Earlier this month, I sat down with Kelly Howard of the Fit is Freedom podcast. You may remember Kelly from a Change Academy episode on how incorporating more fun and adventure can help you be more consistent about your fitness practice. Kelly invited me back to the Fit is Freedom podcast to share some tips with her listeners on how to enjoy the upcoming the holiday season without throwing all of our healthy habits and progress under the bus.  I thought you would be interested in hearing...

In the previous episode, I talked about some of the things that can go wrong when we put corporations in charge of our wellbeing. In this episode, I share an example of what it looks like when it goes right, and how corporate-sponsored wellbeing programs can actually have a very positive impact on individuals and workers as well as on the company’s bottom line.  Lindsey Soroka is a registered dietitian and works as a health promotion specialist for a major national corporation, where she’s in...

A lot of employers and health insurers are now offering wellbeing apps and portals. They're obviously hoping that giving people tools to help them manage their health conditions and nudge them toward healthy behaviors will reduce health care costs. I recently checked out the wellbeing app offered by my own health insurance company. I actually think that some of the well-meaning but poorly-conceived prompts could be doing more harm than good. To be fair, figuring out how to nudge people to...

The theme of treats and rewards is coming up in a lot of my conversations right now…with my coaching clients, with people who have reached out to talk about working together, even with my friends and colleagues. Specifically, using food as a treat or reward.  This is something a lot of us have learned to do. And like any highly rewarding behavior, this habit has the potential to do harm…and can be surprisingly hard to break. In this episode, we’re going to talk about cultivating new sources...

How we see ourselves has an enormous impact on our mental health and wellbeing, how we function in our relationships, even what sort of goals we set for ourselves. Often, we believe that achieving those goals will improve our self-image and make us feel better about ourselves. But usually, it happens the other way around. Our self-image is often very distorted. Others may barely notice “imperfections” that are all we can see when we look in the mirror. And, by the same token, we can also take...

If you’ve been listening to the Change Academy for a while, you’ll remember Molly Watts from several previous episodes. But if you’re newer to the Academy, let me quickly tell you who she is.  Molly is the host of the top-rated Alcohol Minimalist podcast and author of the book Breaking the Bottle Legacy.  Molly’s work focuses on helping people create a more peaceful and sustainable relationship with alcohol. And the approach that Molly takes is very consonant with our philosophy here on the...

All of us occasionally struggle with negative or overwhelming emotional reactions.  But few of us have been taught to handle difficult feelings effectively. In this episode, Dr. Bethy Campbell returns to the Change Academy to share techniques for working with our most challenging emotions–enabling us to handle stressful situations with greater resilience and to access healthier emotional responses.  Dr. Bethy Campbell is a clinical psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, with special...

Late breaking news! Kelly is giving Change Academy listeners an electronic copy of her new book for free!  Scroll down for the link to that I met Kelly Howard a few months ago, when she invited me to be a guest on her podcast.  I loved the concept of her podcast, which is that fitness is not just another chore that we’re supposed to do. It is a gateway to more freedom. Kelly takes that message beyond her podcast and into the real world, where she runs a company that offers hiking, biking,...

Part of living your best life involves thinking–at least a little–about how you can set yourself up to live a good life in the future.  If you’re of a certain age, you might keep track of things like your cholesterol or your blood pressure. Or, you might keep an eye on your 401K balance, with an eye toward ensuring future well-being.  But there’s another lesser-known metric that can also be predictive of both your current and your future health and longevity. Just like those other markers,...

This podcast is based on the premise that –with the right tools, insights, and support, we can create meaningful lasting changes in our habits, improve our health, and take control of our lives.  The podcast Tiny Leaps, Big Changes by Gregg Clunis is based on the same premise. But in this episode, Gregg and I explore some uncomfortable questions:  What are the limits of our personal agency?  What are the forces that lead us to believe that creating healthy, safe, and secure lives and...

Have we put habit formation on too high a pedestal?  Dr. Michelle Segar is an NIH-funded researcher who has spent close to thirty years studying how to create healthy behaviors. that can survive the complexity and unpredictability of the real world. We talk about why healthy behaviors are often particularly resistant to habit formation, and what may work better. Things to Listen For 02:17 Common misconceptions about habits 06:33 Why complex behaviors defy habit formation 14:40 The...

I'm convinced that watching Wimbledon actually improves my game. Granted, when you’re as bad as I am, it doesn’t take much. But there is definitely a lot to be learned from people who are good at something that you’re trying to get better at. Which is why I want to share with you some of what I’ve observed in my most successful clients. These are qualities and attitudes that you can adopt and emulate to enhance your own progress and success, whether you’re working with me or another coach, or...

Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Whether you are trying to create positive changes in your personal life or in your workplace or community, you are more likely to succeed if you are working in a supportive environment.  You’ll often hear this referred to (especially in workplace settings) as “creating a culture of wellness.” But our efforts to instill a culture of wellness very often miss the mark. In this episode, we’ll talk about why and how to fix it. Joining me is Rebecca Johnson,...

Working toward a big goal takes a lot of grit and discipline. You may imagine that everything will be so much easier once you reach your goal.  You can finally relax and enjoy your accomplishment. But that transition, from active change to maintenance, can be really tricky. And we’re often completely unprepared for that.  If we’re not careful, we can let what we’ve attained slip through our fingers, simply because we don’t feel as motivated or rewarded by maintaining the status quo as we did...

This is a must-listen episode for anyone contemplating a career shift, But even if you’re not necessarily looking for a new job right now, this conversation will be highly relevant to anyone trying to live a life of greater purpose and meaning. Dr. Elizabeth Campbell, better known to her clients and students as “Dr. Bethy,” is a clinical psychologist, a marriage and family therapist, with special expertise and certification in career development counseling.  I know you'll appreciate the...

If you are an insight junkie like me, this episode is intended to be the tough love we both need. A lot of the coaching I do involves helping people better understand what is (really) driving their behaviors. These things are frequently invisible or unacknowledged–and this can result in our acting in ways that aren’t aligned with what we say we want.  Without insight into why we do the things we do, change can be very difficult. But the point I want to make today is that insight alone isn’t...

Not only is it fun to share success stories, but there’s always something valuable to learn by hearing how people navigate the process of change. In this episode, one of our clients share some reflections on how has she approached her goals– and some of the surprising benefits that happened along the way.  Two things that I want you listen for: 1. Stephanie wasn’t just looking to create a certain result. She was specifically interested in making a change that would be durable. She didn’t just...

Everyone is burned out. Employees are burned out. Business owners are burned out. Caregivers are burned out. But the solutions that are being promoted are not necessarily what we need in order to solve the problem of burnout. Cassie Christopher returns to the Change Academy to talk about workplace burnout and the impact this is having on both employees and employers (and even the self-employed)--and how each has a different role to play in creating a healthier and happier workplace. What to...

If there’s an issue that you can’t seem to get a handle on, a goal that you've had forever,  or a problem that just won’t stay solved, this episode is for you. We’re talking about why this happens--and how to get yourself out of this frustrating cycle.  Often, it's because there's a mismatch between the solutions that we are applying and the problem that actually needs to be solved in order for us to create the desired outcome. In this episode, we cover how to know whether you've got the...

We’ve been on Spring Break for the last few weeks but we haven’t spent the time lounging on a beach. We’ve been doing some big thinking about the future of the Change Academy and we have some big news to share:  We are redefining our respective roles at the Change Academy. Having co-created and co-hosted the show for the past 3 years, Brock is now stepping away from the mic but not going far…just a few steps away, into the production booth.  In Brock's final episode as co-host, we share more...

Brock and I (Monica) are taking our traditional Spring Break from the podcast and using that time to take a fresh look at our goals, objectives and commitments and do some tidying of our own.  And we’d like to invite you to do the same–and we’ve even created a special resource to help you do just that. --Visit ChangeAcademyPodcast.com/tuneup to join us for a system-by-system inspection and tuneup (or complete overhaul, if necessary) of your health, habits, outlook, and ambitions.

We’ve talked a lot about goals in this podcast: the purpose and function of goals, how to set good ones, and how to pursue them more effectively, even your goal-setting personality! But in this episode, we want to talk about NOT reaching our goals–and why that is not necessarily a problem. 

Do you get stuck in your thoughts, even when (or maybe, especially when) they aren’t helpful? We all do. There is even a name for it - Cognitive Fusion. Well, in this episode, we are going to learn how to defuse ourselves from those thoughts that threaten to undo our hard work, make us feel unworthy or sad, and hold us back from reaching our goals.

Some new research caught recently our attention because it reinforces and expands on a concept that we introduced about 6 months ago in our episode on the Law of Subtraction. When we recorded that, we weren’t aware that our so-called “law of subtraction” had been studied by University of Virginia professor Leidy Klotz. In this episode, we explore some of that research and how we can use this insight to create better solutions to our challenges.

Motivation gaps are those times where you feel as if you are not motivated enough to do what it takes to get a particular result. In this episode, we talk about four things that frequently cause motivation gaps, plus what researcher, Julie Dirksen, refers to as a "special motivation gap." --Join us for a Nutrition Upgrade on March 18 by going to ChangeAcademyPodcast.com/upgrade