I've been doing a digital detox. I gave up news and social media for lent. I wanted to pull my attention out of the habitual cycle of opinions, fears, needing to be informed, emotions, and addictive social media scrolls. I wanted to clean up and clear space in my mind.  In the process, I had this dream last week. It represents part of the Deam of Maya, or illusions we live in. If you want to be happy and fulfilled, you will need to move your attention out of such stories.

Pauline Victoria was born without arms or legs, Despite this physical challenge, she has done what many would think impossible. I wanted to know how she did things like drive, swim, and scuba dive. She said it was how she played the mental game to overcome her physical challenges. In this interview, I got to explore how Pauline masters her mental game. The mental game includes desire, faith, presence, surrender, and calming your nervous system with control over your attention.

Figuring out the truth isn't straightforward.  Consider this; the mind is the mechanism that we use to discern the truth. However, this is the same mind that generates stories, false narratives, daydreams, and fictional realities in our heads.  These two uses of the mind are contradictory. It's no wonder people are having difficulty seeing the difference between truth and a made-up story.

The voices in your head are normal. They are the patterns of thoughts arising from unconscious beliefs. They can be funny, frightening, random or chaotic, and possibly cause deep suffering.

Trauma is often the cause of anxiety, depression, ADHD, anger, harsh self judgment, suicidal thoughts, and other mood disorders. It is much more common than you think. You don't just get PTSD from wartime combat. Your brain and nervous system can be altered from sexual assault, abuse, bullying, emotionally abusive parents, even if they never hit you, surgery, or a car accident.

To change a belief sometimes it helps to understand where and how it came to be. When you understand why and how you started to believe your thoughts about being wrong, bad, unlovable, or broken, you have new perspective on those ideas. You can understand their time and place from who you are today, instead of who you were when those beliefs may have helped. You can also see why it is not true today, or not true before that moment you began believing in your false ego identity as who you were.

My interview with Anna and her journey out of trauma reactions using the skills and perspectives she learned in the Self Mastery practices. Combining them with EMDR treatments and other modalities to go from anxiety, depression, anger and suicidal thoughts, to Living Happy.

Where do you start making changes when you are overwhelmed with emotions? Understanding the deep sources of emotions help us move into compassion, and decrease the impact of the Inner Judge. Beginning steps include acknowledging where you are, accepting it, and then finding one small change to get you started.

Interview with Eva, a Self Mastery Course subscriber who worked her way out of panic attacks, anxiety, depression, and career burnout to build a completely different life. Letting go of fears and eventually feeling joy and love was a surprise change, until it became the new normal.

This podcast will guide you through a breathing practice using specific techniques to relax your nervous system and brain. There are reasons that breathing techniques can help you relax. Breathing. When done properly it bypasses your intellect and directs your nervous system to switch off the tension and hyper-vigilance. This is something that you can’t do by thinking better thoughts or trying to be positive.