Building Psychological Strength

When was the last time you genuinely said "thank you" to someone else? How often do you recognize people for the big (and small) things they do? Have you ever stopped to consider how impactful the act of recognition can be?

Today, we're speaking with Sarah McVanel. Sarah is a recognition expert and is passionate about guiding each of us to re-discover our own greatness, and recognize the greatness in others. 

As it turns out, such a simple gesture (recognition) can have a major impact, and there is some interesting science behind it. During our conversation, Sarah and I talk about the role that recognition plays in helping others (and ourselves) reach our true potential. We discuss that recognition seems to hit on each and ever one of Martin Seligman's PERMA factors. These are the key factors in Positive Psychology that help people flourish and thrive. And, Sarah shares a moving story about how recognition helped her family through an incredibly difficult time.

Sarah has put her psychology undergrad and MSc in family therapy/dynamics to good use and has excelled the field of Organizational Development, Training and Communications for over 15 years.

• Sarah's website: https://greatnessmagnified.com/ 
• Free resources: https://greatnessmagnified.com/other-services/  

If you’ve ever felt like you weren’t enough, this episode is for you. 

If you’ve ever felt like you needed to lose X pounds or make $X in order to be happy, this episode is for you. 

If you have a set of beliefs or thought patterns about yourself that aren’t helpful, this episode definitely is for you. 

This week, we’re talking to Betty Jean Bell. Betty has helped successful women around the world to lose weight, improve their health, and love their bodies now, regardless of shape. All while running their businesses, families, and lives. She helps people transform their confidence, body image, and health with meaningful science, psychology, spirituality, and uncommon action that works.  

We get into the most incredible conversation about habitual thought patterns and how they can trick us into believing that they’re true. How we can begin to reprogram our neural-pathways through intentional effort. How this can impact your physical health, your financial and career success, and your relationships. 

The beliefs we have about ourselves influence every aspect of our lives, and there are ways to impact those beliefs to turn them into something more helpful and empowering. Join us for a FREE live webinar in December to learn how your identity shapes your self-limiting beliefs and why they’re so influential. 

Sign up here to save your seat! 

• https://beingbadass.com 
• For another perspective on weight loss, check out Glenn Livingston's episode #0137 – link to prior episode
• Episode #0140 - Kayla's journey of psychological strength through bariatric surgery
• “Stillness is the Key” book 

Let's be honest for just one moment. Meditation can be hard and frustrating. We've all heard that meditation has incredible benefits, but it can be incredibly difficult to sit still and focus for that long, and it's so frustrating when thoughts continue to intrude.

Plus, how do you even know if you're doing it right and reaping the benefits of the time you're putting in?!

This week, you're meeting a woman who is changing all of that. This week on the podcast, you'll hear from Ariel Garten, inventor of Muse. Muse is a headband that helps you meditate. Using brain sensors, MUSE gives you real-time feedback on your brain's activity during meditation -- actually letting you hear the sound of your own mind.

This was such a fascinating interview. It's not everyday that I get to interview someone who is both a psychotherapist and a neuroscientist. During her interview, Ariel gives us the real, scientific lowdown on:

• What meditation and mindfulness really are
• Why meditation is so helpful for us
• What exactly happens during the brain when you meditate
• How meditation changes the structure of the brain after you've been doing it for a while.
• As a BONUS, Ariel dives into the neuroscience behind FEAR and how we can move forward in spite of feeling afraid

This interview is jam-packed with fascinating and practical information, and I can't wait for you to dive in!

Learn more about Muse here

It is a fact of life that we are all going to experience adversity at times. Life hands us circumstances in the form of hardship, trauma, or other difficulty, and we’re left to try to figure out how to move through it and pick up the pieces.

This week on the podcast, we’re focusing in on how to create a life of meaning after adversity through the story of one woman’s journey to turn her own adversity into an organization to help others.

Becca Erickson is the Founder of Emerge Mother’s Academy. The mission of Emerge Mother’s Academy is to equip single moms to emerge as confident women and caring moms. They do this through a holistic approach that helps women thrive in their lives.

The incredible thing about this week’s episode is that, although Becca’s work focuses on single moms, the value and expertise she shares is so applicable to everyone. You don’t have to be a mom or even a parent to get so much value out of this episode.

In particular, Becca and I have an in-depth conversation about the passive versus active thoughts that our mind conjures up. We debunk the myth that somehow our passive, automatic thoughts are more valuable or authentic than the thoughts we intentionally cultivate. And, Becca provides the most simple, yet elegant and effective exercise for recognizing and changing your own thought pattern. It’s powerful.

Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs on the planet. Regardless of whether you are a parent or not, you’ll get so much out of this episode to help you build psychological strength and thrive in your own life.

This is a really neat week on the podcast. We're essentially clearing up some misconceptions this week.

As yoga and meditation have become more mainstream, we've lost a bit of the impact that these practices can have. We all know that yoga can make you more flexible, but what about the impact it can have as a mind-clearing tool to set you up for a more successful meditation practice? 

We're diving deep into these topics today, as well as the topics of visioning and life design. I couldn't be more excited!

Today you'll meet Megan Betterman. Megan is a digital marketing leader within the Web & Mobile team at a large healthcare company. She is also a wellness consultant, yoga instructor and certified Gyrotonic trainer.

She combines movement, meditation and visioning into impactful programs and experiences to encourage deep reflection and self-discovery.

Megan earned a Master of Business Administration from St. Catherine University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of St. Thomas. She spends her free time on her own health and wellness adventure, traveling the world and playing in nature.

• meganbetterman.com/wellness
• Insight Timer (meditation app)
• Well-Designed Life (book)

This week on the podcast we’re speaking with Dr. Kevin Payne. He is a scientist, entrepreneur and author. 
 
His upcoming book, "Your Life, Well Lived" presents a new understanding of what it’s like to live with a chronic health condition and shows both diagnosed and caregivers how to improve quality of life. Beyond that, it’s an actionable, understandable text on how everyone, chronic condition or not, can live better lives. 

We talk about so many impactful concepts in this episode, but most notably, we talk about something Kevin calls “the edge.” This is the edge of our comfort zone.  

He does a beautiful job of highlighting how personal and individualized the definition of the edge is. It’s different for each of us. He describes that a set of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physical, and social gates help determine whether something is approaching our “edge,” and he gives us a clear way to identify when we’re approaching our own edge. 

Most importantly, he talks about the importance of constantly bumping into that edge. It’s where true joy, happiness, and excitement live. It’s also where growth lives.   

Kevin shares with us the 6 things his extensive research has shown contributes to quality of life, and we talk about it all in the context of how we each can individually figure out what will improve our own life experience. 

We’re so thrilled to partner with Dr. Kevin Payne on this episode! 

• Chronic Cow (Kevin’s company focused on providing practical answers, grounded in science, driven by data, delivered with compassion, and personalized for you. 

• Episode 0141: How to Live ‘Eyes Wide Open’ with Isaac Lidsky 

• Episode 0127: Failure Means You’re on the Right Path with April Seifert 

So many of us have experienced trauma, depression, anxiety, and other painful feelings and events. But answer this:

When you have those experiences, do you tend to try to get rid of or avoid those painful feelings, or do you lean into them?

On this episode of the podcast, we have the pleasure of collaborating with Dr. Steven Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and author of the book "A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters."

Dr. Hayes has been deemed the 30th most influential psychologist in the world and one of the most cited scientists in the world. His therapeutic technique (ACT) is more effective than any other approach the field of Clinical Psychology has ever adopted, and now Dr. Hayes is expanding the reach of the practices of that approach to help people live better lives.

During this interview, Dr. Hayes gives us an overview of ACT and how it applies to our lives. In particular, he delves into pain and trauma and how we have better psychological outcomes if we lean into them, rather than trying to avoid them. 

Toward the end of this interview. Dr. Hayes leads us through one of the most profound exercises I have ever been a part of. This exercise was so impactful that it lead me to create this week's bonus episode. The accompanying bonus episode cuts to the chase and features only this exercise. If you don't have time to catch the entire episode this week, you owe it to yourself to catch the bonus episode so that you can experience this incredible exercise first-hand.

We are so grateful for the opportunity to speak with Dr. Hayes and present his powerful work to you in this episode.

This episode is a bonus episode to accompany Episode #143. Dr. Steven Hayes was generous enough to include a hands-on exercise in his interview, and I found it so profoundly valuable, that I clipped it out into its own episode. 

Please sit down, get quiet, and use this exercise to help you in areas where you might need it.

FULL EPISODE DESCRIPTION:

So many of us have experienced trauma, depression, anxiety, and other painful feelings and events. But answer this:

When you have those experiences, do you tend to try to get rid of or avoid those painful feelings, or do you lean into them?

On this episode of the podcast, we have the pleasure of collaborating with Dr. Steven Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and author of the book "A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters."

Dr. Hayes has been deemed the 30th most influential psychologist in the world and one of the most cited scientists in the world. His therapeutic technique (ACT) is more effective than any other approach the field of Clinical Psychology has ever adopted, and now Dr. Hayes is expanding the reach of the practices of that approach to help people live better lives.

During this interview, Dr. Hayes gives us an overview of ACT and how it applies to our lives. In particular, he delves into pain and trauma and how we have better psychological outcomes if we lean into them, rather than trying to avoid them. 

Toward the end of this interview. Dr. Hayes leads us through one of the most profound exercises I have ever been a part of. This exercise was so impactful that it lead me to create this week's bonus episode. The accompanying bonus episode cuts to the chase and features only this exercise. If you don't have time to catch the entire episode this week, you owe it to yourself to catch the bonus episode so that you can experience this incredible exercise first-hand.

We are so grateful for the opportunity to speak with Dr. Hayes and present his powerful work to you in this episode.

Did you know that upwards of 80% of the thoughts you have on a given day are subconscious thoughts? These are thoughts that happen outside of our awareness. They're mental habits and heuristics that our mind has learned, and they influence our conscious thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. 

On today's episode, we're talking with Michele Molitor about this very topic!

We talk about what the subconscious is...and what it isn't. Michele shares with us her unique approach to replacing limiting beliefs in our subconscious with more empowering ones. And, we talk about the interconnectedness of our physical and mental health.

Michele shares so much wisdom with us, and she also shares some resources:

• Breakthrough Healing (Michele's book)
• Michele's Brain Candy page - packed with guided meditations, free ebooks, and so many other free resources

We also discussed a recent podcast episode I did with Isaac Lidsky. If you like the information in this episode, you'll want to check out Isaac's episode as well. 

It was such a pleasure to partner with Michele Molitor on this valuable episode!

This week's guest has one of the most eclectic resume's in business, including the following:

• He has been a child television star
• A Supreme Court clerk for Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsbert
• Co-Founder of an internet startup
• A graduate of Harvard at age 19
• The author of a TED talk that received over 1M views in it's first 3 days

Perhaps most striking, Isaac Lidsky is only 40, and he is blind. Born with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a rare degenerative disease of the retina, from age 12 to 25 he slowly lost his sight. 

Isaac is the author of the book "Eyes Wide Open," which chronicles his personal experience with losing his sight, but more importantly, in it, he shares with us the lessons he learned along the way that we can all use to live a better life.

In this interview, Isaac shares openly about his personal story. He tells us what it means to truly live 'eyes wide open.' He also speaks candidly about the opportunity that we all have to live the life we want to live. And, his message aligns so closely with a recent episode of the podcast centered around radical responsibility. 

We are so grateful to have had this chance to partner with Isaac Lidsky on this episode!