In this episode I want to do something a little different and invite you to think about how three visuals - bridges, tunnels, and doors - are great vehicles for thinking about how to navigate challenging moments you encounter in your day, and at the same time be a way to open yourself up to receiving opportunities that are all around you that are ripe for the taking. 

Routines are a great vehicle for change. But sometimes we get so caught up in whether we’re doing the routines right that we can find ourselves unintentionally stuck inside of them.    And what I mean by that is we can get trapped in our desire to strictly follow the process of the routine, instead of really pausing to notice whether the routine is actually helping to deliver what you need, in that moment, and whether the routine is actually aligned with your purpose for creating the...

Many of the big, meaningful changes we want to experience take time. They unfold over time and in a way that we almost never can quantify or completely influence or accurately predict.  And sometimes when we’re working toward a change that takes time, one of the challenges we face is that we get caught up in waiting for the big change to happen.  In other words, we’re so focused on waiting for the entire change to materialize in full that we end up overlooking all of the signs and...

We can learn a lot from the success stories of other people. But if we’re not careful about how we process and relate to those stories, we can start to get caught up in them and use them as a template to measure our own success - instead of studying the through lines or the nuggets of wisdom they contain.    In this episode, we discuss how we can avoid getting caught up in other people’s success stories, and use them instead to promote our own growth.

We have a tendency to tell ourselves to not get our hopes up about something that we really want or something that we’re excited about that involves a level of uncertainty.  And we tend to tamp down our excitement through the words we use by adding qualifying statements - something like “This would be perfect for me, but it’s a long shot” - and we do that because if we don’t get our hopes up, then we don’t have to feel the perceived judgment of others or our own disappointment if it doesn’t...

When we think about a potential future scenario that makes us uncomfortable, our mind wants to “confront” the thought. It wants us to meet the thought on the thought’s terms and to accept the future scenario as true - even if it has no basis in fact - so that we can come up with a solution, just in case that future scenario actually happens.  When we confront thoughts like this, what we end up doing is breathing life into them and giving them power over us.  So instead of “confronting” a...

We all spend a lot of time trying to be consistent and trying to project a sense of consistency to other people. And we do that both because we think that inconsistency signals to others that we’re unfocused or undisciplined, and also because inconsistency can make us feel uncertain.  But in truth we need to embrace and make room for inconsistency in our life - because if we don’t make room for inconsistency, we leave no room for growth. By definition, growth is a state of consistently being...

When we think about what we want for ourselves in the future, it’s natural for us to try to issue spot and for our mind to want to solve any problems that we see coming down the pipeline.  Our mind wants to think through all the little nooks and crannies related to events in the future so that we can feel like we’re prepared for everything that might come up - because if we feel like we’ve thought through things then that gives us a level of comfort and it helps us feel safe.  But the...

When we’re envisioning how a future version of events will play out, we tend to associate those events with “The Struggle.”  We constantly hear messages about how “Life is hard”, “No pain no gain”, “Nothing in life is free” - and we also are instinctually wired to look for the warning signs of potential future struggles so that we can avoid them.  But this type of mindset can significantly impede our progress because if we believe that we have to struggle, our attention is drawn to the...

Buffers are actions, routines, habits or thought patterns we engage in that help to keep challenging situations or things that we don’t want to confront at an arm’s length.  Our minds are incredibly skilled at inserting buffers into our day as a way to avoid and push away things that we know will cause us to experience some level of discomfort or that we think have the potential to cause discomfort. Buffers allow us to hide behind something pleasurable or non-threatening that will put...

Sometimes we become so consumed with whether we’re following a rule that we’ve set up for ourselves that we lose sight of the ultimate benefit we wanted to experience through having the rule in the first place. While rules are of course helpful, sometimes they don’t account for the day to day, mini-fluctuations that are a natural part of our human experience we should be paying attention to. And even though we may have an inclination to deviate from the rules, we can view deviation as a sign...

Sometimes when we’re feeling a lack of motivation or focus, we tend to immediately think that it’s due to a lack of discipline - that we’re not doing a good enough job of buckling down and just staying focused.  But we feel undisciplined over a long period of time, it often means that something is out of alignment in terms of our day to day connection with our work. It usually means we aren’t currently in touch with the source of excitement or motivation or joy that comes from, or could come...

In many areas of our lives, the idea of control is an illusion because it suggests that through enough training and discipline and focus, we’ll have the ability to restrain or direct or command anything that we want. It suggests that there is a place we can arrive at where we can regulate or influence every single outcome, if we get good enough at exerting control. But we know from experience that that’s not possible because life is a mix of things we can influence and things that influence...

Sometimes when we create something that we’re proud of - something that gives us a sense of true satisfaction - that feeling is immediately followed by  wondering what people will think about it. And in that moment where we start to seek validation - where we start to wonder what other people will think about our work - it pulls us down from the high vibration that allows us to enjoy what we’ve created and continue to show up at our best. There’s a part of us that still gets caught up in...

One way to navigate a challenging moment is to envision what your “future self” would tell you about how to approach that challenge. Oftentimes when we’re struggling to figure out how to move through uncertainty or something difficult, we get so caught up in the details that we lose sight of the bigger picture.   We forget that we actually do know ways we can help ourselves through difficult times.   In this episode we discuss how you can think about challenges through the lens of what...

When we’ve made a decision, one of the things that impacts our ability to fully get behind that decision and move forward with intention is our tendency to experience decision regret.  And we generally experience decision regret because as soon as we make a choice, we start to process new inputs, emotions, and experiences that come with that choice, and if we experience any kind of resistance, or if our experience doesn’t match what we had envisioned our life would be life after making that...

One way we’ve been conditioned to view opportunity is through the lens of competition.   And here’s what I mean by that: If we believe that there is a limited supply of opportunities, then that kind of thinking leads us to further believe that the only way to receive or acquire those opportunities is to compete for them. Our mind tells us to believe that there is only so much of it to go around. And when we believe there is only a finite supply of opportunities, that impacts the way we...

When we think about something that’s going to happen in the future, our mind is very skilled at turning our thoughts about a future version of events into a story about what might happen if we fail, if we try something new, or if we’re criticized. And we know that our mind uses this story-telling ability as a defense mechanism because these kinds of stories that we tell ourselves about how a future event might turn out help keep us safe and prevent us from taking risks. In this episode,...

When we express to other people that we want to make changes, or that we want to do something new or different, it’s natural for us to be met with some disagreement and disapproval - including from people we respect or trust.  And when we’re met with the disagreement or disapproval of people we trust or anyone else for that matter, sometimes it causes us to question our decisions - even if we believe that what we decided is best for us.  But if we look closely at the nature of the...

One way that we rob ourselves of meaningful experiences each day is by trying to constantly walk a perfect line. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves each day to strike the perfect balance between two competing desires or interests we have that seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum.  Things like walking the line between work and play, healthy and unhealthy, and responsible and irresponsible.  In this episode I explain how this kind of mindset can be a total pitfall and offer three...

In physics, there’s a concept attributed to Aristotle that roughly translates to the phrase “nature abhors a vacuum.” In layman's terms, the concept means that nature requires every space to be filled - and that there are no naturally-occurring empty spaces because denser surrounding material immediately and always fills a void. In this episode we’ll discuss how we can apply this natural law to create space for bigger, better, more productive thoughts by clearing out what’s currently...

Here’s one of the most limiting thoughts you can have throughout a day: “Why did this happen to me?” When we have this thought and ask the question this way, we get in the habit of looking at life and our workdays from a passive perspective. In this episode I give you a few common situations where you might be asking this limiting question, and I offer you a new question that will help you flip this thought and approach each day as an active participant.

If you’re looking to make big changes to your workday, one way to do that is to practice the concept of addition through subtraction - which is essentially asking the question: What can I take out before adding in something new? This can be a powerful concept but in practice it’s hard to implement day to day for two big reasons. In this episode I talk you through those roadblocks and give you a two-step process for how you can start improving your workday by subtracting first.

If we take stock of how we’re thinking throughout the day, we find that we’re just bouncing from thought to thought all day long. And as we’re bouncing from thought to thought, we often don’t realize that many of those thoughts are stressful ones that are triggered by very specific workday situations we encounter.  In this episode I’ll teach you a concept that will help you identify a stressful thought that’s connected to a specific workday situation you encounter, and teach you how to come...