Your Great Journey

Practicing self-compassion allows you to be aware, to tune in, to be mindful of your experiences, and to provide comfort and self-nurturing when you need it. According to psychotherapist Dr. Julie de Azevedo Hanks, author of the audiobook The Assertiveness Guide for Women, neglecting self-compassion is a mistake that many of us make; but, without self-love, we won’t be able to realize our full potential as human beings.

Today we’re sharing some helpful information from psychotherapist Dr. Julie de Azevedo Hanks, author of the popular audiobook The Assertiveness Guide for Women: How to Communicate Your Needs, Set Healthy Boundaries, and Transform Your Relationships. In this audiobook, Dr. de Azevedo Hanks helps you avoid rumination and regret when you’re unable to express yourself or even acknowledge your own needs, and learn to assert yourself and get what you want.​

In this episode, Dr. de Azevedo Hanks explains the many important reasons for practicing self-compassion and offers a practical exercise to help strengthen your self- compassion.

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Author, "The Chalice and the Blade"

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Changing habits can be difficult, so it’s helpful to know if the benefit of a change will be greater than the effort involved. In this episode we’re sharing a simple exercise from psychologist Shawn T. Smith that will help you to experiment with small behavior change methodically and in easy steps.

Today we’re sharing an excerpt from the audiobook The User’s Guide to the Human Mind: Why Our Brains Make Us Unhappy, Anxious, and Neurotic and What We Can Do about It. Written by psychologist Shawn T. Smith, this audiobook helps listeners override the mind’s natural impulses toward worry, self-criticism, and fear and act in ways that promote healthy well-being. This audiobook is filled with advice and exercises to help you overrule your thoughts and feelings and take charge of your life.

In today’s episode, Dr. Smith shares an exercise that will help you learn what kind of changes will have the most benefit for you. These changes might be in the realm of diet, exercise, sleep, or any other lifestyle change you might be contemplating. The exercise helps you to experiment with small behavior change to determine if the new changes will ultimately be beneficial for you.

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This audiobook is about living with our minds when our minds are driving us crazy. It’s about understanding what the mind is doing, why it is doing it, and how we can live our lives anyway. It is about gently taking the reins when our minds are blocking our way.

The User's Guide to the Human Mind

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This episode is brought to you by Wetware Media. Check out Wetware Media’s catalog of 100+ audiobooks — specializing in psychology, spirituality, self-help, personal growth, and guided meditations. Wetware Media audiobooks offer actionable, expert advice to ease anxiety, improve meditation and mindfulness, calm emotions, and help create a life you’ll love.

Visit the Wetware Media website, or browse all 100+ titles at Audible.com.

Do you ever feel that bad habits have taken over your life? When stress and anxiety mount, do your go-to behaviors wreak havoc on your time, relationships, work, and finances? According to Dr. Amy Johnson, psychologist and author of the popular audiobook The Little Book of Big Change, changing bad habits is far less daunting and much more simple than you might think. It relies on neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to reorganize itself — and requires no willpower at all!

Today, we’re sharing an excerpt from the audiobook The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking Any Habit, written by psychologist Amy Johnson, who teaches us that no matter what your bad habit is, you have the power to change it. Drawing on a powerful combination of neuroscience and spirituality, this audiobook will show you that your habits and addictions are the result of simple brain wiring that is easily reversed.

In this excerpt, Dr. Johnson offers a great example to help you learn how to separate your thoughts from the reality of your situation. She also shares information about neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to “rewire” itself. Ready to take back your life? Have a listen!

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The Little Book of Big Change

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Does it seem as though your emotions always get the better of you? That you need more time to recover from an emotional episode than others? Mental health therapist Sheri Van Dijk is the author of the popular audiobook Calming the Emotional Storm. Today she explains how practicing mindfulness can help you to manage your emotions, enjoy a calmer relationship with the world around you, and lead to an increase in positive emotions.

The audiobook Calming the Emotional Storm: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Manage Your Emotions and Balance Your Life, is your guide to coping with difficult emotions calmly and responsibly by using powerful skills from dialectical behavior therapy. This method combines cognitive behavioral techniques with mindfulness practices to change the way you respond to stressful situations. By practicing these skills, you can stop needless emotional suffering and develop the inner resilience that will help you weather any emotional storm.

In this episode, you’ll learn the many ways that practicing mindfulness can improve your ability to choose your response to any situation, and bring you back from painful thoughts of the past or worries about the future to find a calmer, more empowering present.

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Calming the Emotional Storm

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If you’ve ever experienced sudden anxiety, you may wonder how to calm a panic attack. In this episode, Dr. Catherine M. Pittman, author of the best-selling audiobook Rewire Your Anxious Brain, shares some powerful coping strategies that can help you to calm down when you need it most.

Today we’re sharing an excerpt from the audiobook Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry. Written by clinical psychologist Dr. Catherine Pittman and researcher Elizabeth Karle. This audiobook presents a greater understanding how anxiety is created in the brain, along with empowering, proven-effective techniques to overcome it. You will learn to literally “rewire” the brain processes that lie at the root of your fears.

This episode will help you learn how to calm a panic attack. You will learn about the two neurological sources of panic attacks: the amygdala and the cortex. While they are connected, each requires a different approach in order to identify the origins and manage the symptoms of panic — to put you back in control of your life.

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Authors, "Rewire Your Anxious Brain"

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Today we’re sharing a soothing guided relaxation that will help you find your center in stressful moments. This relaxation is an excerpt from psychologist Ted Zeff’s audiobook The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide: Essential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World. You’ll be guided through a soothing, grounding meditation, which will leave you calm, centered, and happy.

The audiobook The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide: Essential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World is a practical guide to help you learn how to manage your sensitivity to both physical and emotional stimulation. Using a series of engaging and easy to follow exercises, you can build your coping skills and be better prepared to make your way through our vibrant and highly stimulating world.

In this episode, Dr. Zeff shares a guided relaxation that will help you come back to center. This guided relaxation can also be enjoyed any time you just want to feel more grounded.

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By understanding, accepting, and appreciating your sensitive nervous system and by learning practical methods to deal with your sensitivity, you will gradually be able to identify and release any false beliefs that there is something inherently wrong with you.

The Highly Sensitive Person's Survival Guide

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We all sometimes wish that life could be different than it is. We’d love to wave a magic wand and fix the annoying job, the inconsiderate friend, or the distant partner. But we can’t. The good new is, we don’t need to! In this episode, Chuck Hillig, author of the audiobook Seeds for the Soul: Living as the Source of Who You Are, inspires us to explore our vast potential, start taking ownership of our lives and live as the source of who we are.

Today we have a conversation with Psychotherapist and spiritual teacher Chuck Hillig. Chuck’s audiobook Seeds for the Soul is a genre-bending mixture of poetry and prose that explores spirituality, life, our deepest yearnings and our true source. This audiobook is an effervescent, joyful collection of inspiring philosophical thoughts. You can come back again and again to Seeds for the Soul, and find something new and nourishing each time.

In this wide ranging conversation, Chuck speaks to those who are looking to take control of our lives and escape the feelings of helplessness that often plague periods of stress and pain. He believes that you can live your best life by looking at your feelings and experiences differently. He shares a number of profound insights, including this one: The key to how to live your best life isn’t outside you—it’s within you!

Visit Chuck’s website here.

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Anxiety is a powerful force. It makes us question our decisions and ourselves, worry about the future, all while filling our days with dread and emotional turbulence. But are you truly in danger or has your brain simply “tricked” you into thinking you are? In today’s episode, we’re offering an excerpt from the audio book The Worry Trick: How Your Brain Tricks You into Expecting the Worst and What You Can Do About It, written by psychologist and anxiety expert, David A. Carbonell.

The Worry Trick shows how worrying and anxiety hijack the brain and offers effective techniques to help you break the cycle of worry—once and for all. The techniques in this audiobook, rather than encouraging you to avoid or try to resist anxiety, reveal the trick that lies beneath your anxious thoughts, and teaches you why avoiding anxiety backfires and always make things worse.

In today’s episode, anxiety expert Dr. Carbonell shares his funny and wise thoughts on how worrying tricks us. You will learn the difference between doubt and danger, and begin to feel more balanced and in control of your worries.

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The Worry Trick

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Inner wisdom is a source we can draw on for clarity when determining the best course of action in any area of life. We all have access to it! But when we’re in the throes of stressful and challenging times, it can be difficult know how to access inner wisdom. The good news is that you can find your way back to your true nature, and resume living as your healthiest, most authentic self.

Today, we’re sharing an excerpt from the audiobook The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking Any Habit, written by psychologist Amy Johnson, who teaches us that no matter what your bad habit is, you have the power to change it. Dr. Johnson draws on a powerful combination of neuroscience and spirituality to illustrate a profound truth: you are not your habits. Your mental patterns are the result of simple brain wiring that can be easily changed.

When we’re overwhelmed, we begin to start operating on surface levels, and lose touch with our inner wisdom. Being separated from your true nature can cause unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and cement bad habits. In this excerpt, Dr. Johnson discusses the spiritual component of breaking a habit—though the advice she shares applies to any area of life where we need to know how to access  inner wisdom—the deep knowing of our true self.

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The Little Book of Big Change

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Today we’re sharing an exclusive interview with psychologist Dr. Shawn T. Smith. He offers tips to help eliminate anxiety and worry, and discusses his audiobook The User’s Guide to the Human Mind: Why Our Brains Make Us Unhappy, Anxious, and Neurotic and What We Can Do about It. This audiobook is a road map to overriding the mind’s natural impulses toward worry, self-criticism, and fear. It offers helpful guidance for overruling your thoughts and feelings and taking charge of your mind and your life.

Based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), The User’s Guide to the Human Mind is filled with exercises for overriding the mind’s natural impulses toward worry, self-criticism, and fear, and offers helpful tips for acting in the service of your values and emotional well-being—even when your mind has other plans.

In this enlightening conversation, Dr. Shawn Smith offers advice helpful information for anyone struggling with a mind that isn’t cooperating and hits you with waves of anxiety. He discusses the skill of psychological flexibility and offers a few tips to help eliminate worry and anxiety.

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author of "The User's Guide to the Human Mind"

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