Mindful Pause Podcast

Christina Tidwell is a Registered Nurse and Holistic Health Coach who weaves conventional medicine with a holistic approach to health and wellness.

At the age of 18, Christina was diagnosed with adult onset still’s disease, a rare autoimmune disease that left her exhausted and confused, along with digestive issues and other issues like fevers, aches and pains. While we were all freshman in college drinking jungle juice at frat parties, she felt imprisoned, left out and overwhelmed of how to fix her health. She just wanted to go back to her life of being a normal teen.

Even at this young age, she tapped into her inner wisdom that said, “I am centered regardless of my environment.” Traumatic events can be amazing catalysts for growth if we can let them be. Christina began her journey at a young age to learn a better way to control her health and ultimately found her calling to others heal themselves.

Today on Soul School she shares her healing journey as well as how you too can tune into your body and create ways to heal yourself so you can live a beautiful, vibrant life not ruled by disease.

Please find Christina Tidwell at: http://www.christinatidwell.com

Instagram: @Livewell_christina

Podcast: The Livewell Podcast

Her signature Live Well Program is specifically designed to help you increase energy levels and help you reconnect to your true self not defined by your chronic disease. If you want to finally get a handle on your health, email her to book a complementary 30-minute Discovery Session, and find out more about how you can benefit from one-on-one health and nutrition coaching.

Thank you for RATING and REVIEWING this podcast! Sign up for my newsletter to stay connected!

EP 18: Take the Wheel

It’s easy to feel like you don’t have control, like you’re on a path that not’s yours.

The Ego loves to get caught up in a Victim mentality blaming others, your circumstance, your parents, your environment, the political climate etc., but this just gets you in a rut and honestly gets you nowhere. It just keeps you down.

EP 18: Mantra Monday: YOU are in control

You’re in control over your thoughts, feelings and actions. You don’t have to be a victim of your circumstances, you don’t have to blame others for your situation. You may not like where you’re at today, or whom you’re with, or how you feel, but you have the power to change.

You are a powerful being. When you feel out of control or lost, go back to this mantra this week: I am in control of my thoughts, feelings and actions. I move with intention.

Please head to my website and connect with me! Thank you for rating and reviewing this podcast on iTunes and Spotify

EP 17: Quiet Your Itty Bitty Shitty Committee

Call it the Ego, your inner critic, I call it your itty-bitty-shitty-committee. It’s a committee because sometimes it feels like there are a bunch of people in your head telling you that you’re not good enough, that you’re not doing enough and that there will never be enough. Total scarcity. This voice sometimes shouts so loud and often, that after a while you begin to listen to it and believe it.

I’m passionate about this subject because we all have that voice. It may say different things and will show up differently in different parts of our life’s journey, but it’s there. Sometimes it can shout so loud, we can’t hear the whisper of our heart and soul that is our true and pure essense of joy and abundance.

It’s not a light subject – I guess nothing on this podcast really is!? But it’s an important one. The itty-bitty-shitty-committee has plagued me in my career, sabotaged romantic relationships and has robbed me of joy. As I learned to be mindful of who shows up in my head, I can start to change the dialogue and sift through the fog of BS and see the truth, returning to my true nature.

Let’s start off with the basics - What the heck is your inner critic?

Ego is the false self – the ego loves to criticize, judge and blame you as well as others. Your ego is always looking to find meaning in every stimulus, in order to protect itself. Your ego always wants more. There is never enough. You don’t have enough. You are not good enough. Your fear-driven ego uses a steady stream of judgments to try to protect you – but this “protection” also inadvertently keeps you from realizing and accepting your True Self.

Brene’ Brown calls the ego a “hustler.” The hustler is like a con man, always trying to convince you to do something that is in his best interest, even if doing that thing may not be in your best interest. Your ego is the hustler that is always comparing, judging and criticizing. The hustler is never satisfied.  It wants more, and it’s always hustling and cutting corners to get what it wants. It compares you to others, or how things should be or how they used to be. It is the opposite of in the moment. The ego feels there is never enough, this moment is not good enough and you are not enough. Your ego is fearful, critical and it judges you, but the hustler is not you.

Your Ego typically says “YOU are…” (fill in the blank) not enough, not young enough, skinny enough, talented enough, smart enough, not successful, not lovable, a failure. People and situations can trigger different thoughts are not-enoughness. When I was younger, my ego said, “You’re not thin enough, fit enough, sexy enough, smart enough, not popular enough.” Now it shows up in different ways, “You are not competent, you are a phony, you’re not doing enough, and even sometime, you’re not a good mom.” It is always there. The message just changes.

True Self is the real you, your authentic self - your soul. Your True Self loves you unconditionally and does not judge you. Abundance comes to you, when you are in alignment with your highest energy state and connect with your True Self. Your True Self, or soul, is present, graceful, compassionate, joyful, carefree, playful, passionate, energized, open, loving and knows it is part of something greater. Your True Self has limitless potential and a powerful connection to the divine.

You know you are not in alignment with your True Self, whenever you feel inferior or superior to someone or something – this shows up in our comparing, competing, judging, wishing for something different, beating yourself up, feeling like you’re missing out, or feeling like you are not good enough. 

Abundance comes from the highest vibrational energy level of love, security, openness, and trust. Abundance is realizing that you are enough – that you are whole, present, faithful, joyful, grateful, and able to deal with everyone and everything from a place of healthy self-worth, gratitude and compassion.  Abundance means you trust that this moment is enough. Its being open and trusting that you will receive what you need and that you are exactly where you are supposed to be. It is being aware and grateful in the present moment, while also letting go of that which you cannot control, and accepting with grace and ease that which you are given. Abundance is staying open and trusting that the Universe will take care of you.

When you align with your itty-bitty-shitty-committee, it will sabotage you and rob you of your joy. It can spin stories like no other and keep you stuck in a very small place and limited thinking.

You don’t grow when you follow the Ego. Whenever I feel stuck or in a limited place, I know it’s the ego. And I know I need to investigate and acknowledge and return to my True Self, which is that place of pure joy and expansiveness. Good things happen when I am in alignment with my true self.

We are our worst enemies and can really only hurt ourselves the most. The stuff we think in our heads we would never say to our worst enemies. Yet we repeat it and say it to ourselves over and over again. But that’s why it’s so important to write it down on paper – because we think and say it silently to ourselves all the time. putting it on paper makes it real. Sharing it breaks the shame.

The most beautiful people are not the ones who are perfect. They are the ones who have had pain and suffering, and rise again. They are the ones who are vulnerable. The brave are the ones who lean into fear and the unknown and share their scars.

It’s a powerful thing when we stop running away and numbing – when we can open our eyes to see clearly, and can feel fully in order to release our inner critic. We can then step into a higher vibrational energy to receive what we want. Our pure nature is love, but our itty bitty shitty committee keeps us so far away from that through fear, shame and judgment.

Joseph Campbell says, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

So what is your treasure you seek?

Every time your itty bitty shitty committee starts to get loud and pull you into scarcity thinking, go back to your mantra (see the exercise in the podcast). Let me know how its going for you on my website.

EP 16: Keeping Score Ruins Relationships

Last night, Jake and I had a date night. My frustration had been bubbling for 2 days and I needed to talk to him about it. I’m caught a cold and baby is sick as well, yet I’m still getting up at night, feeding the baby, rocking the baby to sleep several times a night, while my husband is sound asleep. Every time the baby would cough or wake, I would wait for him to proactively get up and take care of her or me, but he would roll over and continue sleeping. If steam could come out of my ears, it would. 

My ego wanted to yell at him, shake my finger, and shame him into how unhelpful he was being but I know that never goes well. We just end up playing a game of ego tug of war. Especially with a newborn baby, it’s important to not tally our duties and keep score. There’s never really equal duty anyway. I have the boobs! When I can step away from my sleepless fog of fury, I know that Jake is a really good dad and wonderful husband. In reality, we’re both exhausted and doing the best we can.

Keeping score breeds resentment. According to John Gottman, my guru of relationships, contempt is one of the 4 things that leads to divorce. The other 3 are: Criticism (check), Defensiveness (yep, I was feeling pretty defensive) and Stonewalling (I know that if Jake and I didn’t have the conversation soon, I would begin to tune him out.

This doesn’t just relate to romantic relationships. It is useful in all relationships.

I used to have so many expectations of people. Of course, you should have reasonable human expectations like being respected, not having harm caused to you and having healthy boundaries.

I’m talking about expecting others to behave how you want them to behave or have unspoken rules of how you think they should be. It’s totally unfair and unkind. For example, if I buy you dinner or a gift, I used to expect you to gush over it and say thank you several times and then reciprocate. If you didn’t, I would be so pissed. I would ruminate of how ungrateful you were. If I texted you and you didn’t text back I would be upset, or even worse, think you don’t want to be my friend. F-ed up, isn’t it? Our ego is crazy and can take us down ghost stories that don’t serve us, waste our time and are not true.

Now, I just give to give for the sake of giving, without expectations or rules, because it makes me feel good to give you a gift that you wanted – to see you smile and to bring joy to you – without any return or expectations. If after a while, the person is a taker, well, then we have another problem, and probably we’re just not in alignment as friends. If I text you and you don’t text back, I shrug it off and think you must be busy and you’ll call me when you can. It keeps life so simple when you don’t have unfair and unspoken rules on others.

It makes giving, love, friendship way fuller.

So, today’s mantra is to Give without expectations - detach from how you expect the other person to be.

Having expectations of people is not genuine. When you can release those rules of how others should be and let people be who they are, this is actually love. Without conditions. Without rules. It’s hard to do. 

At the end of the day, isn’t this really what we want? To be loved unconditionally. To be heard and seen, in our totality, without judgment and expectations. To be understood. This is true love.

Head over to my WEBSITE and let me know how this mantra is helping you!

EP 15: Turning Pain into Purpose with Jenn Hepton

Today’s soulful conversation is with Jenn Hepton, a Certified Grief Support Coach, Life + Wellness Coach, Speaker, Author, and Educator. She coaches ​womxn who want to make sense of their lives after loss and who are tired of hiding their voices and feeling powerless in their grief. She works with them to navigate through the darkness, find a place of expansion, and purpose.

I don’t believe there are accidental meetings. We have soul contracts with each other for lessons that need to be learned and gifts to share with each other. The day I had this conversation with grief coach, Jenn Hepton, was also the day my father passed away. I didn’t know my dad would pass away later that evening. I truly believe the Universe/God/Source/angels sent me Jenn on that specific day as a gift, in preparation of my loss, to hear her sage advice of how to deal with grief, patch up a broken heart and learn how to heal with grace.

This is a heart-wrenching episode. Some people won’t want to hear about loss and will skip this. I get it. We live in a world that doesn’t deal well with pain and loss, maybe because we don’t want to see or feel suffering, or we just don’t know HOW to deal with grief. But as I learned from Jenn, that when we acknowledge pain and hold space to feel our feelings, even the radical acceptance that it is okay not to be okay, we can then heal ourselves and support those who need healing too.

Experiencing 7 pregnancy losses with the loss of her twins at 22 weeks and her daughter Loey at 39 weeks, Jenn’s massive grief lead her to a place in her soul that needed to heal, a place that she didn’t know existed and a deep healing and craving to live a meaningful life. She shares her PTG (post traumatic growth) story of how she turned her pain into serving others.

Jenn is truly a gift. She is my soul sister who has helped me deal with the loss of my father by holding a nurturing and loving space so I can begin putting together my broken pieces of my heart.

Soul Seekers, I hope you find some solace, wisdom and even some peace in our conversation today with this warrior healer, Jenn Hepton as she shares how she turned her pain into purpose on Soul School.

Find Jenn Hepton at: https://www.lossintransition.com

EP 14: The ONE thing to do when feeling overwhelmed

Ever get that knot in your stomach, or you can't stop your mind from racing with thoughts? Welcome to Mantra Monday where this week's intention is to explore how to slow down when feeling overwhelmed.

Step off the mental treadmill to take in the moment and be fully present to the joy and good in your life. This attracts more good in your life. Focusing on ONE good thing allows you to attract MORE good things.

Sometimes it's narrowing your perspective and focusing on ONE good thing to expand your perspective of EVERYTHING.

Intention for the week: What's you small or big joy that brings you back to the JOY in your life? Focus on that and let that guide you throughout your week.

Also please rate and review this podcast. Thanks so much for listening and sharing with someone who could use this intention. Have you subscribed on my website to stay up to date?

I’ve always been kind obsessed with what makes people happy. I had a happy childhood, but I struggled with major insecurities of wanting to be liked and seeking approval of others more than wanting to be authentically myself. I wish I knew at a young age what happy really looked like and how I could cultivate that sooner in life.

I searched for happiness out there. I used to think that if only HE loved me, then I would be happier, or if I could just look THIS way, then I would feel more confident, or if I made more money, then people would respect me. I’ve found out the hard way and over several decades that happiness can’t be found in anything external of yourself. This is not a new concept, but it sure is a hard one to live each day. Although these external factors may influence your mood in a positive way, lasting happiness can only be cultivated within you. Happiness not a thing, it’s a mindset.

I’m sure there are many ingredients to being happy, but I’ve learned that there are 3 essential values that lead to my happiness.

1. Kindness. Research shows that having relationships and friendships create happiness. Happiness is not determined by the number of followers you have on instagram or how many friends you have on Facebook. Rather happiness is determined by the significant relationships you have in your life. When you are kind, people like you. We have all types of friends – the friend you go out with, the friend who you share your deepest emotions with, the friend that makes you laugh, but the best relationships are with those people who are kind. Think about your best relationships – what is that quality you really love about them. Kindness is more than being nice. It’s genuinely caring for another person, listening to them with openness, loving them unconditionally. When you are kind, you will have more meaningful relationships in your life generating a deeper sense of joy and fulfillment.

2. Empathy is the ability to experience the feelings of another person. It’s not to be confused with sympathy, which is caring and understanding for the suffering of others. Empathy goes beyond sympathizing with someone. When you can put yourself in someone else’s shoes, then you can really understand that person. Everyone wants to be seen and heard. You truly see someone when you show empathy.

When you empathize with someone, you can then work on other qualities that you value or wish to cultivate. Currently, I’m trying to be more patient. But I can only extend patience to someone when I can empathize and understand their perspective. Otherwise I will only see it from my lens, which can be a slippery slope to narrow perspective, judgment, defensiveness or unhappiness. Empathy creates unity and connection, all which softens us into a happier mindset.

3. Gratitude. We all know the simple saying Have an attitude of gratitude. It seems cliché, but it’s simple and true. Suffering is created when something does not go the way you expected or an outcome is not what you desired. It’s hard to be thankful during those times. In these moments where life is tough and you feel depleted, overwhelmed or even resentful, how do you have gratitude?

The good news is that you can’t be in an abundance mindset and also be in a scarcity mindset at the same time. They cannot co-exist.

Thoughts and emotions will naturally fluctuate, but you have control over your behavior and actions. This behavior determines your outcome and ultimately how you feel overall, contributing to your sense of happiness.

Being kind, having empathy and having a gratitude mindset are all choices to show up for yourself each day and experience the happiness you deserve.

So as we close our Last podcast for this year, I want to express my gratitude to you for spending your precious time with me. I love reading your reviews and comments and hearing from you! Thank you for sharing this podcast and expanding our Soul School community. I love connecting with you each week and look forward to more soulful conversations in 2019!

Stay connected with me on my WEBSITE for monthly updates, SHOW NOTES, instagram and Facebook.

The consistent practice of meditation is a habit that will help you be more calm, centered, focused, and joyful, at any time, and in any circumstance.

Rather than getting caught up in the Hustler’s recycled inner-dialogue and commentary, dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, mindfulness through meditation enables you to be present to a feeling, a thought, or a situation, without being overwhelmed by it. It allows you to be fully in the here and now, instead of wishing for something else.

Instead of constantly editing the story in your head and reacting unconsciously, you can step back, create a little bit of space between you and your thoughts and emotions (especially negative ones). You simply let your thoughts happen, so you can feel them fully, allowing those thoughts to pass completely. This process creates a small gap that helps you mindfully respond from a calm and peaceful place.

In this way, meditation helps to keep the voice in your head from running amok and creating a lot of havoc in your life. Being mindful doesn’t necessarily make the thoughts go away, but it does help you reduce your attachment to those thoughts.

Meditation is not going to solve all of your problems, but it will help you deal with them more effectively, by enabling you to respond, rather than react, to external stimuli, giving you more focus, and helping you to be more calm and composed.

All of this may sound quite lovely, but how do you actually meditate? Well, there are many forms of meditation, but here are 5 simple steps for starting and building your meditation practice:

1. R.P.M. - Rise – Pee - Meditate.
2. One-Minute to ZEN - Now, set your timer for 1 minute. Yep, that’s right. Just 1 minute of quiet time for you to gently observe your thoughts, and check in with your feelings and emotions. You don’t need to quiet all of your thoughts or become a Zen Master in 60 seconds. Simply breathe…and allow each breath to create space between you and each of your thoughts and emotions.

Over time, try to build up the duration, first to a couple of minutes, then to 5 minutes, then to 10 minutes.

1. Observe and Just Breathe - Gently observe your thoughts and emotions and breathe deeply. Deep breathing brings you back to the present moment. Close your eyes and take five to ten deep breaths inhaling for a count of 5-6 seconds and exhaling for a count of 6-8 seconds. You may begin to feel a little lighter after just 30 seconds of mindful, deep breathing. Whenever you get off track and lost in your thoughts, feelings or emotions, know that you always have the power to return to the present moment, at any time, simply by returning to your breath.
2. Let Go of Expectations - It’s natural to want to hold on to a “good” thought and push away a “bad” thought, but both of these reactions keep you locked in a cycle of suffering, because nothing stays the same – everything changes. There is no such thing as good or bad meditation. This is simply your way of checking-in to observe your energy level and help you become more mindful during the rest of your day.

The super-duper-secret to meditation (and for many things in life, for that matter) is non-attachment to the result. You can’t always control the outcome. Drop your attachment to the outcome, and enjoy the journey for what it is.

1. Practice Daily - Meditating every day is a healthy habit that helps you know your mind, and set you on a path for the evolution of your soul. Practicing meditation at least once every day allows you to fully live each moment and be more present and mindful in everything you do. When you live with awareness, in the present moment, you can let go of the story, the criticism, and the judgments of your mind. You can experience yourself and others fully. You can be aware of your ego’s hustling criticism, listen to the truth, respond with compassion, and be free from fear and judgment.

For show notes, please go to my WEBSITE

Thank you for sharing and reviewing this podcast!

EP 11: Mantra Monday - Worrying is like paying interest on a debt not owed

I drove by this church near our house the other day. They always have cool quotes on their road sign in front of the church. This time it read “Worrying is like paying interest on a debt not owed.”

I don’t know if it’s woman thing, or a people thing, but I tend to worry a lot. Or at least my mind turns over the same thought a lot – often times, that thought is negative.

Our mind is busy, and can keep us stuck re-circling the same stories of the past or future. We ruminate over events from the past, recycling those same stories. Even though the event has already happened, we relive it again and again in our head. Or we spend time worrying or planning the future, looping the same dialogue all of which hijacks the present moment.

Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert discovered we spend half of the day thinking about something other than what we’re actually doing. They also found that when people are not thinking about what they’re doing, they’re not as happy as when they’re engaged. In particular, negative mind wandering — thinking negative thoughts, or wishing you were somewhere else — was more likely to lead to unhappiness in their next moments.

Worrying is like paying interest on a debt not owed. Worrying and ruminating is annoying and we know they don’t do us any good. What’s really scary is that these thought patterns can actually be really harmful to your health.

For those of you, like my engineer husband, who loves scientific data, mind wandering and specifically rumination, can negatively influence our health.

In the best-selling book by Elizabeth Blackburn “The Telomere Effect” she explains that our chromosomes that carry our genetic material have caps on our DNA, tiny protein chains that are called telomeres. Like the plastic cap on the ends of a shoelace that protect it from fraying, telomeres form caps at the ends of the chromosomes and keep the genetic material from unraveling. Telomeres help determine how fast a cell ages. When they become too short, the cell stops dividing altogether. Telomere length gives a sense of your underlying health. Longer telomeres are good and shorter telomeres are associated with a reduced life span and greater risk for the many chronic illnesses that gain traction with aging. Those of us who want longer and healthier lives will want longer telomeres.

Even though you are born with a particular set of genes, the way you live can influence how they express themselves. What this means: aging is a dynamic process made up of your lifestyle choices that could possibly be accelerated or slowed — and, in some aspects, even reversed. So how does the church sign about worrying relate to your health and aging process?

According to an article on ted.com, Scientists have learned that 5 thought patterns appear to be unhealthy for telomeres including:

1. Cynical hostility which is defined by high anger and frequent thoughts that other people cannot be trusted.
2. Pessimism or negative thinking.
3. Thought suppression is the attempt to push away or not deal with unwanted thoughts and feelings.
4. Mind wandering, usually leading to negative thoughts or just keeping us stuck in busy chatter in our mind.
5. Rumination is the act of rehashing problems over and over which is different than thoughtful reflection or internal analysis.

Often when we ruminate, or turn over a story, we tend to go toward the negative. None of this works in your benefit. Rumination never leads to a solution, only to more ruminating.

“When you ruminate, stress sticks around in your body long after the reason for the stress is over, in the form of prolonged high blood pressure, elevated heart rate, and higher levels of cortisol. When you are thinking negative thoughts about the past, you are more likely to be unhappy, and you may possibly even experience higher levels of resting stress hormones.”

The more you allow your mind to wander into negative thought patterns and ruminate over the past these create a conditioned response that is often automatic, exaggerated and domineering. They take over your mind. It’s as if they tie a blindfold around your brain so you can’t see what is really going on around you.

We think we don’t have control over our thoughts, but really, thoughts and feelings come and go. They’re just thoughts. They’re not important unless we give them weight.

The good news is that when you become more aware of your thoughts, you take off the blindfold. You won’t necessarily stop the thoughts, but you have more clarity. Meditation and focusing on your breath creates awareness of your thoughts and brings you back to the present moment.

Take a moment and take a few cleansing breaths. Imagine watching your thoughts like a movie screen. Instead of getting caught up in that thought and story, step back and create some space between you and it so you can have some clarity. From this awareness, you can choose a different response, rather than unconsciously looping that same negative story. This brings you back to the moment and to your power.

Lately my mind has been wandering a lot! Just by being aware that your mind has wandered can help you bring your focus back to the present moment. Sometimes when focusing on my breath or even meditation is not working, I will literally say out loud “telomeres,” which snaps me out of my mind chatter and reminds me that my rumination is actually negatively affecting my cells and aging them faster. With time and practice, you will learn to encounter your own ruminations or negative thoughts and return to the present moment…which is exactly where you’re supposed to be. 

Resources:

The Telomere Effect by Elizabeth Blackburn 

https://ideas.ted.com/could-your-thoughts-make-you-age-faster/

TED Talk: Want to be happier? Stay in the moment)

TED Talk: The surprising science of happiness) 

SHOW NOTES

EP 010: Brand like a Mom Boss with Nikki Arensman

Meet Nikki Arensman, a bad ass mompreneur who will share her journey from starting JIVA active wear with just a few bucks and sewing machine, turning her active women’s wear and swimwear line into a million dollar business.

Ever the branding guru, she’s also the owner and brand coach of The Well Co. helping women entrepreneurs realize and create their dream business while feeling so freaking good doing it. Also check out her podcast BRANDED on iTunes.

Today we will talk business and brand building, how to keep it all together as a mom boss, and how to stay inspired and find harmony in business and family life.

You can find Nikki on my website for the SHOW NOTES or at:

www.NikkiArensman.com

@instagram 

Thank you for subscribing on my website and please leave a review and rating on iTunes. See you next week!