Season 4 Episode 6: Rest: Wintering

A conversation with Katherine May, author of the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, about offering ourselves grace through the difficult, dark periods of life.

Have you ever been through a period of your life where you felt like nothing was going right? And during that period, did you think: "Oh my god, what is WRONG with me?? I have to get out of this as fast as I can!!" Well, Nancy's been there. But after talking with Katherine May, author of the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, she learned that these difficult, dark periods are just a part of life. And it's the grace that we show ourselves as we get through them, that really matters.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal relationship with wintering.

• Nancy's journey to accept wintering as an important stage of life.

• Nancy's conversation with author Katherine May about the importance of rest in difficult times.

• Tips for folks with HFA who may be going through a winter themselves.

Learn more about Katherine May:

• Go to https://katherine-may.co.uk/

• Buy Katherine's book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times on her website,

• Pre-order her forthcoming book, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, out in March 2023.

• Listen to Katherine's podcast, The Wintering Sessions, wherever you get your podcasts.

• Follow Katherine on Twitter @_katherine_may_

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy Jane Smith: Hey, guys. It's me, Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to The Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships. I am. So excited about today's episode, which might sound funny because it's all about those times in life that can feel like you're going 10 rounds with a bout of bad luck when all you can do is hunker down, wait it out, and try to give yourself some grace to rest and move at your own pace.

For this episode, I talked with Katherine May, author of a book all about those walking through the valley moments called Wintering. She helped me to see those hibernation times in a whole new light. Not a cheery Christmas tree light, but maybe like a flickering campfire. Her approach to the idea of wintering honors the difficulty of those dark times while acknowledging the fact that they do eventually come to an end, and that, to me, felt kind of radical.

When we were brainstorming guests for this season about rest. I wanted to talk about resting as a form of social change as we tossed around ideas. Katherine May's book, Wintering, came to the forefront. Not because Katherine May is a big social change agent but because her book is radical. Wintering, as Katherine May describes, it is a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.

Everyone winters throughout their lives. I know many people in my life who are wintering being sandwiched between preteen kids and aging parents, surviving the early months of blurry-eyed exhaustion with a newborn. Or dealing with a job setback that throws everything into question. Before I interviewed Katherine, I read her book.

I loved the book. I related to it on so many levels. I laughed out loud and got tears in my eyes. Remembering past winters I'd experienced. After reading it, I did what I always do when I finish a book, go to Amazon and see what the reviewer said. I do this to see if I agree with the reviewers or to see if there's anything else I can learn from the book.

Of course, there were people like me who loved the book, and of course, some people didn't like the book, but I was shocked by why they didn't like the book. The reasons fell into one of two camps. Reason. She was privileged for daring to winter and reason. Her reasons for wintering weren't bad enough. Of course, my Monger got ahold of me for a brief moment saying, well, of course, you loved the book.

“You are privileged, and you're soft. So, of course, you think everyone should winter, but everyone needs to suck it up and quit being babies.”

Geez, Monger. Even though the Monger's voice was strong in my head, I knew there was more to wintering. That's why I couldn't wait to talk with Katherine May herself.

Nancy Jane Smith: Oh, I am so excited to talk to you today.

Katherine May: It's really fun. Do you know what? I was just thinking. It's been ages since I did a podcast interview. I've been having a little break over the summer, so this is so nice. Nancy Jane Smith: Welcome back to the world of podcast interviewing, Woohoo. This is Katherine May. She's many things, an author, a podcaster, a mom, and a former school.

Katherine May: Oh my goodness. I have had the most windy, divergent career path possible. I worked in branding for a while, and then I did some hilarious temping jobs, including, uh, working in a nursing agency that was based in a former mortuary. Oh, that was quite an exciting one. Then I became a high school teacher for a while.

And after that, I worked in various sort of arts education settings and gradually transitioned into becoming a full-time writer. That's awesome. It didn't feel awesome at the time. It felt like raw chaos, to be honest. I'm going to lie to you. It was not. It never felt like, uh, very directional, let's say when other people were beginning to save for pensions and things, I was in despair.

Nancy Jane Smith: Like I would, I think, oh, that's awesome. You've had all these different experiences. You've been in a variety of places you really got to to get to know yourself in a variety of ways. And just like, you know, reading the book, ah, wintering is amazing, and we all need to winter and da, da, da, da, da. But my. It's not amazing.

Yeah, I mean the concept is amazing, but the process sucks.

Katherine May: I know. It's really funny actually because you can always tell when someone who's interviewing me hasn't read the book because they'll either say, so Katherine, what are your tips for, like getting through wintering really fast? Or they'll say, so Katherine, you think it's great during the winter.

I'm like, no, no, no. None of those things. No, it's absolutely terrible. And. Like, I think it's really time that we started to have that frank conversation about terrible times being terrible and just to let that sit for a while.

Nancy Jane Smith: Katherine is totally right. When I have dark moments in my life, I feel like I need to get through them as fast as. I never think about the fact that I've actually been conditioned to keep my head down and to not acknowledge how difficult my suffering is.

Katherine May: We don't have the patience to let people say, I'm having a terrible time.

And not to immediately pick up with, oh, but you are learning so much. Or, oh, but actually looking on the bright side, ah, no, it's fine. Like terrible times are terrible, and suffering is not relative. Like when we are suffering. We're just engaged in suffering. We're not thinking, oh, this is ameliorated by knowing that someone else is, you know, losing a leg while I'm just losing a toe.

I think we're in such a hurry, and we're so afraid of looking weak that we, we really struggle to say, this is just awful.

Nancy Jane Smith: Sitting with those challenging feelings, acknowledging the difficulty of those dark, That's what Katherine's book Wintering is all about. But it took a brush with the concept to make her realize that she had a lot to say on the subject.

Katherine May: Sitting in a bar with a friend one night, and she was talking about her life at that moment, and she was just, you know, in, in a lot of despair, honestly, like a lot of things weren't going right for her and. She started saying, like, kind of, that's, that's it. I'm done. I've failed everything. And I had this moment of clarity when I thought, I can see the shape that your life is in and where you are, like in the, in the scheme of things, you know, you're, you are in the dip.

But, but that's just a very specific place. And I, I was a little, uh, tipsy, but I start saying, you're just wintering at the moment. Like, Honestly, this is fine. Like this is just where you are. This is not over. This is just the phase of your life that you are in very specifically, and I recognize it so well.

Um, and of course, I had to go straight home and take notes about it.

Nancy Jane Smith: Katherine borrowed the term wintering from a poem by Sylvia Plath. Go read it. It's dark but amazing, but it gave the term her own spin based on her own experiences with winter.

Katherine May: So wintering is a natural kind of metaphor for the times in life when we feel frozen, so we might feel, uh, blocked from progress.

We might feel hopeless; we might feel cut off from the rest of the world. I make the point in the book that it's a really vile time. It's a really unpleasant, horrible time in our life, but it's also a time. When everything stops and therefore we get to reorient ourselves again.

Nancy Jane Smith: Katherine also uses the landscape of winter snow, burrowing trees encased in ice throughout the book as a metaphor and backdrop for the concept of wintering.

Katherine May: The book is really a deep dive into my love of winter and all the beautiful things that happen in that frozen landscape and how that can apply to human life too, and how even in the most desperate, difficult times, We are still living life to its fullest extent, and there is value in that time. There is definitely a process going on that maybe we can't read at that moment, but ultimately we can look back upon it and see how much it gave us.

Nancy Jane Smith: So it's funny, I just had a conversation with my nephew recently where he was talking about how much he hates summer and loves winter. Ah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I. I'm almost 50, and I just admitted that. I was like, you're right. I don't love it; I love winter way more than summer. And there was so much shame for me.

Which is so bizarre because everyone's like summer, summer, summer, summer. Yeah. And so the fact that then when I read how much you loved winter too, I was like, ah, I'm not alone in this. What is it? What is it you love about?

Katherine May: I, there are so many things I love about winter. I think it's partly a reaction to the hot weather. Like I'm very uncomfortable in hot weather. I find it very hard to think straight. I find it hard to get anything done, so when winter comes, it always feels like a relief to me. I think it feels like a gentler season than summer.

I love the cold, crisp days. I love snow. I enjoy rain quite a lot, if I'm completely honest. I love frost. I love the sight of bear trees. Visually. I find it really fulfilling and sustaining, um, in a way that I find summer very bland and over bright and sort of bleached.

Nancy Jane Smith: Katherine, like me, also loves the things we do in the winter, restorative preparative, cocooning-type activities.

Katherine May: I love the feeling of snuggling into your own house and making a cozy space. I'm, I live for sweater weather. I love chunky socks. You know, I love candlelight on dark afternoons. I love soup. Um, I love baking cakes and making jam from all the wonderful things you can pick in the autumn. I just think it's actually an incredibly restorative season.

Uh, and the kelts called it, you know, the dark half of the year, and they characterized it as gestational, which I think is such a perfect way to think about winter, whereas summer is all about production and newness and like busyness. Winter is about brewing the next thing, like sitting quietly and getting ready for the next phase in your life, whatever it is.

And I find that really exciting.

Nancy Jane Smith: It's such a great idea of, um, the rest, the dormant period of winter that underneath the surface of winter, nature is preparing for the next thing. Yeah.

Katherine May: And I, I think the way that I think about it is it's. Part of the way that the year finds balance, like it, it's not the same all year round.

There are times when we are going out into the world, and we are full of energy, and we are ready to make change and generate new ideas and maybe work really hard in order to get things done. And there are times when we are resting and thinking and reflecting and evaluating, and both are necessary.

That's the thing like I can't get rid of summer no matter how hot and sticky I get at the same time like I need my winters. It is like a crazy graph that goes up and down like a rollercoaster. It's not a straight line. But that's so fundamentally human, isn't it? We're not the same all the time. We don't have the same needs across our lives and across our years.

And when I think about winter now, I just think about it as a phase that we pass through, and, it is limited, and that's what's important to remember. Like whether you love it or you hate it. Mm-hmm. , uh, it's fleeting as everything else is.

Nancy Jane Smith: So the theme of this season for this podcast is rest, which is why I wanted to chat with you because wintering is a time of rest, obviously. Yeah. But it's that permission to rest. How did you finally give yourself permission to rest, or, you know, how does that play into this?

Katherine May: Well, so here's the thing. If you don't learn to rest, rest visits you. And it does it forcibly like you will be rested. You know, and I think that's what we don't fully understand when we talk about rest, is that actually.

To do it when it's chosen is to catch something early because all around me, people are making themselves sick through overwork, through endless care, and pressure and completely unsustainable lifestyles. And when people drop out from those lifestyles, we tend to think that they have like failed personally.

And we don't think about the system that they exist in that just doesn't ever give them a break. And so, uh, rest is really catching sickness early. Like that's, that's how we should think about rest. Mm-hmm. rest isn't that picture that we think we understand. You know, like you get a picture in a magazine that's about rest and it's a woman in like past colors and yoga leggings and maybe a little bit of cashmere perhaps.

And she's got like a cup of herbal tea and she's reading a magazine and she's sitting on the sofa with her feet up looking blissful.

Nancy Jane Smith: Well, I don't know about you, but for me, rest definitely doesn't look like a picture in a knitting magazine that makes it seem like there's only one way to rest. And Katherine says that's totally not true.

Katherine May: I can't rest like that. That's not how I rest. I am a very fidgety person and I rest in motion so too, for me to rest, I'm changing what I'm doing. I'm changing action. I'm changing the way I think about what my day is, you know, so I will rest by cooking a big meal or by actually like, I love cooking to store, like I love cooking, like chutneys and jams and pickles, and.

Big batches of things to put in the freezer. For me, that's really restful. Mm-hmm. , because I'm going through a completely different process to the normal process of my day and I'm. I'm moving, I'm moving my hands, which is easing tension in my body and it's soothing my central nervous system. Mm-hmm. That's rest. Mm-hmm. Right? There are many, many other ways that you might rest. Like I rest by swimming, I rest by, uh, walking. It's not passive rest. It's not a simple bodily stoppage.

Nancy Jane Smith: Katherine reminded me that rest is something you actively have to take time for. Like she said, it's not some passive state.

It's a choice, but I know firsthand how hard it is to prioritize when the world is screaming at you to go, go, go.

Katherine May: I just think it's so important for us to know. It won't just happen naturally if we don't make space for it in our days. And I say that in full acknowledgment of how hard that is, but that's why it's important to think about this on a societal level rather than individual level, because otherwise we turn rest into this like special luxury that only some people can have because they're essentially rich enough to have it right.

They buy the space to rest in. Mm-hmm. And if we start to see it as like a fundamental human need, then we can really start talking about how rest is something we provide on a communal basis and something that we make space for others so that they can make space for us to rest as well. Like it becomes integrated in what we do because no matter how we try to avoid it or brush.

Nancy Jane Smith: The need to rest, even the cycle of wintering, is always going to catch up with you.

Katherine May: And it just isn't as optional as we would like to believe. That's the truth of this. Like bad things will still happen to you no matter how hard you work or how hard you plan, or how aggressively you defend the space around your busyness.

And how pure and great and important that makes you, it can come crashing down in an instant, and we need to show so much more compassion to the people for whom that is a reality, but we also need to look at our own lives and think about how we can build in space to rest if we need to, but also to, acknowledge that it might not work out for us in the way that we're we're hoping, but building that space is really hard.

Nancy Jane Smith: That's part of what makes this wintering idea so radical. It goes against everything that society tells us about how we should act.

Katherine May: Western societies in general, are up to our eyeballs in stress, and we know just how sick stress makes us. And it, it seems to me that in the last 20 years, maybe our culture has adjusted to that, but it's adjusted to it by saying, okay, you need to do this stuff that makes you superhuman, and then it's going to be okay.

So you have to eat these foods and exercise in this way, and you must also meditate twice a day. And you must also, right? Like all this massive list of things, you're supposed to do. And a, it's like impossible to fit all of that in. But what that means is that it doesn't stop anyone from aging or getting sick.

What it does is it makes us feel much worse about those things happening to us because we think there's been a flaw in our behavior. Mm-hmm, and it makes us. Prone to when it happens to someone else, looking at them and trying to work out the reason that they got it wrong, like trying to figure out what mistake they made so that we can't make it.

And that adds to the stress and anxiety loop. Um, but it also is just such a hard way to live, honestly. It is such a hard, unpleasant, me-minded way for us to be forced to live. I think what people don't always realize is that, yeah, I am actually saying something quite radical. It's not as gentle as it maybe sounds.

Yeah. There we go. And every day, every now and again, you see that land on someone, and they're like, Ooh, ooh,

Nancy Jane Smith: For me and my friends who are going through our own wintering with aging parents and our own personal illnesses. Not looking for advice from you, but just, um, I would love it. No, I'm kidding. I would love it if you give it, but just how do you have any thoughts on that? Like how do we withstand that?

How do you hold both wintering and living in the present?

Katherine May: It's massively hard, and I think you particularly mentioning like looking after aging parents, I think one of the really. Eviscerating parts of that experience is knowing that that's going to come to us one day as well. We're in that with two feet, almost like we are dealing with the emergency of care and how grueling that can be and how hard it can be too.

Give someone a, a sort of compassionate response when we ourselves are tired and overstretched and worried with also that, that it's mortality visiting us too, and it's, and it's seeing our own future vulnerability. And I, I just think that's a really very particular time of our life. The only honest answer is to know that it's going to be a hard phase.

Like you can't shortcut your way out of it being hard. I think that's the fundamental truth, but at the same time, it's okay to alleviate that for yourself as much as you possibly can. It's okay to get someone else to clean your house while you, you are going intending to them, or you know, whatever it is that works for you.

And I know that's really different for everyone.

Nancy Jane Smith: Hearkening back to something she mentioned earlier. Katherine says that building a strong community that understands and respects what you're going through in these difficult periods of life is super important and maybe one of the most radical ways we can make room for our wintering journeys.

Katherine May: Find the company of other people who are going through that, because that's rest. You know, being understood is really restful, actually. Um, and sharing duties as much as you can is, is restful. Finding those corners to actively rest whenever you can is the most unleashed you can do. And, and knowing that, that it will pass one day, but it's, it's just really hard, and no one can take that off of you really.

Nancy Jane Smith: Because it is the existential. I mean, it's both, but that existential piece, that's a, that is tough, man. Yeah. And it's been cool because a small group of us have like joined and vent to each other because you got to have some support somewhere.

Katherine May: Yeah. These hard times visit us and it's an interesting moment to reflect on how we are going to be at the final stages of our life.

And, We want to be supported and taken care of too, because it's coming for all of us. Nancy Jane Smith: You know, as you're talking, two things keep popping up. Three things. One, I'll put it together. The radical act of this, which you've mentioned and, and the political act of this in the states especially, but also the idea of that our bodies know what to do. Yeah, yeah. You know, if we could just give our bodies permission to have space. That's what I'm hearing you talking about. It's space to think and wander physically and mentally. Katherine May: Yeah, it's, it's the idea of convalescence, actually, which we don't really have anymore. But illnesses don't just. Stop.

And I, and like when I'm saying illness, like I think we can stretch that to, to fit like major life events as well. Mm-hmm. it was an acknowledged transition back to wellness, and we've totally lost that, haven't we? Like you are sick, or you are Well, and there's no boundary in between. Mm-hmm. and that's the dangerous bit because that's when we can make ourselves sick all over. Yeah, I, it's, it's worth fighting for. Like that rehumanizing of wellness and of health and of mental health is just so urgent, and we seem to get further and further away from it because we are locked in this fantasy that we can defeat illness instead of just acknowledging it as a natural part of our existence and, and mm-hmm.

Working that into how our society is balanced.

Nancy Jane Smith: Because so much of what you're talking about is reconnecting with the natural world, whether in the cycles, in being in nature, literally in reconnecting with ourselves and our connection to nature. Like it's, that is radical. Yeah.

Katherine May: And, we are natural, you know,

Yes. Yeah. And we find it hard to imagine that now like, we are natural, like we are part of the biological world, and we function in the same way as the rest of it. Mm-hmm. And I, you know, like when you look at animals, they rest all the time. They really, I mean, my dog is snoring next to me right now, right?

So, yeah, she, she goes out, she does a little bit of walking, and then she's like, oh, I'm pooped. I'm going to lie down for five hours and snore while you're trying to concentrate. We find it so hard to know that we are valuable. Unfortunately, we are valuable, and we are forever vulnerable to something happening that stops us from being strong for a while.

Um, and you know, how we treat people who are weak when we are strong predicts how we'll feel about our moments of weakness. So I think we can learn in our strong moments too. Kinder to people who we perceive as weak, then we might be setting ourselves up for like a better, slightly better future.

Nancy Jane Smith: Like so many difficult parts of being human, wintering is often about acceptance. And listening to the kind and gentle voice in your head when you're going through something difficult rather than the mean self-critical voice. Speaking of that mean self-critical voice. When we last left off, I was reading the Amazon book reviews for wintering, and my monger was unhelpfully chiming in with all the reasons why wintering was for.

Fortunately, it didn't take long before I heard my biggest fan, and she said, this is why you wanted to talk about this on your podcast. This isn't a you problem, but a cultural problem. Yes, it is a cultural problem, and this is why wintering is a radical idea. It isn't about cozy campfires and soft wool blankets.

Wintering is about being loyal to yourself when you are going through a fallow period. When you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider, and that is countercultural, as witnessed by all the critics on Amazon. I know in the past, my first response has been to judge myself during a wintering period, but I want to remember that wintering is part of being human.

It isn't weak or strong, but part of the human. Yes. Some people can afford to literally cut themselves off from the world and dive into their wintering experience, and there are those whose wintering experience might be triggered by something I might view as less dramatic than my own. And at the end of the day, does that matter?

No. What matters? Being loyal to yourself when you are going through a fallow period in life when you're cut off from the. Feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.

That's it for this week. In our next episode, we're going to talk about one of the biggest reasons it's so hard for me to prioritize rest in my life, my rules for rest. If you have high-functioning anxiety, you probably have 'em too. We'll talk with one of my clients about her rules and how she's learning to break them.

That's next time on The Happier Approach. The Happier Approach is produced by Nikki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod five and Epidemic Sound for more episodes. To get in touch or to learn more about quieting high-functioning anxiety, you can visit Nancy Jane Smith. Do. And if you like the show, leave us a review.

It actually helps us out a lot. A great big thank you to Katherine May for speaking with us today. You can follow Katherine on Twitter @_katherine_may_, or go to her website, https://katherine-may.co.uk/ to listen to her podcast. The Wintering Sessions buy her book Wintering the Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Or preorder her forthcoming book Enchantment Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, available in March 2023. That's Katherine with the K dash May like the month, dot co.UK. And if you enjoyed the episode, stay tuned for an extra special bonus episode that includes my full conversation with Katherine.

That'll be coming out at the end of our regular season. The happier approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care until then.

Season 4 Episode 5: Rest: The Dreaded Napping Experiment

Most people think that napping is great! A little break during the middle of the day. But Nancy HATES naps, with a fiery passion

Most people think that napping is great! A little break during the middle of the day. But Nancy HATES naps, with a fiery passion. They don't help her feel refreshed, and she just wakes up feeling yucky. But! She has a sinking suspicion that if she gave the whole napping thing a try her way, then maybe she could make napping work for her. So Nancy embarks on the dreaded NAPPING EXPERIMENT... DUN DUN DUN. And chats again with Dr. Sara Mednick to learn: what's so great about napping?

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal relationship with napping.

• Nancy's journey to accomplish the NAPPING EXPERIMENT... DUN DUN DUN.

• Insight into why napping could work for you with sleep expert Dr. Sara Mednick.

• Tips for folks with HFA who want to try napping for themselves.

+ Read the Transcript

Happier Approach Season 4 Episode 5 Napping Transcript Nancy Jane Smith: Hey guys, it's me, Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to The Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships. In today's episode, I confront a topic that feels kind of divisive. At least to me, napping. I really don't like napping.

And sometimes, when I'm upfront about my anti-napping stance, people are like, but why? Naps are amazing. Honestly, I just don't get it. And those pro nappers extolling the virtues of a midday snooze tend to provoke my high functioning. My Monger jumps in; why can't you just be normal and enjoy napping?

What's wrong with you? So I decided to take a shot at this whole napping thing, but to try to do it in a way that makes sense for me. I hate napping. It isn't just that I don't take the time to nap or I don't allow myself a nap. I mean, those things are true too. But truthfully, my hatred of naps overrides all other reasons.

Case in point. As part of this episode, my assignment was to take a nap and see if it made a difference in my life. The benign assignment of taking a nap evolved quickly into the Napping Challenge. The Challenge, take a nap for 60 minutes and record how I feel before and after that. Is it nothing too intense or complex? Take a nap. But you would've thought the assignment was to put needles under my fingernails, for as much as I dreaded doing it. Nikki, my producer, gave me the rough deadline of early next week when we chatted on the previous Wednesday. I added the nap challenge to my Google reminders, which also show up on our Google Nest hub in the kitchen.

So Thursday at 9:00 AM, the British Google voice from the kitchen announces, "I have a reminder for Nancy Jane: do the napping experiment." Oh, my husband said, today's the day, huh? Well, technically, I have until early next week, which I figure means Wednesday at the latest, but I want to give myself some time to be thinking about it.

Okay. My husband said, skeptically. Why do you hate naps so much? He who naps every day didn't quite understand my hatred of naps. Well, I said, I rarely feel refreshed after a nap, and I usually wake up feeling nauseous and gross. Basically, the complete opposite of me, right? My husband said, yep. I replied as I returned.

The truth is I do occasionally take a nap falling asleep in the middle of a movie or TV show, but being deliberate about crawling into bed and taking a nap always left me feeling nauseated and unrefreshed, exceptions for if I'm sick or in my drinking days when I was hungover. I also have memories of college, rushing to my dorm room between classes to nap for 20.

I could not have survived college without those 20-minute naps, whether in my room or resting my head on my desk in the library when studying. I got much less sleep in college than I do now, so I needed those naps to survive the day. But I do have some positive experiences with napping. Okay, back to the NAP Challenge.

To fight the nausea, I decided to take the nap before lunch, and because I dreaded the nap so much, I gave myself some grace on time. When I talked to the sleep expert, Dr. Sara Mednick, more from her in a minute, she said that ideally, you rest for 30 to 60 minutes, so I'm going for 30 minutes. That feels more do.

Friday at 9:00 AM, the British Google voice from the kitchen announces. "I have a reminder for Nancy Jane: do the napping experiment."

"Is today the day?!" my husband said.

"Nope." I replied, "not today and not tomorrow. I am too busy to nap, but Sunday, I think I'll nap when we get home from Mom's".

Sunday. I rolled around, and I was too wired after Mom's to sleep, so I told myself Monday it had to happen on Monday.

Monday at 9:00 AM, the British Google voice from the kitchen announces, "I have a reminder for Nancy Jane: do the napping experiment." Yep, I'm going to do it today. By Monday, my day had exploded, and I had run out of time.

By 2:00 PM, my Monger was weighing in: "Good grief. What is the deal? You have to nap? Cry me a river. Why is that so terrible? You're such a crybaby."

Also, my Monger was saying, "Napping, you're going to nap?!? You have work to do."

Finally, on Tuesday, I didn't even set the reminder on Google because I had procrastinated as long as I could. I knew today was the day.

With much dread and pain, I napped, and here's how it went. So it's Tuesday. Today's a Tuesday. I have to take a nap. That's all it is. I have to take a nap in the middle of the day to experiment with it. And I hate napping. I hate it with a passion. I hate everything about it. I hate getting undressed and getting into bed.

I hate, um, Relaxing enough in the middle of the day to fall asleep. I hate, um, when I wake up, I don't always feel better, so there's not much about it that's pleasant. But the one thing that is pleasant about it is my cat Gus is lying here. He is a napping pro showing me the power of napping as he lies here on the quilt next to me. So I am going to nap for 30 minutes. I set the alarm and, um, we'll see how I feel after 30 minutes. Here we go. Okay, Gus, Gus Mama's coming into bed. What do you think?

Oh, hm.

Let's leave me here for now. Drifting not so peacefully off to. And as I float into dreamland, I want to revisit the conversation I had earlier in the season with Dr. Sara Mednick, as we know from before. She's a sleep researcher, and she's also an expert on napping. She wrote a whole book about it. It's called Take a Nap, Change Your Life.

I was skeptical that taking a nap would change my life. So I asked Sara to explain what's so great about napping.

Tell me about the power of napping. I was going to say something more profound, but I'm going to go basic.

Sara Mednick: When I started grad school, I was working with a guy who was doing nighttime sleep. What he was showing was that you need. Six to eight hours of nighttime sleep to show any kind of benefits for memory. I came in, I'm like, yeah, but like people who nap, they wake up, and they feel amazing, and they've only had, say, half an hour or an hour of sleep.

Nancy Jane Smith: Sara wondered how could that be possible that you need six to eight hours of sleep to get a full night's rest, but you could also feel good after a short nap?

Sara Mednick: So he's like, well, why didn't you study it?

Nancy Jane Smith: So that's what she did. Sara tested people in her lab, having them nap for different lengths of time and comparing them to people who didn't nap.

Sara Mednick: And what we found is that you could get in a 90-minute nap where you go through all the different sleep stages, you could get the same magnitude of learning benefits from a nap as you could from a full night of sleep. And it was really. It was so astonishing.

Nancy Jane Smith: Based on her research, Sara wrote her book about napping, and it actually made a lot of nappers feel seen.

Sara Mednick: Everybody who's been napping suddenly felt so, uh, supported, and napping is looked at as being, you know, for people who are lazy, and you know what's wrong with you? Why do you need to sleep during the day? You should be up and working. What my research shows is actually, these people are really smart, and they're doing just as much, if not more, learning than you know and being more creative than people who are not napping.

After I published that book, I did a study looking at people who don't like to nap. Like there was a whole bunch of people that said like, I, I hate napping. I feel terrible after I nap.

Nancy Jane Smith: Yes, I fall into that category. Yeah.

Sara Mednick: And. That's really interesting how it's rare in life that you hear such a strong hatred for something.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. And that was like, I need to study that. So we actually did some research on people who are non-nappers, and I tried to see, well, do non-nappers get any benefits from them?

Nancy Jane Smith: Sara even tried to train non-nappers to see if they could turn into Nappers,

Sara Mednick: and it turns out that about 50% of the population are non-nappers, and those people don't really get any benefits from the nap.

And even when I train them to nap, they don't get any benefits.

Nancy Jane Smith: I know. I know my husband is a napper. He loves to nap and has to do it. He's one of those, gets a lot of benefits out of it, and he's like, you should nap, you should nap. And it always makes me feel worse. And so you have validated my life here with this because I was beating myself up for the fact I must be doing it wrong, you know?

Sara Mednick: Yeah. Well many. Naps, marry non-naps. Oh, interesting. It's very interesting. I mean, its opposites attract or something, but it actually causes a lot of marital strife. Mm-hmm. , I could see that because the non-napper is looking at this person like, I'm doing all this work and you are napping.

You're like, what the hell? You know, and the napper feels. Browbeaten and also like, but I need this. And like, you know, like, I feel like hell like a zombie if I don't get my nap. Right. So, so there's a real disconnect here/

Nancy Jane Smith: Yeah. We don't have that, and I could see where it would lend to marital strife. I enjoy that he takes a nap because then I get the house to myself.

Sara Mednick: Ah, that's, well, that's another good point. Enjoy it.

Nancy Jane Smith: Right. So what's the, so is it the same? What does the brain do differently when we nap versus when we sleep a full night? Or is it that you're finding it's the same?

Sara Mednick: So the sleep is the same.

You know, when you look at the brain, the brain's doing the same thing, but the confirmation of sleep across the nighttime is very different than across the day.

Nancy Jane Smith: Sara says that we have two different pressures that contribute to our sleep.

Sara Mednick: S one of them is a circadian pressure that kind of makes sure that we have a lot of energy and resources for daytime activity.

And then we have this, you know, low circadian rhythm during the night. Um, and that can determine one aspect of our sleep and then another rhythm. Is this homeostatic sleep pressure rhythm that determines how much slow-wave sleep we have? So you have this balance between these two different pressures that determine how your sleep looks across the whole night and at nighttime because you've been awake all day and you've been.

Busy being means when you get to sleep at first, what you need is to have a lot of slow wave sleep because that's the most restorative and repairing sleep.

Nancy Jane Smith: The first few hours of sleep are usually slow sleep. It gets that name because of the big slow delta waves that you see on an EEG when a person is in this stage.

Sara Mednick: And then once you satisfy your need for slowly sleep, then you get into the second half of the night, which has a lot of REM sleep. And in order to get sort of a good amount of slow sleep followed by rem, you actually have to sleep through the whole night.

Nancy Jane Smith: But obviously, if you're napping, you're not going to sleep through the whole night.

So how can you still get the benefits of that sleep cycle in the middle of

Sara Mednick: the. There's actually a point in the middle of the day when most people do get tired, and this is truly when the siestas always occur during this time. And this is the time when you can have a nap that has equal amounts of slow wave sleep and REM sleep, and you could just have this, you know, hour, 90-minute nap.

Um, and it's kind of the perfect, optimal. And that's, that's sort of the secret, I think, as to why, um, naps can give you such powerful results is because it's like, you know, a mini night, you don't have to sleep all night to get both slowly sleep and rem you can just take this nap in the middle of the day to have both slowly sleep and rem.

Nancy Jane Smith: So 60 minutes to 90 minutes is the best. Is there a time of day that's better, or It depends per person?

Sara Mednick: It depends per person. Because of these different pressures of circadian rhythm and the homeostatic rhythm, depending on what time of day you're napping will determine what type of nap you have, how much slow wave sleep you have, and how much REM sleep you have.

Nancy Jane Smith: That allows people to take control of, okay, what do I want from.

Sara Mednick: I want to be more creative, or I want to do more memory consolidation, I want to do more muscle repair. Any of that kind of stuff that would determine, well, I need more slow sleep, or I need more REM sleep. And so then you set the dial to what time you wake up, and then you can determine what time of day your nap is going to have more slowly sleep or more.

Nancy Jane Smith: REM sleep. Well, we're about to find out what kind of nap I had. Slow sleep. Deep sleep as I rise up from dreamland to the sound of my alarm.

Well, there goes Calvin,

My initial reaction is it took me a long time to fall asleep, and I finally fell a little bit asleep. I think for the last 10 minutes, I probably could have done an hour nap maybe, but I was trying to keep it short because I do I think the length is what gets me in trouble when I've done it in the past.

So I will report more in a little bit.

Okay. Well, I did it.

And, um, 42 minutes of rest. Yeah, it took a long time to fall asleep. I did 37 minutes. I crawled into bed, and it was like, I think I had 20 minutes left, so I'd been lying there for 17 minutes, and I just checked the clock to be like, how long have I been like, here? And then I started thinking about someone I went to college with, and I was like, where did she end up?

And I'm like, Ooh, I want to Google her. And so then that was something that. It took me down a rabbit hole, and I was trying to remember her name, her last name, and, but I think I fell asleep, and then Calvin came up and joined me. But like you tried really hard to sleep in your 30 minutes. I did fall asleep.

Okay. For the last like 10, 15 minutes. Because, at one point, your goal was just to rest. And if you fell asleep, you fell asleep. And if you didn't, you didn't. Right. But of course, my goal was, I forgot that was my goal, right? Winter sleep, winters sleep for 30 minutes, right? Oh yeah. Um, but as I was lying there before, I had the, I can't do this. This is an awful feeling.

When I was just initially laying there, I was like; this is kind of nice. And maybe I would do this every day. I could just rest for 30 minutes. Cause I do feel more, do I? Do you notice a difference? You seem perked up, but not. I feel more grounded, like I feel more energized, but I don't feel so crazy like I did before.

I was super hopped up before I went down before I laid down. I also think that I was very stressed about doing this experiment and having to take a nap. I was so dreading it.

About 10 minutes after I talked with Doug about my napping experience, I checked in with myself again. I actually am feeling surprisingly good, like, and I shouldn't be surprised, but I. I am like to the point where I think like this kind of just arrest of 30 minutes or 20 minutes every. In the middle of the day, really, I know it has its benefits, and I was not a believer of this, for me, was not a believer of this for me because I thought I needed to keep myself hopped up.

I don't know, it's really fascinating how much more calm I feel but energized at the same time. So maybe it's getting the creativity around when I do this rest. Again, all of this stuff is loosening up in my brain because I have it so rigid on this is what a nap looks like, and this is how you take a nap.

And being able to loosen that to be like, ah, maybe just resting your brain for 30 minutes in the middle of the day before you eat lunch might be a good idea if you think you need it. Cuz I only have ever napped. When I've been, you know, hungover or tired, like, or sick, that would be the only reason I would do it.

Um, not, uh, just today, like where I'm feeling fine and I just am napping, or resting. So it's going to rest my eyes. Okay. That's it. Okay. And now, weeks later, have I implemented, napping into my life? Well, honestly, But I have been taking more breaks to rest my head on my desk and close my eyes for a few minutes.

I've embraced two concepts that this experiment has shown me. Crawling into bed in the middle of the day is not something I'm going to do unless I'm sick, but I have found short, bite-sized respite periods beneficial. They give me more grounded energy and less hopped-up anxious energy. Even at the end of the day, when I do a five to 10-minute rest, I am more energized and calm than usual.

Maybe over time, I'll build up to 30 to 60 minutes, but for now, I feel the napping challenge was a huge success.

That's it for this week. In our next episode, we'll talk with author and podcaster. Katherine May, about a unique cyclical philosophy for approaching rest that she calls. Wintering. That's next time on The Happier Approach. The Happier Approach is produced by Nikki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod five and Epidemic Sound for more episodes.

To get in touch or to learn more about quieting high-functioning anxiety, you can visit nancy jane smith.com and if you like the show, leave us a review. It actually helps us out a lot. Special thanks to Dr. Sara Mednick. For speaking with us today, you can learn more about Sara and buy her book. Take a Nap, Change Your life at saramednick.com.

That's S A R A M E D N I C k.com. The happier Approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care until then.

Season 4 Episode 4: Vacationing with High Functioning Anxiety

Vacation sounds delightful, but it can cause anxiety to go even higher.

When most people think of vacation, their thoughts are simple: awesome, great, I love to go on vacation, and this will be THE BEST. For people with High-Functioning Anxiety, vacation can be a lot more complicated than that. Resting sounds delightful, but it can cause anxiety to go even higher! Nancy shares why she both loves and hates vacations. Plus, she answers listener questions and gives concrete advice about how to actually have fun on your next vacation, even if you have High Functioning Anxiety.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal relationship with vacation.

• A Q&A where Nancy answers questions about how to handle vacation when you have high-functioning anxiety.

• Tips for folks with High Functioning Anxiety who actually want to relax on vacations.

+ Read the Transcript

The Happier Approach, Season 4, Episode 4: Vacation | Transcript Nancy Jane Smith: Hey, guys. It's me, Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to The Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships. In today's episode, we're tackling the topic of vacation. Seems pretty simple. Plan a trip, relax, and enjoy.

Right? Well, not. I love vacation. I mean, who doesn't freedom, seeing new places, not having to work, hanging with friends or family? I mean, how could it be bad? Well, for those of us with high functioning anxiety vacations, they can be complicated because we don't always get to take a vacation from our anxiety.

My high functioning anxiety has taken over more than one vacation in my life. My husband and I are big fans of Dave Matthews Band. 11 years ago, we saw the band perform at a three day music festival at the Gorge in Washington State. It was my first music festival, my first three day camping trip, and my first not just hanging on a beach vacation with my husband.

I was anxious, and as we pulled into the festival grounds, I was quiet, which is my go-to anxiety. As I obsessed about who we would be camping next to and whether they would be young, old, or loud, as the ground officials motioned for me to turn into our spot, I was giddy. It was on an end, so at least we wouldn't be surrounded by loud, annoying people.

As we started unloading our gear, two guys our age greeted us, and then five more people approached us who also were our age and had been to countless Dave. The nine of us became fast friends and hung out the entire festival. One bullet dodged, but my anxiety was still high. There were too many new experiences for it not to be, but if you'd asked me was I anxious, I would've probably said no.

At some point in the three day extravaganza, I earned the nickname Mama Bear because I was the person that was taking care of everyone. I made sure everyone was safe and together at the concert, I made sure everyone made it back to the campsite each night. I made sure everyone was hydrated and had lotion during the day.

I was mama. But I wasn't anxious about someone getting sunburned or lost on the way back to our site. Looking back, I felt anxious about fitting in, figuring out where to shower and what to do with my time between concerts. Being Mama Bear allowed me to channel that anxiety into something, but it also had a downside.

Sometimes I was so busy caretaking, I missed part of the concert or spent time walking to fill up people's water bottles rather than just relaxing. This is why I wanted to do an episode devoted to high functioning anxiety and. Self loyalty school. My program to quiet, high functioning anxiety has a q and a portion, a monthly private podcast called Ask Nancy Jane, which I love.

So I wanted to bring some of that energy to our season on rest. Today, we will hear from three different people whose high functioning anxiety is running the show on their.

Caretaker Carol:

Dear Nancy Jane, Every year my family and I rent a large house in the outer banks. We have been doing this since I was a kid. All my siblings, aunts and uncles and their families under one roof, all totaled. It's usually about 30. It is my favorite week of the year. Well, I want it to be one of my favorite weeks of the year, but I usually end up a stressed out mess no matter how many times I've tried.

I am always the caretaker for everyone. I'm the point person, the one in charge, and I don't want to be that person. I mean, last year I swore I wouldn't be the caretaker. So we had a family meeting where I shared all the tasks I had done in the past and split them up between the group. But midweek, I noticed myself unpacking lunches for the beach when it wasn't my task.

How do I get out of this cycle?

Love Caretaker, Carol.

Nancy Jane Smith:

Hey Carol.

Thanks so much for your question, man. Can I relate to your story? I have struggled with this so much with my family. First off, it sounds amazing to spend all that time with your family on the beach at the Outer Banks. It sounds amazing, but what you ran into is what a lot of people run into when they try to solve this problem.

Especially a lot of people with high functioning anxiety because you solved. The external part of the problem, which was assigning the tasks to other people, and you did a great job of doing that, having the family meeting, communicating what it is you needed, communicating what the tasks were, and having people take responsibility for them.

But the part that got a little messy there is the internal part, the part where you are saying, I need to let them suffer. I need to be okay that they may fail. They may fail, and they may fail, and so you need to be okay with that process, which is where it gets sticky. Because a lot of times we're not okay with that.

We try to change what other people are doing, but we leave out the part where we need to change how we're reacting to what they're doing. So this is about you practicing ask, which is about acknowledging what you're feeling, slowing down and getting into your body, and kindly pulling back to see the big picture you were going to be practicing.

A lot on vacation , at least initially, because you're going to have a lot of feelings every time this stuff comes up where your brother is late to start dinner. Or you can see that your sister has not done the grocery shopping and she needs to get on that. And you need to be okay that the vacation isn't going to go the way it always has been.

And that's. By practicing ask. That's allowing you to acknowledge what's really going on, to acknowledge your frustration, your sadness, your disappointment, your exhaustion, all the things that you are feeling, and because. I'm guessing this trip, as much as you love spending time with your family, as all families do, they stress the crap out of you.

They stress you out so much, and so what do you want to do? You want to serve others, you want to get rid of that anxiety. And how we know to get rid of our anxiety is by caring for other people and giving back and pleasing. And so that's why it's so important for you to have this internal plan as well, to be able to handle that extra anxiety.

You're probably going to be carrying on vacation. Because you're not going to have the outlet of caregiving. So when dinner is going crazy and your brother's cooking the wrong thing, you're going to get out of the house, go to the beach, take a walk, slow down, get into your body, feel your whole body moving, and then Kay is the kindly pull back to see the big picture.

Come up with a sentence that your biggest fan would say something like this, sweet peanut. This vacation is for all. It's not just for me. It's not just for them. I deserve a vacation just as much as they do, and what is important to me on my vacation is hanging out with the family, relaxing, reading, walking on the beach, all of these things that I'm going to be enjoying.

Reminding yourself this is a vacation and you can be on vacation just as much as your family can be on vacation. And then the most important part there is bringing yourself back to what is it you want to get out of vacation? Set those values really up there so that you can remember, Oh yeah, I want this to be relaxing.

Or I wanted to really connect with my son because we haven't been connecting very well. Or I want to just hang on the beach and do absolutely nothing for hours on end. Remind yourself of those things so that when you start noticing your anxiety, when you start noticing that you're struggling with your family, doing it wrong, quote-unquote, You can bring yourself back to that case step and remind yourself what is most important for you in that situation.

It is not that dinner gets cooked on time. What is most important in that situation is that all of your family is gathering together. They are healthy, they are happy, and they're having fun and being together. So those are my thoughts, caretaker Carol. I hope that's helpful.

Rule Following Rachel:

Dear Nancy Jane,

I have loved vacations ever since I was a little girl. I immersed myself in a new place, leaving my worries behind and learning something completely different.

Do you know the secret to vacationing ruled? Lots of rules.

All those rules make vacationing more fun because you know what to expect and where to be, and you can make sure you are doing everything the best.

But my family is protesting and they refuse to go on another one of my militant vacations. They want us to plan a beach vacation with no rules, which means no research, no plans, and no trying to do it best. I don't think I can do it.

Please advise.

Rule following Rachel.

Nancy Jane Smith:

Hey Rachel.

Thanks so much for your question. You know, it reminded me of a few years ago, a former client of mine said to me that she absolutely loved going on vacation, because that was the only time her anxiety wasn't high. Because there were so many rules that were easy to follow, and I can totally relate, oh my God, to the research and trying to find the best way and oh my gosh.

But the reminder of that is the rule-following is in response to your anxiety. And so you are following all these rules in order to quiet your anxiety while you're on vacation. Now, unfortunately, your family isn't having quite the same response and they're protesting against these militant vacations you've been taking them on.

So what I propose is a, a mix of both. I propose that maybe you go to the beach and give your family that level of freedom, but also trying to pick a beach that is close to. So you can spend an afternoon hanging with your family while you spent the morning looking for the greatest coffee shop or the best place to go and hang out.

And so it gives a mix of you getting the rules and getting that anxiety relief in while also getting time with your family on their beach vacation and giving them what they want. The key to that is going to be twofold. One is you're going to have to make sure you're communicating with your family. When is the best time to be hanging out?

So for you to recognize, wait, my anxiety's really high in the morning, and so that's the time that I want to get out and I want to be checking things out and, and trying to find the best of whatever it is you're looking for. In the afternoon is when I'm a little more relaxed and I can spend more time with the family without getting so stressed out for you to get clear on.

When is your anxiety the worst? The other thing is to recognize that it's still an internal process. This is still a problem, that your anxiety is out of control, and that's why it's coming out. I'm going to encourage you to practice ask during those times when you are lounging on the beach or you're playing a game in the Airbnb with your family and you notice your anxiety going.

And I want you to acknowledge what it is you're feeling in that moment. To acknowledge the anxiety, to acknowledge the fear or the sadness or the shame that you have for just sitting, playing a game on a vacation day, rather than all the programming you might have gotten as a child of the perfect things to do is to travel and to see, and to expand beyond just doing a puzzle and to recognize that's old programming that isn't necessarily true anymore.

Also again, to bring it back to what are your values, Rachel? Are your values always going to be to go and do and see and have the best and have lots of rules? At the sacrifice of your family or are your values to be, Wait, I want to spend time with my family and do the things they want to do, and I want to have a vacation where I'm doing and seeing and a part of something.

So it needs to be really important that you're clear on, Wait a minute, am I obsessing about getting out in the perfect place and doing all the research and finding all the. Because that is true to who I am or am I doing that because it helps me feel better with my anxiety and or it's an old pattern from growing up.

And as you're sitting there doing the puzzle to be able to acknowledge what you're feeling, slow down and get into your body. You know, feel your feet on the floor and your butt in the seat, and then kindly pull back to see the big picture, which is going to be able to say to yourself, Hey, sweet peanut, wow, this is amazingly hard to sit here and do a puzzle with my family, and I really want to be engaged with them, but my mind is elsewhere.

Let me bring myself. And keep bringing myself back and recognize this is what's most important right here, being with my family. That's the key, Rachel. Do in a mix of both. Can you have a militant vacation in the morning and a relaxing vacation in the afternoon, which gives you a chance to start practicing on solving your anxiety and really getting present to that in the afternoon while getting to be able to be fun and do the things you want to do in.

Okay,

Thanks Rachel.

Can't Relax Katie:

Dear Nancy Jane,

I love vacations. I love thinking about it Beforehand, days and days doing nothing. I love researching and planning where to stay and eat. I love planning love books. I will read during all of my leisure time, but best laid when I finally arrive at my vacation destination. I cannot relax to save my.

Days and days of doing nothing suddenly feels downright awful. Rather than lounging on a beach chair, I stay inside to obsessively research places we should explore, or I decide to walk the beach. And rather than leisurely strolling, I challenge myself to power walk and then get annoyed at the sea shell hunters blocking my path by the time I finally unwind enough to read on the beach for more than five. It is the last day of vacation.

Why does this keep happening to me?

From, Can't Relax, Katie.

Nancy Jane Smith:

Hey Katie.

Thanks for your question. So, Can't relax. I totally understand that as well. It's another way high functioning anxiety shows up is that we are so dying to have the relaxation because we have pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed. You are pushing and pushing and pushing and, and really amplifying vacation as this whole time when like this holy grail period where everything will finally be healed and you can be a totally different person who will suddenly love lounging on the beach reading.

Even though you can't read at home to save your life because you're too anxious. But the problem is when we get on vacation, you know, it's that old saying, wherever we go, there we are. It's not like I suddenly get a personality transplant when I go on vacation. And I say that because I spent years, years and years and years.

And I still do it in this pattern of thinking, Ah, once I get there then I will be relaxed and I'll suddenly become the super chill person. Make sure. Setting reasonable expectations for what your vacation is going to be. And so maybe seven days of a beach vacation isn't in the carts. You know, maybe that isn't the way you want to spend your vacation.

Maybe it is that, Hey, I love the beach. I love going on vacation to the beach, but I want to make sure that I'm mixing in other activities. There. So my husband and I, he loves beach vacations. I'm not as big of a fan, but I will go with him. I'm similar to you. I don't want to lounge on the beach for days and days and days.

So I often plan excursions for us or or events that we can do that I've well researched and figured out. And so we have a day of relaxing and then a day of an activity. And so that kind of breaks it up. So when I arrive at the beach, I'm not thinking, Oh my god, Seven days of doing nothing, and that sends my anxiety through the roof.

The other thing that I wanted to share is the idea of really getting curious of what is happening when you're relaxing. When I have the day of relaxing or the afternoon of relaxing, I'll challenge myself to just take the day in 30 minute increments. So I'm going to sit here and read for 30 minutes. Or I'm going to, you know, watch a movie with my husband inside for two hours, or I'm going to swim in the pool or get in the ocean for a half an hour.

And the reason I do that, not because I need the time limits, is because when I have a whole day of nothing in front of me, it causes a lot of anxiety of what can I do? What should I do, what should I do, what should I do? And I get very focused. The right way. I need to find the right way, the right vacation, the right thing to do.

And so by doing this 30 minute increment concept, it allows me to bust up the day. Oh. So right now I'm just reading. It allows me to break up the day and I don't have the day looming ahead of me. It also allows me to say, I'm going to read for 30 minutes, so that means I'm going to have 30 minutes to ease into reading and I'm going to sit here and I'm going to read my book and I may look up after 10 minutes and be like, I can't read anymore. And I'm like, Nope, we're doing 30 minutes of reading, so let's go back until I can get into the groove of reading. Because sometimes when our anxiety's high, it takes us a little bit of time to get back into the.

If I recognize I can't do this, I can't read, I'm going to recognize, you know what? My anxiety's too high at this point in my life and reading is off the table, so I can't read on this vacation. That's okay. Be kind about that. Remember, it's not, There is no perfect vacation. It's about finding what's relaxing for.

In this vacation. Now, next year when you come on vacation, you may be a reading machine and that's all you do is read. But this year that may not be what you can do. That idea of baby steps of recognizing I don't have to read the whole day, I can read for half an hour. And then the idea also of getting curious when does my body relax best?

Maybe it relaxes. At the end of the day, and so that's when you put in your reading and your relaxing time while you're having a glass of wine watching the sunset. It's not about finding the perfect way to relax, it's about finding the perfect way to relax for you, Katie, and that may vary from year to year, but it's really about getting curious about what is the best way for me to relax and how can I give myself a break around how hard it is for me to relax? Okay, thanks Katie. I hope that helps.

Thanks to Carol, Rachel and Katie for sharing their questions. I hope that my answers gave listeners with high functioning anxiety, some hope that they'll be able to enjoy the next vacation they go on.

If you're interested in listening to more one-on-one Q&A's with me, you can sign up for Self Loyalty School, where I do a Q&A through a private podcast feed every month. We cover lots of topics, not just vacation. If you're interested in learning more, you can go to SelfLoyaltySchool.com

That's it for this week. In our next episode, we're taking on a divisive topic, napping. Love it. Hate it. We'll talk once again with Dr. Sarah Mednick about how you can harness the power of napping.

To be more rested and productive, even if you're not sure how it could fit into your life. That's next time on The Happier Approach. The Happier Approach is produced by Nikki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod five and Epidemic Sound for more episodes. To get in touch or to learn more about quieting high functioning anxiety, you can visit nancy jane smith.com and if you like the show, leave us a review. It actually helps us out a lot.

Special thanks to Hillary Rea, Natira McDermott and Nicki Stein for providing the voices of Katie, Rachel, and Carol on today's episode, The Happier Approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care until then.

Season 4 Episode 3: Imagination, Mindfulness, and Rest

Tips for using your imagination to help make mindfulness work for you

Nancy has tried and tried again to be a consistent meditator. Everyone says it's the key to getting rid of anxiety! But the "traditional" ways of meditating that she's tried-- sitting on a pillow for 5 minutes a day thinking about *nothing*-- have NOT worked for her. That's why she got in touch with Jessica Snow. Jessica is a spiritual teacher and writer of guided meditations, whose approach to mindfulness is anything but rigid. Jessica shares some tips for using your imagination to help make mindfulness work for you and even shares a short guided meditation with Nancy.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's struggle with meditating and how the traditional rules of meditation clash with her high functioning anxiety.

• A conversation about imagination, mindfulness and rest with Jessica Snow.

• Tips for folks with HFA who want to harness the benefits of mindfulness.

Learn more about Jessica Snow:

• Go to youaremagicla.com to sign up for Jessica's newsletter, listen to her guided meditations, watch her videos, and sign up for her workshops.

• Follow Jessica on Instagram @meditation_jess

+ Read the Transcript

Intro

Theme

Nancy: Hey guys, it’s me! Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships.

As my producer Nicki, and I were brainstorming topic ideas for this season of rest–the idea of mediation came up. Rest… meditation… seems like a perfect combo right?

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Nicki: [00:00:00] this has come up a few times over the past couple seasons of the happier approach your, uh, reluctance to meditate. Um, tell me about that. Nancy: That’s my producer, Nicki.

Nancy: Hmm. You know, I wonder how much it is that, um, I do have a reluctance to meditate, but now it's become kind of this, uh, you know, it's kind of like the, I've never seen the Wizard of Oz. I've never meditated. Like it's one of those points of pride. Like, I can't meditate, And so it's become rigid in my world. Nancy: Anytime I talk about my anxiety, the next question I get is have you tried meditation?!? Or when I hear someone talking about their anxiety, they often talk about their meditation practice and how it changed their life. But for me, meditation has never been a silver bullet.

Nicki: I listened to your meditation episode from past, like a long time ago. Where, what did you do? You like, you tried to meditate for a certain amount of time. Nancy: well, I started doing a meditation experiment, where I downloaded, um, Headspace and I did some meditation. I was supposed to do a month's Nicki: Uhhuh. Nancy: but that didn't, that did not happen. We did a follow up after the month and we kind of de, we talked about it. but it still felt, even at the end of that episode, it still, I still felt like, um, you should be able to meditate. What, what's wrong with you? Nicki: Gotcha. So we're following up. We're continuing the work. [00:05:00] Nancy: We're continuing the work because this is something that that continually fascinates me because it is kind of like, you know, I'm trying to figure out how can I loosen up the definition of meditation because it is so rigid in people's minds that it's sitting on a pillow somewhere. [00:03:00] Um, you know, with this. music and a voice of a person being like, you know, this soft music and a person's voice that's so mellow that it just makes me want to pull my hair out. Just thinking about that visual, you know, visualizing that makes me more anxious. and that's what I wanted to get at, here are the ways to get at meditation that may not involve sitting on a cushion somewhere, meditating, and for those who do it. Meditation is something that's beneficial. It's just finding your vibe of meditation. Nancy: But if the key to benefiting from meditation is to “find your vibe” it’s taken a REALLY long time for me to find mine.

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ACT I: Meditation HELP!

MUS

Nancy: 5 years ago, I kept reading article after article about what successful people do to be calmer throughout their day. All the tips were to get up early in the morning, take a long walk, meditate, and journal. I decided I wanted to create more calm, and here was the formula! I set my alarm for 5AM like a good little self-development soldier. And then 5AM rolled around, and I woke up filled with anxiety; what am I going to listen to on my walk? Can I Iisten to something, or is that breaking the rules? Should I listen to a meditation or be quiet? How long should I meditate? AHHH, so many questions and doubts and insecurities!?!

This was a personal place of shame for me for years. My Monger, my name for the inner critic voice, would say, “Everyone says meditation is good for anxiety so why don’t YOU meditate–you make everything so difficult!!!”

I would start my day and think about meditating... C'mon, Nancy just do it, you will be better when you start doing this... and then I heard my one-on-one clients say the same thing... I just need to start meditating... implying all will be healed if I can meditate.

My Monger implied that too. She convinced me that there was only one way to get into your body, and it was through meditation. So if I couldn't meditate, I would never be able to slow down and be present. (See how wily the Monger can be?!) So meditation becomes this block or this excuse for why I am not implementing the ideas I know will help because I am holding out for when I am magically inspired to meditate.

MUS out

The problem with holding up meditation as the ULTIMATE cure for all my anxieties is that meditation becomes that new magic button that I think, oh, once I start doing meditation, then everything will be healed, and this self-loyalty stuff will be easy. The other side of that thought is until I do that meditation thing, I'm not going to get anywhere near that self-loyalty stuff.

After weeks of failing at meditation and trying again and again over the years. I had to be honest that I wasn't going to become a master meditator. No matter how hard I tried, I could not implement a meditation practice of sitting still for five to 10 minutes every day. Or every other day, it just wasn't in the cards for me. So I had to get serious about, okay, if I'm not able to do that right now, how will I add mindfulness, groundedness, and peace into my daily life?

On my way to answering that question, I came across Jessica Snow. Her idea of meditation is decidedly not sitting on a pillow with calm music playing. And that sounded really appealing to me…

ACT II: Interview with Jessica Snow Jessica Snow: I am Jessica Snow and I am a. Of the people for the people's spiritual teacher. I used to identify primarily as someone who was known for guided meditation, but in the last few years, I really expanded beyond that. And, um, yeah, so I teach everyday people, um, how to experience extraordinary things, um, that are available freely to all of us. Nancy: Jessica’s definition of her work is expansive– just like the practice of meditation itself can be– she writes and performs guided meditations, teaches spiritual practices and creative practices.

Jessica Snow: I work with essentially nature. I work with creativity and I work with the imaginal spaces that we have within us. Nancy: And Jessica’s been on this journey– in one way or another– since she was a kid.

MUS

Jessica Snow: So when I was young, I loved fairy tales, myths. I just love that. I love to read those sort of things. That's sort of how my imagination kind of in its most like pure state works. I've written over a hundred visualizations. in some of them you'll find a little bit of man-made stuff, but mostly I'm in that realm, that realm is natural to me, the realm of like trees and mountains and animals and spirits and elementals like that, I came into it through fiction, essentially through, you know, fairy tales and myths. And then when I got into my twenties, I started really being a seeker. I was lucky enough to be raised in Los Angeles. Everything was sort of like as weird as I am. My mom already had a friend who was much weirder, you know, so [00:12:00] that was like, you know, fine. Nancy: Eventually, Jessica started holding spiritual gatherings for her friends right in her backyard.

Jessica Snow: on the full moon and on the new moon, I would do these sort of elaborate ceremonies for my friends. And then my friends' friends started to come and I had been working in like corporate world and all that prior to that, I never really liked it, but I did it because I felt I, that was what a good person did. A good member of society. And then I realized, oh, I have this weird niche skill where I can take people through an inner experience. And I can sort of, you know, I say the same set of words. And if there's 50 people in the room, they have 50 different experiences. MUS out

Nancy: Part of the reason that everyone has a different experience with these meditative practices, is that, of course, every human is different– we each bring something unique to the experience and have our own inner worlds and associations.

Jessica Snow: when I say in a meditation to find an animal. very, very rarely will. Two people in the room [00:13:00] have the same animal and each animal means something different. So what an alligator means to me may be different than what an alligator means to you. human beings are so infinitely. Interesting. And we have all of this, you know, miraculous stuff inside of us. And I just love that space and I love to draw people into that, their own version of that space. Nancy: This approach to meditation that focuses on individual preference and experience really resonated with me.

MUS

Nancy Jane Smith: I have to say, so I am a, one of those. I can't meditate, not so much. I [00:03:00] can't meditate cuz I can't stop my thoughts person, but I am a skeptical meditator. Jessica Snow: let's remember most of the meditation processes,These, we are householders. We are not monks on a mountaintop. the monks on the mountaintop were able to do these sort of very disciplined, um, kind of linear more linear practices because why people were giving them food. People were giving them a place to live, right? So we're in a different sort of landscape when it comes to our real lives. Nancy: Jessica’s approach is the opposite of rigid, especially in contrast to the kinds of meditation that I’ve been trying to shoehorn into my life over the years.

Jessica Snow: the types of meditation, who that have become most popularized in my opinion, are the most masculine meaning that there's a certain beginning. There's a certain end. There's all these rules to be good at it that you must follow. What if we took away the word meditation, and instead we inquired with ourselves, are we [00:04:00] having some time. In each day where we are living in an awakened state, awake to what's happening around us, awake to what's happening within us, awake to what's happening for others in the collective, not just humanity, but also plants and animals and forces of nature and, and you know, the ocean and the planet. And if we're doing that each every day, that to me speaks to meditation. MUS out

Nancy: Jessica says that it’s really important that your meditation approach works FOR you, that it’s flexible based on the kinds of activities you enjoy, your attention span, and your physical needs.

MUS

Jessica Snow: When I, I look forward to my meditations, I also don't give myself a lot of rules. I have a whole toolkit, some days eight putting on a song and dancing for five minutes is my meditation. Some days taking a walk with my dog, not listening to headphones, and instead looking at everything that happens on the walk as sign. As symbols as representing something in my life is my meditation. Sometimes having a phone call with a friend is my [00:05:00] meditation,the word meditation, I think has lost its teeth or what, you know, it feels like to me. And so if we take that away and instead sort of start to investigate and create repeatable rituals for ourselves that fit us and fit where we are in our lives. Nancy Jane Smith: totally. cuz this is something that I get trapped on and it's something that my clients get trapped on is what's the right way to meditate. Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Am I, so I love how you're like let's bust that out and, and you know, build self loyalty by being loyal to ourselves of what is it I need for my meditation and my, you know, my mindfulness or how, whatever freaking word you want to use. How can I get present to what is, Jessica Snow: and that's why I have expanded. Right? What I'm teaching. Because I can see for certain people, the sitting still is, is at this juncture in their lives. And we all change over time is not gonna work for them. What they need to do is actually listen to a visualization on their run in the morning. Right? So we can also have our eyes open. If you've had a lot of [00:07:00] trauma, closing your eyes and paying attention to your breath is, is not gonna probably work for you. And then you're gonna think I can't meditate and you're gonna leave the whole, you're gonna throw the baby out with the bath water, and you're gonna miss that. if that same person in my experience, if they go into nature and leave their eyes open and then listen to a meditation that is gonna be a really healing experience for them. MUS out

Nancy Jane Smith: totally. Yes. Cuz I feel like, you know, me and so many of my clients. Have spent most of our lives looking outside that there's an answer outside and I just have to find it. And then in part of working with me is recognizing no, no, no, actually it's inside. And the part you've been ignoring all along, it has all this cool stuff in there that needs to be sorted through and looked at. Jessica Snow: And you know, um, we call that in my community, the wild silky, MUS

and this is something from Mary Oliver, great American poet. She uses it in a slightly different sense, but it's come to mean [00:10:00] this part of us that knows with a capital K and the wild silky, we think it lives like below the belly button button, the center of the torso. And you have to sort of wake it up by being quiet and still, maybe being in nature or something like that. But then when it unfurls itself, it. It will answer any question you're wondering about it does know from this deep, wild, intuitive instinctual part of us, You gotta gently wake it up, then it unfurls itself. And then it has all of these offerings like flowers on a, on a tree it just blooms open towards you. But it's, it's a quiet one. It's not gonna scream and shout over all the other things. So our work is to give it an environment where it feels safe to unfurl. And then we, this is also countercultural. We listen instead of talking and then we [00:11:00] write down whatever we hear, no matter how strange it seems. MUS out

Nancy Jane Smith: Okay. Would you be willing to walk us through a quick meditation? Jessica Snow: would love to. Nancy Jane Smith: Okay. Jessica Snow: I would love to, I would love to. It'd be my great pleasure. um, okay, so let's begin. So leave your eyes open if you want. If you like closing your eyes, guess what? Close your eyes. And let's just begin. See if you can make your physical self, your body about 3% more comfortable for me. I habitually cross my legs. So I'm putting both my feet on the ground and I'm letting the bottoms of my feet really touch the floor. But for you, maybe it might be like sitting up a little taller or maybe [00:20:00] leaning back in your chair, whatever it is, 3% more comfortable in the body. MUS

And then let's begin. by imagining that our thoughts are like in a swirling cloud, above the crown of the head. So visualizing, or perhaps even sensing your thoughts or outside of your head swirling around in the air. And then let's take a couple cycles of breath just to breathe thoughts into the place where they belong, breathing them into the mind. And so for some people, this feels like a gathering of the thoughts, breathing them into the mind, breathing them into the head, and perhaps having this sense of a little click as we get all those thoughts into the place where they belong. The.[00:21:00] And then let's take a few cycles of breath. We're just reattaching the head to the body very often. There's a sort of border. So we've got the thoughts in the mind, and now we're just breath breathing and reminding the head, reminding the mind it's part of this body. Now we've got the thoughts in the head and the head attached to the body part of the body. And then let's just take a few cycles of breath where we're breathing our body onto planet earth. Remembering that we are on this beautiful blue, green planet. We are interwoven with all the things that live here.[00:22:00] And so that was just sort of the arrival part of this micropractice we got our thoughts into our head and get our head reattached to the body and we brought our body onto planet earth. And now let's play with focus a little bit. So let's just begin by paying attention to any surface experience. So this can be the feeling of air on the skin. It can be sounds. You might be able to hear it can be the feeling of the breathing that's happening. Maybe you can feel actually the clothes that you're wearing. So just having an awareness of some surface experience and really what the experience is, doesn't matter too much. what you're really doing is practicing being the witness who chooses where to put your attention. And right now our attention is on [00:23:00] something surface. Even thoughts can be sort of surface preferences. So a few more cycles of breath, just paying attention to any surface thing, anything at all. If you have your eyes open, you can look at the environment around you. That can be your surface experience. Now the invitation is really gently to withdraw your awareness from the surface experiences and bring your awareness to your inner realms. So this can [00:24:00] be drawing your awareness into maybe feelings or emotions. Sometimes when we turn towards our inner realms, we realize that we're time traveling. We've jumped back to some memory of the past, or we've zoomed forward to something that might happen later on. And again, none of that is bad. Nothing needs to be changed. We're just. Practicing moving our focus. We were focusing on the surface. Now we're focusing on something happening inside us and whatever it is, it is, it's all grist for the mill. We don't need to decide that this inner thing is good, bad, right wrong. Instead, we're practicing, moving our awareness inward. And if you feel like nothing's going on in there that's information as well, it [00:25:00] is turning the awareness to the inner realms whatever's happening inside. maybe you turn your awareness to your insides and you feel, you know, some physical process in the body. Maybe you notice some tension or tightness again, no need to name or explain or change anything, but instead just like, oh, isn't that interesting? This is happening inside me. Okay. One more and feel free to be playful with this one. [00:26:00] The invitation now is to extend your awareness out. To the oneness that binds all things. So some people like to look at this as the energy of life itself of existence or nature, or perhaps a deity or perhaps, you know, the quantum field. But again, the practice is just to move the awareness from the inner now to the oneness of all things and connecting with that. And this can feel any kind of way. And however it feels is perfect. It's all grist for the mill. I to sell a few cycles of breath, just tuning into the oneness, the great infinite cosmic web that binds all.[00:27:00] Putting your awareness on the energetic underpinnings of life. As we know it, a few more cycles of breath with the oneness, with all that is, Jessica Snow: and then experimenting with the idea that this witness part of yourself that was able to choose. Now I'm paying attention to the surface. Now I'm paying attention to the inner. Now I'm paying attention to the [00:28:00] oneness. That's that witness consciousness can be something that is brought into daily life and something that you can play with throughout the day. So then when you're ready, you just let your eyes open. If your eyes have been open, give yourself a little stretch or once again, making your body about 3% more comfortable. MUS out

So that was literally 10 minutes. How did that feel for you? Nancy Jane Smith: Ooh, that felt like a lot longer than 10 minutes. Jessica Snow: yeah, yeah. Nancy Jane Smith: it. Okay. Let me say this. I love your voice. I love that. You're not like, okay, so now let's take a deep breath. I love that. I loved that. You were like, in these, you weren't concentrating on the breath. You were like do some breath cycles, which that was really comforting to me. Just that I kind of had some [00:29:00] control over my own experience there. especially because I didn't feel anything when I went inside. So I loved that you were like that maybe a sign too. And I was like, yes, that is a sign. But then I get impatient at that point was when you lost me. Like, and not because of you, I'm not saying you lost me. I'm saying that I got woo sidetracked. Jessica Snow: Let's get involved with this a little bit, cuz it might be interesting. You know, a lot of times when one person is experiencing something, they think that they're the only one but actually it's I said that there might not be anything cuz I know that's a common experience. Nancy Jane Smith: Yeah. Jessica Snow: I don't know if you wanna feel special or you wanna feel like you're with everybody Nancy Jane Smith: I figured it was common or you wouldn't have mentioned it. It actually made me feel better. Cause I was like, oh, okay. Cuz yeah. And I understand why I'm not feeling anything. I think knowing my own what's happening in my world and where I am right now Jessica Snow: That's exactly right. And so, because it's like the first time you tried to ride a bike, you probably didn't ride the bike perfectly right. Successfully. Let's say the same thing happens in these spaces sometimes Nancy: But Jessica says that letting go of the feeling that you “didn’t do it right” and just continuing to show up for yourself, is key to finding a restful meditative or spiritual practice that works for you.

MUS

Jessica Snow: It's very important for us to romance our inner self. We wanna show up like Romeo under the balcony, right? We wanna keep showing up. If we tell this part of ourselves, we're gonna show up every morning and open ourselves, you know, or at, at the end of every day, we're gonna do this. We just keep showing up. So I, if I were you, it would be interesting to me cuz I'm sort of an Explorer in this way. I would throughout my day, set a little timer for 30 seconds, 45 seconds. And just look in there for a second [00:31:00] and then go back to whatever I'm doing. So not getting hung up and applying the rules of success of the outer world to the inner world and having that sense of like, [00:32:00] I'm gonna draw you out little wild silky part of me. Like I'm gonna find a way maybe you only feel safe when I'm in the bath or maybe you only feel safe when I've had my nice, you know, fruit salad or whatever you, whatever the things are. and to get beyond this sort of,I did it well, I didn't do it well, or I can do this, or I can getting beyond that binary being like, actually I'm just an adventurer, I'm an Explorer. And I'm interested in supporting that part of me until it's ready Nancy: And it’s totally okay if your personal way of getting to that meditative place looks or feels completely different than what “traditional” meditation looks like.

Jessica Snow: And you know, I'm our, I'm thinking of our friend. She like does a full face of makeup every day. Beautiful. Nancy Jane Smith: mm-hmm Jessica Snow: That would not be restful for me, but I can totally see and understand that for her that time with the mirror is restful is a peaceful place for her. Right. So for everybody is gonna be different just giving ourselves permission to explore and [00:44:00] to test and pivot, right? MUS out

Nancy Jane Smith: I love how you keep bringing us back. You do such a great job of that, um, to ourselves, for me, for me, for me, for me, this works, that is that, And also the, because I think that is so counter that's the ultimate countercultural thing you're doing is saying, it's you it's you it's you? What about you? What about you? What about you? Because this whole industry is a muck with people telling us, even in this industry, even the self-help industry. Yeah. How we should be doing it, how we should be feeling How weshould like, so kudos to that. I love that's really cool because even as I asked you the question of, oh, what do I say? You know, what do you think it's in the way of rest? And I thought at some point you just have to be willing to do it. Nancy Jane Smith: you just gotta be willing to go in there and get a little uncomfortable Nancy: Sometimes that discomfort can be around actually committing to figuring out what kind of restful, meditative practices work for you. Even if it seems impossible at first. Making the space to say, I’m going to figure this out and continuing to work at it, can make a huge difference.

MUS

Jessica Snow: If I believe that rest is gonna contribute to my long term wellbeing and [00:46:00] longevity and ease and peace and joy and ability to, to sort of, you know, get to do my thing for a long period of time, I can make that decision using my thinking mind. And then that's a north star, so that's a compass point for me. So then as I go through every day, when I have these micro opportunities for rest, or if I need to help myself, you know, um, enjoy deeper rest at night, it's like, oh yeah, that's one of my values. That's something worth being loyal to, that's something that I have fidelity towards. That's very powerful, especially over the long arc of a person's life, I understand rest is important. So even if I'm having frustration that my way of resting doesn't look like somebody else. Oh, it doesn't matter because I'm gonna keep showing up because this is a north star for me. And I know that if I head in this direction, that's, that's going to be good for me overall. Nancy Jane Smith: why do you love the work that you do in this space? Jessica Snow: I love this work because it connects me to all things. It connects me to nature. This work connects me to other people so deeply because I get to see the sort of infinite realms within us. I get to see the, the fidelity that our inner self shows to us when we choose to show up for it. I could never have thought of this profession. I'm so grateful for it. And it is evolving, right. Even how I, when we started talking, I've moved from, I teach guided meditation to I'm, I'm a, a personal spirituality teacher. That's something different. So I'm evolving too with it. Um, and it's just a road that I never want to step off of. I just wanna keep going until I'm full Willy Nelson, just with long braids and, you know, sitting on the porch, telling stories. MUS out

ACT III: Nancy’s Conclusion Nancy: Talking with Jessica really helped me to honor the fact that even if I’m a “reluctant meditator” I can still have a restful, mindful practice that connects me with my inner thoughts and feelings– even if it looks a lot different than what we traditionally think of as “meditation.”

MUS

The reason meditation, mindfulness, inner quiet– whatever you want to call it!-- is so powerful is threefold:

One, it slows down your brain and allows you to notice your body. Two, it allows you to notice your thoughts and how they are constantly there, spinning and jumping from thing to thing. Three, it helps you build a relationship with yourself so you can cultivate more self-loyalty.

Meditation is about getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, and the more we can get comfortable with the uncomfortable, the easier living with our anxiety will be.

Just as running is not the only way to exercise, meditation is not the only way to get into your body and quiet your anxiety.

MUS out

And when I finally surrendered to the fact that quote unquote traditional meditation was not for me... I started to figure out what was... And I came up with a set of what I call mindfulness hacks...if I can't do 5 minutes all at once, maybe I could do 5 minutes broken up throughout the day. These Mindfulness Hacks also allow me to slow down, build a relationship with myself, and notice my thoughts spinning and spinning. Another one that works well is the five senses check-in: what do I see, hear, taste, smell, and feel?

MUS

Standing in line at the grocery store, I am super annoyed! My Monger jumps in: “You have places to be?!! You should have come earlier–you procrastinated too long!” Ok, I think, get into your body I stand up straight and do a slow neck roll. Then I challenge myself to name 3 things I see, hear and smell? And to be as specific as possible. Making it a game is much more fun and bonus, no closing my eyes. I see the sign discouraging plastic bags, the child behind me laughing with her Dad, and the college kids trying to make the self-scan work. I hear laughter, chatting, the door wooshing open. I smell fresh bread, fish, and my shampoo. By the time I finished with the smells, it was my turn to check out, and I was much more relaxed.

MUS out

A common thread running through these mindfulness hacks is they usually include a full-body movement so you are 100% getting out of your head, and they require you to check in with yourself. Even if I just touched my toes or wiggled my body for a few seconds and took some deep breaths while doing it, I am able to shift out of the headspace of the Monger.

We talk in much more detail about mindfulness hacks, and I share a detailed list of hacks in Self Loyalty School. Which is all about quieting your high-functioning anxiety through cultivating self-loyalty. You can learn more about that at selfloyaltyschool.com

Outro

Theme

That’s it for this week! In our next episode we’ll be talking about a topic that seems fun, but can often be sneakily stressful: vacation. I’ll answer questions from a few… special guests… and we’ll talk about how to actually relax when we go on a trip. That’s next time, on the Happier Approach.

Nancy: The Happier Approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod5 and Epidemic Sound. For more episodes, to get in touch, or to learn more about quieting High Functioning Anxiety you can visit nancy jane smith dot com. And if you like the show, leave us a review! It actually helps us out a lot.

Big thanks to Jessica Snow for speaking with us today. You can learn more about Jessica, subscribe to her guided meditations and her newsletter, or sign up for her SoulCollage workshops at youaremagicla.com.

The Happier Approach will be back with another episode on November 4th. Take care, until then.

Season 4 Episode 2: Sleep

Tips for folks with HFA who want to harness the power of sleep.

Nothing hits harder over the age of 30 than a bad night of sleep. When Nancy thinks about rest, she automatically thinks about sleep, and how hard it can be to give ourselves the space to actually allow ourselves to get the full amount of sleep we need. Nancy talks about her personal "sleep rules" and how she's learning to bend them. And we talk to Dr. Sara Mednick, a cognitive neuroscience, author and sleep researcher about the truly magical things that our bodies do while our eyes are shut.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal journey with sleep and how she's learning to overcome her ingrained "sleep rules."

• A conversation about the science of sleep with Dr. Sara Mednick.

• Tips for folks with HFA who want to harness the power of sleep.

Learn more about Sara Mednick:

• Go to https://www.saramednick.com/

• Buy Sara's book The Power of the Downstate on her website, or wherever books are sold.

• Follow Sara on Twitter @Sara_Mednick

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy: Hey guys, it’s me! Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships.

This season, we’re talking all about rest. How do you prioritize it? How do you make it truly and sustainably part of your life? We kicked everything off with last week’s episode, so if you’re interested in how we’re framing the season, go back and listen to it. But today we’re taking on a kind of rest… umbrella topic. Sleep.

Anyone who’s ever tossed and turned all night knows that when your brain’s been going at 100 mph all day, moving from one thing to the next without stopping, it can be really hard to turn that off and fall asleep at night. Sometimes I’ll get in bed at 10PM and I can feel the minutes ticking by as my thoughts turn over and over in my head and sleep continues to evade me. Then I sneak a peek at the clock and suddenly it’s midnight. Foiled again!

It’s times like those when my Monger comes out to play. I beat myself up for not getting to sleep on time, despite my best intentions. But that’s something I’m learning to work on.

Theme out

ACT I: Sleep Is Hard

When I think of rest, I ultimately think of sleep.

MUS

The importance of sleep was drilled into me as a child. I always had a much earlier bedtime than my friends, and my Dad had a strict quiet rule at 9PM. Sleep was valued so much that I developed a lot of unhealthy rules around sleep. Specifically, what a good person does when it comes to sleep.

A good person gets 8 hours. A good person doesn't nap. A good person is in bed before 11 and awake before 7 am The earlier I get up, the better of a person I am. And most importantly, no matter how little sleep I have gotten—I soldier on without complaint.

MUS out

Growing up, I unquestioningly followed these rules because I was afraid of what might happen if I was a quote unquote “bad person” when it came to sleep.

Looking back on this now, as an adult, I am struck by how silly all these rules are… and how totally wild it is that they’ve guided my life. Because of my High functioning anxiety they’ve created great fodder for my Monger… until recently.

MUS

Earlier this week, my husband and I had gone to a friend's house for dinner– nothing crazy, just a couple of glasses of wine, some card games, and good conversation. We arrived home around 11 pm, and as I walked upstairs, I thought ok, it's a school night and you will be tired tomorrow, but you have A LOT to get done.

My Monger stepped in with her familiar refrain…

You aren't going to get enough sleep!!! You shouldn't have stayed out so late!! Well, you will need to push through it tomorrow.

But then…

"Nope!” my Biggest Fan, the voice of self loyalty, replied. “Pushing isn't how we do it anymore. And for the record–you aren’t in school anymore!! Something has to give. Either you won't get as much done tomorrow, or you need to sleep-in some, or take a nap."

TAKE A NAP!?! My Monger replied—what is happening here?! You are making her soft.

No, I thought—I have time in the morning. If I am exhausted, I could take a nap—we will see what happens. My Biggest Fan is right. I won't be able to write much if I am tired. So I need to prioritize rest; however, that happens. Which amazingly silenced my Monger.

MUS out

My Monger thinks that rest– and thus, sleep– is for the weak. But what my Monger doesn’t know is that sleep… is kind of magical. It’s a time when our bodies and brains can repair themselves after long days of stress. And it’s a time that we should all really be taking advantage of.

ACT II: Interview with Sara Mednick Nancy Jane Smith: [00:00:00] I will say my cat has joined me next to me on Sara Mednick: Oh, my cat is right here. Nancy Jane Smith: oh, so cute. What's your cat's name? Sara Mednick: Mama. Nancy Jane Smith: Mama. Uh, well, Calvin. Um, and I'm not going to bring him into the screen cuz he gets a little surly, but here. Nancy: This is Dr. Sara Mednick. She’s a professor at UC Irvine in the department of Cognitive Science, and the author of the book, The Power of the Downstate, among others.

Sara Mednick: I study sleep and I study what are all the, um, mechanisms in the brain and body that make sleep so helpful and supportive for our life. Nancy: But Sara wasn’t always on the path to becoming a neuroscientist. She started out her career… as an actor.

Sara Mednick: I had this dream as a child to be an actress, and then when you get to, I got to New York city and I realized, like, there's gotta be, there's gotta be more that I can do for this world than just stand on these audition lines. And so I got a job working in a mental hospital at Bellevue, NYU, and I got really excited by just working with people with mental illness and feeling like. You know this entire in curiosity of what was going on in their brains that made them behave the way they were behaving. and I suddenly realized, you know, what, I could actually study the brain. Nancy: After that experience, Sara directed all her energy to studying neuroscience. And her background in theater actually made her really good at explaining some of these complicated concepts to a general audience.

Sara Mednick: It's very important that I translate.[00:02:00] The work that we do in the lab into a palatable and interesting and useful, um, piece of information for, for people out there in the world. Nancy Jane Smith: how do you, how do you study sleep? What does that look like on a day to day basis?

MUS

Sara Mednick: So we have a seven bedroom sleep lab at UC Irvine. And what that means is it's basically a 24 hour lab. I have. A fleet of amazing undergrads who are trained to do EEG setups,. we have people come in for nighttime sleep and we do a bunch of testing, before they get to bed. We test them on memory and emotions and attention and working memory. Um, and then we have them sleep in the lab. We [00:03:00] can look at their brain activity. And then when they wake up, we have them test on those same tasks again. Nancy: Sara and her team compare results, to see if any of the functions they tested before the person went to sleep– like memory, or attention– have gotten better or worse after a night of rest. Sara Mednick: You know, they got better on this memory. They had better memory or they had memory loss because of sleep loss. So that's basically how. The sleep lab works. MUS out

Nancy Jane Smith: so what are the most important functions of sleep? What does it do for your mind and body? Sara Mednick: right. Uh, gosh, I mean, the list goes on and we still don't really understand what's in this list. sleep is incredibly important for our restorative functions. Daytime is, um, filled with a lot of. Energy depletion. Right? We're running around, we're doing things it's very stressful. It uses up our resources. Nancy: Working out, experiencing stress or anxiety during the day, even things like being social and hanging out with friends, or learning new things. All of these little parts of daily life add up and deplete our store of mental and physical energy. So… how do we replenish that supply? Sara Mednick: It's very hard when you are awake to do any of these repairing restorative activities. So that is why the restorative functions of, our body have been relegated to sleep and our brain have been relegated to sleep because it's the time when we're not taking in new information. Sleep is the one time where it's like, okay, now we're actually out. And now we can go into all those repetitive modes. Sara Mednick: Your cardiovascular system and your metabolic system, your guts, all of these, um, systems require sleep to calm down and repair and replenish, um, energy resources. So to make you ready for the next. Nancy: Sara has seen these “reparative modes” at work in her sleep lab. MUS

Sara Mednick: When we fall asleep, probably the, the biggest. Shift that we experience, um, throughout the entire 24 hour cycle is falling asleep. So what you see in the brain is a sudden massive slowdown in brain activity. What you see is when you're awake, your brain is highly active. It's multitasking, a lot of different brain areas. Um, sending electrical signals at different frequencies at the same time. So it's a big mess when you fall asleep, suddenly everything slows down and everything starts to synchronize. So your EEG starts to get really, um, slow, the electrical signals start to get really slow and they start to actually. the whole brain starts to synchronize to the same slow rhythms. the whole brain becomes one big rhythmic, uh, beast. Nancy: Your temperature drops, your heart rate drops. Sara Mednick: It basically gives your whole body a major rest. Your metabolic system switches into a repair mode and the, the guts also switch into a repair mode. So it's a huge, um, shift from being awake to being asleep. Nancy: And that’s what Sara studies– how that switch to repair mode might contribute to memory benefits, or emotional benefits. And Sara says that good sleep and rest can help strengthen those things, but there’s really no silver bullet to living a healthy life. Sara Mednick: It's everything that you're doing in your life to make sure you have really good balance between the forces that make you exert yourself and stress yourself out. And the forces that make you, um, Calm yourself down and restore yourself. MUS out

Nancy: Sara calls that restorative, restful state the downstate. Sara Mednick: My term, the downstate, refers to all of the restorative practices that we have to engage in on a regular basis to keep us fully restored and to keep our resources high and to keep us in a good, balanced, um, happy, strong state. The idea is that, you know, we are rhythmic animals and rhythms, give us two things. One is the upstate where we need to get out in the world and do things.And it requires a lot of energy to put on our clothes and go to work and, you know, deal with people… all these things. They require a lot of energy and a lot of resources. And what has to follow in a rhythm is that you have an upstate followed by a downstate where you can then restore all of those. Um, Resources that you used up in the upstate. Nancy: But, Sara says– and as I think we all know– our society really emphasizes the upstate. Sara Mednick: What we need to do is remember that we need to repair and we need to, you know, get back to a balanced state by spending a lot of time in the downstate to make sure that we're sort of ready for the next upstate. In society now we put a lot of emphasis on, well, what are you doing? Um, you know, how hard are you training or how are you training or what are you eating? Nancy: What that go go go mentality fails to take into consideration is, that the restorative work our bodies and minds do in this downstate… can actually lead to BETTER focus, and more energy. MUS

Sara Mednick: Say, you're just starting your workout. The first time it's incredibly difficult and energy exerting and, and when you're done, you're exhausted and you're breathing heavy and your body is sent into a stress mode. And what happens then is your Autonomic nervous system immediately starts to work to get you into the rest and digest mode. It restores all of your nutrients and energy resources. But what it also does is if you stay in that rest for a little bit longer than, you know, just kind of get in and get out. You actually top yourself up with more resources and more nutrients because your body's like, oh my God, that was so terrifying. I never wanna be at such a loss for [00:14:00] resources and so exhausted again. So your body actually gives you more resources. You get more glycogen and. you develop more ATP than you had before, so that the next time you can actually work out harder, you know, you could work out a little bit longer, you can get a little bit further along in your goal. And then the next time when you work out, you need to then have another downstate that doesn't just have a short downstate, but a extended downstate that gives you that extra bit of resources. MUS out

Nancy: Sara says this principle holds true across all kinds of day-to-day activities. Sara Mednick: When you're, you know, thinking. When you're doing learning or, you know, when you're in a classroom and you're suddenly learning information, you know, the amount of sleep that you have after your class is going to determine how well you do in terms of being tested. Right? So this is stuff that, you know, the downstate matters If you know, at, at equally, if not more than what you're actually doing, when you're in your upstate. Nancy: So, how can we take time to engage with the downstate in all the hullabaloo of our busy lives? MUS

Sara Mednick: The first place to look is in your breath. So usually what we're doing when we're in our day to day is we're breathing pretty rapidly and pretty shallowly. We're kind of speaking all the [00:16:00] way through our breath and not taking very deep breaths. When we're working, there's something called email apnea. Where you open up your email and you just stop breathing. Nancy: What the heck!? I totally get email apnea. Sara Mednick: It's a panic response, to the world where you suddenly get into this shallow breath or you just stop breathing. And so one of the most powerful ways to. counteract that is to have deep, slow breaths. I'm going to, um, intentionally do slow, deep breathing. And that shows a huge expanse, um, in, um, restore mode. And so there's many ways that you can do that. throughout your day, you know, when you're driving, [00:17:00] When you're in the store, when you're cooking, you know, when you're sitting there doing your email, you could do this, you don't need an app to do meditation, but you can do meditation practice, any of these restorative practices, they start with breath because the breath is so important to bring in that restorative response. Nancy: Even things like feeling loved and supported. Anything that makes you feel calm, creates that restorative response and helps you tap into the downstate in your everyday life. Sara Mednick: So being with friends, um, holding hands, being out in nature. You take in all the phytochemicals that are in the, um, woods that are helpful for your immune system. Um, and then also how you plan your day. So. What time do you exercise? What kind of exercise are you doing? Um, and what time do you eat? Uh, and what kind of foods are you eating? I guess really starting to think about yourself as a 24 hour cycling animal, everything that you do will help you, um, you know, tap into that rhythm and then resonate with it. MUS out

Nancy Jane Smith: Okay. So like, so much of this stuff is just like, this is helpful for you, you know, rest is good. Rest is important. But my gosh, even though I've devoted my life to this, and I know this is so important, I go kicking and screaming into [00:19:00] rest. Like it is something I don't wanna do. I don't wanna breathe. I don't, you know, I know I need to go outside and, you know, I do the things, but I sound like I sound awful, Sara Mednick: You sound human I, I am 100% with your sister. Nancy Jane Smith: but I'm just saying like, it's so hard and it drives me crazy, cuz I'm like this, I know this will help me, but I am such a buyer of the upstate Western push push push mentality. Sara Mednick: I mean, we are living in a world where. Absolutely, um, are driven to ignore our down states and we are praised, um, and, and validated [00:20:00] for working ourselves to exhaustion, um, and not having any sort of really good, um, relationship between our activity and repose. We lionize over work. We lionize, you know, burning the candle at both ends. I have such a hard time getting to bed on time. You know, I have such a hard time not watching another Netflix show. We live in this world of like more is better. So it's actually very important to think about, creating systems where when you are in that moment of having to make the decision, you don't have to actually make a decision. You just have a schedule. Nancy: For example, it’s 9:45 and I’m thinking about watching another episode of Love Island. BUT if I’m sticking to my schedule and I planned to go to sleep at 10PM, that scaffolding gives me incentive to honor my commitment to rest. Sara Mednick: I think putting as many of these kind of structures in place when you're awake and alert and in a good head, um, then when you get to that time where you actually have to, um, Be faced with the decision you've already made the decision, and this is just what you do. So, but it's, you know, it's hard for everybody. Nancy: But I was curious. As someone who studies rest and sleep… had Sara’s relationship to rest changed over time, as she studied the downstate? MUS

Sara Mednick: Well, I'm turning 50 Nancy Jane Smith: oh, I am too. Sara Mednick: Oh, congratulations. Nancy Jane Smith: You too. Sara Mednick: Yeah, that's awesome. I think I used to be able to tolerate a lot more upstate. Um, and I have far less tolerance now and I have a lot more, prioritization of the things that matter to me. So that's, I guess how things have changed is, you know, um, love matters, family matters mycareer, um, and mentoring matters these things. And, so,[00:28:00] I'm much better at being able to tell myself. what you know, is this, does this serve me? And ask myself that question and then if it doesn't, I'm okay with saying no and doing something that does serve me, I think is, and, and, and rest is definitely a mega part of that, right? Because, um, there's things that you have to sort of say no to. because they really feel like they're going against this natural wave of, you know, this is the amount of energy I have right now. And then I've gotta go into my downstate. And if I do this extra thing that doesn't serve me. So I think I've just become much way, way better at determining what does MUS out

The Happier Approach is sponsored by Self Loyalty School.

Self Loyalty School is designed for people who have tried all the things and are still struggling to quiet their high-functioning anxiety. It has small bite-sized lessons; delivered via a private podcast feed. Because there are daily bite-size lessons for you to listen to, it requires a daily re-commitment to Self Loyalty. Trust me, I've tried all the things, meditation, walking, exercise, coaching, and therapy, and they're all fantastic. But, I could never do them consistently until I built self-loyalty. I've been doing this work for over 20 years, and I FINALLY have figured out Self Loyalty is the key to quieting high-functioning anxiety. When I was finally loyal and kind to myself, I wanted to practice the things that helped. Without self-loyalty, I am pushing, hustling, trying to accomplish the next thing, and letting that Monger and my anxiety run the show. If you are intrigued—head over to selfloyaltyschool.com to learn more.

ACT III: Nancy: My conversation with Sara helped me to realize how important it is– for my health, my overall wellbeing, and even for my focus and productivity– to listen to the voice of my Biggest Fan when I need to prioritize rest.

MUS

Nancy: Last we’d left off, I’d finally been able to quiet my Monger and let myself have a night of uninterrupted rest.

The next morning my alarm cat Calvin began our morning by tapping on my face from his perch on my nightstand. When I rolled over groggily, I saw that he had let me sleep in!! I felt fantastic!! And amazingly, my Monger was still silent.

Playing defense, my Biggest Fan stepped in to say—yay! You feel refreshed and ready to start the day—it wasn't your normal amount of sleep, but hopefully, you won't be exhausted and will still get a lot of writing done. Those words were enough to quiet my Monger—you will still be productive, was all she needed to hear. And that is the truth. The more I rest, drink water, move my body and eat healthy food, the more focused and productive I am.

Rest doesn't come naturally to me, but the more I can break my own rest rules and build self-loyalty, the less my HFA runs the show.

MUS out

Outro

Theme

That’s it for this week! In our next episode we’ll talk to Jessica Snow– a meditation and imagination artist– who brings a sense of wonder and magic into everyday rest. That’s next time, on the Happier Approach.

Nancy: The Happier Approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod5 and Epidemic Sound. For more episodes, to get in touch, or to learn more about quieting High Functioning Anxiety you can visit nancy jane smith dot com. And if you like the show, leave us a review! It actually helps us out a lot.

Thanks to Dr. Sara Mednick for speaking with us today. You can learn more about Sara and buy her book The Power of the Downstate at saramednick.com. That’s S-A-R-A M-E-D-N-I-C-K dot com.

Take care

Theme out

Season 4 Episode 1: Intro to Rest

We are kicking off a new season talking all about rest!

In the first episode of our new season (!) Nancy wades into a topic that's both frustrated and fascinated her over the years-- rest. She grapples with why it's so hard for people like her with HFA to truly rest, and talks with her friend, Stephanie Pollack, about why rest is such a hot topic these days. This is just the first of our eight episode season all about rest-- so stay tuned for more!

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal relationship to rest, including why COVID has made resting even harder.

• A conversation about rest with Nancy's friend Stephanie Poll0ck.

• A sneak peek at what we'll be covering in the realm of rest this season.

Learn more about Stephanie Pollock:

• Go to https://stephaniepollock.com/

• Listen to Stephanie's podcast, "Everyday Leadership for Smart Women": https://stephaniepollock.com/podcast/

• Subscribe to her newsletter: https://newsletter.stephaniepollock.com/

• Follow Stephanie on Twitter @Steph_Pollock

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy: Hey guys, it’s me! Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships.

I am so excited to dive into a brand new season! We’ve got eight episodes coming up, all on a topic that has both frustrated and fascinated me over the years. That topic is rest. I know what you’re thinking– REST!? I don’t have time for REST! Well, I thought that for a long time too. But in the past few years I’ve realized that really listening to my mind and body, and fighting against that instinct to go go go, can be a total game changer. Especially in a world where stressful things are happening every day.

I am well aware– from personal experience– it can be particularly hard for people with high functioning anxiety to ignore that nagging monger voice when it comes to rest. The one that says: you don’t deserve to REST! What if something bad happens while you’re resting! Stay vigilant, you! But I’m here to tell you you DO deserve rest. To feel restored. However that looks for you personally, because it looks different for everyone.

ACT I: Why Rest? Why Now?

"I am exhausted," a friend said to me. "I mean… soul level exhausted."

Yes, I thought, me too.

This is a refrain I have heard from clients, friends, and myself. We are exhausted.

When I think about what we have collectively been through in the past two plus years—global pandemic, increased gun violence, crazy weather due to climate change, the polarization of our politics and culture, threats to our democracy, and a war in Ukraine.

Everywhere you look, there is pain and suffering—and that doesn't even take into account all the personal traumas we have pushed through and dug deep around.

No wonder we are exhausted. We keep piling on more and more and more, with no time for rest. By the time we finish one major drama, we are on to the next.

Over the past few months, I have been digging deep to keep pushing and giving, giving, giving. I have ignored my body's signs of fatigue—I have pushed past the pain, stomach issues, and headaches, and rather than seeing them as signs to rest, I have worn them as a warped badge of honor. But this is not something I am proud of; this is an area where I need a lot of growth.

And I think that’s where my friend was when she said, "I am so exhausted."

At the end of May, I decided I couldn't push anymore. I needed to rest. I booked a short getaway to French Lick Indiana, for my husband and me. I set realistic expectations. I knew I was too tired for romance– I needed sleep.

I was expecting my Monger to criticize me for resting… but turns out I was too tired to care! All I did for 3 days was sleep. The only decisions I had to make were where to eat and where to rest. It was fantastic and blissful.

AND YET! On the drive home, back into reality I realized that I still felt exhausted. 3 days of sleep was but a drop in the bucket for the level of weariness I was feeling.

On that drive somewhere in Ohio, I decided I wanted to explore this idea of rest on a deeper level. Those of us with High Functioning Anxiety have an especially tense relationship with rest.

My first response when I realize I am exhausted is: ugh, I shouldn't be tired—why am I tired?!? And so, I try to justify my fatigue or beat myself up for it.

If I can justify my tiredness and it passes my Monger's test, I deserve to be tired. I can rest. But only for a little bit. There is a lot to get done! People who need care! Push Push Push!

The more exhausted I get, the more I push myself. And once I do this push push push behavior for a few days or a week, it is like a lever gets triggered internally, and I hit the place of no return. My Monger takes over, and screams “THERE WILL BE NO RESTING.” My anxiety goes sky-high, and my unhealthy coping skills come into play. My Monger regularly chimes in with, “Only YOU can do this—THEY will mess it up. You must control everything for it to go well because it must be perfect.”

There is no time for practicing A.S.K., acknowledging feelings, or slowing down. My Monger is driving the bus, going off-road at 100 mph.

Sometimes when I feel like this– in the throes of a monger-attack and beyond exhausted– I’ll reach out to a friend to try to sort through what’s going on and make sense of my feelings. That’s why I reached out to my friend Stephanie.

ACT II: Interview with Stephanie Pollock

Nancy Jane Smith: Hi Steph.

Stephanie Pollock: Hi.

Nancy: This is my friend, Stephanie Pollock.

Stephanie Pollock: I am a leadership coach and community builder for progressive purpose driven women who want to create social impact in the world.

Nancy: Stephanie and I met many years ago at a conference. We were fast friends– being in the same business and dealing with some of the same issues with high functioning anxiety gave us a lot to talk about. Eventually, we started talking back and forth every day.

Nancy Jane Smith: Yeah, it was funny cuz I know you're getting ready to leave on vacation and then I'm getting ready to leave on vacation. And I said to Doug, I was walking upstairs to go to bed last night and I said, Stephanie leaves on vacation next week. And then I'm gonna be on vacation and it's gonna be like three weeks where we're not gonna be together talking.

And I said, it's just a really weird relationship that I have with her. And he said, yes, it is. I can't figure it out.

Stephanie Pollock: Then that has to mean there's something special about it.

Nancy: There IS something special about our relationship. We’re able to talk freely with each other. To explore our ideas and feelings in a way that helps both of us to make sense of the world. And something we’ve been talking about a lot lately? Rest.

Nancy Jane Smith: What is your relationship with rest, Stephanie?

Stephanie Pollock: Oh, it's totally positive. I do it really well. All of the time. I kid, uh, I, I struggle with rest, you know, that, you know, I struggle with rest. Uh, I am a type, a ambitious, uh, achievement oriented for better, for worse. often for worse type of person. And so rest doesn't compute well with that.

Nancy: Like a lot of people, Stephanie’s fraught relationship with rest started when she was a kid.

Stephanie Pollock: When I was 14, he, you know, I was 14. I wanted to go to the mall with my friends. That's what you did at 14.

Nancy: Her dad made an offhand comment about Stephanie being lazy because she wanted to go to the mall on a Saturday afternoon instead of doing chores. And even though he didn’t really mean anything by it, that moment dramatically changed the way she saw rest. From now on, it was like a dirty word.

Stephanie Pollock: Something tweaked in my brain and I said, oh, I'm lazy. I need to change that. It was a really pivotal moment because it set into motion my need to go after all the things, to join all the teams, to say yes to everything, to work really hard. It wasn't enough to be on the sports team. I had to be the captain of the sports team.

And so that has been, you know, 30 years of my life. Because if you believe that your value is measured in your output and your achievements, then rest is wasteful.

Nancy: This all sounds way too familiar to me. I see it in my clients all the time. And I see it in myself. But Stephanie and I are BOTH practicing redefining for ourselves what it means to truly rest.

Nancy Jane Smith: Cause it's not just about, I'm gonna go take a bubble bath, it's more than that. What I'm interested about [with] rest is what we think about when we think about rest. I think, oh, it's taking the afternoon off to watch TV or it's, you know, reading a good book or it's, um, you know, like that sort of stuff is rest, but, but it's also a a state, it's a mindset. Of okay. I have 30 minutes. What can I do in this time to rest, versus who can I talk to? What can I accomplish? What podcast do I need to listen to?

That idea, I think is something I'm trying to change in how I view rest that, oh, it's how I'm doing my day to day mindset. Not just, oh, I'm taking an afternoon to spend in the garden because that doesn't seem to cut it anymore.

Stephanie Pollock: I read an article a number of years ago, it's called the seven different types of rest. And that is something that always comes to my mind when I really think about what it means to rest and what kind of rest I need.

Nancy: That was interesting to me. That there could be different kinds of rest, to address different kinds of weariness.

Stephanie Pollock: So there's physical rest, which is both active and passive. Passive is like sleeping or napping. Whereas active is like yoga or meditation or things like that. And then there's emotional rest, mental rest, spiritual rest, creative rest, social rest, and sensory rest. And that has been really helpful for me. To really be able to tune into what kind of rest do I actually need.

Nancy: So, if you’re pretty good sleeper it’s easy to say: well, you got eight hours of sleep. Why are you tired? What’s your problem?? But if you look at rest from this perspective, maybe physical rest isn’t what you needed. Maybe you needed social rest, or emotional rest. For Stephanie, what she often needs is sensory or creative rest.

Stephanie Pollock: This brain of mine it's on 24/7. It never stops. And it runs on overdrive. So if I don't give it any room to just take a break by, you know, stopping the scroll on Twitter or creative, meaning you don't have to come up with an idea. You don't have to action on something right now. That really helps me kind of dial that back again, imperfectly, but at least gives me a bit of a frame to say yet, you know? Yeah. You're sitting here, you're drinking your coffee in the morning and that's restful.

Nancy Jane Smith: So paint me a picture of what true rest looks like to you.

Stephanie Pollock: Well, as somebody who's had a very busy household, particularly during COVID with kids at home husband at home working. I have realized true rest means I need some time alone. I need quiet, uninterrupted time where I can just be, I don't have to do anything or say anything or be anything other than kind of whatever I need.

You need to give yourself some grace, which I totally believe, I say that to clients all of the time, because they are so hard on themselves as I am to myself. if we're not careful and there's some realities of life that it's like, yeah, yeah. And still keep working.

Nancy Jane Smith: Someone tells me to give myself grace, what I hear them saying is be the BFF, you know, take the afternoon off. You know, when in reality, I think what we are saying is just be kind to yourself about all the stuff you have going on,

I know my stress is at a seven and I can't, and that just tips me over into even more over functioning. You'd think I would get to a seven or an eight and I'd be like, no, now you need rest. No, it's like, I go the opposite. So I get to, if I hit that tipping point, I just am way over. Stephanie Pollock: Yeah, I relate to that.

Nancy: I’m someone who finds it really hard to give myself grace, even in the best of times. But something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, is how this idea that the past few years have been a chance to “reset” has really messed with my idea of what rest looks like.

Nancy Jane Smith: So there was this myth of COVID I remember at the time like, oh, this is the great reset and we're all gonna figure out, you know, how important it is to be resting. And what I think COVID did was it forced us to, you know, to step off the Merry round of stress and commitments, which was awesome. But then it also forced us into a world of no social contact with all these traumatic things happening So now then the world reopens and we're kind of left with all this unresolved trauma, but now expected to deal with it. And so now we're out and our parents have aged to the kids of age. Everyone's stressed. Like life has just gotten harder.

Do you agree with that? What are your thoughts on that?

Stephanie Pollock: I think we are still trying to figure out what this time now looks like and what we want it to be. And, you know, I think back to the early days, my kids came home, my husband came home. It was just managing life. It was managing homeschooling. My, you know, then nine year old daughter was still doing zoom soccer in the basement because they wanted to keep her going.

It was like, oh it is really nice to take my, you know, type a brain down a notch and say, no, you just can't do these things. You don't have to feel guilty about them. You don't have to wonder, should I, could I, would I, because it's just not on the table.

And then we kind of did the ebb and flow of COVID like, it's back it's, it's dipping it's back, it's dipping. And so I just, you know, personally felt like I was on that rollercoaster of like, how much do I invest in my, you know, in my work, in this way, in a project, knowing that it could change.

Oh my gosh, it's been so much. I think we are all now exhausted. Everybody I talk to is exhausted. When I operate like that, I just start to operate a little bit by default. So it's like, well, okay. You know, what do we, what do we used to do? I'll just start doing those things again.

Nancy Jane Smith: The word default there, you know, is, is totally accurate. Like that's how I feel. I mean, that's how I feel. And I can see that in my clients that it's just kind of like, you know, and I, we just, I just picked up where I left off. But what we're doing is we're ignoring the anxiety and the trauma and the, you know, and a little T trauma for many people, many people was a big T trauma of COVID, but we're ignoring what we went through and how anxiety provoking and awful that was.

And part of that is because we're all done. And so we don't wanna talk about it. We have been through hell and we can't just pretend that hell didn't happen and go right back into our lives. And I think that's why, you know, so many of my clients are back at their jobs working 50, 60 hours, you know, the, uh, because people have resigned and they're like, I should be able to do this cuz I did it before.

Stephanie Pollock: I think that's still true. Like the threat isn't imminent in the way it was. We're still we're back to work. We're back at the, you know, the social engagements, we're doing all these things, but all that stored up years worth of, you know, sitting at three 30 to watch our chief medical officer tell us what the numbers are with my husband.

I feel that all of those micro experiences through the pandemic, the sitting and listening to the health officer, the scrolling through Twitter, all of those micro things that have long since passed now they're over. But I feel like somewhere they're a little still embedded in me and that they have accumulated to a point where I don't feel some days, like I have that same get up and go that I used to have pre pandemic, even though the conditions are available now, for me to reactivate that.

I do notice that my capacity it's like I once was operating at a tank of, you know, a hundred percent. And now my tank is like 60 percent.

Nancy Jane Smith: Mm-hmm yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm

Stephanie Pollock: Right. All the time. And I keep trying to like, get it up to 70 and fill it up more. And it's like, no, we're staying at 60 friend.

Like we're just gonna be here for a while. And that is really frustrating. And then that sends my monger into overdrive.

Nancy Jane Smith: Yeah, but I think it is somewhere in the acknowledging what we've been through. Like it is kind of admitting I'm at 60. And I'm not gonna beat myself up for that. I'm just gonna recognize I'm just gonna give myself grace

Stephanie Pollock: Yes.

Nancy Jane Smith: I think it is acknowledging why we're at a 60 versus just giving ourselves grace for the fact that we are at a 60, but consistently bringing it up, like, dude, look what you've lived through. Get a grip.

Stephanie Pollock: Yeah. Okay. But here's the problem. So I'm just gonna be real. We can say that, you've said it to me. I've said it to you. We've said it to our clients and our friends, like, dude, of course you're here. Right? Of course.

Nancy Jane Smith: mm.

Stephanie Pollock: So it's like, yeah, of course, of course you're feeling that way. And then I can go. Yeah, like that's okay. That I am. But the other part of me is like when is it gonna end? Nancy Jane Smith: Right. Totally

Stephanie Pollock: Could you give me an end date please? Because then I can get on board with this whole grace thing. But if this is just the new normal I'm not down with that. For high functioning people, it's like, and what do I do to move to the other side of this? And I don’t know the answer.

Nancy Jane Smith: No, I know. Yeah. Right. I don't. That's why I'm doing a podcast series on rest. Stephanie Pollock: It is the, the magic question, because part of me goes like if I just slept an extra hour and ate a little more spinach, would this make the difference? Like I just, but seriously, like am I just now at a 60 indefinitely? Am I gonna incrementally move 61 62 63. Or do I just need to like get over myself and be okay with being at 60 for a while until I'm not Nancy Jane Smith: Right. How do I do life knowing that, and then have this capacity that I can only do 60%. And I have to come to some acceptance of the fact, this is the reality right now, because trying to slam myself into a box, you know, my round peg into a square box, I'm killing myself. I mean, I'm, I'm wasting 20% more of my energy doing that. So now I'm down to 40% cuz I'm beating myself up all day.

Nancy: Making that adjustment takes patience. It takes time, and a willingness to sit with yourself and really ask– what do I need right now? What kind of rest would be helpful to me in this season of my life. And sometimes, remembering that we’re all on this crazy merry-go-round together for just a short time, can help us make peace with where we’re at.

Stephanie Pollock: You know, next week I'll be on vacation and we go to this place every year. My mother and father-in-law are on the coast of Canada in a beautiful spot, right on the ocean. It's just picturesque. And it really, it is restful for me to be there. It's called Cathedral Grove and it is a forest that is, you know, there's a tree there that's 800 years old. So it's full of these old, old, old trees. And it, for me, when I go there, it is that kind of spiritual rest part. You know, I'm not a religious person, but it is that kind of spiritual rest of remembering: things have come and gone. People have come and gone.

Stephanie Pollock: What are the things that actually really matter here and how can I use this 60% toward those things, as opposed to constantly bemoaning that I'm not at 80 or 90 or a hundred. But I still can be intentional about how I think about what's important to me and where I'm gonna put my energy.

Like this is the cycle of life. I am part of it. I am not it. I am part of it. And it's very grounding for me to just kind of remember that we have these ebbs and flows.

ACT III: Nancy’s Conclusion Nancy: Taking back the wheel from my Monger when she’s going full-speed crazy– trying to tell me that I should be operating at 100% when that’s just NOT possible– acknowledging that impossibility, and putting on the brakes… is messy. Because when I put on the brakes—all the feelings I have been avoiding bubble up, and initially my anxiety increases as I go from lots of distractions to none.

If you, too, are exhausted from pushing and pushing, digging deep to keep all the plates spinning in the air at once, hit subscribe because this season of the podcast will help.

We must rest! And over the next 8 episodes we will be looking at the concept of rest from all different angles. We’ll talk to a sleep expert to help us learn all about sleep. We’ll explore rest through mindfulness and meditation, through the seasons of our lives. We’ll even hear about the power of napping. We’ll also look at why it is so hard for those of us with HFA to rest and what to do about it. Like, how to take a truly restful vacation, how to break the belief that “I can suffer better so I need to keep pushing,” and how to stop treating our bodies like machines.

I am so excited for this season and hopeful that we will have found a way to ease our weariness by the end.

Outro

That’s it for this week! In our next episode we’ll talk to a cognitive neuroscientist and author, who’s focused her career on researching the power of sleep. We’ll learn about WHY sleep is so important, and what you can do to embrace this important element of rest in your own life. That’s next time, on the Happier Approach.

Nancy: The Happier Approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod5 and Epidemic Sound. For more episodes, to get in touch, or to learn more about quieting High Functioning Anxiety you can visit nancy jane smith dot com. And if you like the show, leave us a review! It actually helps us out a lot.

Thanks to my friend Stephanie Pollock for speaking with us today. You can learn more about Stephanie, reach out to her– or listen to her awesome podcast “Everyday Leadership for Smart Women”– at stephaniepollck.com.

The Happier Approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care, until then.

Season 3 Episode 8: Dear Nancy

In this episode, Nancy reflects on all she learned during this season.

In our final episode of Season 3, Nancy reflects on all the thinking and learning she's done around change this season. She writes a letter to her younger self, looking back on how the big changes in her life have often come at her fast and furious, but always for the better. Then Nancy checks in with her husband Doug, about how they've both changed throughout their lives together. Finally, we hear a very special letter to Nancy's older self, 20 years in the future.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's reflections on change and the importance of being self-loyal in moments of transition.

• A conversation about change between Nancy and her husband Doug.

• Resources for staying connected with Nancy and the podcast before our next season comes out.

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy Jane Smith: [00:00:00] Hey guys, it's me. Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. This is the final episode of the season. We've spent the last seven episodes looking at change from every angle.

Do you feel like you've changed from thinking so much about you. I do. And that's the way change works. Isn't it. Sometimes you go looking for it, but more often than not, it can sneak up on you. It's a natural part of living, growing and learning more about yourself and the world. And man, when I think about the ways I've changed over the years, it's pretty mind boggling.

So as a way to end the season and reflect on all the changes I've been through, I decided to write a letter to my 29 year old self, as you'll [00:01:00] hear, she was very different from the person I am. Now, she had all these concerns and fears about the future, about controlling her. Yeah. Sometimes I had to go kicking and screaming through the change machine, but in terms of the way things have turned out, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Dear 29 year old now. I wanted to write to you not to change anything you've lived through, because I think all those experiences have shaped you into the person you are today. Although I will tell you that. Yes, you do find an amazing man. Who isn't the type you're looking for now, but it is the perfect type for you.

I know you spend a lot of time worrying about that and I wanted to put your mind at ease again, don't let that change what you do. Just keep it in your back pocket for the nights. When you feel so lost and alone [00:02:00] one day, you won't feel nearly as lost. Okay. Onto more important matters. I have a podcast. Oh right.

You don't even know what that is. So let's go with radio show. I have a radio show. I know isn't that amazing. So many cool things are in store for you. I'm doing a radio show and the theme of the show is about living with high functioning anxiety. You don't know it now, but you have high functioning anxiety and that realization will explain a lot of your.

Okay. Back to the radio show for the past seven shows, we've been talking about change and how to make change. I'm teaching a program, helping people quiet, their high functioning anxiety through building self loyalty. It is called self love. So I've launched. The school is helping people create change. So I wanted to have that be a theme.

We explore on my podcast. I mean, radio show and the episode is all about [00:03:00] change over time and how, as we age, we learn to approach change differently. Yup. I'm a teacher and a writer. You can probably believe the teacher part, but even I am still shocked by the writing part. It's one of my favorite parts of my job.

But again, I digress. I'm just so excited to talk to you.

I could remember, even though it was 20 years ago, how much you wanted to change. Wow. I know how much you secretly hate yourself. You want to be a completely different person and try your hardest to figure out how to make that happen. That feeling of being a fraud and just waiting for the world to figure it out.

That is the worst I have all the journals you wrote hours and hours writing, trying to figure out your life. You truly believed. If you read enough and wrote enough, you would figure it out, [00:04:00] but it didn't have. I finally figured out a few years ago that the answers aren't there, they are inside. Yep. The place you hate the most and are the most afraid to venture into.

I have re-read some of those journals and all you were doing is analyzing over and over. You aren't acknowledging your feelings at all. No wonder you are so. Today. I actually teach people to acknowledge their feelings and it is a huge part of the work I do. I know it's so hard to believe, but it is true.

It takes a while, but you do figure out the importance of acknowledging your internal experience.

One thing you will spend much of your next 10 years doing drinking. You like alcohol now, but in the next few years you realize how much it helps quiet the monger and numb the anxiety. [00:05:00] Ironically, alcohol also helps you get in touch with those big feelings you're ignoring and stuffing down. That becomes a bit much, and I'm glad you and I have figured out a new way of getting in touch with our feelings.

It takes many years for you to figure it out, but it actually makes the anxiety way worse. You figure it out and around the same time you realize what I said about the key is looking internally, not running away from it as quickly as possible. Don't get me wrong. I love a good numbing session, but these days it tends to be more numbing on bad TV than alcohol, but keep your wits about you.

You make some crazy decisions when you're drinking. So watch. You and I have changed a lot in the past 20 years, but I really thought I would know more than I do at 49. I thought I would have more certainty. I thought I would be fixed. But what I realized now is I didn't need to be fixed. I was never really broken.

[00:06:00] Searching for certainty makes me totally miserable because it doesn't really exist. As far as knowing more, quite honestly, I see now that knowledge is endless and ongoing. I know you believe one day there will be a finish line where you will be judged for doing it right. And winning. But what I know for sure, 20 years later, there is no finish line.

You will never be complete forever in complete as a lettuce Morissette. Well, she hasn't recorded that song yet, but it will be one of your favorites even before you really get what she means. Okay. Girl, take care of yourself. You are amazing. You are going to be an amazing career counselor at Otterbein university.

You will help a lot of students there. Some of whom I'm still friends with today. 20 years later in two years, you will walk into a bar and a cute guy with glasses will start chatting with you from behind the. That's him. [00:07:00] That's your guy just trust me, Nancy.

Naturally, after I did all this personal reflection in the form of a letter, I had to talk to my husband, Doug, about. Introduce yourself. Hey, there, you need to

Doug: be closer together. Um, never being bossed around this.

Nancy Jane Smith: I'm trying to help. I'm not Barcelona.

Doug: Yeah. Not bossy, always helpful. Um, the husband of Nancy Jane Smith. I'm Douglas Harris. I go by Doug.

Nancy Jane Smith: So I wrote a letter to my 29 year old self. I can't believe it's been 20 years since I was 29. And. That got me thinking about how much I've changed, because that was right before I, not right before, but I think I met you when I was 31 and I think we've changed a ton.

Doug: Yes, we couldn't be married. Had we not changed from the people in that bar? Nancy Jane Smith: How would you say we've changed? I [00:08:00] changed or you changed since then?

Doug: Well, I would say that I've changed because I've come to a better acceptance of the fact that I am someone who has limits and I can tell people those limits and they have to take them. I believe we call them boundaries, but I can be like, this is an overwhelming atmosphere.

I'm I need to leave. And it's respected. Nice because I've always done a lot of uncomfortable atmospheres for a really long time. Cause you didn't ask. No, I didn't speak up. I just made it a whole lot more fun to be in a quiet atmosphere. And I was like, wow, that can be respected that see how that can evolve. And,

Nancy Jane Smith: and that, this is because just in case people don't know of your epilepsy, um,

Doug: yes, I'm a big pig jobs and things. My whole life sort of based around my epilepsy and Nancy helped me realize and understand that you can tell [00:09:00] people that you have epilepsy and that you're a professional passenger and that that's okay.

Nancy Jane Smith: Because you can't drive. I can't drive.

Doug: And good. No clarification is part of why I'm married yet.

Nancy Jane Smith: Do you think people can change over time without trying? Definitely like maturity with age brings

Doug: change. I think with trips around the sun and growing older doesn't necessarily bring about change, but more so the things that interact with you as. As you age, that forced

Nancy Jane Smith: change. So you think we run up against enough resistance.

Doug: Like here's a huge obstacle. Like someone dies, there's an instant change. Here's a huge obstacle. Like someone who was close to you and you got to see every day moves out of town.

Nancy Jane Smith: I would agree with you. I think that life happens and therefore change happens. And I think every time life [00:10:00] happens, we have a choice. Whether we're going to go kicking and screaming into the change, or we're going to embrace the change.

Doug: Yes. And I'm jaded because as I get older, um, my medical condition gets worse, so my limitations increase. Um, and that's way less fun and probably not true for everyone.

I'm sure everyone's got their stuff that keeps them at home. But when I think of.

Change sometimes I'm like, oh yeah, the better days back when I had less limitations, but then you miss out on all the wisdom. So who really knows, I think I'd take wisdom over being able to run up and down Hills

Nancy Jane Smith: because my dad used to say. He wished he could go back to, you know, like with all the wisdom he could go back and be 20 again. Would you want to do that? Your dad

Doug: was a smart man, but no, I really enjoyed the lack of wisdom had.

Nancy Jane Smith: How do you think I've changed?

Doug: You've learned a lot about relaxation and boundaries and next day, you're ready to like dive into it and dip your toe in said, what would we like if I relaxed more or differently, would it be okay? Would it be a bad girl because you're a loving regimented person.

Nancy Jane Smith: Do you think that? Cause I feel like. I think I've relaxed a lot in the, like, worrying about what I still do a lot. Like I think I worry a lot, but I used to worry a lot more about what other people thought and I worry far less about that.

Doug: Definitely. I think you're happier being yourself, whatever that is for awhile. You thought that.

[00:12:00] Someone that if you turned left, instead of right, your world would be so different and better. And then you kept making left turns and be like, this is still Nancy Jane Smith: better. I felt like I used to think there was a formula and I just had to find the formula and then I would be happy and I still get stuck in that sometimes, but I can, I can come out of that much faster.

Doug: You didn't believe that your way was good enough where the, your way might be Frank in the testing. It was wrong, but now you're, you're able to explore why Mar you're asked why? Oh, more.

Nancy Jane Smith: It was interesting. I had a client today say to me that since, because I would say all of this is self loyalty. Like I've definitely feel I'm more loyal to myself and the client this morning said.

She's been trying to define self loyalty. And she said self loyalty is I won't negotiate with anyone on who I am. I think that that is where I [00:13:00] lived for a long time, for a very long time. It was just like, I just need to belittle myself if I could be some, someone different, it would be okay. And it's so freeing and still new to be like, I, this is it.

This is who, this is who I'm saying. No. And I think you have taught me that. So where do you see something? I have to, my next assignment for this podcast is to write a letter to myself in 20 years in the future. Where do you see in the next 20 years? How do you see yourself changing?

Doug: She get goes through with the innocent smile, um, in the next 20 years, this is it's truly one of those questions that is just like, well, if I get to live to 66, then maybe I'd be doing this. Nancy Jane Smith: Can you picture yourself? I can't either.

Dear 69 [00:14:00] year old Nancy. As I write this, the world is a crazy place, political turmoil, a war in Ukraine, and it feels like a mass shooting every week. Not to mention a pandemic that never seems to end. We are all tired and frayed, but I still have hoped that goodness and love will win that fear and contempt for each other will fade.

I hope I'm right. As I write this, I'm working on a podcast. Yep. Remember the happier approach. Do podcasts still exist? Maybe you're an avatar in the metaverse, but we are wrapping up season three where we're talking about change. So I'm writing a letter to you to show how maturity brings change. So how close to perfect are you at 69.

You must be almost there by now. I hope you found some peace after the older generation past right now. That is something very much on my mind. [00:15:00] The change from being the younger generation to the older generation time is crazy. Isn't it? Knowing how much the concept of self loyalty has impacted my life so far.

I'm hopeful. You are still able to do the work. Teaching the way of self loyalty and helping people with anxiety. I am sure that need hasn't gone away. I hope you and Doug are healthy and doing a lot of travel and adventure. You probably have great nieces and nephews now, and I can see you the cool funky aunt with the long flowing gray hair tied back in a messy braid.

I'm excited to see what happens in the next 20 years. 69 feels so far away, but I know it will be here. Nancy when we first decided to do this episode, and we came up with the idea for me to write these letters. I was initially scared and full of self doubt, especially writing the letter to my older self.

I was surprised how [00:16:00] much it forced me to reflect on not only where I have been and all the changes I've made, but where I'm headed and all the changes yet to come. Even days after writing the letters, I'm still thinking of my younger and older selves. I recommend you try this exercise and see what comes up. You might be surprised as well.

That's it for this season. I hope you enjoyed our exploration of change. Just as much as I have. We'll be back soon with a whole new concept for our next season. Stay tuned in and subscribe to the podcast for updates until. You could stay in touch by subscribing to my newsletter, or if you've been inspired by this season, signing up for supply to school, the happier approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me Nancy Jane Smith music provided by pod five and epidemic sound for more episodes to get in touch or to learn more about self loyalty.

You can visit [00:17:00] Nancy Jane smith.com. And if you like the show, leave us a review. It actually helps us out a lot. Thanks as always to our favorite happier approach. Guest, my husband, Doug, for speaking with us today, the happier approach we'll be back with a new season in a few months. Take care until then.

Season 3 Episode 7: Change and Comparison

In this episode, Nancy reveals that she's *always* had a business nemesis.

In this episode Nancy reveals that she's *always* had a business nemesis. A person that she compares herself to when she feels like things aren't going great. And that really gets her Monger AND her BFF going at it! Nancy tells the story of how she confronted this comparison behavior head-on and speaks to Regan Walsh-- Chief Renegade Officer at Renegade Global-- about how tricky comparison can be when we're trying to make meaningful change.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal experiences with comparison and its negative effects on creating change.

• A conversation about change and comparison with Regan Walsh.

Learn more about:

• Learn more about Regan Walsh:

  • Go to reganwalsh.com

  • Learn about Renegade Global at renegade.global

  • Order Regan's book "Heart Boss" at https://reganwalsh.com/heartboss/

  • You can follow Regan on Twitter @reganwalsh

+ Read the Transcript

The Happier Approach S2 Episode 7: Change and Comparison May 23, 2022

Intro

Theme

Nancy: Hey guys, it’s me! Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships.

All thought out this season as we’ve been tackling the topic of change, I kept thinking back on all the different habits and thoughts that have kept me from making meaningful change in my life. One that really stuck out? Comparison. You know, looking at what OTHER people are doing and telling yourself that you’ll never be as smart, good, funny, pretty, have as many likes on social media, as them?

The comparison game has kept me stuck more times than I’d like to admit. So many times, that I feel like I’ve actually turned the act of comparison into an artform. An unhelpful, stagnating artform, that is. I’ve had more than one so-called “nemesis” that I’ve compared myself to over the years. And it took me actually facing my “nemesis” head-on, to get to the root of my comparison problem, and actually figure out how to kick it to the curb.

Theme out

ACT I: The Thief of Joy

Nancy: For years I always had a business nemesis.

It was someone who was in a similar business who appeared to have more success than me. Back when I was on social media, I would follow my nemesis on-line and create a backstory about them and how awful they were. And I would change-up my nemesis. I would choose someone who I wanted to compare myself to, or “get ideas from” as my BFF, the voice of false self-compassion called it, and would spend time online spying on them.

The problem was I would follow them purely to torture myself. The unconscious cycle would go something like this…

MUS

Sit down at my computer for my work day with great plans for the day but not quite feeling like I wanted to dive into work yet.

“Let’s get some ideas from other people!” My BFF would say, sounding innocent like she was trying to help.

I would immediately search online for my latest nemesis. At this time, Justine was my nemesis of choice. I’d pull up Justine’s social media presence (yep, this is one reason I got off social media!) and start scrolling through her feed, and the emotional cutting would begin. Each picture was like a slice into my self-esteem. My Monger, the inner critic, would start yelling, “Look at that! She is beautiful! And what she is saying is so WISE! And there it is– she has hundreds of likes on this one post! You NEVER get hundreds of likes. She is so much better at this than you are. WOW!”

By the time I was done my BFF and Monger were going at it. My BFF would jump in to protect me by criticizing everything Justine did, “Well that is ridiculous! I mean how do you expect to help people by telling them to change their thoughts—that doesn’t work?!”

Followed by my Monger, “Well what do YOU stand for?!! I couldn’t tell by looking at your social media presence—you are all over the board. At least Justine is clear on what she stands for!”

Round and round they would go until I was ready to throw in the towel. All my great plans for the day were out the window and I was swimming in self doubt and making a nest deep down in a Monger rabbit hole.

MUS out

There’s a common quote that says: “Comparison is the Thief of Joy” and often when I tell people that I engage in this behavior that is what they will say to me. Yep, comparison is the thief of joy. That is true. And saying that is about as helpful as telling me to Stop it. This behavior is deeper than being healed by a quote.

That’s why I decided to meet this comparison behavior head-on. I decided that I’d interview one of my real-life business nemesis and reveal to her the comparison game that I’d secretly been playing for years and years.

ACT II: Interview with Regan Walsh

MUS

Regan Walsh: Oh, I'm so excited. This is amazing. So fun. Nancy: This is Regan Walsh… one of my final business nemesis. The “boss” of the business nemesis level, if you will. Regan Walsh: My life's work is about helping Renegade, women and people in corporate America show up in really big ways. The work that I do is all around human innovation and disruption and. I recently pivoted and joined forces with a woman named Amy Jo Martin to build Renegade global, um, [00:01:00] which has been such a fun ride. I've been doing this work for about seven months now. And, um, it's a fast growing startup and it's so energizing and exciting, and I feel so lucky to do this work. MUS out Nancy: [sarcasm] Well she seems really scary, doesn’t she? Once Regan and I exchanged hellos and introductions, I got down to business. Nancy Jane Smith: okay. So here's the thing you, I wanted to do this. We're doing the whole season on change. And one of the things we came up with was how comparison. Prevents us from making change. And Nikki was like, Nancy: That’s Nicki, my podcast producer. Nancy Jane Smith: oh, do you have any, um, you know, anyone that you compare yourself to? And I always have a nemesis, like for years, I've had someone that I compare myself to, and that's a bad thing Like, it's not a good thing, but you, for a long time, I've let go of it. But for a long time. you were my person that I was constantly comparing myself to and, you know, beat myself up with like, I could never be as cool as.[00:02:00] Reagan. Nancy Jane Smith:I would do the deep dives into what's Reagan doing on social media. What are Reagan's programs where, whereas Reagan been podcasting, where is she? And, um, so I wanted to bring you on and confess that Nancy: I tensed up waiting for what Regan would say next. And wouldn’t you know… Regan Walsh: oh my gosh. Well, let's, let's just rip the bandaid off and go down this topic. I'm excited about it. Yeah. Nancy: Regan was super gracious and understanding! Regan Walsh: I think every human compares and then has that sense of feeling less than, or greed or, you know, jealous or why not me? Nancy: She’d even played the comparison game herself. Regan Walsh: certainly throughout my entire life, I've experienced that in a lot of different ways. And, um, it certainly is a skill set to be able to rewire your brain and understand why it is you're feeling that way. To have the [00:03:00] momentum to go, you know, after what it is you want and realize you can do all those things as well. So, yeah, I think that's a shared human experience. Nancy Jane Smith: Yes. And I think that was part of the prob part of why you mean you didn't last long as my nemesis Regan Walsh: oh, thank goodness. Nancy Jane Smith: is because you are so authentic. So you're quick, you know, I think the people that were in my nemesis in the past, Presented this, I have it all, you know, everything. I have all my shit together and everything's amazing. And you have been so authentic with, you know, trips and travels and how hard it is, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, that made it, I busted it Nancy: I was super surprised to learn, she’d even played the comparison game WITH ME. Regan Walsh: Oh, I'm so glad. Cause I, I could even say the same when I first met you. I was like, oh my gosh, Nancy Jane Smith has it all together. And she is because you, you started your business before I started mine. And so I look to you. As a guide of somebody who was doing really amazing work that was fulfilling and [00:04:00] inspiring and things that I wanted to emulate with the work that I was building. And so, you know, I look to you as somebody that was on the forefront of human development. Nancy Jane Smith: Oh, well, thank you. That's Regan Walsh: Yeah. I mean, it Nancy Jane Smith: but you were, and you are. It's just what it's always interesting. It's what, you know, whatever my monger tells me, I suck at and I suck at connections like that. I'm not great at networking and building connections. And you are a rockstar at that Regan Walsh: that is my superpower for whatever reason. I know. It's interesting. It's always been my ability to connect people with the right. Nancy Jane Smith: And the thing is right there. It's your superpower. It's not, it's not my superpower, but that doesn't mean I can't have all the superpowers, you know? Regan Walsh: no, I wouldn't it be fun if we did. Nancy Jane Smith: Oh my God. Yes. But I think part of admitting part of doing change is a admitting [00:05:00] what isn't your superpower Regan Walsh: For sure. Nancy Jane Smith: being able to reach out and get help in that. But that's hard to do. Regan Walsh: It is so hard to do. it's having the courage to say, I am horrible at this, or this is frustrating to me who do I need to align myself with? That can take this burden off my shoulders so I can move forward faster. It's such a great skill to be able to, to ask for help and recognize where you need, where you need it. Nancy: If we’re not SO focused on comparing ourselves to others, it actually gives us space to both acknowledge our own unique gifts, AND find ways to strengthen the skill sets that we may need a little extra help with. But the key is pulling ourselves out of that comparison trap. MUS Nancy Jane Smith: And do you have a story where a comparison kept you stuck? Regan Walsh: Oh my goodness. I mean, which, yeah. Do you want me to start alphabetically in which part of my life, you know, like there's comparison on relationship fronts? When I was younger comparison about, you know, jobs or the business I was building, when I, when I first decided to get certified in coaching and I [00:08:00] graduated from NYU, I remember being part of, um, a mastermind, just like it was a one day. Deep dive mastermind. And there were other coaches in the room. And so many of these other coaches were hosting retreats and bottles. You know, and doing stuff like that. And I remember thinking like, oh, these coaches, like I'm just starting off. These coaches are making multiple six figures and blah, blah, blah. And they're hosting their clients on these week-long retreats in Bali. And I was like, I should be doing that. Do I have desire to do that? Heck no, I had two infants or one infant. I was pregnant with my second child. The I anxiety. I was like, okay, well I can pull this off. Like, okay, where would I go? I'm not going to go to Bali. How will who's going to take care of the kids? And I allowed my brain to go down that rabbit hole, trying to keep up with these people. And I was like, actually, that's not even the lane. I want to swim. The work I'm doing, like the clients that I [00:09:00] want to work with, they don't want to go to Bali with me. They want to go with their friend or their spouse or their partner. And in fact, I don't want to go to Bali with clients. Like, what is that even about? But I did that, like I went, I was like, oh, it's that whole should like, they're doing it. So I should, because they're successful and I want to be successful, but my version of success was completely different right now. MUS out Nancy Jane Smith: Because even when you say, and this was one of the things that clicked in me when, before, when you said. And you graduated from NYU and then I'm like NYU. Oh my God, it's NYU. And so I have this whole story about NYU, but you have lived NYU. And so it doesn't have that same story, Regan Walsh: right, right. And well, and interestingly enough, but your background is different, right? So you're coming from that like therapy [00:10:00] background, which I don't have any. Right. So for me, I needed, well, there are a lot of coaches out in the world that just hang shingles. Right. And they say, oh, I'm a coach. I like to listen to people. So therefore I'm going to start this business for me because of my personality. Um, I needed a credential. Right. That was very important to me for my personality, because I wanted that to have, as my foundation, I needed to have that like piece of paper in order to make me feel valid enough, even though the skillset, you know, they didn't teach me the skillset. I already had that skillset because I was born with it, but they gave me. The confidence to say, you know what? I deserve to be paid for my skillset. Nancy Jane Smith: Yes. Regan Walsh: Yeah. Other people just have that confidence innately. Apparently Nancy Jane Smith: No. And I always say that about therapy. Yeah. Like I don't therapy didn't teach me how to do counseling school. Didn't teach me how to do therapy. It was just Regan Walsh: that's who you are. Nancy Jane Smith: who I am. Yeah. But it is an [00:11:00] interesting kind of like whatever we aren't, I think is in another, I think why you were my nemesis and another lifetime, I would have picked you. I mean, I would've picked your choices of being more corporate, being more, you know, NYU. Kind of having that business background, which is not where I went, but part of my value system is in that it took me a long time to find my. And it took me. And so I think growing up, I thought I should be a business person. I should be doing business coaching. My dad was always telling me like, go for business. That's where the money is. And when I changed my major to psychology, I think a part of his soul died. He was so upset that I wasn't going to be in business anymore. But in reality, I am more, I'm more, I'm not businessy. I am more woowee and a little. Therapy, Regan Walsh: Yeah. And you should own Nancy Jane Smith: [00:12:00] and it took me a long time to own that. And so I kept comparing to people who weren't in that lane. And then I think the reason as we're talking, I'm like, ah, the reason I stopped doing that, or I, I was like, go reg. And like, I can cheerlead you now instead of being like, oh, Regan Walsh: isn't it interesting, the energy that we can put into other people versus like the energy. To put into our own business. Right? Like, why do we do that? I know it's just wild and social media makes it, um, a lot easier to do Nancy Jane Smith: yes. Regan Walsh: To like, oh, what are they doing? Or, oh, there they post on social media five times a week. MUS I just had a conversation with one of the Renegade women who was like, oh, I really want to do this thing for the month of January and social media, but how does that tie back to my business? And I was like, well, do you get a lot of business from social media? And she's like, no, not at all. And I was like, well then who the heck cares? Do what brings you joy? Like if your social media is for you to spark joy, And [00:13:00] connected in this way and do it, you know, show yourself dancing every day for a month in funny places, then just do that. Like, it has nothing, it's not going to hurt your business either way. And in fact, you're showing up and being human and that's what attracts people to people is when you're just being yourself. MUS out Nancy: I realized as I was talking with Regan, that what she was describing– following your joy in business and in life– sounded a lot like self-loyalty. And it seemed like the way to get out of the comparison trap was to listen to that self-loyal voice. MUS Nancy Jane Smith: I feel like that's why I talk about self loyalty, which is what you're, we're saying. It's a, just the same thing. It's a word for what we're saying. Um, of keeping to re when I can reconnect with what's my lane, what is it I really want to be doing? Where is it I really want to be, what's the marriage that I want to build. That really doesn't look like anyone else's marriage. You know, that doesn't, that's where I can. That's the solution to this comparing. Regan Walsh: yes. How did you say, what was the phrase you use? Nancy Jane Smith: Self loyalty Regan Walsh: I love that self loyalty. Yeah. Nancy Jane Smith: realized all my clients have, they know loyalty. They will do loyalty to [00:14:00] others. They're very loyal to everyone, but themselves. Regan Walsh: isn't it funny? We show up for other people more than we show up for ourselves all the time. It's wild. Like what if we backed ourselves? Like we backed others. Think what could happen? Yeah. Nancy Jane Smith: And it doesn't matter what Reagan's doing or any of the other people that I've listed as nemeses. I just got to show up and be me. Regan Walsh: Yeah, for sure. Oh, Self loyalty. That's amazing. I'm here for it. MUS out ACT III: Nancy’s Conclusion

Nancy: I know now this behavior– comparing myself to Regan and other people in my field– has to do with fear. Fear of success. Fear of Failure. Fear of doing it wrong. Fear of doing it right.

Basically, if I could find someone who was doing it better than I was, that meant I didn’t have to try. Or if I did try it was ok that I failed. Comparison gave me an out, I didn’t need to try because clearly I would never meet the very high expectations set up by My Monger.

MUS

Regan was my final Nemesis, which is one reason I wanted to interview her—to once and for all put this practice of emotional cutting behind me. And in the end, as I found out through our conversation, leaving my comparison game behind was all about self loyalty.

But it wasn’t magical. It started with me building awareness of what I was doing. I gave myself full permission to spy on my nemesis, swim in the pool of self-doubt with one rule. I had to pay attention to how I was feeling. By acknowledging what I was feeling I built awareness of how crappy this practice was making me feel. At the same time, I started welcoming my fear—I knew I was doing this practice out of fear but I didn’t realize how much fear there was. So I started acknowledging that fear. Each time I spied on my nemesis I took some time to check in with my fear—where am I afraid, why am I afraid– and I would remind myself I am safe and I am worthy. I can do this. And then borrowing a practice from Brene Brown I would put on a theme song to pump myself up. My song of choice—Fight song by Rachel Platten. To remind myself it is ok to be scared and do it anyway.

Yes, comparison is the thief of joy AND it is a sign that we are avoiding change. Rather than beating ourselves up for comparison—let’s use this emotional cutting practice as a way to build self-loyalty.

And.. maybe reach out to your own nemesis for a chat or a coffee. You may find that you have more in common than you think.

MUS out

Outro

Theme

That’s it for this week! Our next episode is the final episode of the season. Wowee! And we’re going to come full circle with the theme of change. I’ll talk to a very special guest about how we’ve approached change at different stages of our lives– how even the way we think about change… can change! That’s next time, on the Happier Approach.

Nancy: The Happier Approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod5 and Epidemic Sound. For more episodes, to get in touch, or to learn more about Self Loyalty School, you can visit nancy jane smith dot com. And if you like the show, leave us a review! It actually helps us out a lot.

A huge thanks to Regan Walsh for speaking with us today. You can learn more about Regan and purchase her book “Heart Boss: Trust Your Gut, Shed Your Shoulds, and Create a Life You Love” at reganwalsh.com. You can also learn more about Regan’s new journey with Renegade by visiting renegade.global.

The Happier Approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care, until then.

Theme out

Season 3 Episode 6: Change and the BFF

In this episode, Nancy shares a relatable tale: her struggle to stay off social media.

In this episode, Nancy shares a relatable tale: her struggle to stay off social media. She made that change a while ago, but her BFF is always gunning for her to get back on. Especially when a really special opportunity presents itself. In this episode, we hear an exclusive interview between Nancy's BFF and her Biggest Fan, hashing out the pros and cons of social media, and how hard it is to make a lasting change when confronted with a decision between false self-compassion or true self-loyalty.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal story about change and her BFF.

• A fun and information conversation between Nancy's BFF and her Biggest Fan.

Learn more about:

• Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com

• Listen to Nancy’s interview with LeAnn Rimes

• Why I Left Social Media Initially

+ Read the Transcript

"Have you ever thought about getting leaving social media"? A friend and I had been debating the pros and cons of social media when she just came out and asked me—what I had been thinking about for the past 3 days. And for the first time, I didn't dismiss it out of hand. It was the end of May, and Instagram was filled with black squares, and I had grown increasingly annoyed with all areas of social media. I was active on social media, personally keeping in touch with family and friends and professionally sharing insight into high functioning anxiety and how to work with me. But In July 2020, I deactivated my Facebook account. I kept my Instagram account that I used for business and personal up, but I shared that I was not active anymore and encouraged people to subscribe to my newsletter. In episode 140, I share all my reasons why I got off. I remember listening to several stories of people who left social media but eventually rejoined. I never heard a story of someone who left and stayed off.

I love being off social media. It is better for my anxiety. Better for my relationships because I am more present, and better for my business because I am more focused on my business, not just on writing one viral post. I can honestly say being off social media is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

But then I was interviewed by Leann Rimes. In the interview, we talk about why I am off of social media. Leann was intrigued and jealous that I wasn't feeding the social media beast. After I hung up with Leann Rimes, my BFF started in, "See, Social media is good and FUN. You loved reading all the posts when you posted something and see all the likes—and now you have nowhere to receive such a connection with people." I spun on that for days.

So we decided to bring the BFF in for an interview to hear her side of the story. And to really shake things up, we are asked Nancy's Biggest Fan to step in as the interviewer.

Biggest Fan: Welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you here.

BFF: Well, thank you for having me—I am a HUGE fan of Nancy and happy to talk about—what is it, again, social media?? Is that the topic?

Biggest Fan: Yes, Nancy has been off social media for almost 2 years now, and I think it has been good for her—but you have other thoughts? I am curious about those. But first, introduce yourself and tell people who you are and what you do.

BFF: Hi there, I am Nancy's BFF.

Biggest Fan: A BFF; hmm, ok, what does that mean exactly.

BFF: Well, as her BFF, I am her biggest cheerleader—I LOVE Nancy. She is awesome, smart, and funny—she is so funny. But she needs to learn to RELAX, and that is where I come in. She drives herself so hard that nasty Monger comes in here and just pushes her and pushes her---I don't like it one bit. So my role is to come in and help Nancy to chill. You know your closet friends from high school your called them your BFF because they were up for anything and always defended you? That is me.

Biggest Fan: Wow-what, so your job is just to help Nancy fight off the Monger inner critic voice and help her relax—sounds amazing—what does that look like?

BFF: Well, basically, it looks like whatever Nancy wants. My sole goal is to encourage her to do whatever she wants. Cake for breakfast? Of course, you deserve it! Watch another episode when she hasn't moved off the couch all day—of course, you deserve it!! She deserves whatever she wants.

Biggest Fan: What if doing whatever she wants is a little hurtful to her? I mean, she needs to do other things rather than just hang out on the couch, watching TV, and playing on her phone while eating cake?

BFF: Well, I don't understand…how can that possibly be hurtful? If it brings her joy and peace, isn't that a positive? I mean, it is my job, and I take my job very seriously---you heard what I said about the nasty Monger. My job is to heal her from her.

Biggest Fan: Interesting. Ok, so the theme of this episode is all about social media? What are your thoughts on social media?

BFF: I LOVE social media—it makes Nancy happy—well, it did before she decided to go off of it. But there is hope; she was debating returning! And I am all about that! Social media provides an escape from reality. It allows Nancy to stay connected with friends from her past and see what they are doing. Social media is a great way to promote her business and she can see what other business owners are doing. Most of all, it is a way to turn off her brain and just let her numb out on mindless crap with family photos, catch up on where friends went on vacation, or just watch cute cats and dogs—I mean, who doesn't love adorable cats and dogs?

Biggest Fan: You mentioned that Nancy is off of social media—but recently, she has been debating getting back on. Can you tell us more?

BFF: Yes, much to my disappointment, she decided to delete her accounts in 2020—well, in truth, she just deactivated them—so there is hope she will go back on. I know she is debating returning, and I am 100% behind that decision! It is an excellent decision---social media helps her more than it hurts her.

Biggest Fan: So I have here a list of why Nancy wants to go off social media. Starting with the amount of anxiety it brings her. She says it brings her a lot of anxiety—so how do you argue with that?

BFF: You know why it brings her anxiety? Because that damn Monger comes in and starts sharing how she isn't living up to her potential and could be doing more. But the truth is social media is mindless entertainment. It is meant to give you laughter and joy, not comparison—that is all the Monger's fault.

I DID convince her to start a fake social media account where she can follow dogs and cats---something that brings her joy. And , every now and then, I encourage her to branch out and check out other people's accounts---like Leann Rimes. Did you hear she was on the Leann Rimes podcast?

Biggest Fan: Yes, I did. I was so proud of her for that—very cool.

BFF: So I wanted her to maximize the love there—did you hear Leann share how she couldn't imagine being off of social media—that means Nancy should be on it. She can connect with people on social media and feel good about herself.

Biggest Fan: Well, I THINK the takeaway was that Leann thought it was a positive that Nancy could do her business without social media—not that Leann thought Nancy should get back on.

BFF: Well, potato/potato, whatever. That is just splitting hairs. But truly, the reason social media is fantastic ---is that Nancy can feel the love. After her episode went live, I encouraged her to keep checking Leann's account to read the comments to see the love for her. It was so amazing—that is the magical part of social media. You can post something and immediately feel the love of all these people liking it! It is the best! I mean, how could you NOT love that.

Biggest Fan: Yes, again, I remember that a little differently—it felt like she was obsessive about checking and went back to her old ways of hooking her self-worth to social media. I mean, yes, she enjoyed seeing the love but at what cost?

BFF: Exactly! That is why I wanted her to keep checking it—the comments were good, so she should have felt good—I was trying to help!

Biggest Fan: I know, but Nancy tends to get sucked into those comments; all that love is just performative, isn't it? The people don't even know her. How can they really LOVE her?

Remember two years ago when everyone turned their squares black? How did that help anyone? Pure performative.

BFF: I guess so—but it was something. A show of solidarity. People expressing their opinions is powerful.

Biggest Fan: Yes, but it wasn't going to change anything. It wasn't real change. It was performing, so you felt like you were doing something, but you really weren't. Isn't that what social media is one big performance?

BFF: Ok, ok, you are looking at this social media all wrong, Miss High and Mighty. YES, it might have increased her anxiety, but that is because her Monger convinced her it wouldn't last or that people didn't mean it. But where else can you just be showered with praise? It doesn't have to be about her business—on her personal page if she posts something celebratory on FB and all her family and friends rush to like it. I mean, look at Birthdays on FB; they are THE BEST.

Biggest Fan: Yes, I agree. Birthdays on FB are pretty fabulous. But let's be honest. Your job, as you said, is to be Nancy's Biggest Cheerleader—and you are doing that well? Do you see ANY downside to social media? What about negative comments? The ones that don't sing her praises. Even when Nancy says it isn't helpful?

BFF: Well, anyone who writes a negative comment is a jerk. They are wrong. And I make sure Nancy knows that. I have crafted some pretty excellent responses to those assholes in my head –but Nancy never lets me send them.

Honestly, The only downside is that Nancy thinks it isn't helpful—I will continue to keep convincing her otherwise.

I admit my BFF almost won.

Until the Leann Rimes interview, I hadn't had a reason to get back on social media—nothing major had happened to me. For birthdays which, yes, the BFF is right—Birthdays on Facebook are the best! But my husband is still on social media, and he would do a shout-out for my birthday, and I would receive the love through other means. But I noticed a twinge of that obsessiveness that day, as I repeatedly checked for birthday greetings.

But an interview with a famous singer who I had listened to since my 20s. Leann interviews big names in the mental health world and picked me—that is pretty huge. So yes, I wanted to see people's comments; I wanted to hear what my family and friends had to say.

After the interview went live, it started slowly. A couple of mornings, I decided to sign back on to Facebook and see what was happening. I did not post anything, but I could feel the familiar pull of social media. And, of course, my BFF was pretty loud, sharing all the benefits of social media---a way to find joy, be mindless, and talk with people I loved. But I also felt that familiar pull of anxiety.

I remember last year I was sharing with a friend all the reasons I loved being off social media. It felt like a giant weight had been lifted. She said, "You sound like I did after I quit drinking. I remember wondering why it took me so long?!"

Yes! I replied—exactly. Best decision I ever made. I don't think I will ever go back on.

Fast forward to last month when my BFF was running the show and encouraging me to sink into the instant praise I could receive from a social media post, and I was debating it. But you know what made me end the debate? My Biggest Fan, yes, the voice that conducted the interview. She just kept lovingly pointing out the drama on social media caused drama in my head. My Monger and BFF would go ten rounds on one post—deciphering what someone meant. My Monger would blame me for saying the wrong thing, and my BFF would jump in to criticize the idiot who commented, and round and round, they would go.

Just as our Monger can keep us stuck with her constant badgering and belittling—our BFF can keep us stuck with her constant seeking of fun and approval. Both are well-intentioned, but the messaging is a little off. Luckily, my Biggest Fan won out, and I stuck with the change I made two years ago—I am off social media, and I don't ever see myself going back.

Season 3 Episode 5: Change in the Body

In this episode, Nancy shares about building a relationship with our body.

In this episode Nancy shares the story we've all been waiting for... a little tale about a rogue Segway. But it's actually about a lot more than that. The Segway story brings Nancy to think about how she's viewed her body over the years, and the way that changes around our physical self can be tough. Then she talks to an expert practitioner and teacher of the Feldenkrais Method-- a movement practice that encourages gentle movement and bodily awareness to promote overall wellness.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

- Nancy's personal story about change and her body.

- Information and insights from Feldenkrais practitioner Elizabeth Beringer.

- How to learn more about Self Loyalty School.

Learn more about Elizabeth Beringer:

-Go to Feldenkraisresources.com/

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy Jane Smith: [00:00:00] Hey guys, it's me. Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships. Last week, we talked all about change and emotions, how emotions aren't just thoughts, but how we feel them in our book.

And they can cause us to act to create change. So this week we're taking that concept one step further and focusing on change in our bodies, just like we can get stuck in an emotional wreck. Our bodies get stuck in ruts, two habits that we formed out of necessity, like walking a little heavier on our right foot because of an injury to our left can cause physical and even emotional pain down the line.

Like a lot of what we've talked about this season, it's hard to shake ourselves out of old habits and routines, especially when they're [00:01:00] physically ingrained in us, but it is possible to work with our bodies to change our habits in a way that is gentle, safe, and respectful. But let me tell you, it took me a long time to learn that lesson.

Earlier this season in episode two, I mentioned that I had a story about a segway accident that I'd say for another time. Well now is that. It was the summer. And my cousin from Oakland called me to invite me to her baby shower. It was a little last minute for a trip across the country, but we decided to add a stay in San Francisco.

I love San Francisco and had been there a few times with family and friends. My husband had never been to San Francisco and I was excited to show him all that. I scheduled a tour to Alcatraz and booked a wine tour through Napa. And on our first day, I booked a segway tour around fisherman's Wharf. The perfect trip.

I [00:02:00] was so excited on the day of the segway tour. We ate a delicious breakfast in our hotel and made our way to fishermen's war for the tour. We successfully completed the basic training, how to wear a helmet, how to get on the segway and stopping it. Finally, we were off, it took us a minute, but soon my husband and I and the other tour participants were confidently segwaying around the city, gliding between pedestrians and writing with traffic down the streets.

Then we came to one of those famous San Francisco Hills looking straight up as the road seemed to reach for the sky. As she started up hill, the leader of the tour casually yelled over her. Oh, we forgot to talk about this, but just lean forward on the segway to go up a hill. Oh no, I thought we didn't cover this in the training.

I would think this would be pretty important. Well, for the very small woman in front of me leaning forward, wasn't quite [00:03:00] cutting it to get her up the hill or segway started going the wrong way. It started slipping backward down the hill towards. And I couldn't get out of her way because there was traffic coming at me on the left and a row of parked cars on the right.

So I fell off my segway and because we were on a hill, well, my segway kept on cruising right over my ankle. As we sat on the road, it took a while for the leader. And even my husband to figure out that I was seriously hurt because I kept laughing. Yep. My shock response. But a hospital ride later, they determined my ankle was heavily bruised and had no major breaks, but it was too swollen to see any minor or hairline breaks.

So they sent me home with pain, meds, crutches, and instructions to staff my foot and see my doctor when I got back home. But here we were day one of our 10 day vacation and we were [00:04:00] staying in a hotel in downtown San Francisco, all our plans camp. I cried as my husband canceled our wine tour and thought to myself, hi, just spent the past four months recovering from major surgery.

I just had a hysterectomy earlier that year, and now my future is going to be filled with more doctors. The thought felt crushing. It was like my body had betrayed me and I couldn't even imagine a time when we'd have a peaceful let alone healthy and happy relationship.

Elizabeth Beringer: Sometimes you can sound like a snake oil salesman, because this is such a, it's such a kind of primary approach that it can be applied in a lot of different ways.

And if you list all those ways, you could sound like a snake oil salesman, but it's because being able to move better, being able to breathe better, being more comfortable in yourself that improves. [00:05:00] Anything that humans do. It's so central.

Nancy Jane Smith: This is Elizabeth Berenger. She's one of the foremost teachers and trainers of the Feldenkrais method, a movement practice that uses gentle motions and sustained attention to help people reconnect with their bodies, increasing range of motion, decreasing pain, and even helping with emotional regulation.

Elizabeth has been a Feldenkrais practitioner for 40 years. Elizabeth Beringer: I met the founder when I was just 20 years old. So. I really absorbed the method and the philosophy of the method very early.

Nancy Jane Smith: When Elizabeth first learned that paying attention to our bodies can change our relationship to them. It blew her away.

Elizabeth Beringer: One of my early experiences in doing the group work, which we call awareness through movement, which today. We would refer to as a mindfulness-based practice, but that word didn't exist at that time. And had no [00:06:00] idea. I wasn't breathing fully, no idea that my shoulders were tight, who would talk about those things, who would think about those things?

And I felt so different and I felt so good and I felt, you know, bigger and more myself. Nancy Jane Smith: The Feldenkrais method is all about building that awareness of how you hold your body and how that makes your body. And you feel the practice can be useful for people with all kinds of health issues.

Elizabeth Beringer: So my practice has included very elderly people and top athletes, children, all kinds of people with neurological problems, different kinds of pain.

We work with people with multiple sclerosis and with Parkinson's and it's not per se a cure for those things. It helps people function better and in some cases, I've seen pretty remarkable [00:07:00] results. And I worked with people who stopped having incontinence problems were able to walk

Nancy Jane Smith: better and not only could practicing Feldenkrais help with physical pain, it can help with emotional pain too.

Elizabeth has experienced that firsthand.

Elizabeth Beringer: I'd already been practicing the method for a few years and I was getting more successful and I was really a little overwhelmed with how much I had to do. And I'd find like I'd get myself in a very anxious state, which would involve stopping breathing. So I said, okay, you know, like, hello, you're a felon Christ practitioner.

What are you? What are you doing about this? And I decided, okay, first thing is, I'm going to rather than beating myself up, which is what I was doing. Like, what are you? You're an imposter. You're having this experience. And. [00:08:00] Then you're supposed to be teaching other people. So I said, okay, first of all, I'm just going to observe myself without judgment.

And once I made that shift, things happened very fast when I was asking. I came into myself, physically. I checked my breathing. I was able to stop doing, because it was more conscious now what I've been doing to restrict my breathing. And then I could also have just stop myself at that one thing that started the cascade of thoughts and say, what action are you going to do rather than convincing myself that I was.

The, for me that action orientation is just stay in the present, breathe and think about what's the action you're going to take now to address what you just remembered, where you just realized you forgotten.

Nancy Jane Smith: Elizabeth says that physical [00:09:00] states and emotional states are really wedded together. If one changes the other candidate.

Elizabeth Beringer: Our habits are all intertwined together. And when I could just be with that and observe it, I had choice. I had some choices, which I didn't have before, because I wasn't aware of what I was doing.

Nancy Jane Smith: And this method, it can really change how you approach your day-to-day

Elizabeth Beringer: life. There's one woman I work with with really terrible pain, you know, messed up back operations and just terrible pain. I'd say the biggest breakthrough we had was. Th the work she was doing involved driving to different people's homes.

And I would just have her when she got back in the car and she would lean back and do a little awareness work in the car. And she said, that's what changed my life.

Nancy Jane Smith: Elizabeth says, this is all about remembering your body and embracing that you take up space and you can feel the world around you. [00:10:00] Even when the world around you feels really.

Elizabeth Beringer: You know, when you're in action, you're not necessarily sensing yourself. Sometimes remembering dissents yourself is enough. And then you start to breathe more fully. You drop your shoulders, you do whatever you need to do when you, when once you've gone through it. But you have to remember yourself.

Nancy Jane Smith: I know I felt like this before. Like my body and myself are two separate entities, but Elizabeth says that bringing those two parts together. Can really make a difference in how we feel both physically and mentally.

Elizabeth Beringer: I think that many people have an attitude towards their bodies of like, it's a thing separate from them. So first of all, We ask people to switch their language, to talk about themselves and not their body. So if you say, oh, I'm going to lie my body down, or my [00:11:00] body is X. We'd take you. I am, I'm lying down. I am my body. And whether you have different spiritual beliefs or not in this world, while we're moving around, owning our bodies and not running away from the sensations. We really change our language to be in the present with our sensation and the process. People can have big experiences the first time it develops and accumulates. And there are these shifts where like, what I just said about the body is a concern as really kind of a concept, but then it goes deeper and it is a lived experience.

Nancy Jane Smith: Um, once people make that shift, they tend to stick with it

Elizabeth Beringer: . You experienced yourself as a whole, and you start to experience yourself. Uh, living [00:12:00] more actively in your kinesthetic experience as you engage in the method. So that becomes a resource and it, I think keeps us healthier because we don't go around hiking up a shoulder and developing pain and pain and more pain until we go to a professional to help us.

I also think that being more aware of ourselves, kinesthetically can be a resource for creativity., And for insights really this method is all about attention awareness and being gentle with yourself.

Nancy Jane Smith: All things I've definitely struggled with. It can be really easy to get stuck in habits and cycles of negative self-talk and thus negative physical states like heightened anxiety. The strange thing is because these are habits, they can make us feel. Even if they're ultimately harmful. So it's hard to change them.

Elizabeth Beringer: One really important [00:13:00] element of our work is safety. So when we have checked out from our physical experience or we have certain kinds of injuries or pain that can become a habit and it's not always comfortable to, to go through. The physical habits that we have, the emotional guarding and those kinds of things.

They happen for a reason. They solved a problem at a certain point and seeing them as actually, it was many times the only solution we had at the time and respecting that about ourselves. Like we were doing the best we could in that, in that situation. And then creating the safety to explore some other options and explore.

Nancy Jane Smith: Of course expanding my view of the body and its abilities and being gentle with myself during the process, as Elizabeth described is an approach that I've had to learn the hard way.[00:14:00]

When we last left off on my segue adventure, I was crying in my hotel room because it felt like my body. And once again, betrayed me after we returned home, I saw an orthopedic doctor who diagnosed me with a small hairline. And I was sentenced to eight weeks of no walking or driving, followed by PT. I remember going to work for the first time and realizing my no elevator office building would require me to crawl up the stairs with my husband carrying my scooter or on my particularly stubborn days.

I dragged it behind me. Tears were usually involved, but there was little compassion for myself, mostly anger and my body not co-op. I had had a hysterectomy earlier that year, that was a harder recovery than I thought it would be. I'd gone from working out five days a week to hardly being able to work out at all.

So having one more gigantic blow to my body was overwhelming. [00:15:00] My body image Munger came out in full force. If you were in better shape, it would be easier to move too bad. You let yourself go so badly or this would be. One night as I crawled up the stairs in tears, exhausted and defeated. I heard from my biggest fan, I thought to myself, oh girl, your foot may be broken, but you are not. You just can't move the way you used to. It'll be okay. You will move past this.

finally I was ready for. And I embraced it with passion booking sessions three times a week, and working out at home when I could, after 12 weeks, my ankle was healed. And I wish I could say that with that brief moment of self loyalty at the top of the stairs, my body shaming days are over. And I found a new way to love myself despite my brokenness.

Ah, but that would be. I've made some baby steps of [00:16:00] stopping body shaming myself in public and not having lunch conversations with friends about good foods and bad foods. But all I did was put all my body issues in a box and sealed it up and put it away. And what do we all know about ignoring things? It never works so fast forward to eight years later, with more diagnoses and more pain that have left me feeling discouraged about.

Listening to Elizabeth gave me renewed hope that it is possible to find a kind relationship with my body and the. Working with my body instead of forcing it into submission. Yes. Some of this is habitual as we discussed with Elliot, but I believe this issue is really about how I see my body and building that self loyalty. I never thought this season with the theme of change would lead me to so many off Hawes about my relationship with my body. I know it is one of the [00:17:00] areas where I struggle with self loyalty. I'm actually grateful for the woman on the segway. She dramatically changed my life first when I broke my ankle.

And then again, when I realized that break is the beginning of me building a better relationship with myself, even if it was eight years in the making

that's it for this week. And our next episode, we're going to look at how making meaningful change can be tricky when the BFF gets involved. That's next time on the happier approach. The happier approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by pod five and [00:18:00] epidemic sound for more episodes to get in touch or to learn more about self loyalty school, you can visit Nancy Jane smith.com.

And if you like the show, leave us a review. It actually helps us out a lot special. Thanks to Elizabeth Berenger for speaking with us today, you can find more information about Elizabeth and the Feldenkrais method@feldonchrist.com. The happier approach. We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care until then.

Season 3 Episode 4 Change in the Emotion Ocean

In this episode, we learn how our emotions can help us create change in our lives.

In this episode, Nancy talks to a leading psychologist and expert in emotions, who tells her all about how our emotions can help us create change in our lives. She learns about the kind of self-reflective emotions-- like pride, jealousy, and embarrassment-- that can be a real challenge to untangle. Then she shares a story about a time when she felt totally lost in a sea of her own messy emotions, and how she learned how to pop her head out from under the water and float to shore. She learns about the kind of self-reflective emotions-- like pride, jealousy, and embarrassment-- that can be a real challenge to untangle. Then she shares a story about a time when she felt totally lost in a sea of her own messy emotions, and how she learned how to pop her head out from under the water and float to shore.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's personal experiences with getting lost in the emotion ocean.

• Information and insights from Dr. Jessica Tracy.

• How to learn more about Self Loyalty School.

Learn more about Dr. Jessica Tracy:

• Find Jessica on Twitter @ProfJessTracy

• Order Jessica's book: https://www.amazon.com/Take-Pride-Deadliest-Secret-Success/dp/0544273176

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy Jane Smith: [00:00:00] Hey guys, it's me. Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. Inner peace is something that can be really hard to cut. Particularly with all the curve balls and changes that life throws at us. I know there have been times for me when it's been really hard to tap into the feeling that I'm on the right path, that I'm making positive changes when I'm stuck in what I call the emotion ocean. For me, the emotion ocean is either feeling too many emotions. Or being so scared of all the emotions bobbing around that, I try to ignore them and pretend they don't exist.

So today we'll talk to an expert on emotions, specifically, big emotions like pride, jealousy, and embarrassment emotions that can be particularly easy to get stuck [00:01:00] in because they tend to require a lot of self-reflection. So we can get totally sucked into the. When you're stuck in the emotion ocean, having to look at yourself and your choices can be the last thing you want to do.

I remember a time in my life when there was so much going on that I didn't know where to go. almost 10 years ago, my husband's epilepsy became more active and his seizures were out of control. My dad was sick with Parkinson's with dementia, and I was feeling stuck in my business. I wanted to teach and write in addition to working one-on-one with clients, my monger, my voice of the inner critic was very active and I had a lot of messy feelings.

I wasn't dealing. If I've been one of my clients, I would have suggested looking at the feeling sheet I had designed, I would have pointed right at the words on the sheet that said lost [00:02:00] hopeless, unsure, frightened, unworthy, somber, and powerless. But at the time I wasn't about looking at my. I just knew that I didn't feel happy and I needed to feel happy.

I was going through the motions of life, but dealing with all those messy feelings or should I say not dealing with all those messy feelings was keeping me stuck and I needed to find a way out. I had the idea in the bathroom. After a speaking event, I had. I remember washing my hands, thinking how much I loved teaching and how I wished I could do it every day. And a voice from inside of me said, why not? Let's open up a space. So I came up with the loft. The loft was short for the live happier left, which was an idea I had for cute, comfortable place where like-minded people who wanted to be happier, could gather to [00:03:00] hear a variety of topics about living with.

And it was adorable, super cute and inviting. I set out to find a space that would support this vision. And I found an adorable loft size place where I could see clients and host gatherings of enthusiastic learners. Other people struggling to find happiness. I built it. I published a monthly calendar with weekly workshops on anxiety management, mindfulness seminars, classes on creativity and group programs on living habits.

But no one came, my one-on-one clients came for their appointments, but those groups of people I was going to work with and teach, they didn't come mainly because, well, I didn't invite them looking back. I thought my biggest fan, my inner voice of self loyalty was the voice that was guiding me to open the loft.

But now I can see it was my BFF, my voice of self-indulgence or false self. [00:04:00] She was convincing me. The loft was the cure for what was ailing me. She was tired of my monger hammering me for not being happy. And this was an easy, quick solution. Do what you love, build it. And they will come and you will be happy.

But getting the word out about the loft to people who weren't already, my clients was the part that my BFF failed to share with me. She just saw the fun, joyful part. Building the loft would be a big, bold movement and big bold movements. Let the universe know you are ready for big, bold thing for big bold things.

Yeah. That is all my BFF. Looking back. I can see it. I was overwhelmed and feeling a lot of different emotions. My monger was hammering me for not being more successful, not being a better daughter or a more caring wife. So my BFF thought, great. Let's do [00:05:00] something big and bold that will bring her joy and we can get away from these messy emotions.

But all the loft did was bring more messy emotions remorse because I wasn't doing all the things necessary to make it work jealous of what other people were accomplishing in their careers, frustrated with myself because I wasn't doing it right. Or this would be better looking back. A lot of what I was feeling deep in that emotion ocean were emotions that forced me to really take a look at me.

To be self-reflective and own my feelings. Of course, that was the last thing I wanted to do. If only I'd been able to talk to Dr. Jessica Tracy, back then

Jessica Tracy: for most of our behavior, emotions are critical that the reason that we do most things, we do not everything, but most things we do is because of emotions.

Nancy Jane Smith: This is Dr. Jessica Tracy. She's a professor of [00:06:00] psychology at the university of British Columbia. She studies emotions and how they affect human behavior. You

Jessica Tracy: know, when you get up in the morning and you brush your teeth, first thing, that's not an emotion guided behavior, you don't have to think, oh my God, the dentist is going to be so angry.

I'm going to get a cavity. Right. You don't have to do that. Cause it's just. For things that are not habit driven, you know, like going and getting a vaccine, for example, like that's something that we do because of fear, right? We don't want to get the disease. And so we go ahead and do this thing that we know is not gonna be pleasant. It's gonna be uncomfortable. It might be painful and so on, but we force ourselves to overcome that.

Nancy Jane Smith: Jessica says that emotions are more than just. They cause us to act in our

Jessica Tracy: bodies emotions. Aren't just thoughts. Right? They're also, they're embodied. I think it's really hard if you're highly aroused and having, you know, for example, a panic attack, right?

You're full of anxiety and you're full of all this stuff. The panic attack is so much more than those thoughts. In fact, the thoughts might be the least of it, right? The best way to come a panic attack is not to think different thoughts. It's to change your breathing.[00:07:00]

Nancy Jane Smith: Not only do emotions guide a lot of our embodied behavior, but they can also keep us stuck in unhelpful or unpleasant patterns, particularly if waiting through those emotions requires a lot of self-reflection. These are the kinds of emotions that Jessica studies self-conscious emotions.

Jessica Tracy: They are the emotions that are all about the self. So the way that we define them is to feel a self-conscious emotion. You have to think about who you are, think about yourself and realize that an event that occurred is either consistent with that self and who you want to be and sort of telling you, yeah, this is, this is me doing a great thing, and that feels really good for who I am or.

Nancy Jane Smith: So, for example, when I started the loft and it opened up a lot of jealous feelings about comparing myself to other people and their careers that happened to, because I was afraid of not living up to my potential, my vision for myself, didn't line up with my sense of self

Jessica Tracy: sort of telling you, oh [00:08:00] gosh, that's not who I want to be. This is not, you know, helping me achieve my goals for the kind of person I want.

Nancy Jane Smith: Jessica spent a lot of her career studying one particular self-conscious emotion.

Jessica Tracy: Pride is an interesting one because there actually are two different kinds of pride. We distinguish between the pride. That's all about achievement and confidence. And basically sort of like, you work really hard for something. Maybe you studied really hard for a test or maybe you're training for a race and then you do it and you did really well. And then you have this feeling of like, wow, that feels really great. And that's what we call authentic pride.

Nancy Jane Smith: Authentic pride is the kind of emotion that motivates us to care about our work and our face. That encourages us to do hard things and have hard conversations.

Jessica Tracy: The reason we, we want to do all that stuff is because we want to feel like we are a good person in all of the various ways that we construct the concept of good.

Nancy Jane Smith: But then there's hubristic pride, hubristic pride,

Jessica Tracy: [00:09:00] which is much more kind of what we think of when we think of arrogance. We know from work in my lab, that when you feel university pride, you are more likely to engage in things like cheating, lying in order to maintain your status. You know, you become disagreeable, hostile, aggressive.

Nancy Jane Smith: It seems obvious, but if we really want to feel good about ourselves, Jessica cautions staying away from engaging with hubristic pride and leaning into our feelings of authentic pride, she says feeling authentic pride can actually compel people to make real changes in their

Jessica Tracy: lives. Those emotions are particularly important and changes in the south because those. That tell us what we want our identity to be like. Right? So when we feel pride, that means we have done something that gets us closer to the kind of identity we want. And it's a good feeling. It's reinforcing. I felt that way when I did this, I'm going to do that again so I can keep feeling that way. And that in turn motivates us to do the things that will get us to the [00:10:00] identity that we want to have.

Nancy Jane Smith: Jessica's even grappled with these emotions. After I

Jessica Tracy: graduated from college, I worked in a cafe for awhile, which was a really fun job, you know, talk to customers, make lattes, that kind of thing. But there was a point at which I felt, you know what, like I really miss those nights when I stayed up all night in college with my friends, you know, we were trying to put together a news magazine. And that was really exciting. That made me feel like I was doing something. I cared about something that was important to me. Something that made me feel like I'm the kind of person I want to be. I'm having fun in this cafe job, but I don't ever have that feeling. Life is good, but I'm missing that feeling of, oh God, it's hard. It's challenging. It's stressful. But I am achieving something that I really care about. And that realization is what pushed me to go back to

Nancy Jane Smith: grad school. 'cause Jessica felt this disconnect, like she was missing that feeling of authentic pride. That's what inspired her to make a change and go back to grad school.

Jessica Tracy: so we're thinking it's the absence of an emotion, but I think we're all kind of aware of. It's [00:11:00] that feeling of when you're just kind of floating, you know, when you're just kind of like going through the motions, phoning it in, you're sorta like, I need to do something to feel good about myself, because I am not excited about who I am.

I'm not doing things that make me feel like I am the kind of person I want to be.

Nancy Jane Smith: Um, that last thing Jessica said about phoning it in and going through the motions. About your day-to-day life, not reflecting who you authentically want to be. That really stuck out to me. The loft was supposed to be my answer, a catch all for everything that was going wrong in my life, but really it was just making me feel disconnected from who I actually was and what I really wanted to do.

I decided to close up the live happier loft when my lease was up from. Right before I packed it all up, my dad died. And as I packed up all the cute, cozy furnishings and prepared to move, I sat among the boxes and the remaining twinkle [00:12:00] lights and sobbed. I was heartbroken about my dad and powerless about my husband and still feeling stuck in my work. But I decided to take all those messy emotions and deal with them in a more authentic. During that time, I recognize the power of acknowledging emotions. And I wrote my book, the happier approach, making big, bold changes often feels like the answer because when you feel like you're going through the motions, you convince yourself a bold move will work, but big, bold moves rarely work because they come from a place of.

And messy emotions, which can lead us to hubristic pride. The kind that led me with my BFF whispering in my ear to open the left. I wouldn't change my experience of the loft. It taught me a few things. The power of unchecked feelings can lead us down some crazy. If I'm tempted to make a big, bold [00:13:00] move, I need to get curious about what I'm feeling that might be driving that.

But most importantly, it confirmed in me that I do love teaching. And now years later, I've taken my love of teaching and transformed it into a school that I'm authentically proud of this time. My biggest fan was guiding me. I call it self-love. It's a cute, comfortable place online that helps people navigate their messy emotions and hear from their biggest fans.

Now I'm able to take a look at the emotion ocean from a bird's eye view, maybe in a beach chair, soaking up the sun. I can acknowledge my emotions as they come and it feels good. It feels like me.

That's it for this week. In our next episode, we're going to talk about change in our bodies. I'll talk to a [00:14:00] movement expert. She will share how even our bodies can get stuck in unhelpful patterns and how to break that cycle. That's next time on the happier. The happier approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me Nancy Jane Smith music provided by pod five and epidemic sound for more episodes to get in touch or to learn more about sup loyalty school, you can visit Nancy Jane smith.com.

And if you like the show, leave us a review. It actually helps us out a lot special. Thanks to Dr. Jessica Tracy for speaking with us. You can find Jessica on Twitter at prof, Jess, Tracy. And if you'd like to order Jessica's book, take pride. Why the deadliest sin holds the secret to human success. You can find the link in our show notes, the happier approach.

We'll be back with another episode in two weeks, take care until the.[00:15:00]

Season 3 Episode 3 Believe in Change

In this episode, we explore how entrenched beliefs can keep us from change.

In this episode, Nancy talks to an expert in creativity, who had to reevaluate her whole life and career when everything fell apart, then re-learn what she valued as she rebuilt her life from the ashes. But first, she tells us a story that illustrates some entrenched beliefs she had about herself for a long time, that she had to let go of in order to move forward.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

- Nancy's personal experiences with shaking off entrenched beliefs.

- Tips and advice from Melissa Dinwiddie, Founder and CEO of Creative Sandbox Solutions.

- How to learn more about Self Loyalty School.

Learn more about Melissa Dinwiddie.

- Visit Melissa's website: https://melissadinwiddie.com/

- Order Melissa's book: https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Sandbox-Way-Your-Full-Color/dp/0997962615

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy Jane Smith: Hey guys, it's me. Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed hustle at achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. In our last episode, we learned that it's really easy for our brains to get stuck in a rut we're biologically conditioned to fall into patterns and then stay in them.

And when the world around us reinforces. I think we've always known about ourselves. Like I'm the kind of person who exercises every day or, oh, I'm not a creative person or I'm the kind of person who will have kids someday. It can be really hard to stop all of that outside noise and actually listen to what we really want instead of following a script and staying in that rut, even though it doesn't feel right anymore.

So today we'll talk to an expert in creativity who had to reevaluate her whole life and career. When everything fell apart, then relearn what she valued as she rebuilt her life from the. But first, let me tell you about a belief. I held about myself for a really long time. One that you may be pretty familiar with yourself.

Well, if you have this procedure, you won't be able to have children. It's just too risky. My gynecologist said with a sad look on her face. Oh, I replied a little numb from the news. Okay. Well, let me think about it and I'll let you. I totally understand. It's a big decision. My gynecologist said I had just turned 35 and was in a new relationship with my now husband Doug, because our relationship was so new.

We hadn't yet ventured into that. Do you want to have kids to. I was not one of those people who always dreamed of being a mother. It was something I thought I wanted mostly because it was something I was supposed to want. But for the most part, I never gave it much thought. I'd always been more focused on my career and enjoy the freedom of not having kids, being able to travel and have adventures anytime I wanted.

But in my mid thirties, when my gynecologist told me they were going to have to do a procedure that would prevent me from having. I was suddenly struck with an overwhelming loss. All of a sudden, knowing it wasn't an option made me want kids more culturally and biologically the messaging around getting married and having children is strong.

I was always told what a great mom I would be. I'm a natural born caregiver. It is something I love to do. And yet caregiving is also something that drains. Plus, I love my life. A freedom, freedom to travel, eat out and be spontaneous that night over dinner. I shared with Doug that this procedure would mean kids were off the table.

I was nervous. I didn't think he wanted to have kids, but shutting the door completely is a different level all together. As soon as the words came out of my mouth. So I can't have kids. Doug said, great. I don't want kids. And not having to worry about that right out of the gate is awesome. It's your body, but I'm a hundred percent supportive of no kids.

He was so sure, but I was less sure. I kept jumping back and forth between the two thoughts. You never longed for. But you would make a great mom. Kids would be all consuming because you're such a good caregiver. You would be overwhelmed by caring for them, but to bring a tiny human into the world and help them grow, that would be amazing.

Kids would dramatically change your life, but everyone wants kids. You should want kids. Doug doesn't want kids. And I think [00:04:00] he's my life. But if you want kids, you should decide that now, maybe Doug isn't the one for something that I never really wanted. It was suddenly all I could think. Part of the reason I was so confused came from the fact that I couldn't figure out if having kids was something I wanted or something I was supposed to want.

I couldn't separate this belief I had about myself. You're a great caregiver. You would be a great mom from what I possibly, maybe actually. So when I talked to Melissa Dinwiddie recently about her path toward accepting her own creativity, even though her questions about herself were different than mine.

A lot of what we talked about sounded pretty familiar.

Melissa Dinwiddie: The path has been very long and windy. I thought I was a non-creative person. Quite honestly.

Nancy Jane Smith: That's Melissa Dinwiddie. She's the founder and CEO of creative sandbox solutions, a creative consultant. But before she founded her company, her life looked very different.

Melissa Dinwiddie: I thought I wanted to be a writer and started making art to arts and crafts to procrastinate. And then discovered I loved this thing calligraphy.

Nancy Jane Smith: She ended up turning her calligraphy hobby into a business.

Melissa Dinwiddie: My main business was Jewish marriage contracts. Uh, it's called the katuba, which is a traditional part of every Jewish wedding.

Nancy Jane Smith: For those of you not familiar, uh katuba is like a really elaborately, beautiful prenuptial agreement. And it's a really important part of a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony.

Melissa Dinwiddie: It's been a part of the Jewish wedding ceremony for over 2000 years. And because in Judaism, there's a precept that says that if there's an object that is required for ritual purposes. It's a really good thing for that object to be as beautiful as possible.

Nancy Jane Smith: Melissa was on track to make six figures with her business, but then we all know what happened

Melissa Dinwiddie:. 2008 happened and the economy tanked. And for the first time, my business tanked as well. My business had just grown and grown and grown and grown, and I assumed it would just continue to grow, not realizing that no, actually it doesn't always work that way.

Nancy Jane Smith: This disruption turned Melissa's life upside down. She desperately tried to drum up business, but to no avail,

Melissa Dinwiddie: I threw money at the problem. And the only thing I succeeded in doing was getting myself deeply in debt.

So now cut to 2010. I'm deeply in debt, extremely stressed out. Melissa Dinwiddie: The universe basically walloped me upside the head with a two-by-four, which is what the universe will do if you don't figure it out on your own.

Nancy Jane Smith: Right. That's when she had a revelation

Melissa Dinwiddie: after so many years of being up so-called professional artists, making my living as such as it was as a professional artist, I was actually living a highly non-creative life.And I was extremely, extremely unhappy and I wanted to change that. I felt like I was in the gutter. And the beautiful thing about that is there, the only place to go is up and it stripped the blinders off of my head.

Nancy Jane Smith: Melissa had been stuck in the groove of her tuba business for so long that she didn't even realize how unhappy she was, but in this down and out moment, she realized she had other options. She shook off her entrenched belief about what she could accomplish.

Melissa Dinwiddie: When I retired my katuba business, I had to let go of that identity. And suddenly here I was at the, in the gutter and I realized that's a bunch of bull. That is not the only thing that's possible for me. So what do I want? Well, the thing that I knew that I wanted was to live a creative life.

Nancy Jane Smith: So she started. To help her figure out what she wanted from a new creative life. And that set the scene for her new business, a creative consultancy.

Melissa Dinwiddie: And I just started writing and writing and writing and writing and writing and writing. It's sort of been an ongoing journey since then,

Nancy Jane Smith: But even now that she's shaken off this old belief about herself, Melissa's ideas about her creativity and how they relate to her work are still. I think change Melissa Dinwiddie: is really hard for many years. What I did was help people get creatively unstuck. Why? Because we teach what we need to learn. That is the thing that I was passionate about and wanted to help people with, because that is the thing that I needed the most help with myself. I solve that problem for myself back in 2010, 2011. And. I had to keep solving that problem for myself over the years. It's very, very easy.

Nancy Jane Smith: To get stuck.

Melissa Dinwiddie: Okay. So here's the process.

First you have to get past inertia, which is a matter of just starting. It just often takes a while to find your groove and it's painful, but eventually if you keep at it often, it doesn't take as long as you think it's going to, to find a groove. And once you find that groove, oh my God. So good. And then you're grooving along.

The problem is grooves are temporary. They're finite, but we keep going at them. We keep going along that groove because it feels so good and we want it to last and the grooves are not designed to last, but we want them to last. So we keep going. And what happens when we keep going in a groove, it turns into a rut and that's suddenly we find that we're stuck.

And then we can't figure out how to get out because now we were in this nice groove, which felt all comfy and cool and was like stretching us just the right amount. And now we're in this 10 feet deep rut and we can't get out. Because the sides are like too, you know, high and smooth and like, ah, so that's one of the ways that we can get ourselves stuck.

Nancy Jane Smith: But Melissa says the important thing to do when you're stuck in that groove is to treat yourself with compassion until you find a way out,

Melissa Dinwiddie: Because here's the thing we're all gonna stumble. We're all gonna get derailed. We're all gonna find ourselves in a, in a rut, whatever. And. Nobody any good to beat ourselves up about it.

We are going to beat ourselves up about it. So guess what we get to have self-compassionate about that? Oh, it's okay. You beat yourself up about it. You know, you get to [00:11:00] love yourself up for the fact that, oh, well you beat yourself up again.

Nancy Jane Smith: Just like Melissa said, it's so hard to shake up a belief about yourself and identity that seems built into the fabric of who you are.

I was having the same problem, deciding if I really did want to have kids or if I could let go of that part of my identity, if it was ever really a part of my identity at all.

Where we last left off, I was modeling all of this over and over the next few days, as I kept thinking all of the negatives, but you'd be such a good mom, but don't you like kids were soon overturned by the positive. Doug doesn't want kids. It is never really been a life goal for me. Kids would be all consuming and maybe I could find other outlets for my caring, getting pregnant and giving birth would be tricky and challenging with my health concerns.

So I called my gynecologist and told her I was ready. We scheduled the appointment for the procedure and I hung up the phone. It was so confusing to be sad about something. I didn't even think I want it out of the blue. I surprised myself by grabbing a piece of paper and pen writing a letter to my child that I would never see a little Doug and Nancy who would never be brought into this world.

Tears streamed down my face. As I wrote a letter to this human, I would never meet. It was a strange feeling, grieving, something that didn't exist. Grieving my biology. Grieving a healthy, well thought out choice. And then I took the letter and a lighter, and I walked to the back corner of the yard. I took the trout and dug a hole and then took the lighter and held it to the paper and burned it.

I watched the words and paper turned to ash and I felt a surprising sense of closure. My normal pattern would be to tell myself I was overreacting hammer myself for being. You didn't want kids anyway, why are you so sad? But this time I just allowed the messy unexplained feelings. I allowed the belief that I should have kids bump up against the reality.

Aren't the right choice for me, giving myself permission to feel sad, disappointed, relieved, and hopeful was healing. It also allowed me to own the decision. I could have blamed it on Doug or my health, but in reality, it was Doug, my health and my personal choice. It was all three. It has been almost 15 years since I decided not to have kids.

And it was the right decision for me. I still wonder what our child would look like or be like, I still wonder what type of mom I would be or what my child would be doing right now. And when those thoughts come up, I acknowledge them and allow them. And inevitably, I come back to relief. I made the right choice, expectations, be damned.

That's it for this week. In our next episode, we're going to talk about the change and emotions. How allowing yourself to feel too many or too few emotions can make it difficult to sustain change in our. I'll speak to a psychologist, an expert on emotion, moral thinking, and self-conscious emotions to dive into why it can be so hard to make a change when emotions get involved.

That's next time on the happier approach. The happier approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me Nancy Jane Smith music provided by pod five and epidemic. For more episodes to get in touch or to learn more about sup loyalty school, you can visit Nancy Jane smith.com. And if you like the show, leave us a review.

It actually helps us out a lot special. Thanks to Melissa Dinwiddie for speaking with us today, the happier approach we'll be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care until then.

Season 3 Episode 2: Change in the Brain

In this episode, Nancy learns how hard it is to form habits and goals all from a psychologist and neuroscience expert.

Nancy tells us about her journey to accept her new physical limitations in her workouts, and why learning about how change works on a scientific level, can make space for kindness and grace. Nancy talks with Dr. Elliot Berkman, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who studies the science of habits. He'll tell us what's really going on inside our brains when we try to do something new and make it stick.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

- Nancy's personal experiences with trying to form habits and routines.

- The science behind forming habits and achieving goals from Dr. Elliot Berkman.

- How to learn more about Self Loyalty School.

Resources Mentioned:

Learn more about Dr. Elliot Berkman:

- Go to the University of Oregon website: https://ctn.uoregon.edu/profile/berkman

- You can follow him on Twitter @Psychologician

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy: Hey guys, it’s me! Nancy Jane Smith. Welcome back to the Happier Approach, the show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace and relationships.

This season we’re talking all about change. How hard it is, how to make it seem not-so-scary, AND how it feels in our bodies. Today’s episode is all about that last part– how change works in the brain, from a scientific perspective– specifically a translational neuroscientific perspective… but we’ll get into all of that in a sec!

Change is such a BIG concept, that it can be hard to wrap our heads around how it actually happens on a day-to-day basis. Like, in our last episode when I slowly brought more storytelling and authenticity into my business and ended up changing my whole approach. It seems like I snapped my fingers and WOOHOO change. But of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that.

So today we’ll talk to an expert in psychology and neuroscience about all the little steps that go into making a big change– basically how building small habits can all add up to reaching our bigger goals. From habits as little as washing your face every night, to larger ones like building a new fitness routine. That’s something I’ve been working on for a while now…

Music

ACT I: Change in the Brain

Nancy: "You used to work out every day–remember when you could run a mile in under 8 mins now, you probably can't even run a mile."

Aw, the familiar voice of my Monger, my name for the voice of the inner critic.

Fitness has always been a part of my life. Exercising has been critical to both my physical and mental health. Almost a decade ago, I was in the best shape of my life–doing a mix of cardio and weights for over an hour a day. The vision of who I was was someone strong who could handle any physical challenge if I pushed myself hard enough.

In the past decade, I broke my ankle in a segway accident and had major surgery, which left me unable to work out for almost a year. Then a few years ago, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and Ankylosing Spondylitis, 2 chronic auto-immune illnesses. In the span of a few years, I went from being in the best shape of my life to living with chronic pain and most days feeling lucky if I can walk the dog.

Since those diagnoses, I have struggled to get back into a regular workout routine. It’s been a war between the Monger and the BFF. My Monger saying, "If you pushed yourself more, you COULD get into shape. You are just lazy and old, and you use pain as an excuse.”

My BFF responds, "It doesn't matter if you move or not; you are still in pain, so you might as well not move. You will never get back to where you were–why even try."

At the end of last year, I decided to try physical therapy to learn how to move my body in a way that didn't cause pain… I loved working with the physical therapist– I worked out twice a week with the PT and three days on my own. I was getting back in the groove. "This is working," my Monger said, "just keep pushing, and you will be back to a good place in no time."

For a couple of weeks, I was riding the high that I COULD get back to where I was. Squats–no problem! Lunges-I got this! Weights with lunges–bring it on!! My Monger was right; I just needed to push harder. So I did. I kept pushing myself harder. And then one night, getting ready for bed, my leg gave out, and I couldn't walk. I had inflamed my Achilles heel, and it was excruciating.

The next time I went back to PT, he decreased my exercises, and I was devastated–"It’s ok," he said, "You will recover. You just need to rest it and go easy. No more lunges, no more squats." And then a few weeks later, after I hadn't made any real progress, he said, "ok, I think we have maxed out what I can do for you. You have the exercises, keep doing them at home. But I didn't. I stopped altogether. "If you can't get back to where you were, there is no point," said my BFF.

Around this time– when I was discharged from PT and feeling pretty discouraged about my attempts to build a new fitness routine– I interviewed an expert, who made me think about my approach in a whole new way.

ACT II: Elliot Berkman

Nancy: Have you ever seen the Bob Newhart skit where he's a psychologist Elliot: Yep. I think I know the one you're talking Nancy: and he says, just, just stop it. Elliot: Haha, yup. Nancy: Um, that's my husband's favorite quote, whenever I'm like, I want to start doing this and he's like, just stop it. Stop it. Okay. But that always comes into my mind when I'm thinking about making changes. Elliot: Just stop it! Nancy: That’s Dr. Elliot Berkman. Along with being a good sport and going along with my jokes about Bob Newhart– he’s a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. Elliot: I study goals, motivation and behavior. I love studying goals because of the kind of duality of the fact that humans are. Some of the only creatures. I think the only creatures that we know of that really set these fancy long-term goals for ourselves.

Nancy: If you think about it, Elliot’s right! Humans are always thinking about the future. We have five year plans, ten year plans! Elliot: Famously you know, dogs are happy in the moment. They're not thinking about tomorrow or yesterday. Right. They don't ruminate. They don't worry about their inadequacies of relative to other dogs, you know?

Nancy: But for us forward-planning humans, if we fail to live up to a goal that we set… it can make us pretty miserable. And Elliot has some bad news for us on that front.

Elliot: A lot of the research on goals shows that we're really, really bad at it. You know, most goals fail, um, where there's all sorts of pitfalls in terms of how we set goals for ourselves. Are they too hard? They're too hard and often they're too big. Which makes them kind of unattainable.

Nancy: But not all is lost. Elliot studies how we can use our natural, if somewhat flawed, neuro-hardwiring to actually create behavior changes and reach our goals. It’s a field called translational neuroscience.

music Elliot: Translational neuroscience is taking what we know about the neural systems of human behavior and human thoughts and emotions. And using that information to create interventions or programs that help people change their behavior in some way, My particular interest in that is thinking about how we use information about how the brain creates habits, how the brain is motivated to obtain various things and using that to help us change our behavior more effectively.

Nancy: For those of you struggling with some of this vocab like I was in the interview, a neuro system is basically a term that describes how all of the different parts of the brain work together.

Elliot: Parts of the brain and the way they are active during different mental processes, like thoughts and emotions and how the brain is interconnected sort of within itself. So different parts of the brain. Talk to each other. And thinking about, you know, okay. So during say a motivated state, what are the parts of the brain that are active?

The way to think about it is you, you can use a computer analogy if you want. So there's each little part of your computer. Does something on its own, right? The CPU does kind of computations, right. Or the Ram stores things temporarily. But of course the computer doesn't work the way that we would want it to work without all those pieces talking to each other.

Music out

Nancy: So explain what happens in our brains when we're forming habits.

Elliot: What happens when we form habits is our brains have the capacity to form an association between a particular behavior and a particular cue. Usually it's something that gets rewarded.

Nancy: So, for a very basic lab-ratty example: the cue could be a red light. A red light turns on, you press a lever, and you get a reward. Maybe the machine spits out a nice slice of chocolate cake.

Eliott: And the way that works at the level of the brain is the reward serves to form a connection between the cue and the behavior. The idea is once that happens a few times you no longer really need to be rewarded. Eventually when you see the cue, the behavior will become the kind of dominant response that happens.

Nancy: But in humans, a cue isn’t necessarily something as simple as a red light. It could be something higher level.

Eliott: Getting in my car in the morning or finishing a meal, which would, for example, for a smoker, be cues that they've associated with smoking a cigarette.

Nancy: Elliot says that those “cues” are the most important part of creating habits. Eventually when we see the cue our brain will start to release hormones that reinforce the behavior before the reward even appears. Eliott used the example of building a consistent fitness routine.

Elliot: Behavior change is at first, very deliberately building out the structures in your world to support the behavior, to make sure that there's always a cue that goes with the behavior. So a lot of people will do things like put their running shoes or their gym bag somewhere, very visible or accessible. So that later when you see the cue, it reminds you to go work out. They might even structure their world or structure their day so that there's a chunk of time in, you know, sort of in their world reserved for the exercise. And so that even that time can then become the cue or it's like, oh, I'm free for an hour right now. I have nothing to do. That's a good cue to go, go out and exercise.

Nancy: But one of the biggest barriers to making sure that cue is recognized? Building it into our already busy schedules and routines in a consistent way.

Elliot: Sometimes you have to ask the question, not so much, why am I not doing the new thing that I want to do? Right. Which is working out, but why is it that my life is already so full?

Nancy: And all those things that fill up your life? They’re like an endless maze of other habits that you’ve already built into your routine, that you have to contend with in order to build a new habit.

Elliot: I would say that's sort of a second theme of what can become barriers or what can become a challenge for behavior changes. You're never just creating a new behavior. You're always overcoming old ones.

Nancy: Another barrier? Often those old habits are connected to a way that we see ourselves. A sense of identity that can be really hard to overcome if your new habit doesn’t fit with your picture of yourself.

Elliot: So the idea is you're never just changing a single behavior, right? There's other things that you're working against, you have existing behaviors in your life that you're working. And you also have existing identities, right?

Music

I have family in Louisiana and for them to say, you know what? They are pork people like that is a part of their identity in Louisiana is it's absolutely true. Right. And it's all well and good for somebody there to say, I want to start eating more healthily. You know, that seems like a reasonable goal. But if you think about a goal like that within the broader context of like, it's actually quite important to us at a cultural level, at a personal level, To have, you know, to eat these things, you know, fried pork products or ham bacon, you know, probably more than is advisable, right.

Is, um, an important part of their identity. And so the point of that argument is just to say that before you embark on some behavior change, it's important to think about what are the processes in our lives culturally. Individually, personally, that maintain the behaviors that we have, not just the fact that they've been reinforced in the past, but also the fact that they're kind of embedded in our, in our life and our social systems. then on the flip side of that, you can imagine, well, what would be ways that I could connect that new behavior that I'm trying to do up to my broader identity?

Nancy: So how could I be still be eating pork but in, in a healthy way.

Elliot: yes, exactly. Or maybe thinking about recasting or reframing the identity and say, you know, yeah. You know, pork is sort of part of our culture here, but, but so is, you know, so are collard greens, right? And maybe green, maybe that is the thing that I'm going to attach to say. That's what I identify with in terms of food in Louisiana.

Music out

Nancy: All this talk of identity made me think about MY fitness habits. How my identity had always been really attached to working out. I’d had a lot of pride in it. But now with my physical limitations, I didn’t have that anymore. I wondered if my situation might be similar to the pork-eating example that Eliott mentioned.

Elliot: Sometimes it's really thinking of. You know, well, what is, what, what are other parts of your identity that, that you do care about that you could potentially attach to physical activity? so maybe it's not now activity for activity's sake. Maybe it's something about, um, self care, right? Maybe the idea is I'm a person that takes care of myself and, you know, I do have this condition of arthritis, but in fact, physical activity is part of caring. You know, it's part of my sort of medical regimen for caring for myself. Nancy: So it would be more tied to another example would be, oh, I want to be able to go to an event and stand there and not be in pain. And in order to do that, I need to be doing these stretches and working out in this different way than I'm used to.

Nancy: But that still left me with a question. WHY did I even want to work out in a different way? What was the larger goal here?

Nancy: You started out at the very beginning and you said something about setting big goals. We set big goals as human beings, is it? And so then the common wisdom is to make it make the goals bite-sized, but then that's, but that's less exciting.

Elliot: It's less exciting and it's less satisfying. Which is a trick from the science of habit formation. At first, when you're starting, you want to set small goals that are attainable, that are rewarding, right? That's how you build habits by reinforcing, you know, small wins. But from the bigger picture, what makes goals rewarding intrinsically for humans? If they're not things that are sort of primary rewards…

Nancy: Primary rewards are things that give us immediate satisfaction like food, sleep, drugs, sex… On the flip side, are higher-level rewards.

Eliott: Like feeling a sense of self fulfillment, becoming the best version of me, right. It's hard to feel that way if you're just taking these baby steps. And so another insight I think from, and this comes more from psychology and the neuroscience, is the idea of a goal hierarchy.

Music

The idea that even those big goals can get connected down to small things. And the way that we organize our behaviors and our goals in our minds is actually really, really important. The way you understand those small steps as being connected or, you know, a small instantiations of a larger thing are really important. Sometimes people refer to it as a why, how hierarchy. You can start at the top level. Like I want to be a healthy person, right? That's a big goal. It's a sort of a lifelong goal, but you can break that down and go down the levels of the hierarchy by asking the question of how right.

So healthy person, how do I do that? Well, I can imagine several ways I can eat healthily. I can be, be more physically active and after each of those. You can ask how right. And in fact, you can always continue to ask how do I eat healthily, eat more vegetables? How do I be more active while I maybe start jogging.

Nancy: And it’s just as important as you’re breaking down the “hows” to go up the hierarchy for each small goal you have and ask why?

Elliot: Like, okay, I just had a salad for. That's great. You know, good for me, but think about the question of why, right? Why was I doing that? Well, I did that because I want to, I want to have a healthy diet and why do I want that? Because I want to have be a healthy person. So understanding the connections kind of up and down the hierarchy is really important because it helps us make connections between small victories, which can be satisfying. And then the really sort of truly fulfilling thing, which is making progress on those big high level goals.

Nancy: If you reach high enough for the “why” you could end up getting some pretty deep, introspective answers to that question.

Elliot: Usually the ultimate answer is you have some sort of vision of yourself, right? Whatever it might be, and that you're trying to attain that kind of vision.

And so this behavior will help you get to that and it might not necessarily be connected to health. Right. So a lot of people want to change their behavior because they want to live long enough to, you know, seat, know their grandchildren and they care about that. You can even ask that. So why, why do you want to meet your grandchildren?

Right. Well, because it's really important to me to feel a sense of my, you know, lineage carrying on through time. Okay. That's a big high level. And you can say, yeah, well it's connected to eating this salad, whatever it is, that's connecting those specific behaviors to something that is truly meaningful for you.

Music out Oftentimes in general, people will sell it, set a goal and backslide because it's not connected to some sort of higher level purpose.

Nancy: But take comfort. Even experts in goal setting and habit forming aren’t necessarily good at it.

Nancy: Are you really good at making habits and change or?

Elliot: I'm less terrible than I once was. Now in academia, we have a saying research is me-search right. You study the things that, that are really challenging for you. And so goals has always been something of a personal fascination because of my frustrations with it. Beat

Elliot: I would say change is hard at first because of the demands of planning. It’s a confluence of two things that are very hard, right? Planning, which is the very kind of abstract forward-thinking kind of, you know, only humans do this kind of thinking type of thinking. And at the same time, you're overcoming really powerful ancient brain systems that support and maintain habits.

Nancy: And giving yourself grace in the face of those ancient brain systems– something that is honestly SUPER hard to do, even from an evolutionary perspective– really seems to be the key to making change last. Maybe music till out

Eliott: We're beings that are designed to form habits. We're designed to get into a rut. I mean, that's sort of how our brains work. I think humans are kind of adapted to have the capacity to change, have the capacity to do new things, but it comes at a very high cost, right? To do something new. It really demands all of your attention. It demands focus, and that in some ways is our most precious resource. So anytime you're changing, you're sort of working uphill, right? You're going against that machinery. Beat

I think a lot of people on into intellectual level understand. The sort of rejection of dualism, this idea of like, well, are the mind and the brain, you know, is, is there some S is, does the mind exist separate from the brain, you know, as the body and the soul kind of thing.

Like they get that like, no, no, there's not really a soul separate from your body. You know, if one dies, the other dies, that kind of thing. But it's, it is still like very extremely appealing intuitively to think of a separation between them. And I think that even plays out in science, right. People very much think about, well, I'm studying psychology and that's separate from the brain. But even though you're kind of acknowledging like, no, they really can't be. A CT III: Nancy Changes Her Brain… slowly but surely!

Nancy: Since I was discharged from PT around the time I interviewed Elliot, talking to him opened up a whole new way of thinking for me. He talked about the vision of yourself– your identity– and how that can prevent us from making change, and I had a major ah-ha!

MUSIC

I hadn’t created a realistic vision for myself that holds my physical limitations and the need to move my body. I have not been able to change my image of myself from someone who had no physical limitations to someone who has chronic physical limitations. AND I hadn’t realized how hard change is to actually implement– because of the way humans evolved! I needed to accept a new vision of myself, give myself grace, and take small steps towards a larger change and a powerful “why”-- connected more to my own self-care, than to an outdated vision of myself.

I wish I could tie this story up in a neat little bow. And say after that ah-ha, I did successfully change the vision in my head from one of being fit and strong to one of having grace with my body and being kind even though I probably won't ever get back to the level of my 30s. But I know that isn't how change works. It takes time and baby steps.

I have been trying to build a relationship with myself that isn't one of pushing but one of kindness and curiosity—noticing where my body hurts and how it feels after gentle stretching. Reminding my Monger that my body is different now, not better or worse, just different, and while I probably won't get back to where I was in my 30s, that doesn't mean I should do nothing.

Changing the picture I had of myself in my head, the standard I’ve always held myself to, has been hard. There is grief and sadness, mourning what I used to be. AND there is hope that I can figure out how to be in this body and find the sweet spot of challenging myself but not to the point of pain. It’ll just take lots of deliberate baby steps, to get to that ultimate place of change.

Music out

That’s it for this week! In our next episode we’re going to look at how entrenched beliefs– from politics, to long-held ideas about ourselves– can keep us from change. I’ll speak to an author and creativity facilitator, who had to break down her entrenched beliefs about herself in order to keep moving down her own path. That’s next time, on the Happier Approach.

Music out

Nancy: The Happier Approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod5 and Epidemic Sound. For more episodes, to get in touch, or to learn more about Self Loyalty School, you can visit nancy jane smith dot com. And if you like the show, leave us a review! It actually helps us out a lot.

Special thanks to Dr. Elliot Berkman for speaking with us today.

The Happier Approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care, until then.

Season 3 Episode 1: But Can I Change?

In the first episode of our new season, Nancy brings us on a personal journey of change through self-loyalty.

In the episode, Nancy describes how she embarked on the most self-loyal year she's ever had, both in her business and her personal life, which culminated in the creation of Self Loyalty School. Nancy speaks with her friend and business collaborator, Hillary Rea. They discuss Hillary's storytelling philosophy and the work they've done together to cultivate self-loyalty through story. Then Nancy checks in with our favorite recurring guest, her husband Doug, to get his read on how she's been able to pivot toward self-loyalty over the past year.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Nancy's journey to make the change to become self-loyal in her business and in her personal life.

• Storytelling and communication tips from Hillary Rea.

• How to learn more about Self Loyalty School.

Resources Mentioned:

• Go to https://tellmeastory.info to learn more about Hillary and how to work with her.

• Sign up for Hillary's Monthly Speak Up Session: https://www.tellmeastory.info/session

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy: Hey guys, it's me. Nancy Jane Smith. A great big welcome back to a brand new season of the happier approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle, and achieve at the price of our inner peace in relationships. Last season, we went on a journey to the magical land of self loyalty and met up with all our old friends and frenemies along the way, like the Monger, the BFF and the Biggest Fan.

This season, we're tackling a new topic, change through a self loyal lens. How can we create change within ourselves while maintaining a tined mental attitude sounds easy. Right? Well, over the past year, I've made a lot of changes. And let me tell you it hasn't always been easy. I've tried to be more self loyal and the way I show up for my business and guess what it's actually changed, how self loyal I am in my day to day life too.

I funneled all of this newfound self loyalty into a course about high functioning anxiety. It's called self loyalty school. Creating this course is one of the most self loyal things I've ever done. It was a challenge I put myself to, to do something based on what I know works for my clients, rather than the script I've seen other people follow.

So to kick off the season, we'll take a look at where I started on my journey to being a self loyal business owner. We'll talk to my friend and business collaborator, Hillary Rea, plus our favorite reoccurring guest, my husband Doug, about what changes I've made to my life to bring me to this moment and how other folks can learn from that momentum.

So, first let's go back way back to when I first started my business 15 years ago.

I've been in business as a therapist and coach for 15 years. And for 14 of those years, I ran my business looking for what everyone else thought I should do. If I tried something new, I would go online and research what others were doing.

I called it going to committee. I would hunt down the right way to do everything-- the right way to write a sales page or get someone to sign up for my newsletter, even the right way to do my podcast. I would spend hours looking for the right way and then dive half-heartedly into the solution. Inevitably when the solution wasn't easy or magical, I would change my mind and the cycle would repeat. My business was fine, but I was bored with it.

I was tired of the cycle, but I didn't see a way out. When COVID blew up the world and many social norms, I started questioning everything and I asked myself, why am I doing this the way everyone else has done it? Maybe there isn't a right way. Maybe there are a thousand different ways. And I just need to find my way.

I saw that I was struggling with having self loyalty. Rather than listening to myself to ease my anxiety. I was going to committee. So if it didn't go well, I could blame the committee. And wouldn’t you know those committee sanctioned ideas, didn't really work. In 2020 my desire for change was different. I wanted to change not because I thought I was broken, but because I needed a different way, I wanted to bring more of myself into my business communication.

I wanted more self loyalty, so I committed to change the way I approached my business. I would stop looking to the experts and start looking within myself. And that led me to Hillary Rea.

Nancy: Okay. Hi Hillary.

Hillary Rea: Hello.

Nancy: I'm so excited to have you here. Oh my chair's squeaking. Hold on a minute. I should oil that for future interviews.

Hillary Rea: WD 40 would probably work.

Nancy: Hillary is the founder of a storytelling company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Hillary Rea: Yeah. I run a company called tell me a story, which is a communication consulting and coaching business, where I help folks use personal narrative storytelling as a powerful communication tool. So I work with folks on communicating through story and Nancy, I've known you for almost two years now, maybe a little bit more. We started working together on storytelling in the fall of 2020, I think.

Nancy: Yeah, it feels like a lot longer three years. I say that in a good way.

Nancy: When I decided I needed to bring more self loyalty to my business, Hillary was one of the key people who helped me make that change.

Hillary Rea: So I believe that if you have an audience, if you have listeners, if you have one person that you're communicating to even, or a group of people or thousands of people, I believe that if you share an experience from your life in the form of a story. That you have the ability to foster deeper connections with the people that you're communicating to.

You have the ability to inspire the people listening to think of their own life experiences and how they impact them and inspire them to communicate. It builds, trust it, sinks messages in it helps people remember you. And it's fun as the communicator to just say, Hey, this is who I am, and I'm going to have fun sharing a piece of who I am with you.

Nancy: I was drawn to Hillary's work because I was trying to be more vulnerable by bringing more of my personal stories into my business, through my newsletter and my podcast. But I kept running up against the same problem.

Nancy: I love storytelling, but I couldn't bring myself and say I into my work. I needed to come from the statement of you. You, you are feeling this. You're feeling that.

Nancy: The common wisdom of business communication is that my business isn't about me. It's about you, the client and what I can do for you. But what I learned from Hillary is that personal storytelling and vulnerability can actually connect with people more than that traditional you, you, you approach. A while ago, she even wrote about it in her newsletter.

Hillary Rea: It was around what you were just saying about speaking from I versus speaking from you or we, and I was really trying to encourage people to think about I not as like a self-indulgent way to communicate, but that it's okay to use I and still be in service of the people that you're communicating with. And so I used this example of this sales person. So I am, by the time this comes out, I'll be over 39 and a half, maybe 40. And so this was something that happened to me when I was 18 or 19. It was a Dwayne Reed in Manhattan. I was in college. For those that maybe don't live in New York, Dwayne Reed is like, a Walgreens or CVS. They were one of the first drug stores. Like now I feel like drug stores have like beauty departments. Dwayne Reed like had that before it was popular, there were like French drugstore products. So there was like a sales rep at this random Duane Reed in Manhattan that had a table set up.

And I think it was Vichy or Vishy. I remember the brand specifically. And I was walking down the aisle and like, you know, drug stores don't have the greatest lighting. Like it is cool toned the fluorescents, right? And there's like vomit colored carpeting on the ground and all of that. So I walked by, I don't even know what I was there for.

Like, I don't know. Let's say I was there for toothpaste. I don't remember, but I like walked down this aisle cause it was on the way to the checkout. And this woman stopped me and said, excuse me, I see that you're struggling with acne. Have you ever thought about using this or she said you have acne something like, it was a you statement. And I was like 18 or 19.

I had had acne for like, since sophomore year of high school. And it was like traumatizing. Like it wasn't the worst situation in the world, but I, you know, it was under the care of a dermatologist. It like really had messed with my self-esteem, especially in high school. So when the person said you are struggling with acne or suffering from acne, or you have bad acne or whatever it was that she said, I was so taken aback and I like ran out of the store. Like I don't even, I didn't steal the toothpaste. I just dropped whatever I had. And like, didn't buy it or I bought it quick and I left. But I was really upset afterwards and it stuck with me. I think a lot of sales tactics are like, you are this, you feel this way. And so that's why I shared that story in my newsletter.

I was like, what if that woman had shared a personal experience about her using that cream? There had to have been another way that her and I could have fostered a connection if she really actually wanted me to buy something.

Nancy: Obviously in this case, the YOU YOU YOU tactic did not work. And I had an inkling. It wasn't the right approach for my business either.

Hillary Rea: Can I ask you a question or will that throw everything?

Nancy: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hillary Rea: Do you feel like this idea of more vulnerable, does it feel more emotionally draining or heavy to quote unquote be more vulnerable, AKA like using I and using stories?

Nancy: I wouldn't say it feels more heavy. I would say that in order to write, and before I do a newsletter, I have to get really present with myself and kind of tap into that self loyalty, tap into that voice of the biggest fan.

And then when I can do that, it doesn't feel heavy. Like it just feels really natural. It's when I'm writing and I'm trying to rush through it. And I haven't done the settling down that my monger comes in to say, you know, who do you think you are? You're being, self-absorbed no cares about your story.

And so that's when it can feel heavy, it's such a different energy to tell stories in that way and to be really present. And I think it has infiltrated a lot of my life, not just my professional life, but in my personal life of showing up and being more present and being more vulnerable in how I share.

So I'm interested to hear how you have seen my approach change. Hillary Rea: So I've worked with you now for a little bit over a year. Like we've been working together on storytelling. I would say communication wise, it's a complete 180 and I mean that in like, the most positive sentence. And it's also not that like anything you were doing before was terrible, but I feel like I know you, I know your work and your expertise, and I know what you believe in.

I know what differentiates your work and your expertise from others. I trust you more because of how much of yourself you're sharing in addition to what it is that you're sharing. I can get transported into your ideas in a whole new way.

Nancy: But obviously this change didn't happen overnight for me. And it doesn't really happen that way for anyone. Not even Hillary. Hillary Rea: It's not that you start telling stories or I start telling stories and everything's like, poof, I'm loyal to myself. And everyone gets me. There's always these layers. And maybe it's similar to your spirals of like, oh, cool. That felt really great. Oh no. What are these people going to think? Oh no, I have unsubscribes from my newsletter.

No one's listening to my podcast. Like all of those voices come back, even if they're not true. And then you kind of have to like keep pushing through, or I have to keep pushing through. Nancy: No, I would agree. It has not been a smooth process, how I was communicating before or how I ran my business before was very comparing myself to other people.

So I spent a lot of time seeing what other people were doing and trying to apply that to my business. And I dialed it in, in the sense of, I just kind of did an overview of, if you have high functioning anxiety, you're into people pleasing, you're into perfectionism. And I would just say the, the catch phrases.

Without really showing it. And now I feel like there's so much more richness because I could be like, ah, here's a story of how people pleasing showed up that I wasn't realizing that illustrates it so much.

I remember one day I had just cooked dinner and then I ran downstairs to switch the laundry over. And I was like, oh, I’ve got to hurry. I’ve got to hurry. Doug is going to be mad at me because I'm taking so long to do the laundry. And then I thought, dude, you're doing the laundry for your family. You know, like this benefits, both of you you've cooked a dinner for both of you.

Now you're doing laundry. You're not, you know, down here watching TV. You’re doing stuff. And that's a great example of people pleasing and the extra layer of that. And I think that's where this has helped.

Hillary Rea: You’re also showing people that it's not, you're not doing a, you have acne kind of performance. You're like showing people like, Hey, I am an expert in this thing because of my degree, my background, my clients that I've worked with, but also I have this thing and it doesn't go away, but here I know how to help you because I'm in a different place with it. And I know what you're going through. And here are some stories that like, I don't have to convince you because here are some stories about that. So to me, it just feels like it doesn't diminish your credibility. If anything, it enhances it.

Nancy: No, I think anytime you're going to make change, if it does require, because this has been a major change for me and I didn't realize it was happening, I was like, oh, I want to add more storytelling to my business. And, you know, Hillary has got to help me do that and beginning, middle, and end and et cetera, et cetera. But I didn't really realize how it would change. Not only my, it would change everything. You know, it would change how I approached my business and how I approached my work and how I approach my marriage, how I show up with my friends, that it really helped me build self loyalty. I want to hear what is your personal definition of self loyalty?

Hillary Rea: I think actually the other, a couple of weeks ago, I was asked to define vulnerability. And I answered it as a way of showing up for myself and a way of showing up for other people. And I would say self loyalty is a way I can show up for myself so that I can show up for other people. So I see it as it's a kindness, but it's also like a truth telling that has to start with me before I can get to other people.

Nancy: Do you have a story of a time you saw me being self loyal? Hillary Rea: All the time. Can I say that? But also in what you're doing with your course is like, I would say 250% self loyalty, because you were like, I don't want to do this like anyone else, I want to do this the way, like format wise, how I want to do it. And I also want to do it in a way that's going to make the most sense for the people that really need this. And I want to use storytelling the whole time. And so that to me was like you committing to that and trusting that over, like seeing what's the right quote unquote way to like put a course out into the world.

Nancy: Um, what is your relationship with change? Do you like it? Do you hate it?

Hillary Rea: So I both love change and hate it. Here's an example of hating it. I always order the same thing at every restaurant. Like if I go to a restaurant and I've tried, like, I guess at one point I had to try something new. Right? But if that was then the thing I loved, I always get it.

Always. Like for lunch yesterday, I like treated myself to order takeout and I like got the same thing that I always get vegan, Buffalo wings and French fries from this one plate. Nancy: Do you debate changing it or you just always, you don't even debate it?

Hillary Rea: No. However, I'm also really big into like long-term drastic challenges that work towards a change. So I did this meditation thing. Like I meditated every single day for over a year, a handful of years ago. And now I meditate a couple times a week and I like am fine with that, but that was a huge change for me. I have just like two decision-making queues in my brain. And one is like, everything has to be this way all the time.

Or let's just go for the total other thing, but I'm going to take little steps to get there. I think it's always like I have to get a big awakening of, I need this to change, but then I take small steps and repetitive steps to get there.

Nancy: What do you think it's important for people to be aware of as we are doing change in our lives?

Hillary Rea: Trying something new on a menu probably could lead to a new favorite food, which I'm now saying out loud for myself, because it's funny. I'm like very into change in other aspects. I just think, you're never going to know what the change will feel like or what the change will allow you to actually do, or allow you to understand about yourself.

There's no way to predict what that's going to feel like, look like, be like. And so if I'm too focused on that, what's it going to be like, feel like, look like. I'm never going to do it, but if I look at all the changes, I have made and I don't have any like big life quote, unquote life changing moment or anything, but if I look at all of the like small changes I've made ,the right thing to do was to make the choice to change whether I knew what was going to happen or not.

Nancy: Yeah. Cause I think that's why I love the concept of self loyalty so much because even if it doesn't work out, you're still, you, you know, like that idea.

And I think there's a lot of, I know for me, there's always been a lot of disconnecting of oh, but I need to be that person. Hillary Rea: Yeah. And bringing this back to storytelling. I didn't feel comfortable with being fully being me until I stepped on a stage and shared a story from my life. And it wasn't that I was trying to be someone else.

I think I just had this idea of like who I should become instead of embracing who I am. And now that storytelling is so ingrained in like everything that I do versus what started as a way to express myself and perform on stage. But even that I was like, oh, I don't have to be a character. I can use my voice in a different way.

And no one's going to tell me it has to sound a certain way. That's the way I'm loyal to myself is like being okay with who I am and like loving who I am, but because I can feel comfortable sharing who I am with others. And when I hear other people share stories, like when you share stories or just out in the world, I feel better about myself too, and not better, like, oh, I'm better off than that person, but I think I'm not alone.

And so then I have more self loyalty because I can trust that I'm not alone in how I feel or what's happening. Nancy: I always loved storytelling and I loved Hillary's approach. It was exactly what I wanted to do. A perfect way to build some loyalty into my business and into my life. Now that I've rewritten myself back into the narrative of my business, not only am I more engaged in my work, but so are my clients. The more I share my story, the more people respond that they feel less alone, which is exactly why I made the change.

My husband, Doug has seen it firsthand.

Nancy: Okay. So this is the conversation with Doug. Take one.

Doug Harris: Take one.

Nancy: Okay. So introduce yourself just for the kicks and giggles of it.

Doug Harris: I'm Doug Harris. Nancy Jane, Smith's husband, the guy that believes in her the most.

Nancy: Ah, that's so sweet. What's your definition of self loyalty? Doug Harris: Self loyalty's a tricky one because there’s what you want to do, that's loyal to you. And then there's what everyone else is doing that’s loyal to them. And you really have to choose what you want to do over what everybody else is doing. Sometimes they will be like, that's not the best thing for you, but you know that what is best for you and you do that.

And that's when you're being self loyal.

Nancy: Have you seen, would you say you've seen me change in my practice of self loyalty?

Doug Harris: Definitely not just in your, like your practice of your everyday self, but in your practice as a whole, it's a confidence, it's a belief system. It's a yes, literally a way that you carry yourself when you walk around the house, maybe because I didn't ever see walk around the office, but you you're very like proud of look, I, I helped my clients.

They've made progress. I only needed to help them this short period of time and that's great for them.

Nancy: Yeah. Cause I feel like I was in this year, this past year, I've really tried to change my focus from what the marketing experts told me I should do. And to more following my own experience and knowing what works.

Doug Harris: For you, the, the high functioning. I mean, if there's the poster child, sweetheart, you are. it So, you know, pretty well, what's going to work and to set aside one hour, every so often to hopefully meet all your problems, doesn't work as well as the way that you do it. And you know that and you care.

Nancy: So one thing I felt with my high-functioning anxiety was like, I was the only freak in the world that had this.

And so being able to share my story helps people feel less lonely. And you, we were talking last night about authenticity and how that, I think I've discovered that as kind of a superpower of mine.

Doug Harris: I mean, I don't know that you could be non authentic anymore. You're kind of like here I am. And here's what I think and love you.

Nancy: Adding this vulnerability to my business life. It has been a hard change. One that I work at every single day, but it's taught me that change is slow and deliberate. Change is hard and it's worth it when it's grounded in a powerful why. This past year of change has been scary, raw and vulnerable and gratifying.

Gone is the boredom and the going through the motions. But this is also not a story of redemption. The big change I made was not a story of me fixing myself. This was me approaching change, not from a place of needing to be fixed, but a place of seeing what's possible when I lean into self loyalty.

Nancy: That's it for this week. In our next episode, we're going to look at change in the brain. I’ll speak to a professor of psychology, who actually studies how our brain forms habits and the brain science behind reaching our goals. That's next time on the happier approach. The happier approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me Nancy Jane Smith.

Music provided by pod five and epidemic sound. For more episodes, to get in touch or to learn more about self loyalty school, you can visit nancyjanesmith.com. And if you like the show, leave us a review. It actually helps us out a lot.

Special. Thanks to Hillary Rea and Doug Harris for speaking with us today. As you heard firsthand, Hillary is an amazing storyteller and communicator. If you'd like to work with her, you can get in touch at tellmeastory.info.

The happier approach will be back with another episode in two weeks. Take care until then.

Bonus Episode: The Time I Hired a Matchmaker

In this extra-special bonus episode, Nancy tells a super personal story of self-loyalty with appearances from the Monger, the BFF, and finally, the Biggest Fan.

She describes how she created her new course: Self Loyalty School. She tells us how you can start looking to the inside rather than to what other people think is right, to cultivate self-loyalty and quiet your anxiety.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

- Nancy's super personal story of self-loyalty.

- Tips for quieting your anxiety through self-loyalty.

- How to sign up for Self Loyalty School.

Resources:

Learn more about Self Loyalty School:

- Go to https://selfloyaltyschool.com

+ Read the Transcript

Nancy: Hey guys, it’s me! Nancy Jane Smith. Before we kick off a brand new season of the Happier Approach– episode 1 will be dropping into your feed on March 4– I wanted to give you guys a little something extra special. Call it a belated Valentine’s Day card from me to you. What follows in this bonus episode is a super-personal story of self-loyalty. Hope you enjoy.

"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."
-Dr. Suess

"You will NEVER find someone you are too awkward, too much of a loner. You are just too neurotic to find a partner.."

This was my Monger's constant commentary as I entered my 30s. (My Monger is my name for that mean inner critic voice). I was single as I had been for much

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of my life, and I wanted to find someone to share my life with.

After trying Match, Eharmony, and countless blind dates from friends, I decided to hire a Matchmaker. My High Functioning Anxiety told me that I could overcome my lack of dateablity IF I found the right hack. I needed to find someone to tell me what I was doing wrong, tell me what I needed to change, and help me make the changes, so I could find a partner before I turned 35.

As I drove to my introductory meeting with the matchmaker, I was nervous and excited. This is it, I told myself she is going to fix me, make me dateable, and I will find someone to share my life with. Elizabeth, the matchmaker and dating coach, greeted me in the reception area, and we made our way through a maze of hallways to a small cramped office. She described her services, a dating makeover,

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coaching sessions, exact matches,and mix and mingle events. As I wrote a check for WAY too much money, I thought, this is it! This WILL work.

At the first session with Elizabeth we went through her suggestions. First up, I needed to read The book The Rules—a book written in the 90s giving women 35 rules to follow to 'land a man.' The rules included, Let him lead (not my strength because I love to be in charge), Be Mysterious (another ding I pride myself on being straightforward and transparent.) It even had advice on appearance: "Men like women who are neat and clean." It advised, "If you have a bad nose, get a nose job; color your gray; grow your hair long." Yep, what should have been a major red flag to my independent, no-rules-playing self was just one

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more thing I needed to change. I mean, clearly, I was doing it wrong, so the key must be–being less me.

At the time, I had short blond hair and was a few pounds overweight. So my dating coach advised me to lose some weight and grow my hair. She also told me to stop wearing a ring with a diamond in it my Dad had given me (one of my most treasured possessions) and wax my face, ok, just my upper lip. I headed to the salon to get the blond hair that no one had ever noticed removed from my upper lip. Not only was it excruciatingly painful, within a few hours, red puss filled bumps popped all over my sensitive skin. Yep, I was definitely going to attract a guy looking like this!

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Eventually, it was time for my photoshoot, and my standard sky blue crew neck cardigan sweater, which I felt brought out my blue eyes was NOT ok. Of course, I had to have something tight and low cut which I didn’t own, so off to the mall I went to find something Rules appropriate. The photos were cringe-worthy unnatural. I didn't even recognize myself in them. And of course, my Monger had a lot to say "OH MY GOD–you look ridiculous, you can't even look sexy when people are helping you! You are doomed!"

Even though none of this felt like me, I jumped through every hoop my matchmaker laid out because she fed into my belief that I was broken and flawed and needed SOMEONE to save me. To tell me HOW to be dateable. And my matchmaker was happy to take my money and my time.

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Finally, it was time for my dates, my upper lip was just recovering from the waxing debacle, and I was ready for my first date. The day of my first date, I put on my new tight, low-cut outfit, a far cry from the standard turtle neck, wool sweater, and jeans I usually wore.. As I was driving to the coffee shop, my anxiety was high, and my Monger and BFF were going at it. Monger: You are so awkward–I mean, you can put the sexy outfit on the girl, but that doesn't mean she looks sexy.

Followed by my BFF (the voice of self-indulgence and false self-compassion) Let's blow this off. Who cares what this guy thinks of you!? There is wine and chocolate at home, and you can put on your turtle neck and curl up with your favorite being, Pooh, my cat.

Not surprisingly, the Biggest Fan, the voice of Self Loyalty, was silent.

My date, Matt, greeted me, and he was cute! Score one for Elizabeth the matchmaker. But that was it. The rest of the date was

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him looking disinterested and me getting hammered by my Monger for not being entertaining enough.

Later, when I chatted with Elizabeth, she told me that he just wasn't interested. She then asked, "Have you read The Rules? Because if you had, then that date might have gone better." More fodder for my Monger.

When Date #2 came around, I told myself that I would follow The Rules and let him plan everything. But this guy, Brad, obviously didn't read The Rules because he was so passive he couldn't plan anything! After a couple of unsatisfying conversations, I broke The Rules and suggested we go to a bar and watch the NCAA Basketball tournament–it was March, and I love March Madness. But Brad didn't like bars or basketball–2 dings for Brad.

When I gave the feedback to my matchmaker about Brad not wanting to plan and me not being interested in him, Elizabeth gave me a lecture about being

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too picky and not giving him a chance. I wondered if she gave that SAME feedback to Matt, the first guy whose feedback was simply that he wasn't interested in me.

I was beginning to doubt the Matchmaker–but my Monger was strong. "This woman knows better than you. I mean, you have been so unsuccessful in meeting someone. Do you think you can do any better?!?! Obviously, you are too frumpy, unsexy and now, after reading The Rules, it is clear you are too bossy and too controlling. You will NEVER find anyone."

My friend, Doug, was one of my closest friends, a member of my inner circle. He and I had tried dating years ago but had decided we were better as friends. Doug had just moved back home after four years in Florida, and we were catching up on the news. I shared with him all the things my Matchmaker told me I needed to change about myself in order to find a man. As he listened

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to me talk about growing out my hair, removing the ring from my Dad, and getting my face waxed, he suddenly jumped up on the couch and stretched his arms out wide–THIS IS YOU, he said, energetic, dynamic, independent, and full of life. And then he scrunched back down on the couch and said, this is what she is trying to turn you into… don't let her…

I looked at him, stunned. He was the first person who didn't tell me I had to change to meet someone. The message was confusing, wait a minute, I don't need to change?!? The message that I was broken and undateable had been playing in my head for so long I couldn't understand what he was saying. Everyone else, including my Monger,

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was telling me I needed to change. I needed to be different. There was something broken in me, and I needed to fix it.

But at that moment, hanging out on the couch, Doug reminded me I was enough just as I am, and I was wasting time looking outside of myself. Once he pointed me in that direction, things took a different turn…

Shortly after that conversation on the couch with Doug, I fired the matchmaking service. AND I found someone I liked, fell in love, and got married.

And on our wedding day, when it was time to read my vows, this is what I said, You have given me the greatest gift possible. You let me be me. You let me be my anxious, intense, neurotic, controlling, stubborn, in charge, independent self. All while knowing and nurturing my emotional, laughter-loving, vulnerable, self too. You

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stretch me to become a better person, all while being my biggest fan and my greatest support.

That person was Doug–yep, the same guy on the couch.

We married a few years after this conversation. But that conversation was when I knew he was more than just my friend. The story of him on the couch also made it into my wedding vows because it was so impactful.

I am not sharing this to share how amazing my husband is (even though I think he is!) I am sharing this story because I spent much of my life looking outside of myself for the answer–when I get married, when I get my dream job, when I have a house, the list goes on and on. And once I have all of those things when that magical when appears THEN, my Monger will be quiet, and my anxiety will be less. But what Doug has

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taught me–and for sure it is the greatest lesson–it isn't about looking outside of yourself for the answer–it is about looking INSIDE—and being loyal to what is there.

We have been married for over ten years. The beauty is I found someone who appreciates and is willing to deal with my anxious, neurotic, overly controlling traits. Even marrying someone who accepted me 100 percent for who I am didn't fix me.

I spent most of my early adult years trying to fix myself to be more acceptable, acceptable in dating, acceptable in my work, acceptable in my friendships. I had no idea that it wasn’t about fixing it was about accepting. Accept myself as I was, imperfectly awkward. THIS is self-loyalty.

It isn't about hacking ourselves or fixing ourselves; it is about being loyal to ourselves and having our own back. When we are as loyal to ourselves as we

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are to others, we can stop pushing and start engaging in the activities that ease our anxiety.

There are so many self-help courses out there teaching you– just like the matchmaker said to me– that THEY can fix you. The answer isn’t someone else’s hack or someone else’s way. And it certainly isn’t about following the rules. The answer is to have your own back and be loyal to yourself even when it feels impossible. The answer isn’t out there– it is in you.

That is why create Self Loyalty School: to shine a light on that fact and make it approachable for everyone.

In Self-Loyalty School, I will be your Doug.

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Okay, so I won't jump up on your couch to show you who you are. And we're not going to get married. But I am here to guide you in building self loyalty so that you can quiet your High Functioning Anxiety and live with more ease and peace.

Nancy: Thanks for listening to this very special episode of the Happier Approach. To find out more about Self Loyalty School you can visit self loyalty

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school dot com. And for more stories of self-loyalty, stay tuned for our new season! We’ll be back with our first full episode in two weeks.

Nancy: The Happier Approach is produced by Nicki Stein and me, Nancy Jane Smith. Music provided by Pod5 and Epidemic Sound. If you like the show, leave us a review! It actually helps us out a lot.

Take care, until next time.