Millennial Midlife

A lot of times when I’m out walking, doing yoga, or meditating, I get a lot of clarity around new topics for the podcast. Today’s episode is one of those topics – emotional responsibility, or taking responsibility for how you feel. I wanted to bring this to Calmer Conversations because it’s something that comes up very often in my 1:1 coaching and group programs. This episode is bite sized and will teach you how you can start to consider your own emotions, rather than the ingrained belief that many of us have which is that we are responsible for others’ emotions and conversely, that others are responsible for ours. I hope this helps! 

If you’re interested in more focused support, I encourage you to check out The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

Episode Resources:

• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Learn more about my courses here.

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Today I want to talk about the rule of identity, and specifically past identity and future identity, in creating change in your life. That change could be something that feels relatively small, like you may want to feel calmer  (even though I would argue that's probably a big change), or it could be something really major, like you want to change careers or I you want to make a big move or do something else really drastic in your life. No matter where you are in that space, you're probably listening because you want to feel differently in your life on some level. What I'm going to talk about today can be applicable across the board,, so don't think that you need to have major identity shifts on your radar or changes in your life for this to be applicable for you. If that sounds good to you, let's get started.

Episode Resources:

• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Learn more about my courses here.

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Have you ever set a goal, say waking up really early to work out before you get your day started… but then your alarm goes off in the morning and you hit snooze. You end up feeling disappointed, frustrated, and maybe angry. You set a new commitment to do better the next day, but then the cycle repeats. If so, this episode is going to be really interesting for you. We’re exploring the duality of the brain, focusing on the primitive and higher functioning parts. When you listen, you’ll learn how these two parts influence behavior, decision-making, and the challenges of procrastination. It’s really important to understand these brain mechanisms to facilitate change and improve mental well-being so let’s dive in. 

If you’re interested in more focused support, I encourage you to check out The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

Episode Resources:

• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Learn more about my courses here.

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

A lot of times in this work you’ll hear me mention “brain based change”, but what does this actually mean? When I am talking about using your brain to change, about using a brain based approach to creating change in your life, to feeling differently, to acting differently, what I'm talking about fundamentally is understanding what's happening in your head. This means understanding what is happening in your nervous system and working with that so that you can create change from a root cause level. The foundation of this is, you can probably guess it, is understanding your thoughts – what is a story? What is a belief? How do they play into my life and what's happening? So that's where we're gonna start today. This episode is good for anyone who is just starting with this work or for those of you who have been doing this for a while, but need a refresher.

Episode Resources:

• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Join The Calmer Brain Club
• Learn more about Nervous System Self-Care

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

As I'm recording this episode on September 10th, yesterday was my birthday and I turned 40, which feels momentous. So for this episode, I was thinking, because it was on my brain a lot yesterday and today even, that I might share a little bit about where I was 10 years ago in case that helps you and also just to give you a little bit more of an idea of my story and where I've come from and what's happened in my life and what I've kind of created over that time period. I’m blown away when I look at where I was a decade ago and compare that to what my life looks like today. At the core of a lot of the changes I’ve made in my own life, is the understanding that happiness comes within, which we touched on last week, so listen to that episode! But I hope that today’s episode will help demonstrate the significance of making changes and letting go of things that don't align with who we are, the concept of living our own lives instead of living someone else's, and the importance of measuring our progress and growth.

Episode Resources:

• Bhagavad Gita
• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Join The Calmer Brain Club
• Learn more about Nervous System Self-Care

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Before listening to this episode, I want you to take five minutes to end this thought: “I’ll be happy when…” or you can insert calm/successful/loved or whatever it is you’re desiring at this moment. Give yourself the opportunity to brainstorm and write down everything that comes up, whether it’s something big or small. The reason why I want to start to play with this question and the reason why we're devoting an entire episode to it is because it pushes our happiness off into the future – that happiness can only come when you’ve checked all the boxes on that list. But what if you could retrain your brain to think that happiness is within you instead of dependent on something outside of you? That happiness is actually available now, in the present, rather than the unattainable future? This concept used to be really hard for me to understand, and maybe you’re reading this feeling the same way. So I hope this episode helps clear it up! 

Episode Resources:

• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Join The Calmer Brain Club
• Learn more about Nervous System Self-Care

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

If you’ve listened to the past couple episodes of the podcast or if you’re connected with me on social media, you know that my family and I have recently moved from a small island in Maine to Virginia. Not only that, my kids are starting school for the first time ever. So in this episode, I want to discuss how I have been using her work to support myself and my children through the changes and shifts in our lives. You will learn the  importance of understanding and processing our own thoughts and emotions, as well as caring for our nervous system in order to show up as present and supportive parents. By doing this work, we can create a safe space for our children to experience and process their own emotions. Get started today! 

Episode Resources:

• Listen to last week’s episode
• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Learn more about The Calmer Brain Club

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

In this episode, I thought I would share my personal experience of using the tools and skills I talk about in each episode of this podcast during a period of change and uncertainty in my own life. I’m sharing how I navigated the emotions and challenges that arose during our recent move (while being pregnant!) and how I stayed grounded and calm throughout the process. You’ll hear the importance of recognizing and accepting emotions, asking meaningful questions, and being aware of thoughts and beliefs. I’m also highlighting the power of practicing tools such as EFT tapping, coherent breathing, meditative walking, journaling, and prayer. It’s my hope that this episode will encourage you to commit to doing this work over time to create peace and calm in your own life.

Episode Resources:

• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Learn more about The Wins Course or The Calmer Brain Club

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Today on Calmer Conversations, I want to talk about the difference between intentional thought work and toxic positivity. Sometimes when people find out about this work or sometimes when I get questions about it, they think that coaching or they think mindset work is really about only using positive affirmations or always keeping a positive mindset and I don't think that could be further from the truth. In reality, when I think about this work, I really think about how it's an embracing of all of your humanity and all of the thoughts you have, all of the emotions you have, and the entire human experience. But I understand why it can come across the other way and why people can even use this work as a new form of perfectionism or a new thing to do right. They can start feeling really bad if they do have negative thoughts – so that's what we're gonna talk about today, moving from toxic positivity and embracing all of your humanity to create lasting change. If that sounds like something you're interested in, this episode is definitely for you! 

Episode Resources:

• 3 Tools for Calmer Change: Acceptance
• Byron Katie
• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Learn more about The Calmer Brain Club

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Today I want to talk about silly thoughts, more specifically that there are no silly thoughts or that what we judge as silly thoughts are actually not silly. While this sounds a little bit funny to be using the word silly so many times, I think this is something that comes up quite a lot, particularly for people who have an active cognitive brain, consider themselves to be overachievers, or have a decent understanding of how their brain works. Most thoughts don't make logical sense and are based on past experiences and beliefs. In truth, calling a thought silly puts the brain into resistance, making it harder to make changes. So I want to chat about the importance of curiosity and acceptance when it comes to “silly” thoughts, and suggest practices that will help you shift from judgment to curiosity and enable you to work with your thoughts and create change.

Episode Resources:

• Visit the full show notes page here.
• Instagram: @ceceliabmandryk
• Let’s work together! Learn more about The Wins Course or The Calmer Brain Club

Mentioned in this episode:

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course

Learn more about The 5-Minute Shift mini course, a brain-based approach to feeling better now. It’s on sale for $29!

The 5-Minute Shift Mini Course