The Happier Approach®: Recent Episodes
Nancy Jane Smith
Ever feel like the world would fall apart around you if you took a minute to rest? That’s High Functioning Anxiety and it’s a not-so-secret secret that women like you live with every day. The Happier Approach presents an alternative to the overdoing, overthinking, and over-performing. Join Nancy Jane Smith as she shares the tools she’s created as a licensed professional counselor and coach specializing in women with High Functioning Anxiety to find a life full of the love, laughter, ease, and happiness you deserve.
We hope you enjoy this super special bonus episode, here to tide you over until our next season begins in a few months. This is my extended conversation with Katherine May, author of the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. We talk about how to get through our winters, what we love about winter, and why different people need to rest in different ways.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Nancy's extended conversation with Katherine May, author of Wintering and the forthcoming book Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, available in March 2023.
- Extra insight from Katherine May, who we interviewed for Episode 6 of this season.
- Tips for folks with HFA who want to learn to be kind to themselves as they go through the winters of their lives.
Learn more about Katherine May:
- Go to katherine-may.co.ukhttps://katherine-may.co.uk/
- Buy Katherine's book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times on her website, or 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_
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
Here it is, our final episode in our season all about rest! Remember in the first episode when Nancy talked to her friend Stephanie Pollock about the seven different types of rest? Well, for our last episode, we're coming full circle and talking to Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith-- the physician, author, and researcher, who literally came up with that concept! We'll learn all about the seven different types of rest and how we can treat ourselves kindly when we feel exhausted.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
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Nancy's personal relationship with the seven types of rest.
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Nancy's journey to accepting that rest isn't just about sleep.
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Insight and information from Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, author of the book Sacred Rest.
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Tips for folks with HFA who want to better understand their rest deficits.
Learn more about Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith:
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Go to drdaltonsmith.com to learn more about Saundra's work, how you can work with her, and buy her book.
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Take the rest quiz to find out what your personal rest deficits are at restquiz.com.
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
One thing you should know about people with High Functioning Anxiety-- we love our rules! Even when they don't help us live happy and healthy lives. In particular, I have A LOT of rules around rest. When I can rest, how I can rest, if I've earned the rest I'm taking. You get the idea. In this episode, I talk with one of my clients, Michelle, whose rules for rest are similar to my own. We talk about how we're learning to loosen up our rules, one step at a time.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
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Nancy's personal relationship with her rules for rest.
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Nancy's journey to accepting that she is worthy of rest and to loosen up her rest rules.
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Insight from one of Nancy's clients, Michelle, who is also learning to loosen up her rules around rest.
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Tips for folks with HFA who want to try to loosen up their own rest rules.
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
Hey guys!
So we're supposed to have a new episode for you today, but as it often does, life happens. And my producer Nikki, well, she's quite sick. So in the spirit of this season on rest, we are practicing what we preach and waiting until the new year to publish our last two episodes of the season.
Our next episode will be out on January 6th. Have a happy holiday, and make sure you take some time for rest. Until next time!
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's personal relationship with wintering.
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Nancy's journey to accept wintering as an important stage of life.
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Nancy's conversation with author Katherine May about the importance of rest in difficult times.
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Tips for folks with HFA who may be going through a winter themselves.
Learn more about Katherine May:
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Go to https://katherine-may.co.uk/
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Buy Katherine's book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times on her website, or pre-order her forthcoming book, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, out in March 2023.
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Listen to Katherine's podcast, The Wintering Sessions, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Follow Katherine on Twitter @_katherine_may_
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's personal relationship with napping.
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Nancy's journey to accomplish the NAPPING EXPERIMENT... DUN DUN DUN.
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Insight into why napping could work for you with sleep expert Dr. Sara Mednick.
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Tips for folks with HFA who want to try napping for themselves.
Learn more about Dr. Sara Mednick:
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Go to https://www.saramednick.com/
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Buy Sara's book Take a Nap, Change Your Life on her website, or wherever books are sold.
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Follow Sara on Twitter @Sara_Mednick
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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.
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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.
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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.
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's struggle with meditating and how the traditional rules of meditation clash with her high-functioning anxiety.
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A conversation about imagination, mindfulness, and rest with Jessica Snow.
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Tips for folks with HFA who want to harness the benefits of mindfulness.
Learn more about Jessica Snow:
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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.
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Follow Jessica on Instagram @meditation_jess
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's struggle with meditating and how the traditional rules of meditation clash with her high-functioning anxiety.
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A conversation about imagination, mindfulness, and rest with Jessica Snow.
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Tips for folks with HFA who want to harness the benefits of mindfulness.
Learn more about Jessica Snow:
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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.
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Follow Jessica on Instagram @meditation_jess
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's struggle with meditating and how the traditional rules of meditation clash with her high-functioning anxiety.
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A conversation about imagination, mindfulness, and rest with Jessica Snow.
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Tips for folks with HFA who want to harness the benefits of mindfulness.
Learn more about Jessica Snow:
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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.
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Follow Jessica on Instagram @meditation_jess
Visit: https://NancyJaneSmith.com
Learn More About Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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
Learn more about Self Loyalty School:
- https://selfloyaltyschool.com/
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 Pollock, 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:
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Nancy's personal relationship to rest, including why COVID has made resting even harder.
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A conversation about rest with Nancy's friend Stephanie Pollock.
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A sneak peek at what we'll be covering in the realm of rest this season.
Learn more about Stephanie Pollock:
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Go to https://stephaniepollock.com/
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Listen to Stephanie's podcast, "Everyday Leadership for Smart Women": https://stephaniepollock.com/podcast/
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Subscribe to her newsletter: https://newsletter.stephaniepollock.com/
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Follow Stephanie on Twitter @Steph_Pollock
Learn more about Nancy:
- https://nancyjanesmith.com
- https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's reflections on change and the importance of being self-loyal in moments of transition.
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A conversation about change between Nancy and her husband Doug.
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Resources for staying connected with Nancy and the podcast before our next season comes out.
Learn more about Self Loyalty School:
- Go to https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's personal experiences with comparison and its negative effects on creating change.
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A conversation about change and comparison with Regan Walsh.
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How to learn more about Self Loyalty School.
Learn more about Regan Walsh:
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Go to reganwalsh.com
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Learn about Renegade Global at renegade.global
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Order Regan's book "Heart Boss" at https://reganwalsh.com/heartboss/
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You can follow Regan on Twitter @reganwalsh
Learn more about Self Loyalty School:
- Go to https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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:
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Nancy's personal story about change and her BFF.
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A fun and information conversation between Nancy's BFF and her Biggest Fan.
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Learn more about Self Loyalty School: https://selfloyaltyschool.com
-Listen to Nancy's Conversation with Leann Rimes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nancy-jane-smith/id1540357529?i=1000556139496
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:
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Nancy's personal story about change and her body.
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Information and insights from Feldenkrais practitioner Elizabeth Beringer.
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How to learn more about Self Loyalty School.
Learn more about Elizabeth Beringer:
- feldenkraisresources.com
Learn more about Self Loyalty School
-SelfLoyaltySchool.com
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. 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 Learn more about Self Loyalty School
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 Learn more about Self Loyalty School: - Go to https://selfloyaltyschool.com
In honor of my new course Self Loyalty School, this season we are looking at how to make change. In this episode, Nancy learns how hard it is to form habits and goals all from a psychologist and neuroscience expert! She 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. 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 Learn more about Self Loyalty School: - Go to https://selfloyaltyschool.com
In the first episode of our new season, Nancy brings us on a personal journey of change through self-loyalty. She 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. Learn more about Hillary Rea: - 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 Learn more about Self Loyalty School: - Go to https://selfloyaltyschool.com
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. Learn more about Self Loyalty School: - Go to https://selfloyaltyschool.com
In this episode, Nancy recounts a story of a moment where she didn't feel like she fit in her surroundings at all, but was able to find a very solid moment of connection with her inner voice of self-loyalty. Nancy shares a conversation with her childhood pastor, and friend, Gary Ritts. Gary tells the story of how he switched denominations partway through his ministerial career and never looked back. Finally, we get to hear a little more about Nancy's dad Ted, and how he inspired friends like Gary by being their human personification of the Biggest Fan.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How to separate the voice of the Biggest Fan from the Monger and the BFF.
- How to accept your own square peg style.
- How to use moments of connection to tap into the voice of the Biggest Fan.
- Stories and advice from Gary Ritts.
This episode traces a familiar circle, pun intended! Nancy explores the idea of "spiraling" through a personal story about living the same lessons about anxiety over and over again. Then, she talks to movement educator and expert on the mind body connection, Jenn Pilotti, about ways to combat anxiety by using your brain to tune into bodily sensations. Jenn shares some movement exercises, tips and tricks for calming the nervous system through movement. At the end of the episode Nancy puts what she learned from Jenn to the test, by taking a walk through a labyrinth. Listen to the full episode to hear: - How to look at the so-called "anxiety spiral" in a new light. - How to use movement to calm anxiety. - Tips and tricks for tapping into the sensations of the body. - Resources and advice from Jenn Pilotti. Learn more about Jenn: - Go to jennpilotti.com Learn more about Nancy: * Coach in Your Pocket * The Happier Approach Book
In this episode, we tackle a subject that Nancy has VERY strong opinions about. Gratitude. Sometimes it seems like people use the idea of gratitude as a way to wipe away the pains and sorrows of life. But that isn't very effective and can end up making us feel worse. Nancy talks to journalist and author Rob Walker about how we can use the art of noticing the everyday as a way to tap into a deeper sense of gratitude for the world around us. Rob shares some tips, prompts, and suggestions for using simple attention as an alternative to the stale notion of gratitude. Listen to the end for some excellent dog panting sounds! Listen to the full episode to hear: - How to hold on to our power of attention in everyday life. - How to tap into and notice the world around us to create an authentic sense of gratitude. - Tips, prompts and tricks for sparking creativity through attention. - Resources and advice from Rob Walker
In this episode, we learn all about feelings. How they show up in our brains and in our bodies, and how they can affect the way we interact with the world around us. Nancy tells us about trying to conquer her Monger during a stressful time, and how feeling her emotions in her body and naming them, helped her to feel better in the moment. We also hear from science journalist and health advocate Donna Jackson Nakazawa who explains to us from a scientific perspective what a feeling actually is, and how it affects our bodies over the course of our lives. She gives us some tips for understanding our emotions and how our health can be affected by trauma. Listen to the full episode to hear: - How feelings affect our physical and mental health. - How a feeling is biologically created. - How trauma affects our emotional and physical state. - Resources and advice from Donna Jackson Nakazawa.
In this episode, we'll learn about the final character in the Happier Approach cast-- the wise, self-loyal, and sometimes elusive, Biggest Fan. The Biggest Fan always has your back, but that doesn't mean that listening to her is easy. Nancy shares her experience of learning to tap into the voice of the Biggest Fan through the encouragement of her husband Doug. Then, she speaks with actor Victor Warren, who embodies what it means to listen to that self-loyal voice in order to make your dreams come true. Finally, Nancy shares a conversation between herself and her husband Doug, where they talk about the true meaning of the Biggest Fan. Listen to the full episode to hear: - All about The Biggest Fan - Tips for tapping into the self-loyal voice of the Biggest Fan. - Insight from actor Victor Warren.
In this episode, we get close and personal with another central character in the Happier Approach: the overindulgent BFF. The BFF has good intentions-- she's often jumping in to argue with the Monger when that mean voice of self-criticism gets too loud. But the BFF can push us over the line from self-care to self-indulgence very quickly. Nancy walks us through a typical tug-of-war between her Monger and BFF, and tells us how she's able to quiet those voices.
Nancy also speaks to writer and mental health advocate Jill Stark, author of three books about mental health. Jill tells us about her experience giving up alcohol, and how practicing radical honesty around that tough decision totally kick-started her career as an author. She also shares some tips that she's picked up from her own experiences dealing with her inner critic.
Listen to the full episode to hear: * All about The BFF. * Tips for recognizing the BFF voice and distinguishing between self-care and self-indulgence. * Resources and advice from Jill Stark.
For more information about Jill and her work: * Go to https://jillstark.com.au/ * Check out Jill's Twitter account @jillastark * Follow Jill on Instagram @jillstark_ * Order Jill's books When You're Not OK, Happy Never After, and High Sobriety through her website: https://jillstark.com.au/books/
Learn more about Nancy: * Coach in Your Pocket * The Happier Approach Book * Live Happier Website
In this episode, we take a trip into Nancy's brain and learn all about her inner self-critique. The voice that tells her every day that all the things she's doing just aren't good enough. Nancy calls that voice The Monger.
The Monger is at the root of why Nancy started the Happier Approach. She realized that her Monger's voice is particularly loud. Nancy wonders: do other people, people who really seem to have it together, have loud Mongers too? To answer that question Nancy speaks with Kati Morton, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, author, and YouTube creator. Kati tells us about her own struggles with the inner critic and gives us some tips on how to quiet that screechy Monger voice.
Listen to the full episode to hear: * All about The Monger * Tips for recognizing the Monger's voice and quieting her. * Resources and advice from Kati Morton.
For more information about Kati and her work: * Go to katimorton.com. * Check out Kati's YouTube channel * Pre-order Kati's forthcoming book Traumatized out September 7, 2021: * Follow Kati on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Learn more about Nancy: * Coach in Your Pocket * The Happier Approach Book * Live Happier Website
In this episode, the first of our new season, we go back to the beginning to learn how The Happier Approach all started. This is a great episode to listen to if you're just learning about the podcast. If you're a longtime listener, you'll get the in-depth story of how Nancy started her journey toward self-loyalty, catalyzed by a public talk at a wine shop, as well as a personal tragedy. You'll hear from all the major characters in Nancy's life, her husband Doug, her best friend Mary, her mom Jane, and even her dad Ted. Each of them remembers, along with Nancy, how she came to recognize her Monger and her BFF, and rally her Biggest Fan to start her journey toward self-loyalty. Listen to the full episode to hear: * The origins of The Happier Approach. * A primer on the major characters of The Happier Approach: the Monger, the BFF, and the Biggest Fan. * The story of the beginning of Nancy's personal journey toward self-loyalty.
Learn more about Nancy: * Coach in Your Pocket * The Happier Approach Book * Live Happier Website
The beginning of any new year often hyperactivates our “Shoulds.” I should lose weight.
I should start meditating more.
I should be kinder to myself.
I should put myself out there more.
I should, I should, I should.
I am no stranger to the Shoulds that my Monger promotes every new year. Like clockwork, those shoulds and New Year, New Me attitudes drift away. My Monger always has a heyday with this—convincing me that I was failing.
But the concept of self-loyalty—the notion that true change comes only when we’re loyal to ourselves first—is what changed the game for me… for the better.
In part one of this series on self-loyalty, I talked with my friend and podcast producer, Sean McMullin. We defined self-loyalty and how to bring self-loyalty to the center of your life as you make plans for change in the new year. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, I recommend that you do before jumping into this one.
Today, I’m continuing my conversation with Sean, going deeper into change, resolutions, and plans for the new year.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How 2020 and COVID changed our approach to resolutions
- How our image of ourselves, our identities, and our stories can keep us from seeing possibilities
- Upcoming changes for the Happier Approach Podcast
Learn more about Sean McMullin:
- Yellow House Media
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Headspace Meditation App
- The Real Point of Meditating by Mike Sturm on Medium
- The Science of Mindfulness | Dr. Ron Siegel | Talks at Google
- The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker
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The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.
Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Audible, or Barnes & Noble!
And click here to learn more about how you can work with me through on-demand coaching!
For years, the month of December was my month of debauchery. My BFF (the voice of false self-compassion) ran the show. After months of being told what I “should” do by my Monger in December, I could throw all the rules out the window. December was the one month out of the year that I gave myself permission to not listen to the shaming voice of the Monger: I gave myself the free pass of December because I knew come January, my Monger would drop the hammer and criticize me into submission. I believed, on January 1st (well, 2nd really because on the 1st, I was still recovering from all the December merriment), I would magically become a new person. Someone who loved vegetables and hated sugar, desired to work out every day, easily abstained from drinking, and uber-productive.
I am sure you could guess how that went. Long story short, come mid-January, my Monger had a field day with all the ways I was failing. This all-or-nothing thinking ran my life for years---decades really.
But something changed, thanks to the practice of self-loyalty.
December isn’t a magical month of no consequences anymore. Instead, I have days where I overeat sugar and drink too much caffeine and days where I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. And my worthiness isn’t linked to any of it. Whether I eat five sugar cookies or five carrots, I am still me: broken, imperfect, smart, funny, overly-sensitive, loyal Nancy Jane Smith.
But the idea of change and resolutions still intrigues me. So on this episode, I am bringing back my podcast producer Sean McMullin. You might remember him from episode 155 and episode 161 where we discussed meditation and mindfulness.
This is part one of this conversation and I’m so excited for you to hear it. Part two will be released next week!
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- The definition of Self-Loyalty
- How self-loyalty works with the idea of change and resolutions
- Sean’s plans for the new year--combining a word of the year with quarterly themes
- How to hold your resolutions loosely AND actually make change
Learn more about Sean McMullin:
- Yellow House Media
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
The Happier Ap
Anyone with High Functioning Anxiety knows what I mean when I talk about the Swan Effect. It basically boils down to the feeling of being so on top of it and accomplishing everything we set our sights on… compared to the overwhelm and exhaustion that we feel under the surface that no one can see.
My guest on this series about the performative nature of high functioning anxiety is no stranger to the Swan Effect.
In part one of this podcast, Lou Blaser from the Second Breaks Podcast and I talked about the Swan Effect and what it feels like to be calm on top and yet paddling like mad, metaphorically, underneath. We also discussed when Lou realized she needed help and what therapy taught her about anxiety and depression.
On today’s episode, Lou and I continue the conversation around the performative nature of high functioning anxiety with Lou. For her, learning to recognize that tendency is a sign that her depression and anxiety have spiked and that she needs to step up her self-care.
If you feel like no matter how anxious you are that you need to appear on top of it, this episode is for you. And don’t miss part one, which you can listen to here.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why sharing your anxiety is so hard and finding the right pair of ears is essential
- The sneaky ways we sabotage ourselves
- Why therapy isn’t a fix-all and the disappointment in realizing Lou won’t be magically fixed
- The power of self-loyalty and changing how Lou had her own back was so important
Learn more about Lou Blaser:
- secondbreaks.com
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Coach in Your Pocket
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment–without waiting for your next appointment.
I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket is the most
Well, we made it to 2021! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. I know I’m excited to be back at the podcast after a short break. One of the most challenging aspects of High Functioning Anxiety is the Catch-22 of the positive affirmations you receive for being so on-it and accomplishing so much versus the overwhelm and exhaustion you feel under the surface.
Does this sound familiar?
This Catch-22 causes those of us with HFA to be extremely performative in how we approach our lives. The never-let-them-see-you-sweat idea permeates everything we do.
On today’s episode, I’m going to go deep into the performative nature of high functioning anxiety and talk with Lou Blaser from the Second Breaks Podcast. Lou was kind enough to agree to come on and talk about her experience with anxiety and depression.
Lou and I refer to that Catch-22 as The Swan Effect: you look beautiful and calm on the outside but underneath the surface you are paddling like crazy. I am so excited for you to hear this interview.
This is part one of this conversation with Lou. Check back next week for part two!
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- When Lou realized she needed help
- What therapy taught her about anxiety and depression
- The signs for Lou when she needs to step up her self-care practices
- How both our larger culture and the culture of the corporate world keep us stuck in performing.
Learn more about Lou Blaser:
- secondbreaks.com
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Coach in Your Pocket
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment–without waiting for your next appointment.
I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket is the most effective and most life-changing
About a month ago, I challenged myself to a month of practicing meditation. As I shared in Part One of this series, I didn’t have a consistent meditation practice prior to this experiment. In fact, I was pretty resistant to it in the first place. (Be sure to go back and listen to this episode if you haven’t yet!)
But I was inspired to give meditation another try because of all the stress and anxiety in the world right now.
As I share in the episode, I made it to 30 days of practicing meditation and mindfulness. Technically, it was two weeks of meditation and two weeks of mindfulness—and I get into why I broke it into chunks like this in the episode.
Of course, I had to invite my friend and podcast producer, Sean McMullin of Yellow House Media, back to the show to chat with me about my experience. As you heard in the first part of this series, Sean is someone who not only knows me well—but he also has a meditation practice of his own and I figured he’d be the perfect person to keep me accountable.
I learned so much from this experience and I learned even more through my conversation with Sean.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What went well and what didn’t go well in my meditation and mindfulness experiment
- The role my BFF and my Monger played in the experiment
- Sean and I discuss the role of neuro-diversity, rules, and rigidities and how something as small as closing my eyes became a HUGE stumbling block for me in my practice
- What my meditation and mindfulness plans look like moving forward
Learn more about Sean McMullin:
- Yellow House Media
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Headspace Meditation App
- The Real Point of Meditating by Mike Sturm on Medium
- The Science of Mindfulness | Dr. Ron Siegel | Talks at Google
As if navigating the holidays wasn’t already hard enough, 2020 has turned our holiday traditions on their head. In my family, we’re making some tough decisions about the holidays, and emotions are running high. We’ve already canceled our traditional Thanksgiving trip to Chicago to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousins—and it looks like we’ll need to reimagine our Christmas as well, which has been pretty much the same my whole life. Making decisions this year has been hard. I’m sure you feel it, too. Do we have a holiday celebration with family? Do we travel? Do we stay home and have a virtual get together? Do we need to change how we do things at all? It’s tough and the decision fatigue is real.
In a quest to make the holiday decision-making process as easy as possible (or at least a little bit easier), I wanted to talk with Decision Engineer and Coach, Michelle Florendo.
Michelle specializes in helping people untangle messy decisions in life and work. After studying decision engineering at Stanford University, she spent the past 15 years helping hundreds of professionals use the principles of decision engineering to make decisions with less stress and more clarity.
Listen to the full episode to hear: * How we make decisions * How decision fatigue is a thing more than ever this year and how to deal with it to make life a little easier * Tips on dealing with all the emotions that come up around COVID and the holidays * Ways to navigate the constantly changing information we’re getting around COVID * Why it’s important to honor the feelings that keep coming up and treating them as data
Learn more about Michelle Florendo * Michelleflorenda.com * Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn * Follow Michelle on Instagram
Learn more about Nancy Jane Smith:
- Live Happier Through The Holidays
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both somethi
For many of us with High Functioning Anxiety, we have a hard time noticing when we are anxious. Our anxiety is usually swimming around in our heads WELL before we consciously notice it. For me, I can say I’m fine, I’m not feeling anxious then poof—I explode at my husband for leaving something out of place and realize how high my anxiety is and I didn’t even realize it. In a similar vein, my clients tell me their HFA shows up when they can’t sleep at night because of their racing thoughts. The truth is: we all have default patterns we fall into.
Many of us have “go-to” behaviors to express our anxiety that we either inherited genetically or that we learned from a young age: behaviors we engage in and beliefs that we get stuck on. Some of these patterns might be overeating, overthinking, people-pleasing, insomnia, over-analyzing, or assuming you are wrong.
HFA is sneaky—and it shows up in the most strange and uncomfortable ways. To illustrate, I decided to record the times when my anxiety was exceptionally high this past weekend. My goal was to share what was happening—and how I felt about it—so you could get a behind the scenes look at how HFA plays out in your life and what to do about it.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- The 6 situations that triggered my high functioning anxiety and my response to them
- Healthier ways to approach your HFA—and why practicing A.S.K. to quiet your Monger is important (listen to this episode to learn all about the 3 steps of A.S.K.)
- What a wrestling match between your Monger and BFF can look like
- How many of my default patterns tie back to messages I swallowed as a kid
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
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The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monge
The self-help industry is FULL of concepts that are meant to inspire you into a better version of yourself—go big or go home, love yourself, rewrite your past—but what happens when they’re overused and lose all their meaning? How can they then motivate you to live happier and more fulfilled? And what about self-compassion?
I remember reading Tara Brach’s book, Radical Acceptance, where she tells a story about a woman’s mother who was dying. On her deathbed, the mother opened her eyes and said, “You know, all my life I thought something was wrong with me. What a waste.”
I can still remember where I was when I read that line. At that time self-compassion was NOT a part of my life. In fact, it was the exact opposite: I believed something was wrong with me and I was constantly looking for the fix. Kind of the opposite of self-love and self-compassion.
The bright side is that one line prompted my quest to figure out what self-compassion was and how it looked for me. It was a cautionary tale—and I swore I would figure out a way to be kinder to myself.
In today’s episode, I’m bringing you a conversation with my childhood minister, Gary Ritts. We started our conversation with self-compassion and went down a number of avenues beyond it into grace, empathy, Brene Brown, sympathy, loving relationships, and kindness.
This is one of my favorite episodes I have ever recorded and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How self-compassion is radical self-care and what self-compassion can look like
- Ways that self-compassion can look for different people—and how to find ways to recharge yourself so you feel more complete and fulfilled
- Why compassion and self-compassion are a choice that requires practice by learning and doing
- How grace is something that is given to us—and why we can choose to accept it, even if we don’t think we are worthy
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help boo
For those of us with high functioning anxiety, the voice of our inner Monger is loud. It’s the voice that tells us we’ll never succeed.
It’s the voice that tells us we’re an imposter and we’re mere moments away from being found out.
It’s an internal voice of belittling and nastiness. It consistently makes us feel like we aren’t enough.
For those of us with exceptionally loud Mongers, we can’t WAIT for the day that our Monger disappears. And while we’d like to silence that inner critic once and for all, what happens if you feel like you’d never get anything done without your Monger? What do you do then?
That’s exactly what my dear friend Jamie told me… and it sparked an epiphany. I needed to get to the root of why my own Monger was so belittling, shaming and mean—and why I believed that I needed that voice. In this episode, Jamie and I are chatting about her anxiety and how her Monger shows up in her life and ways your Monger might show up in your life, too.
To learn more about the Monger, listen to Episode 110: The Voices In Your Head—The Monger and click here to read more about the Monger on my website.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How Jamie brings her own sense of humor to the many rules and rigidities we have in dealing with our anxiety
- The different ways that our Monger can show up: mean and relentless or critical and pushy and ways our Monger can shame us and keep us stuck in all areas of our lives
- How Jamie realized that her Monger would never fully go away but instead she could make her part of the team
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
What is happy? This is a loaded question—but it’s something I want to explore in this episode because happiness is the #1 thing my clients say they want. But how do we get to happiness? What is the path there?
Lately, I’ve been on a quest to go deeper. To ask questions. To get clear.
In episode 153, I explored how asking and studying into a question helps you to really get to the heart of the issue.
What does happiness look like?
What does happiness feel like?
How will we know when we’ve reached happiness?
For this episode, I decided to ask some of the people in my life—my mom, my second mom, my nephews, and my friend Andrew, who is a philosophy professor at Otterbein University—what they think about happiness and you’ll hear their ideas throughout the show.
As you’re listening to this episode, I challenge you to ask yourself: what is happy for you?
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How happiness is fleeting and is a feeling we have, just like sadness and anger. It isn’t a state of constant being
- How to give ourselves grace and relieve ourselves of the pressure that we should be happy all the time—and if we aren’t happy, there must be something wrong with us
- Examples of what makes people happy from reading in peace, creating something, and spending time with family
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Coach In Your Pocket
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.
I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket is the most effective and most life-changing work I have ever done. My clients are consistently blown away by how these daily check-ins combined with the monthly face-to-face video
I don’t have a meditation practice of my own. In fact, I’m pretty resistant to it. I have a lot of rules around meditation and I’m pretty rigid in how I think about it.
But, with all the stress in the world recently and my own anxiety, I thought it might be helpful to revisit meditation.
Meditation, after all, puts our anxiety front and center. It encourages us to make space for it so that we can soften our feelings of anxiousness and stress. Maybe it could help?
That’s why I decided that doing an experiment would be a lighthearted and fun way to reintroduce meditation back into my life. Plus, it would be a space for play and exploration rather than rules.
In this episode, I sit down with my friend Sean McMullin of Yellow House Media, who is the producer of this podcast, to talk about experimenting with meditation and mindfulness.
Sean’s been practicing meditation for nine months at the time of recording and is light years ahead of me—and he also understands my blocks and resistance to meditation.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- The moment when Nancy realized that she needed to start adding meditation into her morning routine
- Sean’s experience with daily meditation plus how long his meditations were when he first started and how long they are today
- Nancy and Sean explore the reasons behind why people meditate, why they don’t, and common expectations (like meditation is going to make everything easier in life)
- How people with high functioning anxiety might struggle with establishing a daily meditation habit and what to do about it
Learn more about Sean McMullin:
- Yellow House Media
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Headspace Meditation App
- The Real Point of Meditating by Mike Sturm on Medium
- The Science of Mindfulness | Dr. Ron Siegel | Talks at Google
- The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker
How often are you apologizing, regardless if you hurt someone or if the situation truly necessitated an “I’m sorry”? People-pleasing includes a lot of apologizing, and it doesn’t always express what we really mean which, sometimes, isn’t so much I’m sorry as it is I’m so thankful.
I used to say I’m so sorry all the time. I’d apologize for everything—even when it’s not really what I meant. Here’s an example from my own life. When I published my book, The Happier Approach, some of my friends and family hosted book parties in their homes.
One of my dear friends from high school, Renee Mattson who spoke on the podcast about how to avoid passing your anxiety onto your kids (here’s part one and part two), hosted one of these events. She invited me to her house a little early so we could have lunch together.
When I arrived, Renee realized she’d forgotten to think about lunch. As she was running around the kitchen, prepping leftovers, I started to feel bad. She went into all this trouble—hosting an event for me—and now she’s serving me lunch!
My Monger was having a field day with this. As the words “I’m so sorry you had to make me lunch” came out of my mouth, I caught myself and simply said: “Thank you so much for making lunch. I know it wasn’t easy and I really appreciate it.” Renee’s face lit up and she said, “you are so welcome, I’m so glad you came early. I know it’s just leftovers but it gives us a chance to talk and catch up.”
In that moment, I realized that by saying thank you—which is what I truly meant—it allowed me to appreciate Renee, allowed her to feel appreciated, and empowered both of us. Had I apologized instead and said my 3 favorite words, “I am sorry”, then she would have apologized for throwing together leftovers and all the things that we people pleasers apologize for and we would have both left the conversation feeling disempowered.
Today on the show, my guest Amy E. Smith and I are talking about people-pleasing and how saying I’m sorry all the time is just one of the ways that people-pleasing shows up in our lives and how it disempowers us and keeps us disconnected from the people in our lives.
Amy is a certified confidence coach, masterful speaker, and personal empowerment expert. Founder of TheJoyJunkie.com, Amy uses her roles as coach, writer, podcaster, and speaker to move individuals to a place of radical personal empowerment and self-love.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What people-pleasing is and how you can be a strong, high achiever and still be a people pleaser (raising my hand her
Frequently we will ask ourselves—why am I unhappy? But the key component is the question underneath the question.
What is making you unhappy?
Or better yet, what would you know if you were happy?
A friend, former guest, and storytelling expert, Hillary Rea, shared that it might come down to asking a more beautiful question—a question that helps you get to the heart of the question to uncover the answer. Often, Hillary uses the phrase—ask a more beautiful question—to prompt her to get to the heart of an issue.
Throughout my own experiences, I’ve found that the beautiful question is usually underneath the question that’s important and so today’s episode is a study into the question underneath the question concept.
I’m talking with Kim Strobel who’s a happiness and empowerment coach and the founder of Strobel Education. As a leadership consultant and happiness coach, Kim helps businesses, organizations, and high-achievers prioritize their health and well-being so they can reach new levels in their business and their life. And as a result, businesses and organizations take massive actions and create positive change in every area.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- The conventional happiness formula and how it keeps us stuck
- Adding gratitude and affirmations into your life in a helpful way (you know I have some opinions about these 2 concepts so Kim and I break it down for you!)
- How Kim’s panic disorder affected her life, how she overcame it, and what happened when it reared its ugly head again
- How the process of learning to live with her panic disorder helped bring her happiness
Learn more about Kim:
- www.KimStrobel.com
- www.StrobelEducation.com
- The She Finds Joy Podcast
- She Finds Joy on Facebook
- Follow Kim on Instagram
- Follow Kim on Twitter
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
I didn’t always know I wanted to be a therapist. It took me a while to ADMIT it out loud that I wanted to be a therapist (I was 34 before I got my license). I honestly have a love-hate relationship with the world of therapy and psychology. It endlessly fascinates me—and yet the industry as a whole is notoriously dysfunctional and, at times, archaic. At 25, I was getting ready to start my second year of my Masters in Counseling. I had registered for classes and was less than a week from starting when out of the blue, I decided to drop out. I still remember walking from my apartment to the registrar’s office to withdraw. It was a totally irrational decision and 100% based on my gut which was SCREAMING at me to withdraw. I didn’t know why… I just knew I couldn’t go back and continue my studies.
Seven years later, 4 different jobs, and after completing a different Masters’ Degree, I decided to complete my studies and earn my Masters in Community Counseling. This was also a gut decision—and a particularly amazing one because miraculously, I re-enrolled just under the deadline where I would have had to start my studies over.
What happened in those 7 years? A lot of my own work, my own soul searching, my own therapy, and a commitment to doing it differently. Committing to doing therapy differently was how I could ultimately make the choice to continue the work and it’s why I’m here today.
It’s rare that I meet another therapist who has this same commitment which is why I was so excited to bring you my conversation with Riva Stoudt of Into the Woods Counseling.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What inspired Riva to be a therapist
- The changes we would like to see in the therapy profession
- Positivity culture and how it can keep people from healing and making progress
- Tips on finding a good therapist
Learn more about Riva:
- Into the Woods Counseling
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Coach In Your Pocket
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.
I have been
For those of us with anxiety, it’s pretty common to go into research mode and ask ourselves: why am I feeling this way? And if you already enjoy thinking, analyzing, and solving problems like me, well, then thinking and researching why you’re anxious is your go-to pattern. When I was writing my book, The Happier Approach, I learned that my default pattern—researching and asking why—didn’t actually serve me. The solution to my anxiety had nothing to do with the why.
So what’s the solution to anxiety if it isn’t figuring out the why?
Honestly, I was a little disappointed by the answer.
It’s about getting into your body.
Moving from exploring our thoughts and opening up to our bodies is very hard for many of us. We live in our heads. We forget we have bodies. But what happens when our bodies have a lot to tell us about our experiences—and we don’t listen?
In Episode 149, I talked with Nicole Lewis-Keeber about the t-word: trauma.
In this episode, I’m talking with yoga psychotherapist and founder of Whole Health Collaborative, Sarah Dionne all about getting out of our heads and into our bodies and how we store trauma in our bodies.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Sarah’s unique blend of yoga and therapy and what it means to be a yoga psychotherapist
- The false belief that stopping the thoughts will stop the experience
- How ignoring our bodies and criticizing ourselves is an act of violence against ourselves
- The importance of compassion and how it is key to everything
Learn more about Sarah Dionne:
- wholehealthcollab.com
- Connect with Sarah on Pinterest
- Follow Sarah on Instagram
- Follow Sarah on Facebook
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Coach In Your Pocket
Helping people with
Your past matters—even though the personal growth industry is obsessed with the future you at the expense of the past you. In that world, the only real change and movement in your life come from looking forward, setting goals, and just doing it as I talked about in Episode 148. But I believe that it’s OK to have a past.
It’s OK to be perfectly imperfect.
It’s OK to share stories from your past.
It’s OK to have trauma and pain in your past.
It’s OK to have a joyful past, too.
The bottom line? You cannot ignore your past.
If you do, it will creep up on you in the personification of your Monger as your parents or in the way you talk to your kids or how you interact with your spouse. Your past plays a role in your current life—period.
It’s immensely powerful to face our stories—to look them dead in the face and slowly release their power through patience and compassion for ourselves. That’s how you live happier.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- The first step in the process of not letting your past control your life
- Practical ways to move through the stories from your past that are holding you back
- Why we often tell our stories like a news bulletin—drama and all—and how we need to focus more on how something made us feel
- How you can learn from your past and make peace with it
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
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Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with you
Trauma. This word is loaded for so many of us. When we think of trauma, we think of what we call Big T Traumas: images of war, combat, natural disasters, physical or sexual abuse, terrorism, or catastrophic accidents usually come to mind. There are also Little T Traumas. These are often personally traumatic because of the timing, the place, or our emotional state: interpersonal conflict, divorce, infidelity, legal trouble, financial worries, moving, and many more.
Although something could be considered a “Little T” Trauma, that doesn’t mean it’s less traumatic or less damaging. Instead, it allows us to see the word trauma in a different way and realize that it can take on many shapes and forms.
Today on the show, I’m kicking off the month by chatting with Nicole Lewis-Keeber. Nicole is a business therapist and mindset coach who works with entrepreneurs to create and nurture healthy relationships with their businesses. She's a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Masters in Social Work and has a rich and varied experience as a therapist.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Nicole’s definition of big T trauma and little t trauma and how big T trauma explodes and little T trauma erodes
- How the personal development culture keeps us trapped by discouraging us from looking at our past
- Why the phrase “inner child” has gotten so much flack and why being willing to listen to your inner kiddo is so important
- How our inner kiddos come out in our present-day work and wreak havoc and what we can do about it
- Nicole’s tips for finding a quality coach or therapist
Learn more about Nicole Lewis-Keeber:
- nicole.lewis-keeber.com
- Follow Nicole on Facebook
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Coach In Your Pocket
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.
Go big or go home. Dream big!
Do big things.
That’s what all the self-help gurus and Pinterest tell us to do. But is it really the answer?
We can all think of a time where we thought that going big—moving somewhere new, going after that new career, or buying the awesome house or car—would be the solution to all of our problems.
Yet more often than not, we find that those big moves aren’t the answer to our inner happiness nor our problems. I’ve found in my own experience as well as working with clients that doing the inner work and facing our humanness is what we need to do first.
That’s where the true big adventure lies.
All this month, I’ve been talking about Being Human. I spoke with Tara McMullin in Episode 145 about being human in your business and with Sarah Kathleen Peck in Episode 146 about getting unstuck and out of your own way.
In today’s episode, I want to expand a bit on the unstuck theme and how our tendency as people with High Functioning Anxiety is to do two things: 1) give up on getting unstuck and keep swallowing the dream of being superhuman, and 2) continually look for that easy fix.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- My experience with chasing after a big dream to move to Portland and what I learned by facing my Monger, setting healthy boundaries, and stop turning my back on myself and building my own self-loyalty
- How facing the hard stuff in your life can be full of adventure and learning
- What to do and what it means when you want to Blow It All Up
- Why going big means fully showing up as a human being
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
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The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
Have you been feeling a bit stuck lately, wondering what comes next? Saying to yourself that there has to be more?
If so, you’re not alone.
That’s because I’ve been asking myself these questions lately, too. I’ve noticed that whenever I’m in this place for too long, it usually means I’m looking for the “right answer.” I’m trying to find the “perfect” next step.
I’m wrapped up in fear, doubt, and insecurity.
Those feelings are not uncommon when you’re stuck. But when it becomes a pattern—fear, doubt, and insecurity lead to staying stuck and staying stuck leads to those feelings—that’s when getting out of your own way gets tricky.
This month, I’m continuing this month’s theme of Being Human with Sarah Kathleen Peck. Sarah is the founder and CEO of Startup Parent and the host of The Startup Parent Podcast, where she helps working parents try to navigate everyday insanity.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- There are two types of people: those who know what they want and they’re having a hard time going after it and those who are stuck and don’t know what they want
- Why we all know the answer to what comes next—we just need to get out of our own way
- What I really want to do and how I keep getting in my own way
- How our culture has brainwashed us into pushing, pushing, pushing when sometimes the best thing to do is pull back
Learn more about Sarah:
- startuppregnant.com
- Follow Sarah and Startup Parent on Instagram
- Follow Sarah and Startup Parent on Twitter
- How To Get What You Want course (use this link half off!)
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happi
Does this sound like you? Your to-do list is a mile long—yet, logically, there’s no way you could complete it; you drive yourself so hard, pushing, hustling, head down working toward a goal—and beat yourself up when you don’t reach it.
You might even sacrifice sleep and your own well-being in pursuit of this goal.
If so, then your Monger might be running the show and holding you to an impossible superhuman standard.
Your Monger convinces you that you have to do these things. There is no choice. You push yourself day in and day out in pursuit of a goal or fantasy version of what your life is “supposed to be”—because if you don’t attain the life your Monger is pushing you towards, then you just don’t have what it takes to be happy.
If you gave yourself permission to pause and reflect on how your Monger holds you to these impossible standards, you might ask yourself: who set the goal I’m hustling so hard for? And if it is actually my goal, is that goal still serving me or even something I want to be pursuing?
When we have spent our whole lives with the belief that we can be superhuman if we only hustle harder, how do we embrace a life of imperfection and acceptance?
In this week’s episode, I’m talking about how to deal with our Monger who is constantly pushing us towards the impossible and ways to embrace our humanness.
And, if you missed last week’s episode, we kicked off this month’s conversation with Tara McMullin who shared her experiences with Being More Human in her business. Go check it out.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How our Monger and our BFF keeps us in such rigid thinking that we miss the possibilities that being human brings
- 3 ways being human is more helpful than the quest to be superhuman
- Why self-loyalty is the ultimate act of being human
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
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The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety
Being human is messy and imperfect—and, we’re bound to make mistakes. It’s part of the deal.
We’re not going to get everything right, every time.
But we learn as we go.
That’s what being human is all about.
For some, being human—the messiness of it—is totally anxiety-provoking. It makes things feel harder to do and accomplish. But what if embracing your humanness could actually result in more ease and more success… with a whole lot less anxiety to boot? Is it possible?
Not only is it possible, but it is also achievable through tiny, small changes we can make to our everyday lives. And all this month, I’m going to go deep into how to embrace our humanness and discuss what it means to be human.
Today, I’m kicking off the Being Human theme with one of my business mentors, Tara McMullin.
We talk about how for Tara bringing her humanness into her life has made some huge shifts with her business, relationships, and mental health.
Tara is a podcaster, small business community leader, and speaker. She’s been helping small business owners find what works for them for over a decade. Tara’s goal is to push past the hype so she can better facilitate candid conversations about doing business in the New Economy.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How Tara’s quest to be more human has enhanced and enriched her life
- How hearing about High Functioning Anxiety gave Tara some real ah-ha’s
- The relationship between depression and HFA
- Tara’s morning ritual that helps her with her HFA
Learn more about Tara McMullin:
- explorewhatworks.com
- The What Works Podcast
- Follow Tara on Instagram
- Follow Tara on Twitter
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been w
There is so much pressure to be the perfect parent. My clients tell me all the time that they consistently feel they have to be “perfect” and be all the things to their children. That anxiety infiltrates everything they do—and that anxiety can also impact their children.
One thing we can do to decrease not only our own anxiety but our kids’ anxiety, too, is by being honest about what we have time for, what our expectations are, and own up when we fail. It’s important not only for our children but also for ourselves.
This week, I’m continuing my interview with parenting expert and coach, Renee Mattson about anxiety in children and how as parents we can help raise our kids with more resiliency and less anxiety.
If you missed it, I highly recommend listening to part one where Renee shared helpful ways to not pass along your anxiety to your children and why clear boundaries, empathy, and compassion are so important.
Renee is the owner and founder of Child in Bloom, a coaching business for parents and teachers. She’s a mother of three, a licensed intervention specialist for children with specific learning and behavior needs, licensed educator for elementary and gifted children, parent coach, adjunct faculty member at Xavier University, and trainer and coach for educational professional development.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why it’s so important to follow your gut as a parent
- Creative ways to support our kids without accommodating them
- How to solve the ultimate problem: wanting to spend as much time with your children but not having any time
- Why putting your children ahead of your marriage can lead to increased anxiety
Learn more about Renee Mattson:
- Child In Bloom
- Child In Bloom on Facebook
Learn more about Nancy:
- What Happened to American Childhood?
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
In these unprecedented times… In these uncertain times…
Now more than ever…
UGH.
The language of 2020 is getting old.
But it’s getting old because we are running out of words to describe the anxiety, overwhelm, fear, and uncertainty that we are living through right now in July of 2020.
It’s not just anxiety-provoking for us as adults but also for the next generation. Statistics show that the strain of our world is taking a toll on our children.
A few months ago, one of my clients asked if I’d seen the Atlantic article about childhood anxiety—they were convinced that they were totally messing up their kids!
Of course, I read the article and it inspired me to reach out to parenting expert (and childhood friend of mine!) Renee Mattson. I wanted to find out her thoughts on how we’re impacting our kids and how we can better parent them through these anxious times.
Renee is the owner and founder of Child in Bloom, a coaching business for parents and teachers. She’s a mother of three, a licensed intervention specialist for children with specific learning and behavior needs, licensed educator for elementary and gifted children, parent coach, adjunct faculty member at Xavier University, and trainer and coach for educational professional development.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Helpful ways to not pass along your anxiety to your kids
- Why clear boundaries, empathy, and compassion are so important
- How a lack of time has made over accommodating an even bigger problem and how to approach it
- The idea that our children are craving an adult in the room and too often we treat them like mini-adults
Learn more about Renee Mattson:
- Child In Bloom
- Child In Bloom on Facebook
Learn more about Nancy:
- What Happened to American Childhood?
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
Helping people wi
In the self-help/personal development world, the idea of stories—and the stories we tell ourselves—is seen as a negative thing. The message is: if we were better people, then we would know all of our “stories”—and if we are honest about them, they wouldn’t get in our way and hold us back from living our full potential.
Instead, we could change our limiting beliefs by simply “changing the story.”
That phrase drives me crazy. As if it’s that easy to change your story!
And while the self-help world might portray stories as a challenge to overcome or as an opportunity to rewrite, I have always seen it differently: stories are what make us the amazing, unique humans that we are.
Today, I’m so excited to introduce Hillary Rea to you. She is a storyteller by trade and has a refreshingly different take on the stories that we tell ourselves, the stories we tell about ourselves to others, and the stories that others tell about us.
Hillary is the founder of Tell Me A Story, a full-service communication consulting business that trains entrepreneurs, leaders, and change-makers to use the art of storytelling as a powerful communication tool. She is also the producer and host of Rashomon, a narrative storytelling podcast in which one family shares every side of the same story.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How our stories play a role in our lives and how Hillary has found that telling them NOT changing them is how we find freedom
- How telling our stories helps us build self-loyalty which is key to dealing with our high functioning anxiety
- Her love of storytelling and why it is so important to her and the larger world
- What Joseph Campbell’s Hero Journey might be lacking in and what Hillary teaches about the 5 facets of storytelling
Learn more about Hillary:
- tellmeastory.info
- Join the Speak Up Newsletter
- Roshomon Podcast
- Instagram: Tell Me A Story
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Hap
There are numerous definitions of boundaries. One of them is that boundaries serve as expectation management. At its core, it’s quite simple: boundaries create an expectation for what I can expect from you and, conversely, what you can expect from me.
Healthy boundaries create healthy expectations and are truly essential for any kind of relationship—but people with high functioning anxiety really struggle with setting them for a number of reasons.
They think that people won’t like them.
There might be conflict.
It might mean they hurt someone’s feelings.
Ouch.
But when setting boundaries, any of the above can happen—but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow through. In fact, boundaries are one way we can be both clear and kind with others.
If that feels counterintuitive to you, I recommend giving this episode a listen. Today, I’m discussing the importance of boundaries with Randi Buckley.
Randi is a leadership mentor, author, and podcaster who offers a different way of thinking for something more. She is also the creator of the group- and self-led programs, Healthy Boundaries for Kind People, The Deep, and Maybe Baby. and works with wildly intelligent individuals and organizations, and is a curator of context, nuance, and discernment.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why using mind reading to keep the peace often leads to bigger blow-ups
- What it means to carry the emotional weight for other people, how we naturally do it, and, more importantly, how to stop
- How the break down of setting boundaries is more than just saying no
- The difference between people-pleasing and kindness (and why one undermines boundaries while the other does not)
Learn more about Randi:
- randibuckley.com
- Sideways Truth Podcast
- Instagram: @randi.buckley
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
Hanging with a friend in the backyard. Cooking dinner.
Relaxing with my husband.
Driving to pick up food and sitting at the traffic light.
During a conference call with a colleague.
Countless times throughout the day when I’m feeling uninspired, vigilant, or bored.
These are just a few of the times social media has infiltrated my life in the past few days.
Social media continually takes me away from the experiences and relationships I really value—over and over again.
The thing about social media is that it's supposed to make you feel more connected to people you care about... but ends up taking you away from the moments you spend with them.
That’s why I’m leaving social media.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- The thought process that went behind leaving social media for good
- 3 main reasons why I wanted to stay on social media (and what I realized)
- The 2 rules I used to be more intentional and thoughtful about my decision to leave
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
- Avoiding Through Social Media with Founder of SkillsCamp Bailey Parnell
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Working with me using my Coach in Your Pocket is perfect for those spiraling up lessons. You have done therapy, you have learned your triggers, examined your past you know you are Spiraling up but your Monger and High Functioning Anxiety are still running the show. Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
But this isn't how it is.
There is hope if you struggle with High Functioning Anxiety—it doesn't have to be this way. You can reduce your anxiety and keep your edge. You can have less self-doubt
What’s the point? Why bother?
Who cares?
It will never change…
Have you ever caught yourself uttering those words?
Perhaps you’ve said these to yourself when considering a career change or launching a creative project or even making a self-care plan. I know I have!
These questions can also be considered along the lines of what’s happening across the nation right now with social justice and equality.
Sometimes, we are so afraid of taking imperfect action and doing it wrong that we simply don’t bother at all. Instead, we stay stuck by not taking action at all and rehashing the ways we did it wrong in the past.
But we can do it differently.
We can take small, measured, imperfect action.
We can make progress toward desire.
Today’s guest, Jennifer Louden, is an expert in doing it differently. She is a personal growth pioneer and author of Why Bother?, helping readers discover the desire for what’s next in their lives. As an entrepreneur and educator, Jennifer has offered women’s retreats for over 25 years and reaches over 20,000 subscribers weekly.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why Jennifer was inspired to write the book, Why Bother?
- How she realized that “holding her mistakes close” was actually holding her back
- How our past—especially without family of origin—affects our current lives
- Why it’s important to go beyond the idea that all of our creative endeavors must be useful or practical (and how that believe holds us back from trying new things)
Learn more about Jennifer:
- JenniferLouden.com
- Jennifer’s Book, Why Bother?
- Instagram: @jenlouden
- Facebook: Jennifer Louden
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
My Monger is always in my ear, saying: You got this. And while, to some, “I got this” might sound like empowered thinking, when it’s coming from my Monger, it certainly is not.
Instead, it’s a clue that I’m on auto-pilot mode.
Here’s what I mean:
Recently, after a full day of work, I was making dinner for my husband and doing a load of laundry at the same time. Telling my husband to plate up, I rushed downstairs to “flip a load,” as I call it.
This is when my Monger started chiming in. “Hurry up!” it said. “You told your husband dinner was ready and now you’re downstairs messing with the laundry!”
And it struck me: I’d worked all day, cooked dinner, and now I was doing laundry—and my Monger was STILL going to shame me for not doing it fast enough?!
Good grief!
But stories like this are common for me. For years, I lived in that message. I call this the catch-22 of “I got this.”
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- 3 ways to avoid this endless spiral of “I got this” thinking
- Why operating on autopilot is harmful—especially with high functioning anxiety
- How our Monger distorts our perspective
- And how that can affect our relationship with ourselves and with others
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- The Happier Approach Book
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
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The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.
Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Audible
Which of these examples looks like a day of self-care for you? A hike through the woods with your nearest and dearest and a picnic lunch.
A rambunctious night of games, drinks, and pizza with friends.
Sleeping in and having coffee in bed, followed by a granola bowl on the back deck.
A chance to read your new fiction book, some yard work, and a barbeque on the grill.
Canceling plans to go canoeing because you just don’t feel good and need to rest.
Staying in bed all day, watching movies.
We have a set definition of what self-care should look like. But the reality is that any and all of the above ideas can be self-care!
For those of us with High Functioning Anxiety, we struggle with self-care. I mean, soul-nourishing, true downtime, really-giving-back-to-ourselves kind of self-care.
And yet our lack of self-care keeps us stuck in over-functioning and a lack of self-loyalty.
Sound familiar?
That’s why this month we’re talking about what keeps you stuck and how self-care (and lack thereof!) is one of those things.
My guest today is Mara Glatzel, MSW, an intuitive coach, writer, and podcast host who helps perfectionists and people pleasers reclaim their sovereignty. She’s a queer, femme wife and mother of two, recovering control freak, and a human who deeply understands the impulse to relegate her needs to the bottom of a very long to-do list in an attempt to prove her worth.
Mara also teaches everything she knows about identifying, honoring, and advocating for your needs in her 9-month online program, Tend. You can access her free training Revive: Self-Care That Works, hang with her on Instagram, or tune in to her weekly podcast, Needy.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Her tagline redefining self-care and reclaiming sovereignty and what that means to her
- How to prioritize yourself when you have overly prioritized others
- How self-accountability is an act of self-love
- Why “needs” is such a bad word in our society and how she is reclaiming needs as a good thing
Learn more about Mara:
- MaraGlatzel.com
- Revive: Self-Care That Works
- Needy Podcast
“You should be grateful,” they say. “It isn’t that bad. I’m just whining,” you tell yourself.
“I shouldn’t be so negative. I have so much to be positive about in my life.”
Man, oh, man! We really beat ourselves up for not being able to stick with positive thoughts all the time. The minute we start to feel negativity—like fear, anger, or doubt—we’re trained to step in with positivity.
Yet anger, sadness, and doubt have things to teach us. If we skip right over these “negative emotions,” we never get to experience life on a deeper level.
Today, I’m thrilled to talk with Danielle Brooker who helps busy, always-on women ditch stress and reclaim their joy. She owns The Daisy Patch, where she offers private coaching and group masterminds as well as digital courses. She also hosts the podcast, Let It Shine, and is a Forbes.com contributor.
In this episode, Danielle and I totally geek out about the differences between joy, happiness, and positive thinking. There is so much good stuff here and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What the difference is between joy and happiness
- How joy and positive thinking work together yet how they are completely different
- How you can be uncertain and feel really bad and at the same time experience joy
- Why she refers to her online home as The Daisy Patch
Learn more about Danielle:
- The Daisy Patch Website
- Instagram: thedaisypatchcoaching
- LinkedIn: Danielle Brooker
Learn more about Nancy:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
Podcast Recommendations:
- The Make Light Show
- The Opt-In
Today, we’re talking about doing things the “Right Way” and—surprise!—how there’s no such thing. Unsurprisingly, many of my clients live for “doing it right.”
For them, there is nothing more amazing as hearing: Yes, you’re doing it right. In fact, one of the most popular phrases I hear from clients is: I did okay, right? They’re always looking for affirmation that they did it right.
So why is the need to do things the “Right Way” such a common experience of people with High Functioning Anxiety?
Doing it right, following the rules, and being a good girl keeps us from criticism. And growing up—either in our family of origin or through school and church—we learned that following the rules earns us LOTS of praise.
Not only that, but it protects us from the anxiety of not knowing what to do next. It keeps us safe—at least that’s what we convince ourselves of.
What rules have you created for yourself? Let’s explore this together in this week’s episode and find out what we can do about it.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why there is no such thing as doing things the “right way”
- How the quest for doing things the “right way” leads to judging others
- What we miss out on when we constantly try to do things the “right way”
- How curiosity is key if we’re trying to understand why we’re afraid of getting things wrong
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
During the pandemic, I'll be offering a mini version of my Voxer work. Nothing too intense. Nothing too coachy. Just a chance for you to vent, talk about what's most pressing, and have a neutral third party on the phone for right now.
I'm calling it Coach In Your Pocket: Just Checking In Version.
Rather than a 3-month commitment to you completely regroup on your anxiety, Coach In Your Pocket: Just Checking In Version is a simple monthly program geared to help you stay sane during this time.
Voxer is an app you can download to your phone for free that allows you to record a message to me and then I can respond to you during my office hours.
Honestly, I have always had a mixed relationship with creativity. I have almost always loved it and thought to myself, I want to do that more! And then months, years pass before I actively pursue something creative. Why?
My Monger’s message of perfectionism and practicality always gets in the way:
“She tries but she has no talent”.
“What are you going to do with it? You are going to have all these art projects and nowhere to put them.”
“You have to drag all the art supplies out and spend MORE money on creative. Get real.”
I get in my own way.
This is why I wanted to talk to someone who deals with High Functioning Anxiety and is still able to pursue creativity for a living.
Today, I am talking with Beryl Young of Momtography. She is a mom, photographer, teacher, and creator of popular classes to support parents in capturing the life they love. A former elementary school teacher by day, she’s taken her experience in education and photography and brought a message of creativity, resilience, connection, and fulfillment for camera lovers young and old.
Beryl’s work has been featured on The Huffington Post, PicMonkey, Mpix, and Digital Photography School. She’s taught hundreds of moms around the globe how to use their camera to its fullest potential and connect in deeper ways to the people they love most in the world.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- When Beryl realized that she had High Functioning Anxiety and how it shows up in her life
- How she got around the perfectionism that can get in the way of creativity and gave herself permission to create
- How creativity helps her manage her anxiety
- What self-care looks like to her
Beryl’s Links:
- Momtogtraphy
- Free Capture What Matters Workshop
- Instagram: @momtographyceo
- Understanding Girls With AD/HD by Kathleen G. Nadeau
Nancy’s Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
During the pandemic
Devoted, constant, and committed – all my clients would list loyalty as one of their highest values. Loyalty to their mothers, fathers, spouses, kids, friends, work, and the world in general.
They are the listeners, supporters, lovers, givers, cheerleaders, and fans. They are the caregivers for their aging parents. They are the backbone of their families, relationships, and workplaces.
The dark side of this loyalty to others is the exhaustion, the never-ending to-do list, the never feeling good enough, whole enough, satisfied enough.
The anxiety.
All this month we are exploring the unique values of someone with High Functioning Anxiety and how they silently struggle with these values.
Last week we talked with Brittany Berger about anxiety and productivity. This week I am talking about how those of us with HFA value loyalty.
Here is the irony: some of the kindest, gentlest, giving people in the world never quite feel kind, gentle, or giving enough.
Want to know why?
They are so busy devoting themselves to make sure their family and friends are heard, supported, and cared for they bypass themselves.
They have been trained to care for everyone else but themselves.
This is something I have struggled with personally. I love caring for people. I pride myself on my loyalty, I love being there for those closest to me, and I know it has come at a price. A price of exhaustion and stress.
Today I want to talk about how to get off that hamster wheel of stress.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- When we don't have loyalty to ourselves we are constantly looking outside of ourselves for direction.
- How the Monger lies to us by saying “take care of everyone else and then you will have peace.”
- How we can stretch our loyalty to include ourselves and not just others.
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
During the pandemic, I'll be offering a mini version of my Voxer work. Nothing too intense. Nothing too coachy. Just a chance for you to vent, talk about what's most pressing, and have a neutral third party on the phone for right now.
I'm calling it Coach In Your Pocket: Just Checking In Version.
Rather than a 3-month commitment to you complete
Go Go Go is addicting. During this social distancing time, I keep hearing people say that we can finally stop hustling and use this time to get in touch with ourselves. The problem with that thinking is it implies that hustling is something that was forced upon us.
But in reality, hustling is something we choose to do as a coping mechanism against our uncomfortable feelings of sadness, grief, anger, doubt, and uncertainty.
For those of us with High Functioning Anxiety, these mechanisms can lead to even greater levels of anxiety. We all rail against hustle culture while at the same time actively embracing it. This coping mechanism has become a valued cultural norm to point where we even glorifying it.
So what would it be like to stop embracing the hustle culture altogether?
My guest today has raised a one-woman battle against hustle culture and her addiction to it. Brittany Berger is the founder of Work Brighter, a digital media company that helps productive unicorns go beyond working smarter to a version of productivity that makes room for “unproductive” things like rest, self-care, and fun.
She started Work Brighter after 5 years running content marketing in high-stress startups that prioritized hustle, growth, and scaling over self-care and mental health. Now that she's changed her own mindset, she spends her time helping other high achievers define balance for themselves, advocating for mental health awareness, and dancing...always dancing.
That Brittany walks her talk which is one reason this interview is so amazing. She believed the hustle culture lie with all of her being and shares not only her burnout story but what she has created and the values she lives by now.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Brittany’s transformational story of burnout with all the nitty-gritty details
- What self-care really looks like
- Why it is so hard to unhook that belief that we can rest only when we have earned it
- Practical tips for when your to-do list is 500 things long and your boss is breathing down your throat
- How to get out of the cycle of pushing during the week and collapsing on the weekend
Brittany’s Links:
- Work Brighter
- Instagram @workbrighter
- Twitter @workbrighterco
Nancy’s Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
Let me check Instagram one more time. Maybe I got an email? I haven’t checked for 10 minutes.
My glass of what is almost empty. Let me go downstairs for a refill. Stretching would be good right now, anyway.
Well, that break took a lot longer than I had planned. I got sucked into pulling some weeds while talking to my husband and then decided to make a snack.
Oh geez, I forgot to actually refill my glass.
Okay. Back at my desk. Before I start writing, let me check Instagram one more time. Anything new in my inbox?
This was me trying to write this podcast episode–avoiding and procrastinating. For me, this is all part of the process.
All this month we have been talking about avoidance and anxiety. We talked with Jaquette Timmons about avoidance and money, Erica Drewry about our relationship with food, Bailey Parnell about social media, and Andrea Owen about avoidance, anxiety, addiction.
Today I want to wrap the month up and talk about the connection between avoidance and High Functioning Anxiety and give you some insight into High Functioning Anxiety vs Low Functioning Anxiety.
Avoidance and anxiety go hand in hand but you might be surprised to learn how.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What the differences are between High Functioning Anxiety and Low Functioning Anxiety
- How there really isn’t one type of anxiety that is better than the other
- How knowing where you fall really helps with coping better
- And how to avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms that we often develop around our anxiety
Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
During the pandemic, I'll be offering a mini version of my Voxer work. Nothing too intense. Nothing too coachy. Just a chance for you to vent, talk about what's most pressing, and have a neutral third party on the phone for right now.
I'm calling it Coach In Your Pocket: Just Checking In Version.
Is it too early to pour a glass of wine? I'm just going to have one drink while I read my book outside.
Okay, well, one more while I cooked dinner.
Oh, a glass of wine would taste so good with this pasta.
I think I'm just going to do half a glass.
Well, there's just a little bit left in the bottle. I'm just going to finish that up…
And then at 3:00 AM, waking up with a headache and unable to go back to sleep, my monger starts chiming in: Why did you drink so much? What were you thinking? Why did you do that – again?
Before I took a long, hard look at my drinking, this was what I put myself through most days of the week.
Alcohol and anxiety tend to go hand in hand. We drink to decrease our anxiety and then because it feels so good, we drink too much and the result is an increase in anxiety.
Today, we're continuing our month of avoidance and anxiety by talking with Andrea Owen about the connection between avoidance and alcohol.
As a recovering alcoholic and life coach, Andrea has a unique perspective on the topic of avoidance and alcohol. She is the founder of Your Kick-Ass Life coaching and author of the books How To Stop Feeling Like Shit and 52 Ways To Live a Kick-Ass Life. I have been a huge fan of Andrea's for years, and this is the first time I've had the privilege of talking with her.
I love this interview for so many reasons, but the main point I want to leave you with is that alcohol use runs on a continuum and it is a personal decision. No one can tell you that you have a problem with alcohol except for yourself. For Andrea, her bottom was very high. For others, it takes much more drama and devastation before they notice they have a problem.
If you haven’t had the chance, go back and listen to the episodes with Jacquette Timmons, Erica Drewry, and Bailey Parnell.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- When Andrea knew she wasn’t just a social drinker
- Why it can be so hard to see that drinking is a problem
- Why alcohol gives us false hope as a treatment for our anxiety and why it can make for a dangerous combination
- What role society plays in drinking
- And what to do if
Social media is one of my personal favorite methods of avoiding and as you can imagine it has only gotten worse in recent weeks. I often find myself obsessively making the rounds on social media: Twitter to Facebook to Instagram to email and back again. Stories about being isolated at home, questioning the seriousness, tips for cooking during a crisis, hoarding TP...
UGH! This has to stop!
This is a conversation I was having with myself even before the pandemic crisis. It has only gotten worse since the shelter in place orders went down.
Social media is an amazing catch-22 – it calms your need to be vigilant while simultaneously making you more anxious.
All this month we have been exploring the ways that avoidance shows itself in relation to anxiety. So far we have talked with Jacquette Timmons about avoidance and money and Erica Drewry about avoidance and food.
Today we are talking Bailey Parnell about how we engage in avoidance through social media. I am so excited to bring you this eye-opening conversation with Bailey, founder & CEO of SkillsCamp and #safesocial. After Bailey noticed her own abuse of social media she decided to research and learn more about this issue. Her approach to reducing our social media is unique and very doable.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why the research that says our anxiety increase with social media is not accurate
- Why our tendency to demonize social media only makes it worse
- Baliey’s 5 steps to using social media safely – AKA, Safe Social
- What to do when you find yourself down the rabbit hole and mindlessly scrolling
Erica’s Links:
- Bailey Parnell Website
- SkillsCamp
-
safesocial
- Instagram: @baileyparnell
Nancy’s Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
During the pandemic, I'll be offering a mini
Chocolate, ice cream, chips, cheese balls, Ho-Hos, and Junior Mints. My list was packed with all the necessities for surviving a global pandemic–at least all the necessities for one who emotionally eats. When the governor of Ohio announced that he was closing all non-essential businesses, my first thought was: Oh no! Do we have enough food? I did a mental scan of our fridge and our pantry, wondering if we had enough to make it through a couple of weeks, if not longer, under lockdown.
I immediately opened an Instacart account and started making my list.
I was going to be ready for what was coming.
All this month I am talking with experts in a variety of areas to pull back the curtain on our avoiding ways and how we can make small manageable changes to bring intention to our lives.
Today I am talking with Erica Drewry about avoidance and how it plays out with food.
Erica is a registered dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor in Columbus, Ohio. For the past 11 years, she has been the owner of Aligned Nutrition and provides nutritional counseling in person and virtually.
This topic is very personal to me and I am so excited for you to hear our conversation! It is an open and honest (at times very vulnerable!) conversation about food, anxiety, and avoidance. You will definitely get a glimpse into my personal story of how I use food to avoid.
We recorded it just 2 weeks ago so it’s a message of eating during the stress of a worldwide pandemic that couldn’t have come at a better time.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What might be behind our tendency to eat when we are bored, and why I filled my Instacart with junk food
- How binging and restricting go hand and hand, even if you don’t think you have a problem with restricting
- What intuitive eating really means and how it gets distorted in society
- What role society plays in our relationship with food
Erica’s Links:
- Aligned Nutrition
- @alignednutrition (on FaceBook, Youtube, & Instagram)
Nancy’s Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
During the pandemic, I'll be offering a mini version of my Voxer work. Nothing too i
There is one thing almost everyone does when their anxiety gets high. They avoid.
Whether through food, alcohol, social media, or money–we avoid.
All this month I am talking with experts in these four areas of avoiding. We’re pulling back the curtains on our avoiding ways and how we can make small manageable changes to bring intention to our lives.
We're kicking this off this month talking with Jacquette Timmons about money.
Money and avoidance go hand in hand. Money is a very loaded topic for people in general, but especially those with High Functioning Anxiety. We avoid dealing with our money. We avoid talking about money. We engage in overspending or being overly controlling about money.
All of these patterns come from one place – avoiding our intentions and feelings about money.
Jacquette Timmons is a national investment expert and financial coach. She is the founder of Sterling Investment Management, a New York-based investment education and financial coaching firm. She has worked in the investment industry for 23 years and conducts numerous personal finance and stock market investing workshops.
This conversation couldn’t have come at a better time. While I think any time we can intentionally talk about money is good, right now, with the current state of the world, this conversation is even more relevant.
I learned so much from Jacquette in our conversation. We laughed and shared openly and honestly about the topic of money. She has a unique and refreshing approach to money management – one that we can all benefit from to ease our shame and anxiety around money.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why Jacquette’s approach to money management is so unique
- What you can do to ease some of your shame and anxiety around money
- Why we avoid when it comes to money and what we can do about today
- What the role our family of origin plays in our approach to money
Jacquette’s Links:
- Jacquettetimmons.com
- Twitter: @jacqmtimmons
- Instagram: @jacquettemtimmons
Nancy’s Links:
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
- Instagram: @nancyjane_livehappier
Habit is one of those words I have a negative reaction too. Like a lot of people, I have tried to create healthy habits and tried to be super militant about maintaining them, only to fail miserably.
What are we supposed to do? On one extreme we have the voice of the Monger who is constantly beating us down for this failure – not exactly motivating – and on the other, we have our BFF who encourages to rebel against anything habitual.
So, yeah, the word habit brings up all kinds of stuff for me.
This is why I wanted to talk to Sarah Von Bargen of Yes and Yes, the “lifestyle blog for smart, funny people.”
Sarah is an expert in setting and keeping habits. She writes and teaches on Yes and Yes about setting habits, money, happiness, and about recognizing self-defeating behaviors and taking action on them anyway.
One thing that struck me about this interview with Sarah was her emphasis on small manageable changes – the opposite of my old pattern around habits. Healthy habits are not about all or nothing. It’s about habits that are small and realistic and intentionally honoring yourself (all that self-loyalty I talk about). Way less dramatic than my old way of being but far more productive!
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What it looks like to give yourself permission to engage in a non-productive habit
- How to own your time when everyone else seems to come first
- How to tell the difference between caring for yourself and numbing out
- Some approached you can take to decrease your phone addiction
- Why the 21 days to set a habit is BS and how long it REALLY takes.
Links:
- Yes and Yes
- Bank Boost
- Pomodoro Technique
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next appointment.
I have been doing this work for over 20 years and Coach in Your Pocket
When my mom told me she wouldn’t be visiting for Easter this year – choosing to visit a friend instead – I experienced a flood of emotions. I immediately felt disappointed and sad.
Easter isn't a big deal in our family – we don't even go to church – but I was still looking forward to seeing her. I was bummed.
And then my Monger started sounding off: “What's the big deal? She’s allowed to go to visit her friend and it isn’t like you are a deeply religious family or anything. You are so uptight and rigid! This shouldn't make you sad.”
The rest of the day when I would feel sad or disappointed the voice of the Monger would swoop in and tell me that my feelings were irrational and I would feel terrible about myself.
But here is the thing: feelings happen. It doesn’t matter if the feelings make sense or not. You are still having them and that is more than okay, no matter what your Monger is telling you.
Today, we are continuing this month’s deep dive into the F word. In episode 119 I introduced the topic of Acknowledging your feelings as a key part of reducing anxiety, and last week, I addressed 2 of the fears we have about feelings. Today, I am going to explore what to do when your feelings just don’t seem appropriate.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What happens when we don’t give ourselves permission to feel and confuse the natural response of acknowledging our feelings with demanding a behavior change.
- How it is a myth that if we feel sad that means we have to take action on that feeling
- Why the idea of”‘changing our thoughts” or “fixing our mindsets” never works
- How when we have High Functioning Anxiety we learn to compartmentalize those feelings, putting them in a box deep inside, never seeing them again
Links:
- Episode 119: The 3 Steps Of A.S.K.: Acknowledging Your Feelings
- Episode 124: The 2 Biggest Fears About Feeling Your Feelings
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Here is a common scenario in my world: I had a lot to get done – back to back client meetings and deadlines looming. My anxiety was through the roof! I kept telling myself, “you need to acknowledge your feeling,” knowing that it helps when I am stuck in anxiety. But it wasn’t working. I kept coming up sad and overwhelmed. No matter how many times I tried I wasn’t getting any relief.
At the end of the day – meetings over, deadlines met – I was still spinning with anxiety. I realized I had gone through the whole day without really feeling anything. Every time I had gone through the motions of naming my emotions they were quickly hijacked by my Monger saying, “Feeling sad is a waste of time. You don’t have time for this nonsense. Move on and focus!”
This is a common experience for many of my clients. We shame ourselves for feeling our feelings. We tell ourselves that we don’t have enough time for them. That we won’t get anything done by feeling things. Or, worse, we fear that allowing ourselves to experience our emotions would open up a bottomless pit of despair that we would never be able to find our way out of.
In today’s episode, I want to dive a little deeper into the F word. I talk about Acknowledge your Feelings as a key part of reducing anxiety. In episode 119 I introduced the topic, but today I want to dive a little deeper and answer some of the questions that I receive from clients and listeners about feelings.
Feelings are a big part of my coping strategy around my anxiety. Allowing my feelings and facing them has been a game-changer for me. I KNOW the fear that doing this will open the flood gates, that all the feelings will come out and overwhelm. So, in this episode, I address some common fears about acknowledging your feelings.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How to allow your feeling even when you are afraid that it will lead to overwhelming despair
- How to acknowledge your feeling when it seems like that will just add to the stress you are already experiencing
- How our feeling don’t just go away if we ignore them but will show up in other places
- How acknowledging our feelings isn't something you have to DO because it is something your body naturally does – you just have to give yourself permission.
Links:
- Episode 119
- Coach in Your Pocket
- Live Happier Website
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently
We have all heard this story: A woman has hit rock bottom. She is burnt out and is experiencing her dark night of the soul. Cornered by life, she feels like she has nowhere to turn.
And then, miraculously, she has some major ah-ha moment–lightning strikes and everything is fixed. Birds sing, everyone breaks out into song, and the struggle is gone.
I used to be addicted to these transformational stories.
These stories gave me hope that permanent change was possible. That one day I would be healed. I would be perfect.
The truth is, these stories of sudden transformative change keep us trapped and miserable. They feed us the lie that if we are still it is because something is wrong with us. They tell us that we haven’t suffered enough or that we haven’t been good enough to be transformed.
My guest today, Shannon Siriano Greenwood, went through burnout–she hit her rock bottom and was able to climb back out. But her story is far from simple. It isn’t wrapped in a bow and it isn’t a song and dance number.
Shannon is the founder of Rebelle, a membership organization that brings together women of diverse backgrounds and industries, and Rebelle Con, a boutique conference about wellness, money, community, and creativity. Both of these programs grew out of what Shannon learned going through her own dark night of the soul experience.
Shannon is committed to change and to mental health as an on-going daily practice. As you will hear, some days she nails it and some days she has a lot of room for growth.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why Shannon’s friends and family did not say anything even though they thought she was pushing too hard
- What Shannon learned about support and friendships and the struggle to make friends as adults
- How to manage your energy as an introvert when you are trying to build new relationships
- How to set boundaries when you have not only a fear of missing out but a fear of hurting people
- And what Shannon tries to do on a daily basis to help her striveaholic ways
Links:
- RebelleCon
- @ssiriano
- @rebellecon
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years, and because it silently affects so many people who think this is just how it is.
Working with me this way is an incredibly efficient and effective way to deal with your anxiety in the moment--without waiting for your next ap
For many years I believed that I could fix my High Functioning Anxiety I thought that if only I could find the right way to do it, that if I just found the right hack, I could be healed.
But this isn’t how it works. The truth is that we will never be done with our High Functioning Anxiety. There isn’t a hack that can fix everything. Yes, we can loosen its grip and live a life without it controlling everything but it takes work.
High Functioning Anxiety is an on-going issue and learning to live with it is a daily process.
In December we talked about the 3 characters that play in our minds – the Monger (inner critic), the BFF (the voice of false self-compassion), and the Biggest Fan (the voice of kindness and wisdom) – and about how when we hear our Monger talking and berating us, or our BFF judging other people or sabotaging us, the goal is to bring in the voice of Biggest Fan.
All this month we have been talking about how to do that. In the past 3 episodes, I introduced A.S.K. and talked about the 3 steps: Acknowledge your feelings, Slow Down and get into your body, and Kindly pull back and see the big picture.
And as I have said before, A.S.K. is more nuanced than just doing these 3 steps.
So today I wanted to bring back Abby and hear how she implements A.S.K. around a common problem that I hear from just about everyone: what do we do about the issue of “not having enough hours in the day?”
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How to use the feelings sheet to acknowledge what you are feeling.
- How to practice staying in your body and bringing in your Biggest Fan whenever you get frustrated.
- How to enlist your Biggest Fan into seeing the big picture
- And the rewards of doing the hard work of not allowing your Monger to run the show.
Links:
- The Feelings List PDF
- Episode 119: Acknowledging your feelings
- Episode 120: Slow down and get into your body
- Episode 121: Kindly pull back and see the big picture
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I
No matter how hard we try to keep up the veneer of perfection, every now and then we make a mistake. Mistakes happen and when they do, we can be absolutely horrible to ourselves–telling ourselves things like: I'm such a failure, I deserve to be fired, I am a terrible parent.
Sometimes we can even rationalize our way back to knowing that it was a small mistake that truly doesn't matter in the long run.
But then there are the times when we really mess up. When we legitimately make a mistake in a way that really matters. We go against our values, we drop the ball, we let down our spouse.
What happens when we really mess up and can't just rationalize our way out of it? When our inner voice isn't making a mountain out of a molehill? When our inner voice is taking an actual mountain and adding a shame blizzard of epic proportions?
How do we ever get past this? What's next?
This episode is about the big mistakes. It's about the concrete steps you can take to move through those situations. Calm your anxiety and feel better.
Today, we're finishing up this three-part series on the A.S.K. method for dealing with your High Functioning Anxiety by examining the third step: kindly pull back and see the big picture. I talk about those real mess-ups, the missed deadlines, the times we scream at our kids or embarrass our husband in front of his boss. The times we really mess up.
Can kindness really pull us out of that?
Yes, it can.
If you haven’t already, take the time to go back and listen to the first two episodes in this series: Acknowledging Your Feelings and Slow Down and Get Into Your Body.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What to do when we legitimately make a mistake in a way that really matters
- How no amount of beating yourself up, shaming yourself, or telling yourself how much you suck is going to make those mistakes any better
- How kindly pulling back to see the big picture allows you to call in the voice of the Biggest Fan and hear from that kind voice of internal wisdom
- How to lean on the 3 traits of the Biggest Fan – Kindness, Forgiveness, and Curiosity
Links:
- The Feelings List PDF
- Episode 110: The Voices In Your Head – The Monger
- Episode 111: The Voices In Your Head – The BFF
- Episode 112: The voices In Your Head – The Biggest Fan
To deal with the Monger, you have to get out of your head and get into your body. Most of us live predominantly in our heads. We literally aren’t even aware that we have a body unless it starts to hurt, and then we just take a pill to make it better. Our Monger takes up a lot of space in our heads, so the more time we spend in our heads, the more we stay out of our body and the louder our Monger gets.
Last week I introduced A.S.K. and talked about the first step: Acknowledge your Feelings. If you missed it please go back and give it a listen.
This week we are talking about the second step: Slow Down and get into your body.
When we hear our Monger talking and berating us or our BFF judging other people or sabotaging us, the goal is to bring in the voice of Biggest Fan.
One key to channeling your Biggest Fan is getting into your body. When we can slow down and get into our bodies, we change our perspective. By changing our physical presence, we can see more options and the last step – Kindly pull back to see the big picture – can happen with greater ease.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How accomplishment and drive can take up the same space as slowing down and intentional living
- How to create a practical meditation practice that will actually work for you even if you’re not a “super meditator”
- What the research has to say about slowing down and the mind-body connection
- And some tips for practicing the Slow Down and getting into your body when it is the last thing you want to do
Links:
- Mind–Body Research Moves Towards the Mainstream – Vicki Brower
- The Feelings List PDF
- Episode 110: The Voices In Your Head – The Monger
- Episode 111: The Voices In Your Head – The BFF
- Episode 112: The voices In Your Head – The Biggest Fan
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely ha
Today, we are starting our month-long discussion of A.S.K. with the first step of the system: Acknowledge Your Feelings. But first, I have a confession: I dislike 3 step self-help systems.
Not because they don’t work but because they overly simplify very nuanced and individualized processes.
This can be challenging for people with High Functioning Anxiety. We love rules. We love a guide–a simple system that we can follow to the exact letter, making everything feel better.
A.S.K.–my very own 3-step system for reducing your anxiety–appears to do that. It seems to offer a simple solution to our struggles with anxiety.
But, as you will hear this month, there is complexity below the surface this seemly simple solution.
This is why I encourage you to think of the system of A.S.K. as the bare minimum–the basic foundation, from which you can jump off of to make this process your own.
After 2 years of teaching these concepts, I wanted to revisit them and expand on what I talked about previously, adding in some fresh tips. Once you have listened to this episode, you can revisit where I have talked about these 3 steps in previous episodes (episodes 72, 73 and 74),
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- A basic overview of the 3 steps of A.S.K.
- Acknowledge what you are feeling
- Slow down and get into your body
- Kindly pull back to see the big picture
- Some scenarios of the practice of acknowledging your feelings in action
- What role self-loyalty plays when acknowledging your feelings
- What it looks like when people with High Functioning Anxiety avoid feeling their feelings (are you a brooder of bottler?)
- How owning your feelings after years of avoidance and pushing them down takes time
Links:
- Emotional Agility by Dr. Susan David
- My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
- Putting Feelings Into Words
I have often fallen for the trap of thinking that a new system–a new calendar, a new journal, a new app–was all that I needed to keep me organized and bring order to the chaos. But all around me are piles of half-filled calendars, abandoned bullet journals, and long lost apps–the evidence of well-meaning systems that I started only to later abandon.
I know that it isn’t a flaw in the systems that’s the problem. It’s my own lack of commitment to these systems that is the problem. I know this truth, and yet I still struggle to live in that place. It is so much easier to just blame the freaking system.
In January we are inundated with the new year, new you message. It is a time when starting a new system for change is particularly alluring. And all this month we have been taking a different look at how change works.
We’ve covered: setting New Year’s resolutions without succumbing to the hype, working through our challenges so that we can live a life that is true to our values, what Mr. Rogers can teach us about slowing down and being present, and how the concept of Spialling Up can be applied to a life long of growth and change.
I thought it would be nice to end the month on a conversation with Tonya.
Tonya Dalton is a productivity expert, author, speaker, and founder of inkWELL Press Productivity Co, a company centered around productivity tools and training.
So, of course, when I started reading her book, The Joy of Missing Out, I was hopeful that Tonya could fix me with a shiny new system for finding joy in doing less. I soon realized that wasn't the case.
Instead, Tanya gets it. She understands the struggle. She isn’t about some “all you have to do is follow my system and you will be cured” way of thinking.
As you know, like most of my clients, my BS meter is pretty, and when I was reading Tonya’s book, it was like Tonya was reading my mind. Every objection I had, she had a way to make it approachable and doable.
Listen in to see which ones I've added to my life, and at the end of the interview, I'll share how it's still going.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- What Tonya has to say about our love with the to-do list and how to think about it differently.
- Why Tonya is so passionate about productivity.
- What she sometimes calls ‘million-dollar minutes’ and how it will help you think about your time diff
Do you ever feel like you're repeating the same lessons over and over again? Do you feel like the stuff you worked on 5, 10, or even 20 years ago has a way of coming back, even though you thought you'd found the solution?
There's a very good reason for that and, no, it’s not because you're broken.
It’s because change isn’t one and done. It’s ongoing.
It’s because of a concept that I call Spiralling Up.
It can often feel like we are relearning the same lesson over and over, but really we're experiencing a different level of that lesson–new situation, new challenges at a new level of insight.
Change is like ascending a spiral stare case that presents us with new challenges the higher we climb. It’s not that we are relearning an old lesson, it’s that through life we are being presented with a new and higher level of that lesson.
In this episode, we're going to look at how change works and specifically how the concept of Spirally Up can be applied to the life long project of growth and change. How you can step up to new challenges with a new perspective and remind yourself that you aren't failing–you're just spiraling up.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How having to re-visit life-lesson does not mean that we are broken
- How, while we do repeat lessons, we don’t unlearn all we have implemented before. We repeat the lesson one step up with a new perspective, new challenges, and new information
- What to do when we get stressed and overwhelmed and our triggers and patterns are more likely reveal themselves
- What the research shows about the change that results from our life experiences, and how that change often leans in a positive, helpful direction
- How the process of change takes an unpredictable, non-linear path
Links:
- Brent Rogers’ researcher on change
- Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s Tedx talk
Working with me using my Coach in Your Pocket is perfect for those spiraling up lessons. You have done therapy, you have learned your triggers, examined your past you know you are Spiraling up but your Monger and High Functioning Anxiety are still running the show.
Helping people with High Functioning Anxiety is a personal mission for me. I have a special place in my heart for this struggle because it’s both something I dealt with unknowingly for years,
Have you ever sat in a movie theater and been blown away by a single quote? One little line just floats into your brain and holds on for dear life?
This happened to me last Thanksgiving watching the new movie about Mr. Rogers, It’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, and I have been thinking about it ever since.
In the scene, Lloyd Vogel, a cynical journalist who has been assigned to do a profile on Mr. Rogers, is calling to set up their first meeting. He is shocked to have Fred Rogers answer the phone. Not his assistant, not his handler, Mr. Rogers himself. Lloyd, not wanting to waste the time of an important person, suggests they set another time to talk. Surely Mr. Rogers has more important things to do.
And here is what blew me away: In response to this suggestion, Mr. Rogers says, “What do you think is the most important thing in the world for me right now? To speak on the phone to Lloyd Vogel.”
When I heard this line I audibly gasped.
The quote got me thinking: How often do I miss conversations or important moments because, in my head, I am already moving on to the next thing? How often does my worrying about what comes next distract me from the important things that are happening right there in the present moment?
Almost all my clients have mentioned to me how hard the month of January can be. For a variety of reasons–the darkness, the packing up of the holidays for another year, the inundation of self-improvement New-Year-New-You messages–this time of year can be challenging.
This is why my goal this month is to give you different ways to think about this New-Year-New-You crap and reframe how you think of change and self-improvement.
Today’s episode is about slowing down and being in the present moment. One of our greatest teachers of this concept is Mr. Rogers and so I thought it would be fitting to do an episode about Mr. Rogers’s effect and some of the ways he has taught me to be present.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How to use the Most Important Thing Test as a way to check in with ourselves and practice mindfulness
- What the difference and similarities between mindfulness and meditation are
- How the test helps us be gentle and stop mentally beating ourselves up
- How to use the test to identify if something is even important
- How when we don’t acknowledge our feelings we spend all of our time trying to ignore them
- And how acknowledging our feelings is much easier than we are making it out to be
Links:
- Name Your Values Worksheet
- The Mindfulness Solution - Ronald Siegel
Today, I want to share a cautionary tale. A few days ago I said to my husband:
“Maybe we should shake things up this year. Do something crazy. Sell our house, move to Hawaii… SOMETHING BIG.”
He looked at me blankly. “What about our families?” he asked. “What about our friends? What about your business? Besides, I like it here. I like our life. We do big things in little ways all the time.”
And it hit me–I had yet again got sucked into the New Year, New You crap– “When-Then Syndrome.”
I had been reading the inspirational memes on social media–people planning on moving to exotic locations, quitting toxic jobs, losing weight, getting in shape–and my Inner Monger was getting louder and louder.
All of these promises of a new and perfect life were making me feel like I wasn’t enough–like I was missing out.
I was getting drawn into comparing myself to all the people who were making BIG change and I was twisting it into a ‘you are not good enough’ mantra.
I was stuck in a cycle of comparisonitis.
I let that realization sink in for a bit: my instinct to make a big change or do something impulsive was really just a mental reflex to our New Year, New You culture.
But when I think about what I value most in my life–empathy, relationships, laughter, integrity, compassion–I can see that the life I lead is a reflection of those values.
My nearest and dearest was right: I love our life.
Yes, I wish we had more adventures. Yes, I wish we had fewer restrictions on our time. Yes, I wish this living intentionally, having self-compassion and empathy and showing up for life was a little easier. But overall, I love the messy imperfection that is my life.
I love that I have a life based on my values, and when things get messy and confusing, I can come back to them and remind myself, yes, right now this is what I want for my life.
In today’s episode, I explore how values are the foundation of your life. How they are the guiding principles on which everything else builds. And how when we work through our anxiety to narrow our down our list of values, we can use them to find what is most important to us.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
-
How naming your values is one of the best ways to bring yourself back to what is most important
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How when you can get honest with yourself and name your values, they will become the new standards of how you live your life
- How to narrow your values down to a list of 5 values that are unique to you
- How to let go of the guilt of not sharing someone else’s values so you don’t end up feeling numb, disengaged, and uninspired by life
- What to do when your values are seemingly in conflict with one another
Eating too much sugar? No problem! In January I will cut back. Not working out? No problem! In January I will hit the gym.
Postponing our plans for change looks great under the glow of the holiday lights. But when we wake up each year on January 1st, hungover from too much celebrating, realizing with dread, that all of our plans for change in the New Year need to magically start RIGHT NOW, it is a very different story.
All of the plans that we have been putting off until the New Year are suddenly very real and very pressing. We need to get it together and act before our Monger catches on.
The deadline had arrived.
For people with High Functioning Anxiety, the days leading up to the New Year are days full of possibility. Set the resolution, do the prep work, and, poof like magic, we will be different people.
No wonder we are so depressed come the first week of January when we realize that the change we want is only going to happen with work and that the work is going to be hard.
We were so focused on how amazing it would be once the change was done that we didn’t take into account what it would actually take to stop eating sugar or to work out every morning.
We didn’t take into account the process of change.
Throughout the month of January, we will be discussing this process of change with helpful tips and strategies for making small changes in your life without all the hype.
Today we will be talking about why resolutions are so triggering and what the research shows for setting helpful resolutions.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Why New Year’s can be very anxiety-inducing for people with High Functioning Anxiety
- What the research actually shows about making resolutions for change in the New Year
- What we can do about it once we know the research and identify our own tendencies
- 5 tips for not falling prey to the romance of New Year’s eve
- How to embrace this New Year with a fresh outlook, new tools, and--yes--a happier approach.
Links:
- Research by University of Scranton Psychology Professor John C. Norcross, Ph.D
-
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2980864
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11920693
- Research by Ayelet Fishbach, University of Chicago, and Kaitlin Woolley, Cornell University
I can talk about the Voices In Your Head all day long. I work with clients every day living with High Functioning Anxiety. I live and breathe this language and these techniques.
The Monger, the BFF, Your Biggest Fan–I literally wrote the book.
But today I wanted to share the experience of living with High Functioning Anxiety from the perspective of one of my clients.
Michelle Steinhour came to me a few years ago consumed with self-doubt, insecurity and constant questioning. It was showing up in her marriage and in her work. She was looking for practical strategies that would help her feel less doubtful about herself.
I introduced her to my Coach in Your Pocket and Michelle has seen a big shift in her anxiety. But, as she reminds us in today’s episode, it’s a life-long process.
Michelle is in the trenches. She’s making the shifts and doing the work. She’s walking the path of the Happier Approach every day by listening in to the Voices In Her Head and reminding them who’s really in charge.
In today’s episode:
- How Michelle manages her BFF and Monger.
- What she has done to encourage the voice of her Biggest Fan
- Some of the biggest changes she has seen since hearing from her Biggest Fan more often
- How the support from her spouse has made a big difference
- Why planning to have kids has made her love this work even more
Links:
The Feelings List PDF
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.
Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Audible, or
There is a voice in your head. She is the voice of kindness, generosity, and wisdom and I call her the Biggest Fan.
Of the 3 characters that are at the core of the Happier Approach, she is the best of all worlds.
She holds the goals of your Monger (to be safe and secure) without shaming and belittling you. She provides the support and encouragement of your BFF (“you are awesome”) without giving you a free pass to do whatever you want.
Your Biggest Fan always has your back, acknowledges your feelings, can see options, is wise about the struggle, and uses your values as guiding principles.
Your Biggest Fan is the how.
She is the one who will help you achieve your goals and be happier.
All this month we have been talking about the voices that carry on in your head. If you haven’t already, go back and take a listen:
- In Episode 110 we talked about how the Monger, that mean voice that shames and belittles you, telling you that you’re not good enough.
- In Episode 111 we talked about how the BFF has an amazing talent of always being able to justify any behavior and how she shames and belittles other people in your defense.
In today’s episode:
- How to identify the kind voice of the Biggest Fan even when you don't think you have one inside you
- What steps you can take to access the voice of your Biggest Fan
- Acknowledge what you are feeling
- Slow down and get into your body
- Kindly pull back to see the bigger picture
- What some of the challenges of accessing our Biggest Fan can be
- How the voice of your Biggest Fan has been silenced for a long time and how she will become louder as you listen to her more and more
- How to be gentle with yourself and identify that the success you want is a learning process
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone
This Month we are talking about the 3 characters that chat at us throughout the day and are at the core of The Happier Approach. Last week we talked about the Monger–the mean voice tells us we’re not good enough. Today, we are going to talk about the voice we most often use to counter our Monger: the BFF
Our BFF enables us to rebel against the voice of our Monger. When we get tired of our Monger criticizing us, we bring in our BFF for a little self-compassion.
Our BFF is the one who always has our back. She is the type of BFF who is always willing to risk getting into trouble and is always there to defend us.
But she is not about holding our feet to the fire or keeping us accountable.
She is very good at finding us justification and someone else to blame. She is all about helping us feel special. She is kind and wants us to feel good about ourselves. In her mind, responsibility, accountability, and restraint do not apply.
Listening to our BFF can be risky. Our BFF loves false self-compassion and uses it as a way to give us an excuse to just do whatever we want.
Our BFF can make us feel awesome, but she can lead to trouble.
In today’s episode:
- Where our BFF shows up in our lives
- What Self-Compassion means to our BFF
- How the BFF isn’t really helping the situation or looking out for our best interests by stirring up drama with our Monger
- How to find the middle ground between “soldiering on” through the cruelty of our Monger and the false self-compassion of our BFF
Links:
- The Happier Approach Episode 110: The Voices In Your Head–The Monger
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.
Find The Happier Approach on Amazon, Audible, or
There is a voice in your head. It is a horrible voice that tells you that you are a slow, stupid loser who will never succeed. It tells you that everyone but you has it figured out and that at any moment you are going to be found out for the fraud that you are.
That voice in your head? That is the voice of the Monger.
Everyone has a Monger, but those of us with High Functioning Anxiety have an exceptionally loud and nasty Monger.
Many of us aren't even aware of how much the Monger is talking to us. We know that we are feeling anxious or stressed, but are unaware that it is coming from an internal voice–a voice of belittling, name-calling, and just plain nastiness.
This voice can viciously chatter at us all day, every day, and we just push through.
There are other voices in your head–the BFF and the Biggest Fan–but of the 3 characters that are at the core of The Happier Approach, the Monger is the loudest of them all.
That is why we are starting this month series about the voices in our head by talking at length about the Monger and about how she is such an important part of understanding and managing our High Functioning Anxiety.
In today’s episode:
- Where does the Monger come from?
- How the Monger is like a first responder whose mission is to keep us safe and how she uses shame, belittling, guilt, and negativity to complete that mission
- How despite what we think, we don’t need the Monger’s shame and belittling to be successful
- How the feeling of “enoughness” that we crave will never be found as long as we keep listing to the voice of the Monger
- Why fighting back against the Monger on her terms doesn’t work and what to do instead
- And how admitting that we don’t need the Monger’s shame is an important step toward moving past it
Links:
- The Happier Approach Episode 101: Positive Thinking vs. Radical Acceptance
The Happier Approach Book
I’ve been working with women like you living with hidden anxiety every day for over 20 years as a coach and counselor.
I wrote The Happier Approach to give you a framework for dealing with your anxiety and start living happier.
The Happier Approach will help you understand the voices in your head and what to do with them. It’s not another woo-woo self-help book that asks you to think positively and live your best life. It’s a practical guidebook for getting out of survival mode and finding a genuinely happy and productive life.
Know someone who has High Functioning Anxiety and a VERY LOUD Monger, the Happier Approach makes a great gift.
Find The Happier Approach on Amazon,
I come from a long, proud line of women dealing with High Functioning Anxiety. And never is this more apparent than during the holidays. Take my mom, for instance.
She loves the holidays and wants to make them as fantastic and magical as possible. But, as those of us with High Functioning Anxiety will understand, she has a tendency to overperform and over function during the holiday season. And, as a result, the expectations and responsibilities of the festivities can be overwhelming.
This is why I thought it would be appropriate to conclude this month’s conversation around High Functioning Anxiety in our everyday lives by taking a closer look at how High Functioning Anxiety reveals itself during the holidays.
In the spirit of the season, I am going to explore 4 holiday landmines that can take your High Functioning Anxiety through the roof and offer some tips to help you ease your anxiety and enjoy yourself.
In today’s episode:
-
4 Holiday Landmines:
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- Quietly meeting or exceeding everyone else’s expectations of perfect gift-giving traditions
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- Desperately trying to recreate the perfect holiday get-together even when you’re missing loved ones
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- Single-handedly balancing conflicting needs and expectations while you share space with friends and family
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- Anxiously attempting to follow through on unnecessarily high expectations for holiday preparations
Live Happier Through The Holidays
This holiday season, I want you to find real strategies for building more connections, having more peace, and soaking up everything you love about the holidays. So I started Live Happier Through The Holidays, a daily note delivered to your inbox each day of the holiday season.
Here is how it works:
Each morning from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (November 21st) through Christmas, you will receive a note from me in your inbox. Think of it as a daily message from your Biggest Fan.
My gift to you.
30 days of wisdom and grace delivered to your inbox so we can remember why we love the holidays so much.
Join me so you don't have to white-knuckle your way through the holiday season we can do this with more grace and calm.
Visit live-happier.com/holidays to sign up.
And Click here to learn more about how you can with me through on-demand coaching!
Shame is at the root of all anxiety. Everyone who struggles with anxiety has an underlying belief that they are unworthy, unqualified, a fraud. This belief causes them to worry and anxiously ruminate over feelings of shame and unworthiness.
We expect people with generalized anxiety, the kind of anxiety we've come to know through TV and memes – hiding out, not engaging, numbing – to respond to these feelings by disappearing into themselves. This reaction is triggered by their shame.
But not you. High Functioning Anxiety sends you down a different path.
No, your response is to over function. Your High Functioning Anxiety has you convinced that the way through the shame is to push yourself more, to accomplish more, to people please, hustle, and polish it all to perfection. All of this in the hope that you can relieve the feelings of shame and anxiety.
This month on The Happier Approach we’ve been talking about how High Functioning Anxiety plays out in your everyday life. And no conversation about High Functioning Anxiety would be complete without talking about shame.
Listen to today’s episode to learn:
- How shame plays out in the everyday lives of people with High Functioning Anxiety
- What the difference is between shame and guilt
- How to know when you are acting out of shame by learning to identify Three Strategies of Disconnection:
-
- Moving away from your shame
- Moving against your shame
- And moving toward your shame
- And practical approaches to building shame resilience
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- Acknowledge the shame and ask for real empathy for what you are feeling
- Give yourself kindness and compassion around your feelings
- And start paying attention to your rules and then lovingly remind yourself to let it go
References & Resources:
- Psychologist Linda Hartling’s Strategy of Disconnection.
- Brene Brown Daring Way
- Her video on empathy
- And my book The Happier Approach
You are leading a double life. On the outside, you appear to be the most “with it” woman anyone is ever going to meet–calm, cool, and collected. But on the inside, you are an over-analyzing storm of self-doubt, stress, and anxiety.
Those of us with High Functioning Anxiety have developed coping skills and have become so good at hiding our anxiety, even our friends and family would never guess what lay under the surface.
But these coping skills have left us feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and still full of anxiety. And what makes it worse, everyone around us sees us as being able to handle anything and just keeps piling on more and more.
The coping mechanisms that use to help, are now hurting us but we feel we can’t stop because they are all we know.
“Okay okay,” you say. “But what am I supposed to do with that?”
It starts with recognizing when your High Functioning Anxiety is running the show. Once we start learning to recognize the signs of High Functioning Anxiety and developing the coping skills to deal with our anxiety, we can start calming the storm and finding the ease that we are looking for.
Listen to the full episode to learn about:
The 10 Symptoms of High Functioning Anxiety.
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- Procrastination
- Seeking constant reassurance, AKA Praise me, please!
- Control freak
- Busy busy busy
- Lots of negative self-talk
- Fear of letting people down
- Lack of sleep
- Numbing
- Physical symptoms
- Everything is “fine!”
And some tips on what to do about it.
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- Be kind to yourself. Remind yourself that you are human and that this doesn’t mean that you are broken or flawed
- Be curious about how you are feeling and make checking in with yourself a habit
- Make the time throughout the day to regularly get out of your head and into your body
References & Resources:
-
The Feeling List PDF
-
The DSM
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My book
To your family, friends, and coworkers, you’re the one who always has it together. You look out for all the details, attend all the meetings, make sure the bills get paid and plan the next vacation to Disney.
On the inside, you’re wondering if you're the only one who cares or is even capable of getting things done.
If you don't do this, no one else will.
Everything you have, you have because you were willing to be the one who went the extra mile.
Except...
Living and thinking this way isn't sustainable. This level of control and anxiety is negatively affecting your relationships and your health, both mentally and physically.
And it doesn't have to be this way.
Yes, we are the ones taking care of business and yes on the outside, those of us with High Functioning Anxiety appear calm, focused, and on top of it.
But this isn’t what’s going on in the inside. Inside we are stressed, angry, and resentful that no one else cares as much as we do.
The challenge is that we are hooked. The benefits of High Functioning Anxiety are the things you’ve accomplished, the accolades you’ve won, and the praise you receive from the outside world for being so with it. We live off of this.
This can’t last. While we appear to have everything under control at the end of the day, what we really crave––a sense of calm and ease––is still painfully out of reach.
In today’s episode of the Happier Approach, I discuss:
- Making time to center ourselves so we are prepared for the chaos of the day
- Creating boundaries so that work doesn’t encroach upon our personal lives
- How to slow down and be present so we can more thoroughly engage and enjoy our daily lives
- A.S.K.:
-
- Acknowledging what you are feeling
- Slowing down and getting into your body
- And Kindly pulling back to see the bigger picture
- And how learning to know our values and live with intention while being kind to ourselves can help our anxiety from taking over.
The solutions the personal growth industry sells leave women living with hidden anxiety--women like you--with more stuff to be anxious about. Even worse, it can turn you off from getting help completely.
I want to help you dial back the overwhelm and overthinking with a set of tools designed just for people like you. It’s not woo-woo. It’s not trying to positively think your challenges away. And I’m certainly not going to tell you to start living your best life.
I work one-on-one with women like you to deconstruct why anxiety creeps up on you and give you something to do about it.
I didn’t want to experience life–I wanted to master it. I was too caught up in my goals to enjoy what was right in front of me. I figured that when I checked all the boxes on my goal list, then I would finally be happy:
- WHEN I have a life partner THEN this experience will be awesome
- WHEN I am thinner THEN I will be happier
- WHEN I am less busy THEN life will be more peaceful
- WHEN I am more present THEN I will be content
And because I wasn’t present in the moment, not living in the moment was holding me back
We live our lives in When Then statements. We spend too much of our time waiting, hoping, wishing for our broken selves to be fixed so THEN we can be happy.
What if you aren’t doing anything wrong? What is happiness isn’t something you attain permanently? What if you are thinking about it wrong?
All this month we are looking at how the self-help isn’t doing us any favors and is leading us astray, particularly those of us with High Functioning Anxiety who love looking outside of ourselves for the answers.
In today’s episode, I examine howl When-Then thinking is keeping us stuck. How it is preventing us from accepting ourselves, living in the moment, and seeking solutions from within.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- How to start accepting ourselves as we are so we can start living the moment
- How we can have happiness without devaluing the daily experience
- 3 Myths of When-Then thinking
- And recognizing life’s daily opportunities so we can experience life more deeply and fully
Some of the research and resources mentioned in this episode:
- Psychologist and researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky
- My books on living with High Functioning Anxiety
- And how you can work with me one-on-one
The solutions the personal growth industry sells leave women living with hidden anxiety--women like you--with more stuff to be anxious about. Even worse, it can turn you off from getting help completely.
I want to help you dial back the overwhelm and overthinking with a set of tools designed just for people like you. It’s not woo-woo. It’s not trying to positively think your challenges away. And I’m certainly not going to tell you to start living your best life.
I work one-on-one with women like you to deconstruct why anxiety creeps up on you and give you something to do about it.
Recently my husband had an extended hospital stay. The number one question I received from my well-meaning friends and family was: How are you going to take care of yourself while he is in the hospital?
“The best I can,” I told them. But this just did not satisfy their curiosity.
They wanted to hear about all the bubble baths, yoga, and meditation I had planned for this stressful time. But I knew better. There wasn’t a bubble bath in the world that was going to make this easier.
My husband was in the hospital. It was going to be stressful. I didn’t know what to expect. The self-help industry’s’ idea of self-care wasn’t going to be any help. I was simply going to do the best I can.
All this month we are looking at how the self-help industry has sold us a bunch of toxic information. And for those of us with High Functioning Anxiety who love looking outside of ourselves for the answers, this toxicity is especially troubling.
In today’s episode, I take a closer look at self-care and how it isn’t just yoga, bubble baths and breathing apps. Self-care done well is the ultimate in self-loyalty.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
- How the idea of self-care has gotten out of control
- What I believe the 3 main issues of self-care are for people with HFA
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- How we associate busyness and stress with prestige and status
- How we have made self-care synonymous with self-indulgence
- How we wrongly believe that we are undeserving of self-care
- How we can go about building self-loyalty
- And what we can do to define self-care for ourselves
Some of the research and resources mentioned in this episode:
- The Journal of Consumer Research on busyness and lack of leisure as a status symbol
- My books on living with High Functioning Anxiety
- And how you can work with me one-on-one
The solutions the personal growth industry sells leave women living with hidden anxiety--women like you--with more stuff to be anxious about. Even worse, it can turn you off from getting help completely.
I want to help you dial back the overwhelm and overthinking with a set of tools designed just for people like you. It’s not woo-woo. It’s not trying to positively think your challenges away. And I’m certainly not going to tell you to start living your best life.
You’ve heard that winning isn’t everything but deep down you know that isn’t true. Striving to be the best is how you keep your edge. In the last episode, I discussed the self-help industry’s positive thinking problem. In today’s episode of the Happier Approach, I discuss with Clair Booth, author of The Achiever Fever Cure: How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy, what it takes to start flourishing without being a high achiever. Claire was a successful but stressed-out market research entrepreneur and executive suffering from what she calls "achiever fever"—constant striving coupled with chronic feelings of inadequacy. Sick and tired of feeling miserable--but ever the self-help skeptic--Claire decided to try anything that might bring relief, from mindfulness to martial arts, from spending ten days in silence to "smiling" at her spleen. At first, Claire was fearful that slowing down and softening up will mean losing her professional edge.
Instead, she discovered a more joyful and purposeful life, one that also turns out to be good for business.
Listen to the full episode to hear Claire and I discuss:
- What Achiever Fever is and how to know if we have it
- The dark side of being a high achiever
- Identifying and naming our inner judge
- Meditation and the life-changing act of chopping vegetables
- The connection between alcohol and anxiety
- Living life as opposed to just logging life
- And what we gain when we give up the Achiever Fever
Find out more about Claire Booth and the Achiever Fever at claireboothauthor.com.
Some of the research and resources mentioned in this episode:
- The Achiever Fever Cure: How I Learned to Stop Striving Myself Crazy by Claire Booth
- The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Last time we started pulling back the curtain on the toxicity that exists in the self-help industry. Today on the Happier Approach we examine one of the most toxic ideas pushed by the industry: positive thinking. One of the most misleading concepts that the self-help industry teaches is the benefit positive thinking – change your thoughts and stop feeling so negative! If it were that easy – if all we had to do was put on our rose-colored glasses – why are so many people still depressed, anxious and overwhelmed?
It is my theory that the self-improvement industry is selling the wrong thing. We don’t need to simply “think positively.” Instead, we need to quiet the cacophony of positive thinking messages that come our way on a daily basis--and listen in to our own inner peace.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
- How the message of positive thinking is holding us back and even harming us
- Where our belief in the positive psychology movement originated
- How research contradicts the claims of the positive psychology industry has been selling you
- And practical tools and resources that you can use in place of just “looking on the bright side'
Some of the research and resources mentioned in this episode:
- Martin Seligman, the originator of Positive Psychology
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study by Prof Brett Ford and Prof Iris B. Maus
- The Happier Approach System: A.S.K.
- Gabrielle Oettingen
-
- Her book Rethinking Positive Thinking
- And her W.O.O.P. system
- Peter M Gollwitzer
- Oliver Burkeman’s book The Antidote: Happiness for People Wo Can’t Stand Positive Thinking
- My books on living with High Functioning Anxiety
- And how you can
Live your best life, think positively, high vibes only! Frankly, it’s become toxic. Over the next few episodes of The Happier Approach, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at the personal growth industry just might be making your anxiety worse.
I’ll be sharing the tools and resources I use with myself and clients to quiet the cacophony of positive thinking messages that come our way on a daily basis--and listen in to our own inner peace.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
- How the self-help industry is especially dangerous for those of us with High Functioning Anxiety
- How I almost single-handedly kept her local Borders afloat (spoiler: I didn’t)
- Why “radical acceptance” changed everything for me--but what I had to do first before I could fully accept myself (you can start this today)
- Why leaning into your value for loyalty is the key to building a new relationship with yourself and your anxiety
Some of the research and resources mentioned in this episode:
- The Science Daily research study
- Tara Brach’s book, Radical Acceptance
- And Tara Brach herself
- Nancy’s books on living with High Functioning Anxiety
- And where you can work one-on-one with Nancy
The solutions the personal growth industry sells leave women living with hidden anxiety--women like you--with more stuff to be anxious about. Even worse, it can turn you off from getting help completely.
I want to help you dial back the overwhelm and overthinking with a set of tools designed just for people like you. It’s not woo-woo. It’s not trying to positively think your challenges away. And I’m certainly not going to tell you to start living your best life.
I work one-on-one with women like you to deconstruct why anxiety creeps up on you and give you something to do about it. Click here to learn more about working with me through on-demand coaching!
Happiness Hacks is now The Happier Approach! Join licensed professional counselor and coach, Nancy Jane Smith, as she shares tools, resources, and inspiration for women living with High Functioning Anxiety. If you’ve ever felt like the world might fall apart around you if you took a minute to rest, this is the show for you. For more information on High Functioning Anxiety, The Happier Approach, and Nancy Jane Smith visit: http://live-happier.com
Today I am celebrating Episode 100! Yippee!! I am looking back on my top 7 episodes and giving you some behind the scene look at what I was feeling/thinking as I recorded them and a bit of back story. Also sharing what is coming next for Happiness Hacks and why my Monger has been so loud!!
This week I had an ah-ha when I noticed I was stressed to the max but was telling myself 'everything is fine'. My body was screaming stress and my anxiety was in full force, but my mind was trying to convince me it was no big deal. This is a classic pattern of High Functioning Anxiety listen to see how to recognize the pattern and what to do about it. Read the transcript at http://live-happier.com/episode-099
Download the Feelings Handout: http://bit.ly/whatamIfeeling
In episode 097, I described High Functioning Anxiety today I am looking at what do about it and why just overcoming perfectionism or setting boundaries won't work.
Today I am looking at the term High Functioning Anxiety. What is it? Why I think it is important to differentiate from anxiety and how to know you might be dealing with it.
I am BACK! So excited to be back chatting with you. Today I am sharing my personal story of both Resistance and Procrastination when it comes to the Happiness Hacks Podcast. Sometimes it is hard to tell which you are experiencing. Hope this episode helps!!
So many of my clients talk about feeling invisible. The issue isn't that they aren't showing up in their lives or that they don't feel seen. The problem is they feel seen not for themselves but for how they SHOULD be performing. Do you agree? Listen and let me know. Special Note: Listen carefully around the 3-minute mark our cat Gus makes his voice known...he is practicing being visible!!
In early August my Mom and I took a trip to visit friends in Iowa. The trip brought me so many ah-ha's about life priorities and living happier I wanted to share a few of the lessons I learned.
This week's podcast came out a little late, listen to find out why. Sharing my own 'default patterns' and how slowly but surely we can change them.
So often we hear that our Monger is a Mean Girl or a Bitch. On this episode, I share why calling your Monger that doesn't help. You can't fight shame with shame.
Frequently when we refer to our Monger (inner critic) coming out to play it is in response to criticism but she also gets loud when we are being praised too much!
What is that about and what can you do about it?
For years I use to teach the common advice that you need to love yourself. And then I realized that the key to loving myself was to practice being kind to myself one act at a time.
Recently I read the book First, We Make the Beast Beautiful A New Journey Through Anxiety by Sarah Wilson. And I can't say enough good things about it. Today I explore 5 of Sarah's cruel ironies when it comes to living with anxiety. If you struggle with anxiety or know someone who does, I know you will be nodding your head in understanding as you listen.
A different look at The Happier Approach characters not just how we talk to ourselves but how we interact with others. Which character are you? How do you interact with those around you?
This week my heart was heavy after the suicides of 2 famous people and the release of the CDC report saying suicide rates are at an all-time high. I did what I always do when my heart is heavy, I wrote.
It is time for a revolution.
It is human nature to look outside of ourselves for the way to feel more peaceful, content or happier. But the truth is only you have the answer. Not the next promotion, guru or approach, you have to figure out what works and make it happen for you.
Today I offer a simple question to get your mind moving in different ways. We get so caught up in the 'hamster wheel' of life that we forget to ask ourselves are we living a life we want to be living? In this episode I explore the question...what does a good day look like?
There are a lot of things in my industry lately that have just been rubbing me the wrong way, and so they've been making me feel kind of quiet and small. So instead of continuing on that quiet and small mantra, I wanted to air them and see if you guys agreed with me or felt the same way or were equally annoyed or maybe it's just me.
I am answering listener questions...well actually only 1 question but an important one. If you are struggling with acknowledging your feelings...this one is for you.
Yesterday I had an extreme Monger attack. In this episode, I share what I learned, why shame attacks are so hard and what our job is when we put on that warm cozy sweater of our Monger.
In this episode, I talk about the to-do list and our love of it keeping us on task and responsible and its way of keeping us trapped in the belief that WHEN we finish the to-do list we will be happier. (That's a lie by the way.)
In this episode, I talk about 3 random observations about our inner dialogue, what causes our Monger to get fired up, why we have a love hate relationship with her and what we HAVE to do to quiet her.
A new monthly segment for the show the Happier Approach Q&A. Answering listener questions about all things Live Happier and The Happier Approach. Have a question? Submit it here
Feelings. They get such a bad wrap. If there is one thing the psychology world has a lot of contradictory opinions on, it is feelings. Today I look at the benefit of stepping into the deep water and riding the waves of your feelings.
The quote “Stop comparing your insides to other people’s outside.” is a big ah-ha for people. But comparing ourselves is something we do ALL THE TIME. What can be gained from doing that? Can we engage in comparison without beating ourselves up?
Now and then someone will say to me "I don't think I have a Monger." And my answer is always, 'Yes you do. Your Monger is just sneaky." We underestimate how much our Monger chats at us and how accepting we have become to her message. Today I am looking at some habits/behaviors you might have that are inspired by your Monger.
So many people have told me how brave I am for writing and publishing a book. We tend to compare our insides to other people's outsides and think they have it all together. Today I am pulling back the veil on how I successfully (and unsuccessfully) dealt with my Monger attacks the week of my book launch.
Part 3 of my system for quieting your Monger (inner critic) and hearing from your Biggest Fan. In which I chat about stress, Mongers, BFFs and the potential healing power of Tim Horton's doughnuts.
Part 2 of my system for quieting your Monger (inner critic) and hearing from your Biggest Fan. Gain peace, productivity and be happier. 1st step: Acknowledge What You Are Feeling. I promise it isn't as painful as it sounds.
Today I am sharing my system for quieting your Monger (inner critic) and hearing from your Biggest Fan. Gain peace, productivity and be happier.
It's the Holiday Season and our Monger LOVES to remind us of all the ways we aren't perfect. My #1 tip for enjoying the Holidays, getting along with challenging family members and having a happy Thanksgiving even if you aren't living in a Norman Rockwell Painting.
These 2 tips are easy ways to bypass your Monger, bring in your Biggest Fan AND get more done. Win win!
Learning how to celebrate our wins and not diminish ourselves is the topic today. Too often I hear clients cut themselves down when they should be celebrating their success.
Today I am sharing my story about the loss of my Dad and my grief over the past few months. It is something I haven't talked about much so I wanted to share what I have learned about grief. It was a hard podcast to record and hopefully will be helpful if you are dealing with grief or know someone who is. NOTE: The sound is a little goofy at times, I apologize for the mic issues.
I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the tragedy and trauma that has been in the news lately. I thought you might be too, so I wanted to share my thoughts on how we can navigate this time in a kind and productive way without getting caught up in fear and blame.
Lately I have been getting a lot of questions about the differences between counseling and coaching. Today I attempt to answer those questions...if you have wondered what's the difference...tune in and listen.
Recently someone said to me "I am done making myself small for people." It struck me how often we do this and how it is linked to the way we talk to ourselves. Are you making yourself small in your life? Tips to show up in your life fully.
Practicing Gratitude is an amazing practice that allows us to see the world through a different lens and regain some perspective. Too often I see people take this practice of gratitude and use it as a weapon on themselves. In this episode, we look at the Downside of Gratitude and the 3 ways you can avoid it.
Our Monger (that nasty inner voice) keeps us stuck in myths that make us feel more stressed and overwhelmed.
Today I am unraveling 2 more of those myths: The Myth that THEY have it figured out The Myth that there is a Right Way
For years I thought I had to be super yoga zen woman to deal with this nasty inner voice. And being the Type A person I am that wasn't going to work...fortunately I found a way for me that does. Today a few thoughts on dealing with your Monger when you aren't Zen.
Our Monger (that nasty inner voice) keeps us stuck in myths that make us feel more stressed and overwhelmed.
Today I am unraveling some more of those myths.
The biggest obstacle to quieting the voice of the Monger is the belief that without the Monger (inner critic) you will be an unmotivated sloth who accomplishes nothing. In this episode, I discuss how to quiet your inner critic AND accomplish everything you desire.
How we talk to ourselves and others has power. In this episode, I talk about 3 phrases that we use on a regular basis that we can tweak in order to give ourselves more compassion and expansiveness.
Every now and then I catch myself, reverting back to the old habit of beating myself up for all the rules I am not following. Most of my rules start out like this: Good people.... So I might say good people get up before 8pm, good people always read the paper, good people write their blogs first thing in the morning, good people respond to e-mails right away. These rules can keep us stuck in a cycle of beating ourselves up and unnecessary suffering. So in today's podcast I ask...what are your rules? What rules do you have that 'guide your life'?
So many of us believe like feeling our emotions will send us down a slippery slope into wallowing and negativity. In reality, NOT feeling our emotions leads us to more negativity and drama.
Sometimes despite our best intentions our Mongers camp out in our heads. Today I had a case of the Monger Mondays...listen to how I regrouped and found my Biggest Fan again.
A new way of looking at your Inner Critics favorite phrase "you are going to do it wrong."
One of the ways to decrease overwhelm is to ask for help and yet we are SO resistant to it. In this episode, I explore that resistance and what to do about it.
I received some pushback from last week's episode. I love pushback because it allows me to clarify these concepts. Talking about getting stuck and feeling selfish when we own it.
Part 2 of 6 Living Happier Through the Holidays: Managing Your Energy and Boundary Setting
A few thoughts on the election. Doesn't matter who you voted for, we all need a reminder that the key to healing lies in embracing the messy middle.
When life gets challenging the temptation is to blow it all up and start over. Real change happens when we change the foundation of our lives rather than just re-arranging the clouds.
I have received some questions about how to channel your Biggest Fan...today I answer them (or at least begin the conversation)
We convince ourselves that suffering is a necessary a part of life. Pain is a part of life; suffering is optional. Listen and learn how to stop unnecessary suffering.
The cause of drama can be summed up in one phrase...lack of direct communication. However, this lack of communication can be due to a number of things, fear of conflict, shame, perfectionism, lack of trust, lack of integrity etc. In this podcast, I explore how to have a tough conversation without the drama.
The danger of getting so stuck in blame and resentment we don't fully show up for our lives.
Something we hear a lot is that we need to be more empathetic. Empathy is not usually our first reaction. Today I dive into the complexity of empathy and why it is such an important part of living happier.
I am finally back from break! I had quite a battle with my inner critic these past few weeks. Listen to my latest trick to quiet that belittling voice.
Anxiety is a habit. We can become addicted to the 'high' anxiety gives us of being productive, accomplishing a lot and looking 'all together'. But at what price? Our health? Our relationships? Anxiety is not something to be glorified--it is something to build resiliency around.
In this society, we get so caught up in the chase we forget what or why we are chasing in the first place. We get so use to going after 'the goal' we forget to ask ourselves--do I really want this goal in the first place?
How to recognize when you have an addiction to busy and tips to get yourself on the wagon.
Coming Alive...or more importantly, what is keeping you from Coming Alive. Thoughts on one of my favorite quotes: “Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman
Today we are turning the problem of procrastination on its head. Easy strategies to help you work through the problem of procrastination.
Speaking up for ourselves is challenging. Being direct and specific with our needs doesn't always come naturally. On this podcast, I talk about some of the unhealthy behaviors we engage instead of speaking up for ourselves.
Meditation is amazing...and it isn't for everyone. This podcast offers tips and ideas for adding more mindfulness and peace into your everyday life.
When we are afraid of growing because we might make people around us angry or afraid of 'rocking the boat' this spiritual principle will change our lives.
Getting stuck in 'shoulds' keeps us obsessing about what is the 'right thing' to do. How to let go of the incessant thinking.
In this episode I answer a listeners question: You say to allow all my feeling but, how am I suppose to let go of an unpleasant feeling that I don't want to experience? How do I not get stuck in it?
Too often we are looking for the perfect combination of a+b+c=happiness. What to do when that just isn't the case.
I want to start a revolution, a Listening Revolution. It starts with a ban on unsolicited advice.
How to deal with your inner critic...the simplest most challenging advice to be happier and silence those Mongers.
Tips for dealing with that nasty inner critic/Monger voice that shows up uninvited at 4am.
Do you spend too much time on your phone? Is your phone controlling your life? Last week I realized mine is more prominent in my life than I want it to be so I declared this month a Screen Free Month. Here how it is going.
As I prepare to pause from the rush I wanted to offer some tips on Living Happier During Thanksgiving.
One of the biggest red flags to me is when someone says, I should be happy….Listen to hear what the phrase “I SHOULD be happy” really means.
Inspired by an article I read, in this podcast I am talking about handling the every day little transitions, struggles and period of grief we experience. Giving ourselves some grace.
One of the top reasons my clients come to see me is they want to stop feeling so much frustration and resentment and most importantly they want to stop taking it out on those they love. In this episode, we discuss tips for taking care of that frustration.
Feeling resentful or angry all the time or even some of the time? Tips on dealing with that resentment in a healthy way.
Looking at the messages we tell ourselves that keep us stuck in a pattern of stress…how is stress serving you?
Tips on how to deal with your first responders a.k.a, shame, inner critic, bully, mongers, gremlins etc.
Reducing Stress and Enhancing Energy is The most popular topic for my speaking engagements. The problem is we know how to reduce stress… we just don’t do it. In this podcast, I look at, why that is the case and what we can do about it.
For years I have been saying that it all comes down to values. Once you know your values you can live happier and while I live this on a daily basis, it wasn't until recently that I re-affirmed how important values are.
The process of making change involves making mistakes which is followed by shame, guilt and fear. Closing the loop looks at how to move through the process so that real change can occur.
The world of self-help is inundated with messages about GOING BIG and DREAMING BIG...BE ADVENTUROUS…and it got me wondering when did big get to be the line which we measured our happiness?
Sometimes the idea of feeling our feelings is a full on street fight. Learn my love hate relationship with this phrase and how doing it has changed my life.
Gratitude and positive thinking can be extremely helpful AND it can keep you stuck in a life of misery and pain...Learn how to stop gratitude might be hurting you more than helping you.
Discussing the definition of Living Happier as well as the biggest myth to living happier.
Learn what the Magic Button is and how stopping the search for it will dramatically change your life.