We all have a longing to feel good and pure, but the reality of our humanity is inner conflict and continual contradiction. We have dark and light impulses; we have tendencies to both generosity and selfishness. In this episode, we explore how we are changed from the inside-out: not through attaining through will power some level of manufactured purity, but in learning to hold all of our contradictions with acceptance and humility. And we explore practices to help us live into this flourishing life.

Even if it gets suppressed or ignored, we all have a longing to be good and to do good. This collective longing can express itself in the shape of purity culture—sociological movements in which people strive to be pure, with sexuality and sexual purity often at the forefront. In this episode, we explore the evangelical purity movement of the 1990s and also purity movements more generally. Specifically, we explore how lasting change happens, and how we can escape the false gold of purity culture by pursuing real transformation.

Do we see desire as good or as something warranting our suspicion and judgment? In this episode, we explore the role of desire in Western history and, specifically, the different conceptions of desire within Greek and Hebrew thought. Far from being a mere academic exercise, understanding how desire has been framed in history can help us understand our own relationships to desire. This is paramount, because only when you are willing to address your core desires can you truly live into a flourishing life.

In this second episode on Internal Family Systems, we explore how to integrate our exiled parts. Ultimately, integration happens through conversation—through naming, labelling, and talking about the exiled parts of us, and by learning how our unwanted behavior is the very thing pointing us to the legitimate needs and desires which must be addressed if we are to live a flourishing life.

A consistent practice of gratitude will change the structure of your brain and transform the way you see the world. In this episode, we explore the gratitude ladder—a simple rubric for giving thanks no matter the challenges or circumstances you may be facing. 

No bad parts. That’s the mantra of Internal Family Systems thinking, which explores the notion that each of us is made up of various parts (including exiles, managers, and firefighters), each with a different function, within our personality. This episode explores Internal Family Systems with the goal of helping you become self-aware and a fully integrated human being. And it’s about how each of us changes our behavior through a life of awareness, non-judgment, and compassion.

Differentiation is the antidote to anxiety. Differentiated people refuse emotional reactivity, they stay rationally grounded, they refuse to take on the anxiety of a system, and they are able to form meaningful relationships and connections. In this episode, we explore a rubric for practicing differentiation in everyday in life, in order to live a life of courage and hope.

All communities involving human beings can be held captive by anxiety. In this episode, we explore the core ideas of Family Systems Theory: that in unhealthy systems, the entire system may orient around the anxiety of its most anxious member(s). That systems are resistant to change. That triangulation is a function of codependency. And that the only path out of anxious systems is through self-leadership and differentiation, through which a new and extraordinary future becomes possible.

Everyday there are things we know to do and that we avoid doing. Such norms and customs make up the stuff of culture. But where do these cultural rules of engagement come from? In this episode, we explore how all culture traces back to our desire and, ultimately, to our desire to be known, included, and accepted. Far from being an academic exercise, understanding where culture comes from can change the most intimate details of your life. 

Human beings tend to see differences as a threat, but to feel safe and secure we look for people who look like us or who we deem similar to us. These dynamics may be natural, but they can lock us into very low levels of relating to others and to the world. In this episode, we explore how our core, common desires are the key to establishing connection with others, no matter how different they might seem. And we explore how storytelling can open up new worlds of connection that literally change everything.