If you struggle with feeling anxious, lack confidence in what you have to say and know your quietness affects your relationships at home or work, then this MindStream Podcast will help you understand the importance of speaking up. You’ll learn four different approaches that can help you more capably use your voice, speak with ease, assert yourself and develop confidence. As you listen to the podcast: first, identify yourself in the stories and draw the meaning they hold for you; second, if you know you are hesitant to speak up in situations, set a small goal to speak where you normally wouldn’t . . . consider two, three or four times a day; third, think about how you approach speaking up and see if your speaking pattern shows up in other areas of your life as well; and finally, write down what you would like to say and then bring your notes to your important conversations. The great news is that when you start speaking and experiencing the effects of your words on others, your anxiety decreases, your confidence increases and your relationships are enhanced.

I was interviewed by Mark Sylvester, host of the 805Connect business podcast. The focus of our interview was initially on a topic dear to him . . . he’s been discussing leadership and how to increase your effectiveness as a leader. It was an informative interview that covered my Emotional Mastery approach and a variety of other topics. I think you’ll enjoy the interview just as much as I did.

This podcast is all about ideas, insights and inspirations drawn from books. Think about the words that have inspired you. Think of this podcast as a “wordspiration” – talking about one or more key ideas or the overall theme of books – perhaps elaborating on an idea or talking about its impact. Today’s podcast draws several ideas from Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior, a book by Dr. David Hawkins. He describes aspects of applied kinesiology and non-linear physics, and if you can move through those elements, you can reach the essence of the book - understanding the difference between power and force. Despite the timelessness of these concepts, now is the time to thoughtfully consider and choose into the attitudes and behavior that embody genuine power. Essentially, by its nature, force is destructive and takes life away whereas power, by its nature, is generative and life-giving. Listen to more specific distinctions and think about how you might apply these ideas to your attitudes, behavior, health, politics, relationships, religion or spirituality.

Ever get into an emotional funk where you're down or depressed mood just seems to have you by the throat? Like you can’t shake feeling sad, blue, or down? Or maybe your mood is mixed in with feeling frustrated, anxious, disappointed, angry or even jealous. And as a result, you feel insulated in your own shell, isolated on your own island, you don’t accomplish what you want to accomplish and you become unproductive. Instead you end up sitting with a glazed over stare. Today’s podcast is about breaking free of “bad moods” – breaking free of an emotional funk or feeling down. Shaking the blues. Listen for several ideas that can help lift you more quickly into productivity and lightness and ease. Did you ever get in an anxious, down or depressed mood that you couldn’t shake? Or you felt so emotional that you found it difficult to take any steps toward achieving the goals you set for yourself? Today’s podcast offers you a variety of ideas, any one of which can help lift your mood and move you back into a more engaged and productive state. They include: calling friends, family or loved ones; self-reflection about what you are thinking and feeling, rejuvenating your brain by attending to your rest/sleep, nutrition and exercise habits; engaging with inspiring material; taking action; being more disciplined and developing better habits including cleaning up clutter; allowing yourself to experience and express unpleasant feelings; and recognizing the down periods may be a time for integrating, being grateful for, and recommitting to your desired goals/dreams. Use these ideas to break free of anxious, depressed or irritable moods so you can take action toward and enjoy what you most desire.

#goal setting,#how to set goals,#goal setting ideas,#senseofmeaning Today’s podcast starts with ideas drawn from As a Man Thinketh, a classic by James Allen, and one of the early ones about thinking that helped shift and shape my thinking . . . and it's about none other than the power of our thoughts. Two key ideas are addressed in this podcast. The first – you have to be really mindful of what you are thinking – think harsh self-critical thoughts, then you just get better at the effects of those thoughts. Think positive loving, affirming thoughts – then you get better at those. The second is the importance of having something to pursue in life . . . having a sense of purpose. It’s what gives your life a sense of meaning and the experience of vitality.

Looking for some marriage advice? Leery of marriage counseling tips that don’t really help? Relationships are hard but it can be harder still without the proper roadmap. You need an approach that keeps you on the road to deeper and deeper trust. Whether you are in a marriage or thinking about it before marriage counseling you’re in the right place. This podcast is for men, women, those in love, and those in stress. That is what you will learn in this podcast. Ever face challenges in your relationship – especially when it involved being away from each other and the stress and strain that causes? Ever feel like your love was tested? Or your ability to trust your partner? Even when there was no sign of straying? ‪While anger, sadness and insecurity are common first reactions to a change in your arrangement, pay attention to the love between you and your partner or spouse. The first element to consider ... the thoughts and feelings tied to an anticipated (and assumed) loss. This is a common and natural reaction. If you are facing a similar challenge, see the time away from each other as fully supporting what your partner needs; stay fully aware of the evidence you have – if there is no sign of straying, there is no sign of straying. If you feel the love, feel the love. If you have a great connection, honor that. Don’t make stuff up that doesn’t exist. The key then is to stay fully present to your feelings of vulnerability given that you are highly invested in the relationship and highly invested in the relationship continuing. This means you have to recognize that your vulnerability is growth for you; so that the most important element here is to understand that your worry is really about the feelings you would experience if a loss of the relationship occurred. If you keep these ideas in mind, then you can minimize the stress and strain to your relationship and keep your love and trust alive!

Consider failure just an opportunity to learn since you didn’t achieve the outcome you were desired. Yet, when many experience failure, they stop pursuing their dreams and goals because the result wasn’t what they wanted. And they turn the failure at a task into a judgment that, as a person, they are a failure. Fear of failure and fear of taking risks is really about avoiding or backing away from the feeling outcome (e.g., anger, disappointment, frustration) of things not turning out how you wanted. The key to handling failure, fear of failure and risk-taking is to be able to handle the unpleasant feelings that you might experience as you pursue your goals and dreams.

Do you feel like a burden to others when you do ask for help? Feel vulnerable? Feel like a burden to others when you do? Perhaps you find it very uncomfortable to ask for help, believing that if you make a request of others then you are “asking too much”, that your request is burdensome or that you are a burden. Drawing on your own experience and feelings, as well as a simple military analogy, in today’s podcast you will learn why asking for help, is anything but burdensome for others and instead a compliment.

Most of us don’t like to experience negative or bad feelings – those considered unpleasant or unsettling. In today’s podcast, you’ll learn the first of 12 key strategies that help you more easily experience and handle (especially) unpleasant feelings like anger, disappointment or sadness. You’ll learn how to “ride the waves” of feeling.Most of us don’t like to experience negative or bad feelings – those considered unpleasant or unsettling. In today’s podcast, you’ll learn the first of 12 key strategies that help you more easily experience and handle (especially) unpleasant feelings like anger, disappointment or sadness. You’ll learn how to “ride the waves” of feeling.

Don’t confuse feeling better with actually getting better. Feeling better is just a change in your state or mood and is temporary. Getting better is a change in your overall pattern(s) of handling life challenges and is permanent. Crying makes a difference by releasing toxins, decreasing stress and increasing calm. The vulnerability from crying can even invite connections with others. Be willing to experience the full range of your feelings and know that tearfulness is an integral part of emotional strength. Adopt a fresh attitude towards crying and see it in a new light. Crying simply reflects the intensity of your feelings, yet it is simultaneously an important aspect of your personal growth and transformation.

The purpose of reflecting and planning is to get clarity on what you really want. Today’s podcast is intended to be interactive so you can listen to it once just to hear the questions, then come back, pause it as much as you want and really take the time to think about who you want to become and what you genuinely want in the coming year. Consider: What are your wins from last year and what did you learn by achieving them? Is there a key word, intention or theme that can help guide your daily decisions? What did you do to promote connection and healing with people you care about? How did and will you invest in your own growth and development? How do forgiveness, gratitude, kindness and love thread through your life? What qualities and values will you exude and how will they guide your life?

Why is it more challenging and stressful to be with family during holiday periods or extended family vacations? Because you go in to those periods with high expectations rather than approaching holidays more realistically. To make this time more enjoyable, you can: Plan ahead with important logistics (travel, money, food, rest). Anticipate how you’ll relate with different family members and friends including what has triggered you or helped you in the past. Choose your battles more thoughtfully. Set clear boundaries around how you want to approach your visit. Anticipate changes and transitions tied to aging and illness. Respond with adult emotional resources without letting your reactions get hijacked as they might have in your youth.

People who are anxious or worry a lot tend not to take their worries out to a logical end point, so they continue to worry about the same concern(s) over and over without resolving the worry. Worriers exhibit a lack of belief and trust in their capacity to handle tasks, logistics and feelings associated with each worry. To Resolve: Walk your anxiety and worry out to its logical end point by using the “Resourcefulness Reset”. With each worry ask yourself two questions: 1) what’s the worst that could happen? and 2) what if it did, then what. Visualize the resources you’ll need (logistics, people, emotional), then take action based on knowing those resources are available to you for each aspect of your concern. Check out ‘Ease Your Anxiety’ on Amazon as an additional resource.

Perhaps you engage in habits of thinking, feeling or behaving that quietly become obstacles to your desired self-confidence and success. Awareness is the first step to developing new and more productive habits, so take note of the ones you might be using. They include close-mindedness, an absence of self-reflection, staying disconnected or distracted from yourself, refusing to stay in touch with your moment to moment experience, disliking change, negative thinking, harsh self-criticism, fearing failure, having difficulty speaking up, isolating yourself and no sense of mission or purpose or an absence of activity that is meaningful to you. Enhancing your awareness means you are on the path to break these self-sabotage habits, and that there is a roadmap to follow to your confidence and success.

Perhaps you live in an entirely different situation and manner than what you experienced during your youth. Yet it is quite common to react with a similar emotional pattern to the one you once used for survival when you were young. Key Points To Remember: You may still be using that same emotional pattern – the one developed during childhood to “read” present-day adult conversations and situations. It may include ignoring danger when danger is present, gravitating back to old unsafe experiences or ignoring safety when safety is present. The emotional coping strategies that were adaptive for you and that you used to survive during childhood are often the same strategies that imprison you in adulthood. This podcast is about how to reset your internal emotional barometer so you can trust your intuition and more accurately read safety and danger, life events and situations. Emotional flexibility is the goal. As the environment or context changes, then your coping strategies will ideally change as well. Tip: Increase your awareness by writing down your own safety and danger signals. Write down how you used to function in the past and how those behaviors may no longer relate to your current situation. Make sure you subscribe and share these insights!

Learn how you are constantly assessing for safety or for the risk of danger or life threat and how your energy resources can only be available for protection or growth. The experience of safety promotes connection and creativity. What is happening in your life? You are programmed for growth and protection through Safety vs. Fear: We retreat from toxic situations (danger, threat, chaos, aggression) We move towards connection and closeness when we feel safe Examples of situations that may feel dangerous and those that feel safe “Brain talk” about concept of neuroception (how your nervous system is always assessing risk re: safety, danger and life threat) For more from Dr Joan Rosenberg go to http://drjoanrosenberg.com

Think of what it takes to face fires, floods, earthquakes or tornadoes, or an unexpected tragedy.Anything can change in a matter of seconds and your ability to be resilient and bounce back involves how you handle the constancy of change, not routine or stability. Accepting periods of calm and quiet with grace and gratitude and adopting curiosity as an overall attitude towards life can help you develop greater emotional strength, resilience and inner peace.

What does it mean to have a healthy functioning brain, emotional health and a sense of well-being? When you are at your best, well-being brings a sense of inner peace, contentment, harmony, balance, emotional flexibility and the combined feeling of being well-connected to your moment-to-moment experience and well connected to others through friendship and love. This podcast draws from neuroscience or newer findings about the brain, and highlights Dr. Daniel Siegel’s Interpersonal Neurobiology concept of integration. Integration means that different parts of the brain link and function well with other parts of the brain, leading to emotional self-regulation, and an internal sense of harmony. New learning can help you reshape your brain so you can use your mind to change your brain and your brain to change your mind. Well being involves the combined experience of having enough order and routine in your life that it creates a sense of stability, predictability and continuity and having enough emotional flexibility so you can handle change and the unpredictability or uncertainties in life without being overwhelmed by anxiety and without living chaotically. It also involves interdependence. Think of it as the combined experience of being able to engage in your own individual pursuits AND asking for help when you need it. The extremes of fierce independence (never asking for nor relying on help from others) to clingy indecisiveness or dependence (fear of being alone, afraid to pursue things on your own, afraid to fail) are reflective of less emotional health.

This podcast takes a deep dive into one particular negative thought pattern – that of worry about what others think of you. Ending this particular worry involves reframing how you think about the problem itself so you can develop self-confidence and shift to positive thinking about yourself. If you: think others are thinking about you; tend to be overly concerned with what others think of you (or more accurately what you think others think of you); are afraid of making mistakes in front of others; are afraid of being ridiculed or laughed at or thought stupid; are afraid to take risks; are shy; hate public speaking; can’t stand using the phone; or are afraid of social gatherings, then this podcast is for you. Listen closely so you can make this important mental shift.

Whether you are aware of it or not, you are always assessing risk in whatever environment you are in to determine whether the experience will be safe or dangerous. Even though we have this built in capacity as human beings, many people increase their personal stress level by staying in relationships where they feel diminished or devalued. The relationship itself then becomes one that is hurtful or damaging. The one quality a great and enduring friendship, intimate relationship or marriage exhibits is the experience of feeling safe. Understanding and connection is the goal. The experience of feeling safe is the foundation of loyalty and trust. How will you promote safety to make your relationship a safe haven?