Every Human Heart

In this episode, I reflect on personal growth and how we increase our capacity to do more, be more, and get more out of the 24 hours in a day. 

How do you increase your capacity to do what fulfills you when you have the same number of hours that you've always had? How do we grow our capacity to deal with the harder parts of life without letting them get us down? I reflect on all of those questions in this episode and was evidently very excited recording it because I speak at double my usual speed in here.

Part of why I make this podcast is because sometimes past me has messages and teachings that current me needs to be reminded about. Editing this episode made me laugh out loud and I hope the joy and excitement that I felt when recording it touches you and makes *you* excited too about our capacity to keep shaping our lives in the way we want. 

And even if this doesn't resonate right now, I hope you bookmark it and save it for when it might. In the meantime, enjoy how excited Steph mangles her favorite quote and immediately forgives herself because "it has all the important words".  

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Making changes in our lives is all about teaching our brains new ways of thinking, in other words, change is just the creation of new neural pathways. In this mini stephisode, I talk about how understanding neural plasticity and neural pathways can help us persist on the journey of making changes. I also share a little tip I use to keep myself going when I stumble on my own path to making changes that stick. 

In this episode, I mention:

In the last year, I've really worked on getting attuned to what my body is telling me. We are getting better, as a society, to paying attention to our emotional cues and intellectual cues to make sense of the world, and we miss out on valuable information when we ignore what our bodies are trying to tell us. Oftentimes, our visceral experiences are the most primitive and telling signals of what is happening to us. 

In this episode, I discuss what this means and why it's important to learn to get attuned to what our bodies are telling us. I reflect on why we have increasingly distrusted our bodies and what we need to do to get back in attunement. 

I highly recommend 'Burnout' by Amelia and Emily Nagoski for more information on stress and dealing with it. 

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This episode's musings focus on the relationship we have with ourselves and how, when we work on that and learn to accept and love ourselves, it winds up shaping our relationships with others for the better. 

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There's one small but mighty attitude change that change not only help you understand yourself better but also build empathy in your interpersonal relationships. 

Join me in this episode as I reflect on what it is and how it works. Also, this is my 20th episode! Woot woot! Thank you for joining me on this incredible journey! 

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It was my birthday last week and turning a year older gets you thinking. Join me in this episode as I reflect on change, my propensity to pursue growth, personal purpose, and what makes us who we are throughout the years. 

Raise your hand if you've ever asked yourself this question at the dawn of a new relationship, friendship, job, or experience? Heck, maybe even in the middle of it! Sometimes we can be so overcome with anxiety and uncertainty that the possibility of THIS not working paralyzes us. 

In this episode, I dive into this question: where it comes from and what's really important whenever this question pops up. 

What should we refocus on? How should we be in the face of the possibility that this may not work out? 

Stick with me till the end for a particularly juicy set of reflection prompts on this topic. 

What do you think when confronted with the possibility that this time may be like the last time? How do you pull yourself out of a downward spiral?

a.k.a. the uncomfortable step after setting your boundaries. 

Don't get me wrong: boundaries are absolutely essential and everyone must undergo the difficult process of figuring out their boundaries, establishing them, and communicating them to the people in their lives. That's a non-negotiable. Boundary-setting is a part of identity formation, in my opinion. 

BUT...

Sometimes our boundaries become gilded cages that we live in. They become the crutch that we use as an excuse to stop evolving. THAT's when we need to reimagine what our boundaries are. You see, boundaries are the means to the end; and the end -- that 'thing' we're trying to protect? That's the non-negotiable. And when boundaries no longer serve us, we owe it to ourselves to respectfully acknowledge that we've outgrown them. 

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What does it mean to co-create your life? What does freedom mean? Is it the absolute absence of outside influence? Or does freedom consist in how you choose to respond to outside influence? 

People often say that things happen for us, not to us. What does that even mean? Is it some kind of toxic positivity mantra that demands that we deny all the crappy things that happen to us? 

Come along with me as I reflect on how to authentically embrace the notion that things happen for us and not to us, and the four questions that can help you transform your experiences so that you're always in the driver's seat of your life. 

In the past month, life has thrown curveball after curveball and I've had the chance to deeply reflect on who I am, what I'm made of, and who I want to be. I've also had no choice but to think about where my energy should do and what I needed to let go of (for a while). 

Resilience has been the word of the month for me, and I'm strangely grateful for the challenges. A few fundamental truths about tough times and the human spirit kept me going, and that's what this episode is all about.  

Sometimes things feel a little heavy and life feels like a lot, but it doesn't mean that you're weak. It just means that life is a bit much right now. And that's okay :) If you've ever been through a spectacularly tough time -- I think all of us have -- or if you're in the thick of it right now, come along for the ride. I'd love to learn if this resonates. 

One of my favorite yoga teachers just left our studio and has moved on to new horizons. In bidding her farewell, I reflected on the lessons I learned from her and one question she asked us stands out amongst the rest: "What are you resisting?"

So often, we resist making decisions, taking action, having the hard conversations, because of some story we tell ourselves. Maybe it's a story about how we are not good enough, or about how the other person will reject us, or that failure is not something we can come back from. When taking charge of our lives feels difficult or challenging, it's often because we're resisting something. Perhaps it's change. Or growth. Or the cold hard truth. 

In this episode, I reflect on this question and think out loud about all the ways we might be resisting things in relationships, work, and life. 

Come along with me on this journey and I'd love to hear what this sparks in you!

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We can't control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to them. The secret to taking charge of your life has nothing (much) to do with what happens to you and everything to do with working through those experiences to create the future that you want, and that secret to that is working through our emotions. 

How we do make it such that things don't happen to us but for us? 

In this stephisode, I look at a few concrete steps that we all can take to work through our experiences in order to (re)gain agency in our lives. I also chat about how baggage from our past is inevitable... but maybe not such a bad thing! This realization transformed the way I think about baggage and challenging past experiences, and I hope it offers a new perspective to you too. 

I would love to hear what you think :) Get in touch:

Conflict! Gah!! Between fight, flight, or freeze, none of these really help us deal with conflict effectively and meaningfully. When you feel your heart pounding and your breaths getting shorter, is it really possible to engage in conflict without losing your shit?

In Part 1 of this topic, I chat about why conflict is not a bad thing; in fact, it might be a gift! But how we handle it is key :) We need to place the responsibility of feeling better squarely on our own shoulders and approach conflict with an eye towards using the information it gives us to build better relationships. 

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Some people think it's impossible to be friends with an ex. Others believe that to become strangers again is a huge pity given how much of your life you used to share. I used to be in the former camp, but I might've changed my mind. 

In this episode, I ruminate on whether a platonic friendship with an ex is truly possible and what conditions need to be in place for it to us to do so in a healthy way! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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Life is hard. We talk about positive self-talk ("love yourself!") but worry that acknowledging our strengths -- god forbid! -- makes us seem arrogant or narcissistic. We worry that people will say to us: "So you think you're all that?" 

Well, it's time to stop playing small. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging and *celebrating* our strengths and merits and virtues! What matters is what we think having them implies -- do we think that people owe us more or do we think we should give more since we have more? 

In this episode, I reflect on this little detail that makes all the difference. I hope this encouragement for you to step into the light helps you see the light in others ♥️

We often navigate the world with expectations about how people ought to treat us and what we ought to receive. But these expectations are just the signal for the deeper value that we are seeking -- we assume that if the expectations are met, then our standards for a good relationship, job, friendship, etc are met.

But is that really true? 

In this episode, I ruminate on what it means to keep our standards high -- and enforce those boundaries around the quality of relationships we have -- yet maintain low expectations. This interestingly leads to an easier interaction with the people and events in our lives AND opens up way more possibilities about how those standards might be met :)

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Hope is an essential part of human life yet sometimes hope can keep us stuck. 

"Abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning," writes Pema Chödrön in 'When Things Fall Apart' (one of my all time favorite books). 

Why is hope important? What does it mean to abandon hope without abandoning meaning, direction, and purpose? What does it mean to abandon hope but not give it up? 

In this episode, we delve into these questions and arrive at a point where we keep the kind of hope that serves us and illuminates our path, and let go of the hopes that hold us back.

As we enter the new year, many of us are thinking about what we want to do and achieve in 2021 -- it's resolution season. But reflecting on what we want to let go of is just as important as reflecting on what we want to bring into our lives. In fact, letting go of what no longer serves us creates the space for us to welcome the new. Join me in this episode as I reflect on the things I'm leaving in 2020, so that I can make 2021 the best year it could possibly be. 

We've all been through shitty experiences. But do we want to let them be the extra baggage we carry for the rest of our lives? Or do we want to use them to move forward? Because that's totally possible. 

In this episode, let's think about how we can go about reframing shitty experiences and take back control of our stories so they don't make us feel quite as bad. 

The conversation about vulnerability has been steadily growing over the past few years but what are the rules of engagement around vulnerability? Might vulnerability be weaponized and what should we be mindful of? What does vulnerability look like at work and why is it important? 

Emotions are incredible bits of information that tell us us a lot about ourselves. They tell us what matters to us, who we value, and more. It's important to acknowledge and name our feelings, so that we don't run away from the fullness of our experiences and the fullness of who we are. But it's just as important to not sink into the bog that heavy emotions can sometimes be. In this episode, I reflect on how we can use our feelings to shape our narrative and our lives. 

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We often say that relationships fail when they end. But that implies that a successful relationship is one that lasts forever and ever and ever...

But is that true? 

In this episode, I reflect on a few ways that the ending of a relationship is, in fact, not a failure. Might the end of a relationship be its success instead?  

I'd love to hear what you think:

Episode 0 of my brand spanking new podcast! Let's begin at the beginning. 

In this short episode, I talk about what this podcast is going to be about -- I'm sure this will evolve -- and why I'm doing it -- because I'm a curious, existentialist cat. In episode 0, I share with you the spirit of this podcast (what makes for a meaningful life?) and lay the groundwork for the topics to come. 

Come along with me in this labyrinth of life. I can't wait to hear what you think!

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