It's okay, their car is so much worst."

These four ways of perfectionism, not finishing something, procrastination and indecision, and the judging of other people are ways that our Monger shows up in sneaky ways. We might not be aware that it's the Monger that's causing us to behave in these ways. To start paying attention to when is it that you are indecisive, when is that you can't finish something, when is it that you're procrastinating on something, and when is it you're super judgmental of other people? And then stop and ask yourself, "Wait a minute, was that my Monger chatting? What is my Monger chatting on about?" Then to go into the ASK process, and you can hear from your Biggest Fans, Acknowledge what you're feeling, Slow down and get into your body, and Kindly pull back to see the big picture.

But I really think the key to all of this anxiety reduction and reducing overwhelm, and all the stuff that I work on is recognizing when our Monger is chatting, so we can reduce that voice and bring in the voice of our Biggest Fan. But when we are constantly allowing the Monger voice to chat unchecked, it weighs on us, and it's heavy, and it's exhausting. The more we can start paying attention to what are the ways our Monger is sneaking in there, what are the behaviors I engage in when my Monger is sneaking in and how can I do this differently, and how can I bring in my Biggest Fan? That's where the real crux of this work is. I know for me that I'm a huge procrastinator; that is more of my favorite go-to than 80% of doing a task. I'm not so much of an 80 percenter, but I am a huge procrastinator; I'm a master procrastinator. I know when I am feeling my Monger overwhelming me, and I'm spending way too much time on Facebook and heading down the social media rabbit hole, that I need to get my Biggest Fan in check. It's been very helpful in my productivity noticing when my Monger is chatting because our Monger keeps us stuck in not only anxiety and overwhelm, but just for moving forward with our goals, it just keeps us out of productivity.

Those are some sneaky ways that your Monger is sabotaging your life.

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