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With my background as a neuropsychologist, I get asked a lot of questions about memory and focus. Today, I'll explain the three biggest causes of brain fog, along with strategies you can implement now to help you to focus, boost your mental resources, and remember more!

I spent years working in a hospital with patients trying to identify which parts of the brain were working effectively and which parts were not working well. We tested learning, memory, focus, attention span, and language skills. But for a good percentage of my clients, nothing was wrong with their brains! I struggled to figure out why they were having trouble with memory and concentration.

When I dove deeper, I found that many of these clients who didn't have a specific physical reason for memory loss tended to have really similar stories (which usually included being super busy and burning the candle at both ends). When your brain is in constant go mode, you use up your brain resources fast.

Listen in to learn why your brain is on all the time, how your brain prioritizes, why you shouldn’t stress out when you can’t remember facts, and the effects of brain burnout on your body. 

Show Highlights

[03:13] How I was confident in my work and how that changed.

[05:30] The story of a client who had memory loss because of a stressful lifestyle.

[07:41] First mistakes and signs of brain burnout.

[09:20] Why we can’t remember facts when we are stressed out.

[10:47] How somatic cognitive symptoms can affect brain efficiency.

[11:30] Five elements that can overwhelm our brain and cause brain fog.

[13:55] Emotional stress from our people pleaser perspective creates brain fog.

[17:34] Our brains can adapt for short term, but will be affected by long term stress.

[20:11] Following a healthy lifestyle for good brain function.

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Are your beliefs about dieting holding you back? Today I’m talking to Dr. Shawn Hondorp, a board-certified clinical psychologist whose expertise is helping women master their relationship with food and focus on their dreams and goals.

Shawn shares how her own struggles with eating and body image led her to pursue her career and help others maintain a healthy emotional relationship with food. She helps her clients find a sustainable lifestyle, which gives them more control over their habits.

She dives into the role of internal motivation, external motivation, and physical biology when it comes to dieting. We talk about negative beliefs, why diets don’t work, and how to create a more positive relationship with food.

Listen in to learn why autonomous change is the path you want to travel, why weight cycling is bad for your health, and why internal motivation is the most significant factor in realizing a healthy lifestyle.

Show Highlights

[01:55] How Shawn became interested in food psychology.

[03:56] Negative beliefs surrounding diet and body image.

[07:18] The emotional impact of dieting and how it affects your psyche.

[11:39] Societal norms and how they create negative effects on eating habits.

[13:05] Outward perceptions we have from others.

[15:55] Internal motivation to change the way we eat.

[19:45] What willpower is good for and what it’s not so good for.

[25:04] Healthy versus unhealthy food and the implications for not eating healthy.

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Check out Motivation Made Easy Podcast

Visit Dr. Shawn on the web

Today I’m talking to Dori Staehle, the only certified drum therapist in North Carolina, about how to use drum therapy for healing. She explains how she uses drum therapy with kids who struggle with focus and concentration, and even to improve her own focus.

Dori first played drums in a church rock band, and while she played in the band for 13 years, she didn’t discover the healing power of drumming until later. While tutoring kids with ADHD, Dori realized that she could apply her drumming technique she created to help lower anxiety.

 Listen in to learn how she found out how Dori discovered how to use drums for healing, how Dori uses her drumming technique to help others, and how clearing out your personal energy results in clearing out your space.

Show Highlights

[03:40] Drum therapy helping kids with ADHD.

[06:11] Researching drum therapy and how it had been applied up until that time.

[08:12] Developing her techniques for different children.

[10:50] How Dori found out about her rare neurological disease.

[15:14] Healing drumming technique process.

[18:37] The need for renewal and organization when having drum therapy.

[20:15] Learning the musical basics of playing a drum.

[23:51] Developing programs based on her client needs.

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Check out Next Stage Drumming

Today, we’ll talk about five ways you can build resilience into your life. Resilience is the ability to bounce back when you’re experiencing stressful times, and how well you cope when a crisis happens. 

While resilient people do face challenges, they don’t let those challenges keep them down. The faster you can bounce back from a setback, the more likely you are to be successful. Resilience is essential for long-term success. Here are five things I learned about resilience in the past year:

First, you need to train your brain to focus on the wins. Next, you need to bite responsibility off a tiny piece at a time. Then, keep your long-term goals in sight and put them in a visible place you can see daily. Fourth, take care of your health to have the physical stamina to be resilient. Fifth, put yourself first and keep your emotional balance to build resilience.

Listen in to learn why it’s essential to focus on keeping your brain balanced and why being and physically healthy is vital for resilience.

Show Highlights

[02:37] The silver lining of the past year in review.

[03:33] Qualities of resilient individuals.

[04:47] Five things I learned about myself when it comes to resiliency. 

[07:10] Get tasks done one small task at a time.

[09:15] Keep your long-term goals in site.

[13:09] Create healthy lifestyle choices to be physically resilient.  

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Check out Episode 7: Ten Ways to Improve Your Sleep

Today, I’m answering a question from a listener who asked how she can stop letting her brain sabotage her decision-making process. While it’s easy to stress out over making a decision, it’s also easy to be filled with doubt and uncertainty about our decision once we finally make it! Find out why we struggle to make decisions in the first place and my five-step process to make your brain create decisions with confidence!

When you have a tough decision to make and you’re not sure what to do, the emotional part of your brain takes over, and you start to overthink and worry about all the “what if’s”. Your brain gives you dozens of possible scenarios, putting you on overload. This keeps your body stressed out and overwhelmed. You finally make a decision, BUT then your brain hangs on to the idea and goes into a cycle of self-doubt.

Listen in to learn how perfectionism and people-pleasing can lead to indecision, why our brains like to create worst-case scenarios, and why the safety mechanism of your brain can stop you from making a decision.

Show Highlights

[01:43] Common decision-making scenarios

[03:30] How “what if” scenarios can thwart your decision-making process.

[05:16] What happens when our rational brain gets overtaken by our emotional brain.

[07:18] Why your brain and body might not feel confident about your decision.

[08:50] The reason why some types of decisions are easier to make than others.

[11:09] How invested are you in your decision?

[13:33] Stopping the hyper-drive emotional side of your brain.

[16:20] Steps to motivate your brain to take action.

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Check out Episode 30 where I talk about decision fatigue

Today, Candice Bakx-Friesen and I chat about being a female in the battleground of real estate investing. We talk about how our belief systems about money, success, and wealth can hold us back. Listen in as we discuss how to build relationships in our virtual environment and use your strengths to take action and start or run your business.

Candice comes from a background with several family members being entrepreneurs themselves. She was driven to succeed even as a child due to seeing her parents’ examples as entrepreneurs.

She recommends starting to lead by example when your children are very young to instill work ethic and value in being on a team. Children see these examples and bring them forward into their adult life.

Listen in to learn how instant gratification affects goal setting, how distraction relieves us from taking action, why negotiation has to be a win-win situation, and why it’s essential to focus on your strengths.

Show Highlights

[02:30] How Candice became inspired to become an entrepreneur.

[05:39] Her early experiences and how her upbringing shaped her money mindset.

[09:25] The importance of making a plan with a goal. 

[13:02] The negative effects of receiving instant gratification.

[15:20] How Candice navigates a male-dominated industry.

[20:14] Why it’s important to focus on your strengths. 

[22:53] How to build relationships in a virtual climate.

[27:15] Mindset mantras you should consider.

[32:02] Being aware of the risk you are taking and understanding the type of risk you are getting into.

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Check out Investor Smarts on the web

Today, Lisa Kilgour and I talk about how you can create false beliefs around dieting, weight, and body image. Lisa is a registered holistic nutritionist, speaker, educator, and author who helps people heal from diverse and complex health issues. Listen in as we discuss how the food paradigm changes over time, why eating whole foods is essential, and how to change your perspective about food to have a healthier outlook.

Lisa learned for herself how vital nutrition was while in college. She experienced severe nutritional and dietary deficiencies, which led her to have nerve pain, a foggy brain, and uncontrolled asthma, among other health concerns. Although she met with several doctors, none could help her, but they also never asked her about her diet.

After college, she worked in a nutritional company that produced a green whole food product. After trying the product, she finally had focus and clarity back in her life. She then returned to school to secure her nutritional degree and started her own practice.

Listen in to learn why it’s important to look at your entire lifestyle when it comes to health, why our beliefs about weight and food matter, and how to bring more supportive food beliefs back to your body.

Show Highlights

[01:55] How Lisa arrived at her career as a holistic nutritionist and educator.

[03:33] Going back to school for her degree in nutrition.

[06:49] Why living in stress is detrimental to your overall health.

[10:25] Eating for your body and eating seasonally.

[13:28] Bringing food control back to your body.

[15:29] Our belief about weight and what we eat.

[19:57] Where to start when thinking about how to set yourself up for food thought success.

[21:27] Pulling trauma threads out of your current eating habits.

[25:57] Knowing when and how to say you are finished eating.

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Visit Lisa Kilgour on the web

Check out her guide Five Ways to Eat What You Want

Check out Lisa's Book Undieting

Today we’ll talk about how you can be more confident at work - specifically how to feel more confident when surrounded by colleagues that make you feel bad all day. I’ll walk you through three potential solutions to help you deal with negative comments from colleagues at work, and to help you feel more confident having those tough conversations.

Negative colleagues can drive down productivity and the mood of the team. Sometimes outside stressors can lead to a hostile work environment, or we might just have clashing personalities that don’t fit well. Since we all react to stress differently and we all have our own stuff going on outside of work, this stress can be carried over to the workplace and make the work environment a tough place to navigate.

Find out why doubting yourself can take up mental resources, how to find mental resources to deal with work problems, and how to fuel your soul. Learn how to start from a full confidence cup, and why mindset is so important when it comes to any interaction with other people, colleagues included.

Show Highlights

[01:22] All of us have had to deal with crappy work colleagues at some point in our career!

[03:04] Solution number one is start from a full cup.

[05:19] How healthy living activities fill up your confidence cup.

[06:50] Why fueling your soul is so important.

[07:39] Solution number two is check your mindset.

[15:00] Seeing criticism as a personal attack can lead us into a spiral of doubt.

[16:35] Sometimes people are just mean and negative in their criticism.

[20:20] The purpose of asking supporting questions when you receive critical feedback.

[23:19] Solution number three: evaluate what you can do in your situation.

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Today we’ll talk about why it's hard to say "no" when others ask us to take on extra work. I'll explain the two reactions your brain has hardwired to make you feel guilty for saying no, why your mind and body need to stop saying no to every request, and how to say "no" without feeling guilty.

Two prime culprits make us feel guilty about saying no, and create inner turmoil and stress. Reason number one is you've learned to be a people pleaser. Reason number two is your inner perfectionist who wants to be able to do it all.

Find out why our brains are programmed to say "yes," how we can quickly burnout when we practice pleasing people, and why perfectionism can lead you down the path to burnout. Learn why it takes skill to say no, why it's harder to say no than to say yes, and the repercussions of saying yes to every request.

Show Highlights

[01:34] Saying yes so we don’t have to feel guilty about saying “no.”

[02:12] Being a people pleaser will lead you down the rabbit hole of feeling guilt. 

[04:16] Why being a perfectionist will lead you to say “yes” to everything.

[07:00] How your brain overloads when you say yes to every request.

[08:31] Every time you’re saying “yes” to one task, you’re saying “no” to something else.

[10:14] How to say “no” without feeling guilt.

[13:14] Why it takes effort to learn to say “no.”

[16:50] Follow-through and stick to your guns after saying “no.”

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Today I'm talking with a health coach Eva Rodriguez about transformational self-care for busy women and moms. Eva is a certified health coach, personal trainer, emotional eating expert, and host of Healthy, Sexy, Strong Podcast. Eva works with women to help them end the battle with food and their bodies so they can live and love their lives.

Eva shares how self-care is more than having a spa day. She explains the difference between transactional self-care and transformational self-care, and walks me through how transformational self care is a holistic practice that enhances and enriches your life on the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social levels.

Find out why transformational self-care is key to improving your mood and having a good relationship with yourself, and what actions you can take to promote your well-being. Learn why each self-care practice is individual, the Eight Dimensions of Wellness adaptation, and how you can reframe your thoughts to prioritize self-care into your daily life.

Show Highlights

[02:01] How Eva made the leap from her former job to her health coaching business.

[05:21] What is transformational self-care?

[08:20] Elements of individual self-care within the Eight Dimensions of Wellness Adaptation.

[12:06] How you can practice environmental self-care.

[14:17] Prioritizing self-care practices daily.

[16:45] Why self-care isn’t selfish or frivolous.

[20:18] Self-care and playing the long game. Why it’s important for your mental health.

[24:45] Types of physical self-care you can do for yourself.

[27:15] The importance of having healthy boundaries.

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Visit Eva on the web

Listen in to her podcast

My interview on Healthy, Sexy, Strong Podcast