Your Next, Best Step

You keep showing up for it. The role, the tradition, the commitment you have poured years into. Somewhere along the way it stopped fitting, though walking away feels impossible after everything you have already put in.

This episode looks at why that pull is so strong, and why letting go, by itself, is only half the move.

In this episode:

• Why the years you have already given keep steering choices they should have no say in
• What a farmer named Elisha did with his plow, and what it frees in you
• The one move that turns letting go into relief instead of regret

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:19-21

Research note: the sunk-cost effect (Arkes and Blumer) and research on releasing unreachable goals

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

What if the scroll, the cart, the thing you grab without thinking has a real need  is a real need underneath almost every one of them is calling out for your attention?

Join me for the full companion episode “The Habits You Reach For to Cope” where I share a ninety-second practice you can use tonight and the surprising thing researchers learned about how long an urge actually lasts once you stop feeding it. (Ep 164)

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

The reach happens before you decide. Late in the day, your hand finds the phone, or the online cart, or the thing in the pantry, and you are three scrolls deep before you notice you started. This time of year, that reach grabs harder. There is a real reason for it, and a gentle way to work with it.

In this episode, you will come away with:

• A new way to see the habit you reach for to cope, one that takes the shame out of it.
• An understanding of why an urge feels so permanent in the moment, and what actually happens to it when you stop feeding it.
• A ninety-second practice you can use tonight, the next time your hand starts to reach.

Scripture: Isaiah 55:1-2

Research note: Urge surfing (Bowen and Marlatt)

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

Have you noticed what your thumb does when you are waiting on something you cannot change? And what else can you do the next time is comes up?

Join me for the full companion episode “Doing Your Part and Trusting God With the Rest” where we get into what your restlessness in the waiting is actually doing, and the one gesture that helps you set the outcome down. (Ep 163)

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

You did your part. You said the thing, sent the message, made the call, cast the vote. And now comes the restless stretch where the outcome is completely out of your hands, and the waiting has a way of wearing you down.

This week we look at what to do with yourself in that gap, so the waiting stops running you.

• Understand why your mind keeps circling a decision that is already made
• Feel the difference between caring about an outcome and carrying it
• Walk into your week with a way to settle yourself when the waiting gets loud

Scripture: Proverbs 21:31

Research note: inspired by a classic idea in psychology about the two kinds of control we use, acting on the world and adjusting ourselves to it. No statistics, just the concept.

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

The sweater that makes you feel like yourself. The lipstick you save for hard days. You already speak the language of dressing up.

Join me for the full companion episode where we get into why the freedom you feel in a costume was never borrowed, and how to find where else that part of you belongs. “The Freedom of Dressing Up” Ep 162

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

You buy the costume half-embarrassed. You put it on braced to feel a little ridiculous. And instead, something lifts. You stand taller, you laugh louder, and for one evening you feel free.

This Halloween-week episode is about that lift, and why it is real.

• Why a costume can hand you a feeling your ordinary days keep folded away
• What researchers mean by “enclothed cognition,” and the honest limits of it
• Why your truest identity is already settled underneath every costume, which is exactly what makes the play feel free

Scripture: 1 John 3:1

Research note: enclothed cognition — how the clothes we wear stay in conversation with how we feel, shared with its honest limits and no overclaiming.

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

What the always-on news does to your body when you are not even watching, and one small experiment to feel the difference by tonight.

Join me for the full companion episode where we talk about holding your ground when the headlines will not stop, and finding steadiness that does not depend on the world settling first. You will hear why your body reacts the way it does, and how one ancient psalm meets a loud, divided season. “When the News Will Not Let You Settle” (Ep 161)

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

Some weeks, staying informed starts to feel like a part-time job you never applied for. No clock-out time. Terrible pay.

With an election a few days out and bad news arriving faster than anyone can process it, it makes sense that you feel worn down. This episode is about holding your ground when the news will not let you settle, and where real steadiness comes from.

Inside this episode:

• Why the weight you have carried this month is a normal response, not a personal failing
• What repeated exposure to distressing coverage does to a body that is safe in its own kitchen
• How an ancient psalm speaks straight into a loud, divided season

Scripture: Psalm 46:1-3 and 46:10

Research note: Draws on national survey research on stress and division, and on studies of repeated media exposure and the stress response.

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.

When you lose a version of yourself, there is no funeral and no card. Naming it out loud gives it the recognition it never got.

The full companion episode is live where we walk through the practice that gives this grief a place to rest. “Grieving Who You Used to Be” (Ep 160)

Ready for your next step?

FREE 5-Minute Daily Reset (instant download):
YourNextBestStep.com 

Weekly encouragement + practical tips:
YouTube @CoachJanetJ
Instagram: @janetjjaecks

If this episode resonated with you, please follow/subscribe and share with a friend who needs their next step. 

 One small step. One day at a time.