Life Changing Principles

Paul Gilbert, a UK Therapist, noticed that when he did CBT as he was trained, that clients were reframing their thoughts, but still adding negative tones or additional comments. When you "do nothing" the brain defaults to calling up old memories and imagining the future. Our brains our tricky like this and produce thoughts and emotions without our consent. So much of our negative self-talk is not our fault. It's just what brains do. It's not our fault, but it is our brain, so it's our responsibility. Gilbert suggests a series of practices that help us get to know our tricky brain and relate to ourselves with compassion We can incorporate practices from Compassion Focused Therapy into our self-coaching skills. Skills include: recognizing the unsettled mind, working with attention, soothing breathing rhythm, creating a safe place, calling up a compassionate image, the compassionate self, and compassion for the critical self.

We know self-compassion can be comforting and nurturing. Self-Compassion can also be fierce. It can lead us to do hard things like set boundaries, meet our needs, and make personal development changes Protecting Self-Compassion breaks call up a time you need to protect your time, energy, or self. Say: This isn't right, I'm not alone in this, I will stand up for myself. Providing Self-Compassion breaks recognize our unmet needs. Say: This is important to me, everyone's needs count including mine, I am committed to meeting my needs as best I can Motivating Self-Compassion breaks encourage us with a vision of what we want rather than negative self-talk. Say: This is what I envision for myself, it's normal to have a learning curve, I'm going to help myself reach my goals.

We use Self-Compassion when we realize we've been unkind to ourselves. There are five surprises when we begin to practice self-compassion 1- We become really honest with ourselves 2- We realize we are human, even average in some ways. 3- We have to admit we are hurting 4- We get strong because compassion isn't just nice, it has a backbone 5- We face the tough stuff rather than turning away from it.

Compassion training affects the brain and body and that's more powerful than we think it is. The brain is neuroplastic, not hardwired. We have mirror neurons & neurons in the heart and gut. Compassion training affects our brain and body in measurable ways. It makes us more resilient, have less inflammation, less reactive amygdala, and less depression. We can train in compassion by imagining extending compassion to people we love, to ourselves, to neutral people, to difficult people, and to everyone. This practice creates changes in the amygdala as well as reducing stress hormones throughout the body.

Sustained compassion is compassion for people who aren't going away any time soon, like our family members. One example is BALM, a recovery program for family members of recovering addicts.  We're going to 28,686 days on average - which means self compassion is in order for when it goes well and when it doesn't. To sustain compassion we need to look at both the short run and the long run. To sustain compassion over the long run, we have to include ourselves in the circle of compassion. Two skills that help are checking in with ourselves and checking in with the situation before we decide what a wise compassionate response would be. As we check in, we can adjust how we respond to people and change up our interactions with our family members.

Are you able to stay calm in the middle of tense situations? Equanimity is the ability to stay calm in the midst of chaos or a difficult situation. Mindfulness can help us stay calm. Simply bringing our attention to the present moment of our breath or our body triggers a cascade of calming responses in the body. We can also stay calm by accepting what is. Practice acceptance by checking in with the inner players that show up in all of us from time to time.  We need both equanimity and compassion. Equanimity keeps compassion from consuming itself and compassion keeps equanimity from turning into indifference.

How do we help others and actually have it be effective? Today's principle is a Buddhist concept called Skillful Means. It's all about doing what actually helps an individual in a given moment or situation. How do we go about developing skillful means? First is the awareness that our help isn't helping. It's a painful realization, but also empowering, because now we can do something about it. Second, is creatively trying novel things, paying close attention to what is actually going on, guessing what might work, and having the courage to give it a go. It will feel awkward at first, but with a little patience to see how it plays out, we will begin to build skillful means.

What is a Compassion Warrior?  In Buddhist thought, a Compassion Warrior is someone who's reached the door of personal enlightenment, then hears the cries of the world, and goes back to stay on earth to relieve suffering. In Buddhist Art, a third eye symbolizes wisdom, elongated ears symbolize deep listening, a foot on the ground symbolizes a readiness to act, and 1,000 arms symbolizes the many ways in which we can relieve suffering The story of Chenrezig helps us let go of our idealistic drive to solve other people's problems and to be willing, instead, to be with people in the messy middle of their lives. Family Leaders are compassion warriors because they often commit to helping their family members for their whole lives. What kind of compassion warrior do you want to be?

How do I Decide when, how, and whom to help? Intention Setting - is a Buddhist practice in Mindfulness. What are you trying to create within yourself that will prepare you to act in the world? What motivates you to help others? When you become familiar with what you want to have happen as a result of your compassion, you can create a statement of intention that you can use to start the day or to focus on in your mindfulness practice.

Compassion is noticing suffering and the desire to relieve it. But what is suffering?  In Buddhist thought there are 4 noble truths. 

1. No one can escape the fact that suffering exists for all of us. 

2. The way we interact with suffering can create more suffering 

3. There is a way to end suffering 

4. Let's start practicing.

Compassion happens in the moment. The first step is noticing that we or or others are struggling or suffering.  A moment of compassion comes with the desire to help. If we really want to be helpful in a moment of compassion we need 3 things: 

Permission to be Human - realizing that we are not alone in what we are going through. Others suffer like this too. It's part of being human.

Equanimity - staying grounded and calm during a tough moment without getting swept away by your own or others thoughts and emotions.

Wisdom - being willing to stay in the moment, uncertain of the outcome, letting the process unfold as you listen deeply to yourself and others.

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We will have 16 episodes about Compassion from the Harvard Divinity school. We are diving into the Buddhist tradition of compassion and suffering, as well as the current research and their theories. Marrying 2500 years of tradition and decades of research, we will walk away with a deeper understanding that we can use to be more compassionate in actions and thoughts.

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Marie Kondo is a Japanese Internet sensation who teaches you to declutter your homes and fold your socks. My favorite part of her method is thanking the things you are about to let go of in your life.  It honors the reasons they came into your life in the first place. Just like we declutter our shirts and shoes, we can declutter our Christmas traditions and expectations Make a list and ask your kids, young or old, which traditions they love on a scale of 1 to 10. Ask which they'd like to help with or take charge of. When it's time to let a tradition go, thank it for its service in your life, honor its story of how it came to be there, and then let it go.

Principle: Social Support bolsters resilience.  We have more social support than we think. The perception of social support is just as important as having social support. Knowing someone has your back is important to resilience. There are 8 different kinds of social support we can give one another. Before you jump in to give social support, check in to see if they actually want it and believe it will be helpful.

You can trust your stress response. It's there to help you. 

1. You can trust your stress response because it is pattern matching to prepare you to react in real time. 

2. You can trust your stress response because it is just a message interrupting you. That's it's job. Once you've been notified, you get to choose what to do with the information. 

3. You can trust your stress response because it automatically turns itself off. You don't have to do anything! Just wait it out for a few minutes.

Breathing is a tool you can use to calm the stress response in your body. There are 3 principles that help us understand how and why breathing helps us respond to stress. 

1. Breathing triggers a parasympathetic relaxation response that ripples through your whole body 

2. Breathing gives you a sense of calm which not only feels good, but also gives you a sense of control and improves the likelihood that you'll find a solution to whatever just temporarily overwhelmed your ability to cope. 

3. Being unable to calm yourself and your nervous system creates long-term health problems. Basically, breathing can give you your brain back.

When we are looking for solutions, 3 principles will help us. 1. No one is coming. Sounds depressing, but it's actually a positive psychology principle. No one is coming, so stop waiting for them and stand up and act. 2. For everything you are complaining about, someone on the planet has found a solution that you are just not willing to implement. It's not them. It's your willingness to do what it takes. 3. Your first solution isn't going to work. All 3 of these principles prompt you to act in small ways and then iterate and continue to act, which is the one sure way to find your solution

Boundaries

An "I statement", (I Feel About Because) is a classic useful statement found in assertiveness training, conflict management, parenting, and communication classes, and as a skill learned in therapy. Principle 1. Not speaking up when someone's behavior is affecting you causes you to shrink in your own life. I statements share the impact someone is having on your life. Principle 2. Taking the time to create an "I statement" helps you to separate the behavior from your reaction to it Principle 3. Creating "I statements" helps you identify what you are thinking Principle 4. Naming the emotion you are feeling calms that emotion. Principle 5. I statements help you own your own emotions, experience, and expectations. A person's impact can be positive or negative, so I statements can also be use to give credit and appreciation when their behavior is impacting you positively.

Naming the Emotion is a skill we use when someone else is upset. It quiets the emotion and builds trust. The principles underneath why this skill works and why it's important are found in research. Let's explore some research-based principles. Reflective listening changes a person's feelings and ideas in a problem-solving, insight-producing, tension-releasing, responsibility-building, conflict-reducing way. Need to be heard and understood can be measured in the brain. Being understood is rewarding and socially connecting. Not being understood lights up the parts of the brain where negative emotion, social pain, and thinking of how different you are from others is experienced. Having more emotion words (emotional granularity) helps you be less reactive and have more ideas for how to cope so you can solve the problem that caused the emotion in the first place. Interoception (sensing emotions and other things going on inside our own bodies) is the first step in how we create emotions and second step is giving that bodily sensation or emotion a name. These principles support and explain why reflective listening and naming the emotion are such powerful tiny superpowers.

PRINCIPLE: Having a framework gives you a framework to hang your learning on and helps you apply it in real life.  Today we're talking about the skill of reflective listening. In context, we reflectively listen when someone else is upset.  There is power in having a framework in your head so you can use the skills you learn in real time. Let's learn how to reflective listen. There are 3 skills to reflective listening - 1. listen. 2. summarize 3. name the emotion 1. Listening - means stop talking, stop thinking about other things, try to understand what they are saying from their perspective. 2. Summarizing - means saying something that shows them you heard what they said. Use some of their same words, but don't parrot back everything. 3. Name the Emotion - try to guess what emotion they are feeling. Each of these 3 steps are separate skills. I'd estimate that they took me about 10-20 hours each spanning several months or even a couple of years in classes I took to get adequately good at them.  Now that I have the basics down - having the framework gives me a direction to go in a conversation when someone is upset so it's less upsetting to me.

It's Not About the Nail is a viral 1-minute video about a woman telling her husband about a problem and her husband tries to fix it, but what she really wants is for him to listen. 21 Million people have watched the video and it captures a moment that gets repeated millions of times in millions of households. Principle: Noticing Patterns Points to the Potential for Change. When we have the same problem over and over, we are seeing a pattern and that means it can be dissected and solved. One reason we keep having the same problem over and over again is that our brains do so many things automatically. We can drive all the way to work without remembering it because our brains handle even a complex task like driving almost automatically.  Noticing a pattern, then pulling it apart to shake up the automaticity takes some time, but is well worth it in the long run.

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Create a permission page in your goal journal when you need to give yourself permission to take time for yourself, disappoint others, do things out of order, or any other permission you need in order to do it your way.

Education Week

The moment you set a goal you have plunged yourself into the messy middle. We stay in the messy middle of our goals all the way up to the moment we finally complete the goal. It's important to make plans for our goals, and at the same time, not get too attached to them. We often don't know what's around the bend for our goal. We don't know what we don't know. Often the best way to approach a goal like this is to take the next step, then check in, take the next step, then check in. What do you do if you're recording your goals in a goal journal and end up with a messy middle kind of page? 

1. Permission to stop half way, declare it done, and move on to another strategy. 

2. Permission to do things out of order. You can do just the parts you like or need. 

3. Permission to miss a day and to fluctuate in the amount of effort you give to a goal over time. 

Being in the messy middle of a goal can be fun when you know how to check in and navigate it.

Sometimes Goals have No Clear Path We write down our goals and our big dreams, but there's no more room on the page to connect them to reality. The next day we end up with a Big Dreams Hangover - that low after the high of dreaming big. When we have goals with no clear path, we can start with information gathering goals. Information gathering goals are their own legit goal. Instead of "How am I going to change my sleep patterns?" we can choose an information gathering goal like Googling sleep issues, asking friends, joining a facebook group, or making an appointment with a doctor. None of those things will solve our sleep problem, but they will give us information that gets us one step closer. When we brainstorm possibilities and don't know which one will work becuase there's no clear path, we can set exploration goals - a series of tiny experiments to try out different options and see how we like them. When you need a bridge between your real life and the dreams you want, try building goal journal pages that lay some ground under where you are now. What has worked for you in the past? What are your signature strengths? How can you use those strengths to approach your goal? And what is the next smallest step I can take toward my goal?

Reflect Reflecting creates power in your life by reminding you of what you've done and that you are building something that you value. When you're trying to decide which goals you want to do, try imagining yourself at the end and looking back to reflect. Ask yourself: What will I wish I had done? What will I be grateful I did? What will I regret if I didn't do it? One client wanted to feel recharged at the end of the summer. She imagined herself at the end of the summer and asked those very questions, which helped her create clear goals for what she could do now to feel recharged at the end of the summer. Reflecting in advance helps you figure out what you really want. Reflecting on a mundane day connects how you spent your time to what you value. Collecting these ordinary things into one list gives them the importance they deserve. Recording your goal efforts and other things you do gives you something to reflect back on.  Reflecting on things you've realized helps you apply those realizations to your life, so learning life's lessons doesn't get lost.

How can I honor my efforts? For example, one client used to have lists and goals and felt accomplished checking them off. Later, as a mom, she struggled with the constant need to manage kids, house, and get meals on the table. Because that effort was just "part of the job," and wasn't something she wanted to do, she dismissed it as effort. Another client had a goal of a year of CONNECTION. At the end of the day she'd ask herself, what do I do all day? Spending 2 hours on the phone doesn't seem like you're accomplishing anything, but when you honor your effort, it is moving her closer to her goal. A third client had a 3 week writing intensive goal. Each day she'd report on her goal and set a new one. But none of us wants to feel like we're on a treadmill of accomplishment. She also needed a way to honor her previous efforts and make them visible to remind her how her efforts were adding up and building something substantial.

I'm a Family Life and Goals Coach to family leaders who have wants, needs, and goals of their own while they are shouldering the responsibility of running a household and leading and loving a family. This new podcast series is about what I learned coaching. The first episode is about what I learned having my own coach. Principle #1 is when I have a coach, I dream bigger. I may not always choose those big dreams, but I allow myself to dream big and allow myself to think about what if it happened sooner than later. What would I need to do and be to make that happen? Principle #2 is "The Act of Getting a Coach is Vulnerable." So . . . don't be surprised if you cry. At least I did. It's vulnerable to both dream big and say things I wouldn't normally say out loud.  Principle #3 is "How can you get a piece of that now?" Essentially, we think that arriving at goals will get us something. Respect at work. Happiness. Satisfaction. My coach helps me see, you can get a piece of what you want now by working on your thoughts and by taking action in immediate microscopic ways.

How to get real traction on our goals. We need traction because we save goals for the things we can't just pull off. We often think of goals as hard. What does hard even mean? Can you tell me why your goal is "hard" without using the word "hard"? Is it awkward, time-consuming, not what you expected? Research shows when you think something is easy but can't do it you think there's something wrong with you. If you think it's challenging, you're willing to persist longer. Reframing a "hard" goal into a "challenging" goal inspires motivation and persistance. Research also shows that when we are stressed, we are less persistent when unexpected challenges come up. They also found that if you have a sense of control, that the stress doesn't matter as much anymore. If we want goal traction, we have to make an effectual struggle. We need to choose action steps that will actually move you toward your goal, not just randomly in the vacinity or topic of your goal.   The final principle for goal traction is the positive psychology principle that No One Is Coming. No one is coming to rescue you. No one is coming to change your life for you.

Adjusting a goal can give us more goal traction. There are 3 ways to adjust our goal. We can keep going as we were, we can adjust it and make it smaller, add a reminder, or whatever other adjustment it needs, or we can let a goal go. When we adjust a goal we are facing reality and making changes that will get us traction on our goals.  One way to do that is to be humble enough to create a small enough next step to be successful. Sometimes we aren't willing to make a small enough goal because we think "it shouldn't be this hard." That kind of thinking leads us to believe something is wrong with us and so we quit trying. What if we told ourselves a different story like this. This goal is harder than I expected and I'm still learning how to make progress here. To me that's challenging and motivating. It's also not personal. I'd be energized to go after a goal like that. When you adjust a goal, try very small steps. When you are adjusting your goals you can also let them go. You don't have to keep goals you don't like anymore. Just like Marie Kondo, you can thank your goals for their service and let go of a goal that doesn't serve you anymore.

In the middle of a goal it can be scary to stop and evaluate your progress.  We often don't want to face how things are going because we might have to own it. Sometimes big emotions come up when we evaluate a goal. It can feel like we are evaluating ourselves instead. The important part of evaluating a goal is becoming calm and non-judgmental and asking 3 predictable questions: What went well and why? What didn't go well? What did you learn?  When we know what to expect, the step of evaluating can be straightforward and helpful. Those questions can give us insight and traction on our goals.

The way we track a goal can give us more traction on our goals. Usually when we think of tracking we think of charts. Charts can be helpful, but only if they are serving you. Consider avoiding charts that create gaps when time passes. Rather than a daily chart, try a tally chart so you can see how many times you do it, but if you miss a day it's not the end of the world. Tracking can give us data. Tracking honors our progress and makes it visible. Tracking can be a reminder because it is visible. Tracking can also help us figure out when we are done with our goal. Consider using a journal or log to track you goals. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is to check in on a regular basis and a journal or log can help us see patterns in our goal efforts.

When we think of getting traction on our goals, it's easy to think of effort. Of course effort will get us traction. But it can be surprising how many different kinds of effort exist. Effort isn't just physical labor. It's also the mental effort of concentrating, doing boring and awkward things, persisting and coming back after a failure, continuing when you're tired, or emotional effort.  It's important to be agile in our effort, not just pushing through all the time, but taking a step back to see what effort will really help here. Goals can take emotional effort as well as physical or mental effort. Gearing up for a task or dealing with the strong emotions that come up when you do something new or fail are actual skills that require effort. Willingness statements can be helpful in anticipating the kinds of effort that might be necessary to get traction on and accomplish your goals.

One way to get traction on our goals is to do a better job of remembering them. Why is it so hard to remember a goal? It's because remembering is a matter of context and triggers. You set the goal in a different time, place, activity, and mood than when you execute the goal. To remember a goal, create triggers that show up in the time and place you want to do the goal. It's also helpful to recreate the mood you had when you set the goal. Time has passed between when you set the goal and are executing the goal, and in that passage of time your mood is going to change. You can recreate the mood by writing a note to remind yourself why you set the goal in the first place.

Great questions help you choose a better goal which helps you get traction on your goal. Using the example of organizing your kitchen, we use questions to design a better, more specific goal. How can we be more specific with our goals? We can be clear about what done looks like and be specific about our next actionable steps. How do we know our goal is realistic? We can ask ourselves how confident we are on a scale of 1-10 and explore why we are where we are. Often these questions will lead us to set very clear, very tiny goals. Have the humility to break a goal down as far as it needs to go. Sometimes our hovering expectations might make us feel like we shouldn't have to start this small or that we should already know how to do this.  Starting small and being clear where we are going, even with a challenging goal, can help us focus, be persistent, see our own progress, and gain real traction on our goals.

Let's look at a framework that will help us get traction on our goals before a goal even begins. Traction comes from engaging in our goals. Like a gear that can be disengaged and just spin or engaged and move large vehicles forward, engaging in goals moves us forward.  Goal loops, with their 7 steps, are little pieces of goals. Each goal loop we complete gives us traction on our goal. Even if we fail, a goal loop gives us information and learning so we can move forward. The real traction comes when we iterate a goal loop. Iteration is doing a process over and over again. Each iteration is like a marble that we add to our goal jar.  The cool thing is that when we engage with goals, we also get marbles in other life jars because engaging with goals builds personal capacity, character, resilience, self reliance, skills, awareness of ourselves and reality, and take-away principles learned form our life's experiences.

We are going to have a lifetime of goals. A lifetime of goals is like a garden where the plants are goals and the garden is our life. This analogy teaches us ten things about goals in our lives. We're going to have goals all of our lives. Even if we don't set formal goals, our lives are filled with goal-oriented behaviors. Looking at a lifetime of goals as a garden gives us insight into how to manage all the many goals we will have throughout our lifetimes

Understanding the difference between Goals and Goal Loops gives us power over our goals. It feels good to finish a goal. But of course those good feelings don't last forever. We always return to our baseline of happiness eventually. When we set goals we aren't just after that happy feeling. Goals help us gain skills, get things we want, strengthen our character traits, and grow.  Goals are like having a destination on a map. Goal loops are like pulling out the map and asking ourselves some questions. Where are we? Do we know where to go next? Do we still want to go to our destination? Our goals can sometimes feel like they are bossing us around. We set a goal and our future self isn't in the mood to do that goal anymore. When we set the goal we can remind ourselves why we set the goal. Sometimes we'll want to carry on and work harder. Sometimes we'll want to pivot and adjust the goal. And sometimes we want a new goal entirely. Goal Loops give us the power to adjust our goals because they give us a moment to pause in the middle of the goal. Goal loop questions help us see what's really happening with our goals, which gives us more control over them. Goal loops also give us an alternative to quitting a goal. No one wants to be a quitter, but doggedly hanging onto a goal that is not serving us is also not helpful. Goal Loops are the perfect time to check in and intentionally shift your goal.

Failure happens to everyone. Failure is good for growth and personal development. We all know that. So why do we often fear and avoid failure? Because it feels bad. It's uncomfortable. Many of us freak out, numb, avoid, pretend, or blame when we expereince the discomfort of failure. Instead we can practice regulating our emotions, managing our thoughts, and using goal loops to work through moments of failure. The great thing is - we can practice these skills before we encounter failure. As we practice them our brains learn new patterns and we can take moments of failure in stride and move forward without getting stuck.

Goal loops give you traction on your goals by giving you a simple way to evaluate: What is a goal loop? A piece of a goal that ends in 3 questions. What went well and why? What didn't go well? and What did you learn? Goal looping a goal that's not going well turns everything around. It gives you options and pause points to decide how you want to proceed. Goal loops help you approach goals from a position of strength, face the reality of your situation, and dig you out of your current slump. Goal loops have lots of other benefits. Give it a listen!

Our goals have a terrain of their own and are laid out on the terrain of our lives. How does this principle help? It helps us not take things personally when things go wrong, because it's just terrain. It helps us be able to zoom out and back in to gain perspective.  Even though the unexpected will happen it's still important to plan out our goals.  Plans don't predict. They prepare. It's important to plan goals not because they predict how things will turn out, but because they give us sign posts for where we are going so we have direction and can prepare for the unexpected.  As we learn to embrace the messy middle of terrain, it actually becomes enjoyable. We are goal oriented creatures. We are built for this. We are built to move toward the things we want in the future. And we are built to be agile and flexible when our plans don't go as planned.

New Year's Resolutions are famous for being broken. So why do we continue to set them? It's powerful to have a fresh look at our lives.  It's important to believe in possibilities. So if they are important, why don't we keep our resolutions?  The science and business principle of complex versus complicated can shed some light on it. Complicated problem is solvable. Lots of moving parts, needs some skill and knowledge, strategic thinking. But if you're smart enough it's solvable. Complex problems are unpredictable. There's lots of moving parts, but they interact in unexpected ways.  A car engine is complicated. You have to know how engines work, but then they are predictable and engine problems can be solved. Traffic is complex. No matter how good your roads and traffic lights are, you can't predict how many cars will be on the road, individual drivers behavior, where or when a crash will occur, or the behavior of drivers slowing to watch baby ducks on the side of the road.  You solve complicated problems.  You manage complex ones.  New Year's Resolutions are almost always complex, so they need a new approach.

Inner Change. After holding our breaths for even more changes in April 2019 Conference, there were no more new announcements. It was a little disappointing at first. No major shifts! But there were a lot of talks about change. About buckling your seatbelt and preparing for the ride with more changes to come. With the ongoing restoration. The website describes the home-centered nature of the changes before they were publically announced. It focuses on the individual needs of families around the world and promotes flexibility and reducing the church burden on families. It even suggests a slightly new emphasis on Monday nights - suggesting spiritual learning on Sundays and activities on Mondays, adding to emphasize the flexible nature of the program or at other times as families choose. But leaders - still keep Mondays open. Overall the emphasis promotes personal development, growth and an inner change

Begin!  Just begin! That was the message when the Children and Youth Initiative first rolled out.  Begin planning activities with your family. Begin setting personal goals. Begin in any way that works for your family. This is a special podcast pulled from the archives when we first started Goals with Kids and were still writing the Goal Getters book. I was written before Children and Youth was fully rolled out. It's based on powerful principles of faith as a principle of action. Of learning by taking action. Of action bias. Of using our agency. It also introduces the idea of goal loops for the very first time! I'm excited to give you a peek into how it all started! Give it a listen! #begin #strivetobe #lifechangingprinciples #principles #goals #personaldevelopment #childrenandyouth #COJCOLDS #faith #agency #actionbias

Here's a couple more ways to get your kids interested in goals: Build an Achievement board with post-it notes posted in a new, novel place your kids will notice. The bathroom door or mirror, on the fridge, or the wall going up the stairs.  Don't wait for days or weeks or even semesters to put up only big achievements. Make post-its for microscopic achievements. Make 7 notes for the 7 steps of a recipe. Help kids see the PROCESS of doing goals. That goal steps lead to goal achievement. Seeing microscopic goals on the achievement wall sends them the messages that their achievements can "make the wall" too. We can also set family goals to encourage kids to get the hang of goal setting. Make the goals simple and fun.

When we hope to get our kids interested in goals, we can use these principles to get started.  The first principle is do it yourself first. If you want them to do goals, model it for them. You don't have to do an intensive goal that might be difficult like losing weight or exercising. Choose something microscopically small like drinking more glasses of water. The second principle is "Make it Visible." When you choose a goal, keep it simple, but let your kids see you marking off a chart or adding marbles to a jar every time you do it. When the tracking is visible, kids get interested in what you are doing. The last principle is the no big deal principle. Don't get too excited about the idea of them doing goals yet. Play it cool. Make it seem like no big deal. When they get interested, then they can join you in setting and working toward goals.

Gratitude feels good, helps us gain perspective, and has lasting effects. Gratutide changes our bodies in ways that can be measured, reducing stress and increasing our overall well-being.  The surprise is that gratitude doesn't have to be a daily habit to be beneficial. Researchers have actually found that mixing up the ways and frequency with which we show gratitude has larger and more lasting effects than a static gratitude practice. Discover in the podcast several different gratitude practices that increase our gratitude and well-being.

Preparing our kids for adulthood is a large, complicated task. Something as simple as knowing which over-the-counter meds to take when you have a cold takes some practice to learn.  Young adults can figure a lot of things out on their own. The idea is not to try to teach them 100% of what they need to know to function independently. However, not having a good baseline of skills makes it more stressful for a new college student or new employee or new apartment dweller to make all the adjustments to their new life. Having a baseline of skills will lessen their stress. It's not just the young adults who need the new skills. As parents of adults, we need new skills ourselves for how to communicate with them, how to separate ourselves, and how to carve out a new role for ourselves in the relationship.

The CTFAR tool helps us change from simply reacting to situations to understanding our it's our own thoughts causing our emotions and reactions. The CTFAR Model comes from Brooke Castillo, owner of The Life Coach School. C = Circumstances are just neutral events. They don't mean anything by themselves. T = Thoughts are sentences in your head. They are separate from the circumstances. 5 people could have 5 different thoughts about the same circumstance. You can change your thoughts. F = Feelings are vibrations in your body. They also don't mean anything by themselves. Thoughts create feelings. A = Actions are what you do and don't do. Feelings drive actions. R = Results. The results you get are from your actions. So tracking it back - our results essentially come from our thoughts.

We want to have influence with our adult kids, but sometimes it comes across as judging them. What can we do to increase our influence without judging? One important task of young adults and their parents is the task of differentiation. It's an ongoing process where you define your new roles, separate yourself as a person, reveal more of your true self, define new boundaries, and manage all of the anxiety and big emotions that come from this process.  If we want to influence our adult kids we need to accept that differentiation. It helps to be non-reactive and emotionally curious. If we want to give advice, ask permission first. And use stories to say what you're trying to say. Remind them of your intentions and that they are an adult in this situation. Remind them that you'll be okay no matter what you choose because you have your own life. And be vulnerable and real with them. It might be time to tell them about how you face your life so they see you as a person and not a parent. Our kids expereince our actions and words, not our intentions. That means that without realizing it, we can actually be part of the problem. Acknowledging this is an important step into changing the patterns we don't want to continue with our adult kids. It's a lot of work to forge this new relationship, but it's so worth it!

Unpacking is a skill for facing hard things. It breaks down complex situations or difficult emotions into more maneagable pieces. So what is unpacking? It is simply making a list of all the things that seem to be going on around the situation. Unpacking has a lot of potential benefits and some really cool things begin to happen.  First, your confusion or big emotions begin to make sense because you start to see there's a lot going on here. Second, the simple act of giving your frustration words is powerful for problem solving in your brain.  Third, when your brain sees a list of smaller issues, often one will bubble up as something you want to work on or you'll notice things that you hadn't noticed before because you wrote it all out on a list. Try unpacking without actively trying to solve the problem. Let your brain percolate on it awhile.  Then take whatever actions seem appropriate, even if they are small and make the problem just 1 percent better.  Let the momentum of taking action get you unstuck to begin working on your complex problem.

Our adult kids live in a different generation with its own characteristics, technology, and culture. Millennials have gotten a bad rap in the news media and from some of us as parents.  The reality is that we are all adapting to culture and technology changes that happen so fast that no-one can keep up with it.  In this podcast LeAnn discussions the Generation Gap and how to navigate the differences as we develop our relationships with our adult kids.

Our kids grow up and move out, eventually. As parents we are slowly working ourselves out of a job. The transition to being a parent of an adult can be complicated and rocky. Nothing's gone wrong here. It's supposed to be hard. It's hard for 2 reasons. The first reason is there are three things going on simultaneously. Our kid is transitioning to adulthood, we are transitioning to a life without them underfoot, and our relationships is transitioning to something new we are creating together. The second reason it is hard is that these transitions are major life transitions for both of us. There's 3 big transitions that adults go through. As a teenager transitions from being a child to an adult they wrangle with hormones, a new identity, and big emotions. As a mom transitions into being a mom, she goes through a process called matrescence which involves wrangling with hormones, a new identity, and big emotions. When an empty nester transitions from being a parent to being an empty nester, they wrangle with hormones, a new identity, and big emotions.  So launching kids into adulthood is especially tricky because both you as the parent and them as the kid are going through huge life transitions. It's okay if it's hard. That's normal. Nothing's gone wrong. It's supposed to be hard to develop, grow up, and take on a new identity.  The way through is to engage in the now. To take what's happening now and not sweep it under the rug, ignore it, hide from it, or pretend it's not happening. Engage with what's hard about it today. Do the same tomorrow. And eventually we work our way through it.

When we are hard on ourselves, we sometimes hear the advice: treat yourself the way you would a good friend. I love the idea of talking to myself like I talk to my friends when they are hurting. The warmth of it reminds me how hard I can be on myself sometimes. It's good advice, especially in those moments when we are hard on ourselves, but does it always work? Listen in to what works and doesn't work for the people LeAnn talked to.  Then listen for 5 ways to be kind to yourself: Using diminutives, 3rd person, imagine your friend, principles of self compassion with Kristen Neff, and calling forth your compassionate self with Paul Gilbert.

Failing doesn't feel good, so we often avoid it. This podcast is about why it's important to embrace failure and how to approach it. Embracing failure means giving ourselves permission to be human with permission to experience all of the emotions. It's okay to have conflicting feelings, joy in bad times, and sorrow in good times. It's all human. There are things we can do to better approach failure. We can remember that the unpleasant feelings that come with failure are temporary. The podcast suggests other tools like willingness statements, naming the emotion, and other ways to deal with the big emotions that accompany failure. One creative way to handle failure is to create a goal loop. Package the failure into an experience and throw it into your past. Goal loops are 3 simple questions about an experience: 1. What went well and why? 2. What didn't go well? 3. What did you learn? Other tools for handling failure are the better than zero principle, normalizing failure with dinner conversations about the day and talking about it, reminding ourselves that this is one performance, one hour of their lives, one teacher, one moment, or one class. A final tool in this podcast is creating a space for both performance and learning modes.

Often people spend significant energy trying to eliminate their weaknesses or make them strong.  Today's podcast presents a framework for looking at our weaknesses without freaking out or feeling bad about them.  If you line up 1,000 human character traits and score them on a scale of 0 to 10, every person on the planet with have zeros and every person will have tens. We are strong and weak in different things. That creates diversity, not disaster.   Looking inward to fix our weaknesses is like a hypochondriac who constantly takes their own temperature instead of looking outward to show up, come as we are, and lift where we stand.  Think of your weaknesses as a soundboard where we can call forth different character traits as the situation calls for it. Working from a position of strength is more useful than spending lots of time fixing our weaknesses or feeling bad about them.

Permission to be human.  Sounds like a relief, right? Today we dive into Tal Ben-Shahar's work on how giving ourselves permission to be human works to transform perfectionism into healthy striving.   Did you know that researchers have found that perfectionism has basic ingredients?  When you bake a cake, there are basic ingredients. These ingredients determine if the cake will be a chocolate cake, lemon cake, or angelfood cake. By looking at the ingredients of perfectionism you can determine your flavor of perfectionism and what you can do to dial down perfectionism in our lives.  In this podcast LeAnn will unpack perfectionism layer by layer, looking at the 9 ingredients of perfectionism and discussing the antidotes to each ingredient. The ingredients are: • High standards • Order • Expectations of others •Reactivity to mistakes • Perceived pressure from others •        Dissatisfaction • Details & Checking • Ability to be satisfied with an accomplishment • Black and White thinking

Gaps are scary. Whenever we set a goal or see a gap between where we are and where we want to be, we often have an emotional reaction to the gap. And when we encounter a gap we have a avalanche of thoughts about our ability to span that gap. It doesn't matter how big the gap is, our bodies still react with emotions and thoughts.  Why talk about gaps when we are talking about perfectionism? The way we look at the gap will allow us to dial-down our perfectionism. It allows us to be a healthy striver. It allows us to enjoy the journey. It allow the process to change us.  In this podcast LeAnn will discuss ways to look at the gap and the tools to help us manage the gap better, These tools include: Emotional regulation, looking at the end as a way to improve and grow, remember there will always be a gap, and thinking about the purpose for this goal or task.

Unpacking is making a list of what's going on in a situation. Unpacking brings awaresness or self-awareness. Unpacking perfectionism helps us uncover how perfectionism shows up in our lives and how it affects us. Perfectionists don't confront reality and often have secret rules for themselves that aren't realistic. Unpacking helps uncover these hidden rules and face reality. It's not about a standard of excellence, it's about what people think about us.  It's an overconcern with making mistakes and worrying about what people will think rather than giving ourselves permission to be human and make normal mistakes. The podcast includes lots of questions to help you unpack your perfectionism.

Uncomfortable emotions are like waves that come and go. Anger, frustration, or desperation can lead those waves to crest into yelling or other actions. We have all done that before and it never feels good afterwards.  We can learn to ride those emotional waves until they pass and then we can continue parenting without the guilt or the crying children.   We can learn to keep calm with our kids. Keeping calm in the moment is part mindset and part tools! There are mindsets like remembering that nothing's gone wrong here, this is normal. There's also managing the wherewithal that comes in layers and noticing when we are tired, hungry, or maxed out in some other way.  LeAnn also introduces research about how the presence of a calm parent changes the way a child's emotional brain works and lowers their reactivity.  Keeping ourselves calm is the first step, but it leads us to helping our kids keep calm as well, and opens up a lot more opportunities for teaching and parenting. Get ready for tools, principles, and examples about staying calm, something we all need at some point with our families.

We are learning how to get our kids to do what we need . Sometimes it works fine.  Other times it seems really complex.  And what works one time, doesn't work the next. What works for one family doesn't work for another.  Yes, we are talking about realistic parenting.  In this podcast, LeAnn explains some areas of realistic parenting.   How to let go of some of the expectations that make parenting hard.  How to  decide which parenting advice to implement in our parenting.  And she explains that somethings we, the parent, are part of the problem. Even if we have good intentions and work hard, sometimes the way we are handling a situation is part of the problem.  We may need to find new ways to  handle some situations.  However, knowing that we are part of the problem in in a given situation provides us real power and allows us to change and become part of the solution.

When our kids were little we taught them to share. Sharing a cookie meant: dividing it in half. Sharing lots of cookies meant counting them out: 1 2 3 4 5 6 and dividing them up evenly.   But how do you share a toy? We had to develop new language for “sharing” toys, so we taught them to take turns.  We even got them timers so they could take turns for 5 minutes at a time.   As our kids get older, sharing power keeps changing, until they become an adult with 100% power. Sharing power until then is not a tug of war.  It’s a way of looking outward and going in the same direction together.   This podcast is about sharing power with other people, including our kids.   LeAnn will take a look at ways to share power with our kids.

One of the great parts about being a parent is we decide how our home is going to be.  A large part of this is setting personal boundaries between us and our family members.   Creating boundaries takes time and effort. However, it is worth the effort.   We are creating a family culture and a home where everyone is happy. We decide what’s okay and what’s not okay in our house.    Also, while it is our responsibility to care for your children, we need to care for ourself as well.  We need to meet our own needs or else we will be unhappy and may eventually act out on our kids.  To avoid any explosive behavior, we create a boundary. We only have to set them a few times before kids know we mean business.  We can prevent frustration, resentment, and anger through creating boundaries.  Through simple actions and behaviors, we can help kids to see what is okay and what is not okay.  It takes practice but it is a skill worth learning as a parent.   In this podcast, LeAnn will teach you about the principle of setting boundaries.  Come learn how to craft a one-liner to ask for what you need.  One-liners help me be a calmer stronger parent.

As a parent, the environment we create influences our kids’ choices. Sometimes, a change of environment is necessary to help push them to do the things we need them to do.   Changing the environment changes the response we get from our kids.  It gets our kids attention and helps them know that we mean business. Part of your job is to prepare your kids for the future and so it's worth the effort to make these changes and do things that will help them to make good choices.    In this podcast, LeAnn teaches about the power of changing environments.   Doing something really different can really make a difference.  She will teach you to examine your assumptions and break out of them so you can mix it up and try something new.  You can’t control your kids or their choices, but you can control a lot of things.  So when you experiment, make changes, and get something working well, it builds positive momentum to get other things working well.  You will have more confidence as a parent and find better ways to influence your kid to do good without needing to force them in any way.

The true challenge of parenting is that we are in charge of something that you can’t control. We do all that we can to shape our children.  However, we don’t get to choose the outcomes or how they will turn out.  With this notion, some may question of parents matter. The answer is YES WE DO! We do matter and we still have an influence on our child.     We can’t control the choices our children make. However, what we do as parents still really matters! We are trying to mold our children into good people who make good choices.  In this podcast, LeAnn will discuss the principle of stewardship.   Parenting is just so complex that it is difficult to predict how your child will turn out, despite your best efforts.  As you learn about stewardship, you will learn to let go of the need to predict how your children will turn out.  Rather, you will learn to just engage with your children in the moment and enjoy being with them. You can learn skills and communication patterns to inspire your kids to make good choices, because ultimately, you can't make choices for them.

Picture this: Your child refuses to do something you’ve asked them to. You decide to sit down and talk to them about it. Despite trying to be calm, they continue to fight back!   One of the great challenges of parenting is learning how to have conversations like this without creating contention.   conversations, and the way we handle conversations, are really important.   When it comes to motivating our children, the way that we talk to them and the conversations we have can have a great impact.  It isn’t very effective to try talking people into doing something and telling them that this is what they need to be doing.  So how do we have an affective motivation conversations?   LeAnn will teach you how to evoke your child into talking about the changes they want to make, discussing why they want to change and how they will go about doing it.  This will help your child to understand better why they need to c hange and will help them create their own desire and motivation to do things.

When raising a child, it is crucial to build a good connection with them.    Your relationship with your child can greatly affect their motivation to do things.  Chances are, when you started out as a parent, you had an idea of what things were going to be like.  Our fantasies of what things are going to be like seldom come true.  Parenting isn’t as easy as we have hoped.  And perhaps our relationship with our child is not what we thought it would be. They may be distant and disobedient.   It may be time for us to shed those unrealistic ideas of parenthood and look at our child and our connection as it truly is.    Connection is vital. As human beings we need it and thrive with it.  t can have a great impact on all aspects of our lives.  When it comes to parenting and motivating our children, it plays an even more crucial role.   In this podcast, LeAnn breaks down the importance of relationships and what you can do to build a stronger connection with your child.  She will discuss underlying principles that will assist you in the process.  When we have good relationships with our kids it builds their resilience and will motivate them to build even better relationships in the future.

What is our goal as a parent? For most, they simply want to raise their kids to be competent adults.    Sometimes that can seem like an overwhelming task, especially when our child doesn’t seem to be motivated to do anything!   Competence is one of the key components for motivation.  When people don’t feel adequate in their ability to complete a task, they are significantly less motivated to even start that task.  In this podcast, LeAnn discusses the principle of building competence in order to increase motivation.   She will break down different circumstances that can affect your ability to feel competent, including things as simple as your mood at the time when you approach a task.  As you understand competence and why it is so important, you can begin to build competence in your children.   LeAnn will teach small and simple ways in which you can slowly increase that competence in your kid, which will help them to feel more motivated to do things and become productive individuals all on their own.

As a parent, we may sometimes ask yourself things like, “How do I get my kid to take out the trash?” or “How do I get my kid to do homework?”  Or very often it might be, “How do I get my kid to do anything but video games?”    There’s lots of good reasons to want our kid to do things.  However, there are definitely times when it seems they won’t listen. We may feel at a loss of what, out of options.   In this podcast, LeAnn will teach you how to evaluate and take control of the situation with a step by step process of how to get your kids to do, well, whatever it is you need them to do!    This podcast accompanies the free PDF of “12 Steps: How To Get Your Kid To…” in which LeAnn provides a very clear and effective way to help motivate your child.  She will help you understand what your child may be thinking and feeling, and help you know how to approach them in a way that will make your intentions clear, and will help them be willingly to choose to do what you have asked of them.   LifeChangingPrinciples.com

As a parent, our job is to help our kids succeed in life and become productive members of society.  However, sometimes it can be difficult to get children to want to do things like chores or homework. When they won’t listen to us, it can feel like our only option is to force or pressure them into doing things.  If we want your child to truly become a productive individual, they need to learn to choose for themselves  In this podcast, the principle that LeAnn highlights is Autonomy Support. Supporting their autonomy is what parents do to help their kids feel like they have control in their lives.   When parents allow their children to have a choice, and allow them to actually make those choices for themselves, rather than forcing them to do things, their kids will find the motivation to do things like chores and homework all on their own.  It can be frustrating when children don’t listen and perhaps a little tempting to want to force them to do stuff.   LeAnn teaches parents how to make a change within themselves to give their children freedom to choose.   You will learn to  principles and tools to respect your child’s ability to choose and accept their choices, while also putting rules and policies into place that will encourage them to make the right choice on their own.  Kids need to figure things out on their own, including the consequences of different choices, both good and bad, so that in the long run they will become more motivated and productive individuals

Have you ever thought about what really motivates your kids?    Kids are constantly being influenced by the world around them, whether it be their friends at school, their family, or even social media. It’s a constant whirlwind of ideas and opinions! Many kids are good at doing what society wants them to do. They take on the motivations of their environments.  While that can be good, ultimately we want children to become their own people and have their own opinions.   That is called INTEGRATION OF MOTIVATION.    In this podcast, LeAnn discusses the principle of integration of motivation, which is the idea that kids take on the motivations of their environments. .     LeAnn teaches you how to understand and “unpack” your child’s motivation with them. This process will enable you to help your kids develop motivation to do things.   By creating a habit of breaking down their thoughts, emotions, and perceived pressures, you can help them create their own desire and ability to do things for themselves.

Don’t you wish there was some magic spell to make your kids do things?  I don’t have any spells or potions, but I do have a recipe for building motivation that works every time! I call it the SECRET SAUCE OF MOTIVATION!   One challenge of parenting is getting our kids to feel motivated. We want them to do things on their own, without forcing them.  Building  motivation in kids can be very difficult. However, it is easier when we know what things are required to build motivation.   In this podcast, LeAnn discusses the secret sauce of motivation. A recipe of principles that allows you to help your child feeling motivated to do the things you ask and also do the thing they want to do.  The secret sauce for motivation is autonomy, connection, and competence:  Building an atmosphere of autonomy and self direction,  Helping your child feel competent to do the things, and Building a good relationship with your child.  Understanding these individual principles and then applying them together will allow you to cook up (support) motivation in your kid!

In this podcast, LeAnn tackles the principle of motivation, one of the most important things we need as we make changes in our lives.   One confusion many folks encounter is believing we are either "motivated" or "not motivated", like an on/off light switch.   That is not the case.  LeAnn explains there are different kinds of motivation. She lays out the framework and research behind the skills that affect our motivation.   Why do I care about this framework of motivation? So what?   Here’s LeAnn’s "So what's".  Once I understood the motivation research: - I quit trying to talk people into things because it isn’t helpful - When I resist doing something I know how to fix it - I  can dance in a motivation conversation - I have better ways to ask my kids to do things - When I notice resistance, I get curious instead of mad  When we can understand the different ways in which we feel motivated, we can begin to deconstruct how we are feeling as we approach a certain task.   LeAnn teaches how to “unpack” your motivation, or in other words, how to change your motivations to help you change the experiences that you have as you do things.

As you face the challenges of life, the principle of mindfulness can be crucial in helping you as you learn to build up your repertoire of coping mechanisms and skills to handle stress.

Mindfulness is purposefully paying attention in a sustained and non- judgemental way, focusing on the present moment. Mindfulness can look like meditation, mindful chores, or even mindful eating. It helps you to be centered and calms the nervous system..

To be mindful is a sensory experience where you focus on things like your own breathing, the feel of your feet touching the ground, or the sensations you feel as you complete a task. As your mind wanders, you simply bring your attention back to your breathing or senses.  It’s intentionally paying attention to one thing.

In this podcast, LeAnn will teach you about mindfulness, what it looks like, feels like, and the benefits that it can bring to your life. Mindfulness is not always easy. Sometimes our thoughts can be uncomfortable. But when you take the time to be mindful it can help you to be more present in your own life and the lives of those you love. It rescues you from big emotions and keeps them from overwhelming you, giving you space to accept the feelings and then allowing you to think again. Ultimately, mindfulness allows you to separate yourself from your thoughts and feel more aware, in control, and capable of facing whatever stressful situation lies in front of you.

Sometimes in life we are faced with difficult situations and we are unsure of how to deal with them.

While our circumstances may not always change, we can always change the way we look at the situation.

In this podcast, LeAnn shares a personal story of how her husband had a stroke at the age of 30 while she was a stay at home mom with two kids, and pregnant with her third child. She tells the story in two different ways, framing it a different way each time. Through reflecting on this experience, focusing on different aspects of the story each time, she demonstrates how to effectively reframe a situation, turning it from something negative and depressing, to something more positive, realistic, and filled with hope.

There is power in cognitive reframing, or learning to look at a situation and change how you perceive it. If you focus on the negative aspects of a situation and fill your mind with doubt, fear, or self pity, it is harder to find solutions or coping mechanisms to deal with what is in front of you. On the contrary, when you focus on the positive things and learn to accept reality, while also maintaining optimism, your vision will broaden and you will find more options as you face difficult times.

We all have different ways of coping.

Everyone has a bank of coping mechanisms that they have at their disposal.

When stressors and stress come along, you may have the resources to deal with it, or you may not.

A part of learning to be resilient is learning how to cope

Sometimes the demands of the situation may require more than what you have stored in your bank of resources. So if you want to be more resilient you need to either build up new resources or get rid of your stressors. In this podcast, LeAnn will teach you how you can do both.

She will teach you how to evaluate your current coping mechanisms and discover the strengths that you already possess. From there, you can create a baseline of positivity, or a foundation on which you can begin adding more coping mechanisms. When you can see the good things that you are already doing, the positive emotions will broaden your vision and ideas of ways to cope. Over time, as you do that, as well as evaluate each stressful situation you are in, you will build more resources. You can meet each situation head on with confidence and actively cope with it.

Have you ever wondered how much your religion, or lack of religion, affects your ability to be resilient and cope with the difficulties of life?

It has actually been found that resilience and religion can be closely tied.

People use religion as a motivating force. It has been found that, generally, religion makes you a more resilient person.

However, there are a few ways that religion can do the opposite, and cause some hindrance to your ability to be resilient. It may sometimes skew your perception of the world into something that is unrealistic. At church you hear stories about how people do good things, and everything works out for them. So sometimes the stories we hear give us a misconception that if we behave good, things will always work out in the end.

In this podcast, LeAnn will teach you how to understand the ways that religion can build or halter your resilience. You will learn how to use it as a strength through doing simple things like accepting reality and striving to be good without tying your efforts to the outcomes. When we understand the way that life really works, and understand that God is in the details of our lives, it can make us more resilient. Religion and faith are protective factors towards your resilience.

Our bodies are remarkably designed to inform us of things that we need. When you need food, it tells you that you are hungry. When you need rest, it tells you that you are tired.

The same thing happens when we are stressed.

When we experience stress, our bodies produce an automatic reaction called a stress response. When a stressor appears, your body registers it as a threat, a physical change occurs, and chemicals are released throughout your body to help you respond to that stressor. This response is meant to get your attention, which is why it is so uncomfortable to experience.

In this podcast, LeAnn teaches how you can turn off your stress response by creating what is called a relaxation response. Through simple things like controlling your breathing and reframing your thoughts, you can physically change what is happening in your body. When you can control the physical response you are feeling and turn off the feelings of alarm and discomfort, you are more capable of properly dealing with whatever stressor is before you.

Most importantly, understanding the stress response helps us sit with it and tolerate it more effectively, so it dissipates sooner.

The modern world that we live in has a way of creating stressors that previous generations did not have to deal with. Many of these are micro stressors, small things that seem simple or insignificant on their own, but have a way of piling up and causing us to feel anxious or stressed without understanding exactly why. Due to the increased stress that we feel in modern life, we need to increase our resilience.

There are three kinds of resilience, but the most relevant and needed kind for the taxing nature of this modern world is sustained resilience, which is knowing how to consistently deal with the everyday stressors we experience. In this podcast, LeAnn explains what sustained resilience is and will teach you what you can do in your life to create solutions and find relief and hope in the face of constant stress. As you come to understand this concept more, and learn how to utilize this principle, you will be able to improve your ability to be resilient