🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

Saying yes too many times to things I don’t really want to do builds up a lot of resentment. When someone taps into my desire to belong, take care of people and be of benefit to those around me, it’s easy for me to say yes before I’ve even processed their request.

I like my brain space to be mellow these days, and I like simple matter-of-fact decision-making. One of my clues that I haven’t maintained a boundary is that I think about it all the time, and it clogs up my mind and creates tumultuous emotions.

I have to own my own emotions and my involvement in becoming the person who is solving someone else’s problems.

To stop overcommitting, I have to first be honest about what I want to accomplish and do for myself. What do those goals require of me mentally, timewise, financially, socially, and physically? I can only stop overcommitting if I assign value to my own goals and KNOW what they take so that I know how much a new project might overwhelm or derail my plans and desires. And that makes it a lot easier to stand by and let others resolve their goals without me taking it over or managing it for them – because I am managing myself really well instead.

When you want to please everyone, you don’t even realize you have a limit of your own until you’ve gone so far past it that you are overwhelmed, tired, and resentful. We have to stop that! Being yourself and doing your stuff is enough. We don’t need to get love by solving other people’s problems. We are worthy of love simply when existing, as we are, with no strings or favors attached.

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

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🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

A worry we have when transitioning environments is that the same problems we had in our last experience might follow us to our new one. We often externalize these fears and blame our troubles on the outside circumstances rather than on ourselves. But we also have a deep worry that the situation will repeat, because we know on some level that it’s us who have the problem, and running from our problems can’t actually solve anything.

To solve the problem, we need to get honest with ourselves about the part we play in our current woes and commit to changing how we behave, feel, and think about it. And that is SO scary for us that most of the time we keep ourselves too busy to have enough time to realistically do that.

Here are some strategies for coming to terms with conflict and setting boundaries that allow us to set the security and peace that we are hoping for, even when it feels really hard.

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

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🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

Confidence is a sliding scale of belief in ourselves and our ability to get something done. Most of us have a variety of beliefs about ourselves in different areas of our lives.

If you rate yourself highly in an area, you are confident that you can get the job done, and no matter what it’s going to get done. And if you rate it very lowly, you don’t believe you can complete the task and you believe things will get in the way of you achieving that goal.

When we look for things that we 100% know we can do, like brushing our teeth in the morning, it’s a way we can find proof that we can do things. Confidence doesn’t have to look like a heroic movie with you dodging explosions while saving puppies – it often looks like doing regular stuff and not even noticing that we did it because it’s so easy and obvious for us.

When we practice the feeling of knowing we’re capable and what it feels like when we do things we just assume we can do or do well, it gives us a taste of what it will feel like when we accomplish the huge thing we’re scared that we can’t do yet.

Practicing this experience of being with yourself during simple easy tasks gives you the fortitude to keep trying until you are competent and feel great about a new skill that feels hard.

Sometimes building up resilience and through that, confidence, is a science of eliminating excuses.

So many of us want all of our goals to be achieved overnight, but the reality is that increasing our confidence takes time and we need that confidence to keep going and complete our goals. I try as much as I can to figure out how I need to feel and what do I need to believe about myself, in general, to get going doing the thing I am avoiding.

From there, the goals begin to be accomplished. But it takes showing up again and again, and that takes building my confidence daily on each of these tasks.

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

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🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

What does overstimulation look and feel like and how does it cycle in our lives?

It feels like everything is too loud, too bright, too demanding, and overwhelming.

It can look like snapping at people you love, like wanting to scream and pull your hair out at the drop of a hat, or like staring at an email for twenty minutes without being able to bring yourself to respond.

The way I deal with it is finally admitting that I am overwhelmed and need time and space for myself to process all the input that’s coming in.

Often I realize that I get to this space of overstimulation because I felt like I have done so much without getting all the love and appreciation I wanted to get for doing so. When this is the case, taking time to spoil myself with words of gratitude and kindness helps way more than I could have anticipated. It takes the entire experience down five notches and fills up the parts of me that were drained.

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

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🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

What does it mean to be an excellent receiver of gifts? Does it mean I am able to accept a gift and say thank you instead of saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t have!”

I had to work on my ability to receive, and for a long time, I could only conceive of this as receiving gifts. It didn’t occur to me that you can also receive money, fame, praise, love, surprises, friends, rest, and time.

I had to learn that I didn’t always have to be the first one to give to a relationship, but I could also allow people to come to me and receive them instead of always delivering myself.

We sometimes feel we have to fill our time and have difficulty with resting and receiving rather than doing. 

I uncovered a lack of appreciation and feeling appreciated. Receiving was difficult for me at first because I had trouble appreciating myself and being able to receive appreciation from others. As I learned to open up to this, it allowed much more love and receiving to be possible, and for more experiences to open up that I hadn’t had before.

This showed up in my finances when I noticed I was ok with trading and offering free work but had a hard time receiving money. I had to figure out why I was experiencing that, and what I could do about it.

Resolving this had a lot to do with being willing to show up vulnerably and share from my heart and have it reflected back to me.

Where am I thinking what I already have isn’t enough? The feeling of not being able to get what I want no matter what I do leads to being closed off, unwelcoming, and not open to receiving. 

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

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🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

Seeking acknowledgment and praise is universal – and we often look for it outside of ourselves. 

When I am frustrated that others aren’t noticing how much I’m sacrificing myself on their behalf, I now know to look within to notice where I’m not giving myself what I need and am looking for from them. I need to question why I believe I need to do what I am doing in order to have that.

If other people are a reflection of what I’m putting out in the world, it means that when I am not seeing love, respect, and appreciation from them, maybe it’s ME who isn’t putting respect love, and praise out there.

When you’re able to slow down and ask, “What am I radiating at this moment?” If I notice I am seething in frustration, then it’s no wonder that I see frustration and anger everywhere around me. What does it take to turn that moment around and make space to feel something else?

Often it requires allowing yourself to feel exactly how you are without sending it away from yourself. It takes ownership of your experience and allows you to breathe through the emotion as you continue on with life.

I use mindfulness to watch myself and describe what I am doing at the moment without trying to alter it.

For example, I might be a person out for a walk in the sunshine where the wind is cold and my cheeks hurt, and I am feeling pissed off and waking very fast. When I can just be with myself as an impartial observer of my thoughts and feelings, it moves through faster and often I see the answer of what to do to help me feel better and give myself what I need and really wanted.

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

Support the show

🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

We consume a lot of outside feedback and information constantly. There is mental clutter flying at us from all directions and I think we all feel like there’s a lot coming at us all the time. We feel a sense of duty to show up and take it all on. But it leaves us exhausted, tired and depleted, and we all recognize that we need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of everyone else we care about.

What does it mean to refill your cup? We all want to fill our cup, but the well is empty. When we turn the tap on, there’s no water flowing.

So how do we get it to come back on?

We need a break for ourselves. Not for our kids, or our spouses, coworkers, or businesses. We need to stop. We are afraid though that if we stop, it will all fall apart and our lives will break. We are terrified that if we step off the wheel, we’ll never get back on it.

This is a symptom of taking too long to have taken the break. The fear grows from withholding, not from giving and taking. We want to be allowed to care about each other and about ourselves in a human way. We need pauses to allow rest and refilling.

And the refilling – the source of nourishment and water – arises without effort. It takes time for the well to refill. But if we stop drawing from it long enough, nature takes care of this for us.

Part of this nourishment and trust in life comes from stopping long enough to be held by the universe, to allow that just for those moments, nothing is needed from you other than just existing. And existing is enough. The nourishment will flow in. You can relax, and it will be OK.

Doing something for delight and no other reason can help a lot. Rolling around on the floor to see if it feels nice, closing your eyes in a sunbeam and enjoying the warmth – these things are unusual for most of us, and the novelty of it is so nourishing. It breaks the monotony and boringness of our everyday.

What kind of fun, cool thing do you want to do? What if it could be effortless to just show up to that moment and enjoy it? This desire to break the monotony is why we LOVE vacations! But we can embrace this desire and build it into everyday moments.

If you feel like your well is empty – consider that you aren’t limited to only one well. If yours has dried up, you can find another water source! But you have to move. You have to try something different. But it will be so worth it.

Follow your joy, discover more water, and freely share it! There will be more.

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

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🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

One of the ways you can tell that a goal isn’t in alignment with your values is that it feels like torture to show up and begin. Now, some discomfort is a given when you’re stretching into a new or unknown area. But there is more resistance when you’re trying to push yourself to do something that you don’t honestly want to do at all, and you question the end goal’s purpose.

I think of it as a slime factor and sludge that surrounds actions that are in misalignment, versus a kind of bliss and flow that accompanies actions towards goals that are in alignment with who you are and what you want to be in life.

When the only reason we do something is that we feel we have to or that someone else told us to do it, that’s a good time to question the underlying motivation and if the action is worth the effort, the resistance, and the struggle.

Do your goals serve you? Have you picked up the cultural goals that are out there in the ethers, or your family’s legacy of plans? Do you love that, or do you want something different?

We have to work to deconstruct the goals we inherit because they are mostly so subconscious we don’t even realize that we have a choice about some of the actions we take and paths we follow.

The things we try to build are coming from within us, and the things we inherit show up as us trying to assume the shape of a life we suppose is good and right. It’s like fitting into an uncomfortable pair of pants that just don’t fit no matter how we try.

If we have big expectations about how things have to show up for us, it causes us alarm and stress. Pushing ourselves into a corner saying that things can only happen one way is deeply upsetting. If we allow our goals to show up completed in marvelous and unpredictable ways, we make space to be delighted by our experiences.

Following our inner desires and saying yes to our smallest nudges transforms our lives. The more you can say YES to what you truly want, especially the smallest tiny things, the faster we align with who we really are, our true values and goals, and it’s way more fun, too!

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

Support the show

🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

My timeline and other people’s timelines aren’t the same. And when I try to conform to what I think other people expect or want of me and I adopt their timelines it sets me up to be upset. Adopting other people’s goals for myself stresses me out. Does this happen to you, too?

Pursuing an “arbitrary” goal felt like turmoil to me and resulted in me creating drama and turmoil around me.

I couldn’t see how all this work was necessary and I desired SO MUCH attention for doing it that I normally don’t feel like I need when I am self-motivated. I basically watched myself blossom into a drama queen over the course of two weeks and had to talk myself off the cliff.

It made me wonder how often I have adopted other people’s ideas for me and felt this way, and did the experience of this ever become normal for me, or did I want to return to myself and my own goals?

I find there is a felt difference in my body that influences how I behave and express myself when I choose the expression of my goals vs. when I follow the advice of others without adding my own input or having requested the help.

I will do a lot for praise. It’s so human! I will do a lot of work, change how I do things, show up where I am uncomfortable, to get love and praise and respect from others.

What I realize now is that I need to provide that for myself. When I can give myself the love and praise I desire, I don’t need it so desperately from others. And I can feel a lot better about my small improvements because I can cheer myself on genuinely along the way.

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

Support the show

🌿 This podcast is now archived, but these conversations around self-awareness and self-compassion still matter deeply.

 I now continue this work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, a seasonal approach to emotional regulation, burnout recovery, and building a steady, supportive relationship with yourself. Listen here.

My phobia is blood. I have such a hard time dealing with the sight of it, but more than that, it’s the *idea* of blood leaving my body that freaks me out. This year I decided to take a home blood test to help me assess my health with more information. Even though this was a decision I made consciously of my own free will, I still had to deal with my body’s reaction to the news.

Sometimes, there’s nothing your logical mind can communicate to your body to let it know you’ll be OK. If it’s ever happened to you, you understand what I mean when I say you can be thinking, “Hey, Self, we’re fine! This is completely safe and normal! No need to go blind, deaf and full muscle-weakness on me!” while your body completely loses its shit.

This is my experience of having a phobia attack while trying to let my daughter know that it’s just me and not an advisable reaction to a simple finger prick. Then again, she already hates those, so who am I trying to convince? Ha!

If this episode supported you, you may enjoy my current work on Anchored & Alive with Blaze, where these ideas are explored through seasonal rhythms and deeper integration.

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