Kate's Nuggets: Recent Episodes
Kate Arms
50% of Americans don’t take the vacation days they earn. 31 million earned vacation days are left unused by Canadians every year. What do we have against rest?
Rest is crucial for regulating our nervous systems for optimism and joy, for memory formation, and for physical health.
This episode is a call to nap, dawdle, vacate, and play for your health and happiness.
We all have subpersonalities, parts of our personality that function independently. If you have ever had the experience where you felt like one part of you wanted to do something and another part of you wanted to do something entirely different, you have experienced these subpersonalities.
Each subpersonality is created by a pattern of neurons that fire together. When one pathway is activated, you experience one set of thoughts and behaviours. And when another pathway is activated, you experience things differently. Developing a mature personality is the process of integrating these subpersonalities so they are working together.
Your Inner Sage is the part of you that can see all of the subpersonalities with calm, clear wisdom and choose how to integrate them in service of what matters most to you.
When our threat response system is engaged, we can’t think straight. We act reactively and without thought. If our threat response system is badly calibrated, we behave badly. Many of our reactive behaviors have negative unintended consequences.
In order to have more control over the impact we have in the world, we need to learn how to respond more skillfully in situations that scare us.
In this episode, Kate discusses the connections between fear, strong, emotions, learning and memory. She talks about how to use what we know about the anatomy of threat responses to help us have more control over how we react to the things that happen to us.
If we don’t feel like we belong, we struggle.
It doesn’t matter whether we cognitively understand that we are a necessary part of all that is or how we fit in the systems that rely on us. If we don’t feel it, it isn’t real to us in a crucial way.
This is even more true for those of us who are isolated from others for some reason. In this episode, Kate focuses on the sense of belonging to the Largest Possible Community. This sense is what gives us a sense of belonging when we don’t feel like we belong with the people close to us.
Have you ever been so committed to something that no set-back was enough to stop you from trying? Heard stories of heroic rescues of children by their parents in the face of enormous dangers?
Commitment is a powerful motivator.
A strong enough commitment to something becomes the source of our boundaries, motivation, and creative problem solving.
How should we choose what to commit to?
How can we increase our sense of commitment when our motivation is flagging?
And when should we choose to quit?
When we are infants, our behaviours are instinctive reactions to emotions. We do not have any information about how the world works so there is no point in slowing down to think about what is going on.
As we mature, we learn how to relate to our emotions in a more conscious and self-directed way.
In this episode, Kate discusses how to become self-directed in our emotional intelligence learning and why we should.
In every moment, there are good and bad things happening in the world.
People naturally notice bad things more than good things. This can easily lead to a pessimistic outlook. Actively paying attention to the good things acts as a counterbalance.
In this episode, Kate looks at why it is important to practice noticing the good stuff and offers some tools for finding optimism without denying tough realities.
Different neurotransmitters mediate different emotional and behavioral subsystems. And different interventions affect different neurotransmitters. So when you are planning an intervention or a habit change, knowing which system is involved can help you decide what will have the greatest positive impact in your life.
In this episode, Kate shares some information about which tools affect which systems.
Most of us have heard by now that mindfulness creates calm and allows us to stay non-reactive, but few of us have time to sit and meditate. In fact, the people who benefit from mindfulness the most typically have the hardest time sitting still.
Kate’s personal experience with 30 years of mindfulness in action practice helped her manage attention and focus issues that would probably get her an ADHD diagnosis if she were a kid now. Out of necessity, she discovered tools and techniques increasing mindfulness without adding anything more to your to do list, no matter how scattered your attention is.
In this episode, Kate shares some tools for increasing our capacity to stay awake, aware, present, and non-reactive during the ups and downs of daily life.
Resources mentioned in the episode:
The Zen Path Through Depression by Philip Martin
Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine
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Sympathetic joy is the joy we feel when other’s experience joy. We delight that they are delighted. We celebrate on their behalf.
When we are in the habit of celebrating other people’s successes and good fortune on their behalf, we increase our own experience of joy and reduce jealousy.
But more than that, celebrating another’s joy when you don’t understand it is a wonderful way of letting them see how much you care about them.
In this episode, Kate shares some tools for developing the habits of sympathetic joy and reducing jealousy.
Compassion for self and others is a key component of relationships that last.
Although it is often said that one cannot love another without first loving oneself, it is often through loving another that one learns how to love at all.
In this episode, Kate shares some tools for increasing compassion within yourself and other tools for increasing compassion for others.
Book mentioned in this episode:
Say What You Mean by Oren Jay Sofer
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Grace looks effortless. How can we maximize our sense of our own lives as elegant, generous, calm, and dignified?
In this episode, Kate introduces the concept of the Physicality of Grace, one of the major principles of InterPlay, a fun and playful way of accessing the wisdom of the body. She then offers a way of creating more grace in your life and invites you to become a Grace Operative for yourself and others.
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When people aren’t meeting their goals because they are getting in their own way, there are several places they can get stuck. They may not know what to do differently. They may not be able to find the motivation to get started. They may need to develop some new or better skills. They may have trouble sticking with the process.
Many people come to coaching thinking they need help figuring out what to do differently. Many more know what needs to be done and want accountability doing it. Few think motivation is their sticking point.
They know they want things to be different. They are genuinely baffled about why they aren’t doing what it takes to make things different. They think there is something wrong with their ability to follow-through or their self-discipline. But, for many people the biggest hinderance to sticking with a plan is a competition between conflicting desires and motivations.
Luckily, motivation and willingness to get into action are surprisingly malleable. In this episode, Kate offers a few suggestions.
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When we help others, we often inadvertently create drama. Sometimes merely offering help creates drama. And this despite the fact that we often have excellent intentions.
When we offer to help someone, we are implying that we are superior to them in some way. We would not think we would be able to help them if we did not see ourselves as better resourced or more skilled.
When someone is suffering, they already feel vulnerable. A superiority claim from someone else, however well intentioned, usually triggers a sense of threat to their status.
In addition, when we help without asking if our help is wanted, we are also claiming that we know what they need and we are frequently wrong.
The alternative is to put ourselves at their disposal and offer to be of service.
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When a sudden challenge arrives in our lives, most of us compartmentalize our emotions, act out, or freeze.
If we compartmentalize our feelings and deal with the crisis without feeling them, we can maintain a level of control that allows us to handle the crisis. We will need to release the emotions provoked by the situation at a later date or they will become frozen in our bodies and have a negative impact on our future flexibility and adaptability, but we will at least get through the present moment.
If we act out or freeze, however, we may not even be able to successfully navigate the current situation without making things worse.
The tools Kate offers in this episode are especially helpful in calming the emotional storm for people who tend to act out or freeze. If you tend to compartmentalize, you may not feel like you need these tools, but you might find that some of them help you save post-event processing time.
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If we are not in the habit of feeling our feelings all the way to completion and letting them pass through us, they get stuck in our bodies.
Unreleased feelings create a sense of pressure within us. When we start to feel some of our feelings, that pressure can push feelings from our past out in great waves of emotion.
If we are afraid of not being able to contain our expressions of our emotions, we resist feeling them at all.
When we lose touch with the waves of ordinary emotions, we feel alive only when extreme pain or extreme pleasure overrides our self-numbing.
In this episode, Kate shares tools for feeling our feelings in manageable quantities so we can let them pass through us.
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Without the ability to observe ourselves clearly, we cannot gain enough perspective to determine whether we have the skills we need to accomplish our goals or whether we are being the person we want to be. Developing our internal self-observer is a crucial stage in personal development.
Most of us first develop the ability to observe ourselves as a response to criticism and feedback about our mistakes and tend to develop a strong inner critic before we develop our inner witness. The inner witness serves a more neutral function, seeing us simply as we are without emotional content. The inner witness is pure acceptance of what is at this moment.
Unlike our inner critic, our inner witness never judges us as less worthy of love for our faults or because of our mistakes. Our inner witness accepts us unconditionally.
And, because the inner witness does not see us without emotional content, it can neutrally assess when we fall short of our aspirations and be with us as we work to learn from our mistakes.
Cultivating our inner witness enables us to hold compassionate, non-judgmental space for ourselves. The inner witness allows us to nurture ourselves and coach ourselves to be better.
In this episode, Kate discusses why the inner witness is crucial for healthy relationships at home and at work and teaches some tools for developing this part of yourself.
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In this episode, Kate discusses the differences between stress, strain, and trauma. When you understand the difference between them, you can quickly assess what techniques to use to handle various challenging situations.
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In times of stress, it is common to have lots of focused momentum, to feel overwhelmed and unmotivated, or to swing between both.
There are two primary brain circuits that are responsible for those cycles. In thie episode, Kate discusses the difference between an adrenaline crash and the desire to quit that comes from the neuragenic system. She offers tools for working with both systems.
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How can you find fun without ignoring the real challenges in this time? Many of the easy ways people have fun when they are stressed bring short-term relief and have negative long-term consequences. How can we play and have fun in ways that minimize unintended negative consequences? How can we balance our needs for safety and control as we look for ways to feel alive and happy?
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Resilience is the art of bouncing back from stress. Extreme resilience is the art of groing stronger as a result of stress. How can we become stronger through our encounters with adversity. How can the challenges of living through a pandemic be used as a springboard for becoming a better version of yourself.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Extreme Resilience Toolkit
Emergency Stress Relief Process
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Fear brings out our self-protective behaviours, for good and bad. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens all of us. We are all afraid and functioning with less information than we want. We must rely on experts or make decisions that we feel unqualified to make.
When others make different choices for themselves that we are making, it tempts us to question our assessments and their trustworthiness.
How can we cultivate compassion in these times?
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Are you feeling slightly guilty because the challenges of living with a pandemic are pulling out the best of you? Are you disappointed because you are finding it hard to see the positive? Are you irritable and cranky and sick of your grumbling? Whatever you are feeling is okay. There is no way you SHOULD be feeling. You feel how you feel and there is wisdom and value in whatever you feel. Our feelings are our companions through life, navigating us through choppy waters and calm. In this time of choppy waters, we can expect the ride to be sometimes rough, sometimes dull, and sometimes exhilarating and there is nothing wrong with any of that.
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Irritability can create more stress in a relationship if it isn't managed well. When people are irritable, they respond less well to everything. Irritability is a sign of stress and anxiety. A generous response to irritability creates compassion and deepens intimacy. You probably can't make them less irritable, at least not immediately, but you can help things go as smoothly as possible. This one trick will help you keep things as positive as possible when people are irritable. This trick works even when you are the irritable person.
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Kate presents an approach to planning that minimizes exposure to risk and maximizes ability to take advantage of unexpected opportunities.
Mentioned in this episode:
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nicholas Nassim Taleb
The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman & Kaley Klemp
Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead by Karen Kimsey-House & Henry Kimsey-House
Learn More About Agile on Wikipedia
Resources for Developing Your Resilience and Self-Leadership:Extreme Resilience Toolkit: An email course with 40 tools to develop Extreme Resilience or AntifragilityEnhance Your Natural Leadership: An online, interactive, 90-minute course that walks you through a process of clarifying your values, strengths, and purpose - a Leading From the Middle course
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Many stress management techniques assume you have at least 15 minutes to spare. But what if you have only got a minute or two? What can you do to reduce stress rapidly? In this episode, Kate teaches the four elements of a whole person approach to stress management and how to scale it for use whether you have 40 seconds or 40 minutes.
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You are a human being. This means that you are naturally wired to learn from circumstances and adapt to any environment. This is a capability that exists throughout our lifetimes. We can learn tools to enhance our natural adaptability or we can trust our innate traits. Either way, we will adapt to everything the world throws at us.
Adapting is what made the human species successful. It is our birthright.
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When we can't predict the future, we can't predict how our decisions will turn out, but we still need to make decisions. In this episode, Kate talks about how to make skillful decisions under these circumstances. Using this process keeps us acting in alignment with our values and purpose despite the uncertainty.
The process includes a combination of action steps and mindset shifts.
As mentioned in the episode, Kate is offering free coaching sessions for people who need help adapting to the changes associated with COVID-19. Click this link to book time in her calendar. https://katearms.as.me/AdjustingToLifeWithAPandemic
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For people who are used to being able to influence the people and systems around them, learning how to feel secure and competent when their lives get disrupted is particularly challenging. Similarly, people who feel like they are just barely holding things together can be overwhelmed when things change faster than expected.
Learning to ride the waves of change with competence is required for staying mentally healthy when circumstances are volatile.
In this episode, Kate shares how to gain a sense of control.
More tools for dealing with unpredictable change: The Extreme Resilience Toolkit
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Combining the five elements of thriving, the theory of posttraumatic growth, and an understanding of the relationship between aliveness, anxiety, and depression articulated by Steve Bearman, PhD in his article Depression, Anxiety, and the Mismanagement of Aliveness, Kate presents a way of thinking about anxiousness and numbness that offer hope.
She articulates the skills that need to be developed to maximize the growth opportunity and limit the risks associated with intensely stressful experiences.
Whether the intensity is driven by internal or external stimuli, these tools use subjective experience to create a more stable and productive emotional balance.
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There are many ways of feeling special that make it hard for us to have deep relationships with people. In this episode, Kate introduces a model of bad behaviours that we can use to see where we are going wrong. And she teaches the one thing you need to do to feel special without being a jerk.
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Most people spend a lot of time thinking about how to be influential. And we know part of that is charisma. But we may not know how to create our own charisma. In this episode, Kate talks about what lies at the heart of charisma and leadership presence.
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Carl Rogers and Alfred Adler, two giants in the field of modern psychotherapy offer two different tools that when combined create a powerful recipe for healthy and loving relationships: unconditional positive regard and allocation of tasks.
In this episode, Kate discusses what each of these tool are and how to practice them.
She offers, in addition, the concept of unconditional compassionate disregard, which acts as an antidote to the modern, co-dependent notion of romantic and family love.
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What do you think of when you think of self-care?
In this episode, Kate presents an approach to self-care that takes will help you take care of yourself in this moment in ways that nurture and support your future.
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What is mindfulness and why do so many people talk about mindfulness for leaders? What is the difference between mindfulness and meditation? Why might someone want to become more mindful? In this episode, Kate discusses the practice and theory of mindfulness and talks about what becomes possible once you have started practicing.
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We all have thoughts, habits, and fears that hold us back. The ones that show up when we want to try something new often say we aren't good enough, can't handle it, will lose friends if we do, or might fail. Some of them sound so sensible and rational that it is hard to believe that they aren't telly us the truth. Others are telling us what we know are lies, but somehow they still manage to paralyze us.
Often we engage in internal struggles between parts of us that want to do something and parts of us that absolutely want not to do the same thing.
In this episode, Kate talks a little about the neurobiology of this experience and how to work with the struggle in ways that help in the current situation and increase future ease.
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In this episode, Kate discusses the 5 elements of thriving, aka GAMER. With this framework, you can examine your life and identify what it is that is missing. That knowledge will give you the power to do something about it.
As always, Kate includes some tips about practical things you can do to increase your experience of these 5 elements.
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When we have been ambitions and are frustrated by how far away they feel, well-meaning friends or counsellors may suggest that we lower our standards or set smaller goals. But that never works. Our dreams and ambitions are what keep us going. They are what get us up in the morning. We have to take them seriously and honour them if we want to feel alive.
If we are going to do that, we have to learn how to be people with big dreams that we have not yet accomplished. In this short bonus episode, Kate Arms offers some practical tips for feeling better about progress towards ambitious goals.
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It isn't always easy to be curious about ourselves. Maybe we don't want to see the places we fall short of our intentions or goals and maybe we resist claiming how we excel. In either case, learning to gently and compassionately become aware of ourselves is a journey. In this episode, Kate Arms explores how we can ease into greater self-awareness and cultivate curiosity.
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Every time we start something new, we experience fear and resistance, and sometimes we feel shame as well. Learning to handle fear, shame, and resistance is crucial for effective self-leadership. In this episode, Kate Arms discusses why fear and shame arise and offers several tools for dealing with them.
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Effective people know how to ask for help. In this episode, Kate Arms discusses why asking for help is a crucial skill, why it can be hard to master, how to do it well, and how to practice.
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Highly-sensitive people often get the message from the world that their is something wrong with them or that they are out of control. Developing self-leadership skills combats those messages and gives you the ability to use your sensitivity as a super power.
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It can be extremely frustrating to know that you aren’t happy with your life without knowing what needs to change.
Coaches often ask clients “What do you want?” or “How will you know that we’ve accomplished your goals for coaching?” This vision becomes a compass and the coaching relationship becomes a way to get from here to there across unmapped terrain.
But how do you know which way to go if you don’t know what you want? What can you do to start the process of forming a vision? Kate Arms talks about why some people have difficulty finding a vision and provides a few options for how to proceed.
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It is easier to practice self-leadership in low stakes situations than in high-stakes conversations. High-stakes conversations take more preparation and greater skill. In this episode, Kate Arms addresses how to tell the difference.
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In this episode, Kate Arms describes the mindset of conscious self-leadership, explains what happens when people develop a self-leadership mindset, discusses how to develop it, and teaches one tool you can start using immediately.
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Self-leadership is at the heart of being effective in challenging situations. Without self-control, self-command, self-awareness, and the courage to be who you are, it is difficult to achieve any of the goals that make life worthwhile.
Listen to Kate's Nuggets regularly for tips and tools and encouragement as you learn to apply the tools in your personal and professional life.
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