Everyday Better with Leah Smart

Bea Chestnut is a psychotherapist, consultant and globally-recognized expert on the enneagram, a personality typing system based on ancient spiritual traditions. For the past 27 years, Bea has studied, written about and taught the enneagram in both therapeutic and business settings. She uses it as a map for guiding her clients towards a deeper understanding of themselves and others.

On this week’s episode of Everyday Better, we are bringing back one of our favorites: Leah and Bea’s deep dive into the enneagram – what it is, where it comes from and how it can be used to raise your level of awareness. Bea describes each of the nine enneagram types, including each type’s growth path for reaching a higher level of consciousness. She also shares how she discovered the enneagram and explains why she thinks it’s one of the most powerful personal development tools in the world.

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love this one: The Enneagram at Work: Leveling Up Your Leadership Skills.

For more on the enneagram, check out Bea’s book The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up: Find Your Path, Face Your Shadow, Discover Your True Self.

Follow Leah Smart and Bea Chestnut on LinkedIn.

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On paper, Amber Rae had a dream life: she lived in Mexico with her husband and business partner. She was a budding memoirist and a speaker, teaching people how to be true to themselves and find emotional clarity. But beneath the surface, Amber felt disconnected and unfulfilled.

Then one day she woke up. She realized she had built her entire life around the expectations of others and she set out to do something different.

This week on Everyday Better, Amber shares her story of dismantling her old life in the pursuit of authenticity, breaking free from people-pleasing and learning to disappoint others along the way. She explains why disappointing others isn’t selfish, but instead a learnable skill we can use to live in alignment with our true selves.

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love this one: Warning: This Podcast Will Remind You of Your Mortality with Jodi Wellman.

Get Amber’s book Loveable: One Woman’s Path from Good to Free here.

Follow Leah Smart and Amber Rae on LinkedIn.

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Have you ever made a mistake and immediately thought, “I’m so stupid, what’s wrong with me?” Suddenly, you’re not just seeing a mistake, you’re facing a wall of shame, anxiety, distress and procrastination. 

Today, Leah and therapist Kimberley Quinlan discuss why being hard on yourself won’t actually make you perform any better, and how we can use self-compassion as a tool for recovering from a failure and moving faster towards our goals. 

Kimberley guides Leah through a test developed by Dr. Kristin Neff to measure how much self-compassion Leah actually has in challenging moments.  Follow along with them, and write down your own answers to the questions to see where you fall on the self-compassion scale. 

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love this one: Everything You Think You Know About Happiness Is Wrong.

Follow Leah Smart and Kimberley Quinlan ⁠on LinkedIn.

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As humans, we’re natural storytellers. The stories we tell shape how we see ourselves, others and the world around us. But not all of our stories are helpful — some keep us trapped in cycles of fear, blame or regret.

In this week’s episode, Leah shares a simple exercise from grief expert David Kessler to help you investigate how you tell your stories and rewrite the ones keeping you stuck. Using three examples from her own life, Leah breaks down her narratives, separating fact from fiction and discovering more empowering versions of her stories.

To go deeper, check out David Kessler’s Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief Workbook, which includes this and other tools for healing and reflection.

Listen to Leah’s full conversation with David ⁠here⁠.

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When author and entrepreneur Nick Ortner first discovered tapping, he had no idea the impact it would have on his life. Nearly two decades later, he’s helped millions manage stress, anxiety, chronic pain and other physical and mental health challenges using the research-backed practice also known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

This week, Nick joins Leah to break down the science behind tapping, how it targets the brain’s stress response and why naming the negative emotions we carry with us is the first step to letting those emotions go. He also guides Leah through a short tapping exercise you can follow along with, and explains how tapping can be used in conjunction with other tools like meditation, therapy and mindfulness to support your mental and emotional well-being.

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love this one: Can't Meditate? Just Breathe with JP Crimi

Follow ⁠Leah Smart⁠ and ⁠Nick Ortner⁠ on LinkedIn.

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Every single day, we’re confronted with more information than we could possibly verify. So how do we ever know we’re right? And what do we do when we find out we’re wrong?

This week on Everyday Better, professor Alex Edmans shares why you’re probably less open-minded than you think—and what you can do about it. As a researcher, Alex loves data. But after witnessing firsthand our tendency to cherry-pick the data we want to be true, he began searching for a better way to find truth in an era of information overload.

In this conversation, Alex breaks down our most common mental biases and shares the steps you can take to confront them. He also explains why challenging our beliefs is the key to living a freer, more self-led life.

Get Alex’s book May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It here.

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love this one: Demystifying Wellness Trends with Medical Journalist Dr. Trisha Pasricha

Follow Leah Smart and Alex Edmans on LinkedIn.

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Most of us avoid thinking about death until it hits close to home – but what if facing it head-on could actually help you live more peacefully and joyfully? 

This week, Leah sits down with Julie McFadden, better known as Hospice Nurse Julie. After working as an ICU nurse for many years, Julie transitioned to hospice care, where she now helps patients and families navigate the end of life with honesty, compassion and even a little humor. In their conversation, Julie reflects on her personal philosophy: that contemplating death daily has helped her live with more intention and contentment. She also breaks down the biology of how we die and explains end-of-life phenomena.

Whether you’ve faced loss yourself or want to live more fully today, this episode will shift the way you think about life, death and everything that happens in between.

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love this one: How a Career in Hospice Care Made Nurse Hadley “Death Positive”

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Do you ever wish you had more time for what matters most to you?

Today, Leah shares a simple time management exercise designed to bring more clarity and joy to your schedule. Developed by researcher Cassie Holmes — a fan-favorite guest on the show — this technique, known as Time Crafting, helps you understand how you’re really spending your time and how to build your calendar around what energizes you.

Using her own schedule as a guide, Leah walks through the Time Crafting method step-by-step. She shares which activities left her feeling fulfilled, which ones drained her energy and what changed after just one week of mindfully tracking her time.

If you’ve ever reached the end of a packed day and wondered where your time went — or questioned if you spent it on what truly matters — this exercise is for you.

Listen to Leah’s full conversation with Cassie Holmes here.

Download Cassie’s templates for Time Crafting here.

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“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” We’ve all heard it, maybe even lived by it. But what if turning your passion into a career is doing more harm than good? 

In this episode, sociologist Erin Cech challenges our cultural obsession with finding fulfillment at work. Drawing from her book “The Trouble with Passion”, Erin explains how the “passion principle” can exacerbate societal inequalities as well as burnout. She also shares practical questions to ask yourself about the relationship you want to have with paid work, and offers ways to find meaning in a variety of places.

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love this one: Redefine Your Relationship to Work with Former Top Magazine Editor Jennifer Romolini

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Morra Aarons-Mele, host of the podcast "The Anxious Achiever," long understood her challenges at work as byproducts of anxiety and depression. She had a hard time working for other people and often found herself saying the wrong thing in meetings. But a recent discovery changed everything: Morra learned she’s neurodivergent. That realization helped her reframe not only her struggles, but also her strengths, and paved the way towards a more authentic, empowered way of working.

In this week's episode of Everyday Better, Morra shares how embracing her neurodivergence helps her tap into her full potential. She and Leah discuss what neurodivergence encompasses, the hidden power of introversion and how our workplaces need to evolve to support a broader range of minds. Morra also explains why difference isn’t a liability but a competitive advantage, and how to leverage your own unique strengths to show up stronger at work. 

If you liked this episode, check out Morra’s podcast “The Anxious Achiever” here.

Listen to my conversation with Dr. Barry Kudrowitz on why play and humor belong at work here.

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