Self Improvement Daily Podcast

An important topic for all of us to understand is stress and the role it plays in our lives. Of course, most fundamentally stress is a physiological response that is in place for our safety. It gives us the energy and focus to fight or flight when confronted with a threat. Biologically our sympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing cortisol which creates these downstream effects.

Unfortunately stress in today’s human world is a bit out of place. I read a book in college that explained this phenomenon perfectly, and it’s called “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” by Robert Sapolsky. But now that humans are cognitive beings in a modern world, we experience unhealthy levels of stress because we perceive many psychological threats that activate our sympathetic nervous system on a daily basis. These chronically elevated cortisol levels create health issues for us, whereas a Zebra only activates a stress response when it’s being chased by a lion.

Recently I heard stress defined as a perception that your demands exceed your needs. This makes sense because then your body reacts to expand your capacities in the only way it knows how. But on the other side of it, I want to propose more mindful practices to manage stress where you intentionally lower the perceived demand. Writing out a plan, doing objective thinking, or utilizing gratitude or perspective can help to reframe the meaning of the stressful stimulus and make it more manageable.

At the end of the day, it’s important to be aware and in control of our body’s process, paying extra attention to the ways our bodies might not be caught up to the times. So let’s wrap up by reflecting on this question - What causes unnecessary stress in your life?‍

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

Many things only have meaning because there is the opposite to compare it to - Life and death,  health and sickness, night and day, success and failure… What I want to highlight for positivity Thursday is that same idea but the relationship between positive and negative.

Positivity only has meaning because the fulfillment, enthusiasm, and optimism of it can be compared to the feelings of despair, pain, and struggle of negativity. Oftentimes a positive mindset is tasked to see everything in a positive light, but that can be harmful to the necessary contrast it has with negativity. If you ignore negativity, or act like it doesn’t exist, then it dilutes the value of positivity because you won’t have the same spectrum to reference. It also makes you more vulnerable to negativity when it pierces that barrier because you don’t have as much experience managing it. That’s why for today’s positivity quote we’re going to talk about how we “conquer the negative”.

To say it another way, negativity is not meant to be avoided. It is meant to be felt because it provides more richness to your positivity, and in order for us to receive that value we need to allow ourselves to feel it. Just because you’re negative in the moment doesn’t mean you’re a negative person. You can be a positive person and have negative feelings… I am a positive person and I often have negative feelings. But it’s about what we do with those feelings.

To conquer the negative you need to see above it. You have an opportunity to reframe the meaning you attach to the negative feeling with perspective and gratitude. You can do whatever it is that helps you feel good, like exercising or talking it over with a friend to get it off your chest. You must not ignore the negative, you must move through it, you must conquer it.

So with all of that in mind let’s get self-aware about how you personally experience negativity: What do you do to best conquer negativity?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

I’ve come upon an interesting and unique idea that I wanted to share with you. I recognized that the words “aware” and “beware” have the same root - ‘ware’. In fact the only difference is the very beginning - A-ware or B-Ware. Knowing what the words mean I started relating it back to something I’ve been fascinated to learn more about, which is seeing life through the lenses of love and fear. The qualities of love and fear arguably distill the human experience into its most fundamental basics. On an instinctual level these are the two forces that influence everything else, and we evaluate everything against them. Just about everything can be related back to how it helps you experience love or avoid fear.

Our A-wareness brings consciousness to the things we’re experiencing, and when we choose what we want to experience it’s typically the pursuit of pleasure through self-mastery (or self-love), and connection (loving others). Even when we’re aware of something negative, that awareness is a means to move it toward love. Alternatively, bewareness is our brains subconscious background process that when triggered, provokes fear. It’s the threat detection system that’s on high alert at all times to protect us from all kinds of harm (physical, financial, emotional, etc.) and danger.

We have this tug of war between the two - Go for it vs hold back, 'this is great' vs 'what’s the catch?'. But what’s exciting about this relationship is love always wins. Our awareness can beat our bewareness, meaning that we can think through the nature of our threats and make more logical decisions when we allow ourselves to. A great way to do that is to take deep breaths, deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and allowing you to think more intentionally, unemotionally, and clearly. Let me leave you with this question - What is your favorite way to bring more awareness to the emotions you’re experiencing?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

We all the know the feeling of being deeply motivated to do something. There’s an energy to it that allows us to experience heightened focus, concentration, and effectiveness on a certain task. The time to do it is right now and there’s no exception. Typically you think of motivation through the lens of productivity and doing positive activities, but motivation exists within everything you do. You’re motivated to ease the burden of emotional pain, so you cry. If you have OCD you’re motivated to line things up just right to feel a sense of organization. You’re motivated to find a bathroom when you really need to go. Ultimately, all of this motivation inspires you to take a certain action that helps you on some level psychologically.

That’s why today we’re focusing on this equation: Motivation = Motive For Action. And while the examples I provided were more related to subconscious motivators, I want to also touch on conscious motivation, because if we cultivate the right motivation we can get ourselves to do the actions we know are best for us.

When it comes to creating motivation there are a few important things. First is the reward. What is the payoff of doing the action and what need is that satisfying? Remember we’re more likely to avoid discomfort than pursue pleasure. And also keep in mind how likely is it that you’ll get the reward. This all interfaces with the second piece, which is your emotional state. How you’re feeling influences what your short-term needs are. If your current mental state isn’t sold on the value of the action, that leads to procrastination, the enemy of motivation.

There’s a lot more to explore here but I’ll leave you with this: What actions do you want to be most motivated to do?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

Our days are so fast-paced and rushed that sometimes we do things with unexpected consequences. For example we eat way too fast for our body to optimally process it, we shovel food into our mouths and go about our day, and eating too fast can cause digestive issues.

Digestion doesn’t just happen when your stomach is gurgling and rumbling… It happens way before that, even when you see food. Your saliva has enzymes that help breakdown starches so that they’re more manageable for your gut. What I want to talk more about today is mastication, or better known as chewing. If we don’t take the time to chew enough then the bits of food that arrive in our stomach can be too big to be broken down properly. This makes the digestion process more energy intensive and harder to extract nutrients. So slow down and start chewing your food.

The recommendation is that you chew 30 times before swallowing. I’ve been doing trying it on certain meals and it’s a lot. I don’t focus on it every meal, and I don’t expect you to commit to it either, but with this new knowledge maybe you will start to be more intentional about your eating habits so that you can fuel your mind and body as best as possible.

So let’s finish by reflecting on that habit - Do you feel like you could chew your food more?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

Sometimes your lowest lows are actually just your path into something better! Join us in this discussion where we explore how what hurts the most often times is a blessing in disguise.

In this live podcast interview with Heather Monahan, you learn how to:

• Reframe negatives into opportunities
• Have the humility to ask for help when you need it
• Embrace the power of an alter-ego

Learn more about Heather on her website and buy Heather's latest book "Overcome Your Villains".

I’m curious to know how much you agree with this statement: Ideas are improved by having more perspectives. This is top of mind for me right now because I’ve been making a lot of decisions in my life recently and have been asking other people for feedback. We all know that you can only see the world through your own set of eyes, and those eyes miss things that others see. What I want to highlight though is that this idea of receiving feedback is easy in theory but more difficult in practice.

Our minds are designed to assimilate information into our current belief system. This is the most efficient thing our brain can do with the least amount of energy required. What that means is when someone provides feedback that might be different than what you already believe, your brain will try to rationalize its way into proving it wrong or insignificant. This is obviously problematic because if the brain works to reject new information then hearing different perspectives won’t make the same lasting impression. This often goes so far as to influence your behavior where you act dismissive, defensive, or even confrontational when you hear new perspectives.

The way around this, though, is to make this process more conscious. When you hear someone say something, tell them “Thank you for sharing your perspective”. Ideally this will trigger in you that you’re receiving feedback right now that is valuable and that there might be some default processing happening. What you can do is override that subconscious processing with your conscious awareness, bringing attention to how that information is meant to serve you.

To bring this concept into your life today I want to explore this about yourself: How receptive are you to feedback?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

We often encounter situations where we don’t know what we’re doing, feeling out of our element or unsure how to behave, and it can create anxiety. Some people read the room, some people take a step away to buy themselves more time… I have a better option for you. “When in doubt just pretend to be you.”

When we’re feeling doubt or uncertainty about something, it provokes a stress response. We’re safe when we know what’s going on, and when we don’t we are triggered into high alert and feel uneasy. This state is activated to prepare you to protect yourself physically, but as a byproduct it also causes you to start protecting yourself emotionally. So instead of potentially exposing yourself to ways that you could get emotionally hurt, your brain shuts down and keeps you from behaving like yourself and you start trying to just fit in.

But here’s the reminder - “When in doubt just pretend to be you.” If you don’t feel comfortable and feel like you need to pretend, then use your own example of who you are as your guide. There’s no person you’re better at being than yourself, so in acting that way you’re most likely to avoid the pains and fears you're avoiding. Beyond that, your authentic you is the person that others want to get to know. It’s when you have the most to offer, and your skills and best personality traits are on full display.

So when you feel like you need to put on an act to protect yourself, act like yourself! And like usual let me send forward a question that will help develop some self-awareness: When was the last time you felt like you needed to pretend to be someone else?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

I want to reflect on a lesson I learned from my one year old nephew. He recently started taking his first steps. He had been close for a while but he finally took 4 shuffles forward and fell into my grandma’s arms. Everyone erupted in joy for him, and when he had the chance to look up he was beaming with pride. He literally is taking baby steps. But there's more to it than that, and this is why it’s so special.

He’s still not walking, but he respects that there’s a process to reaching his ultimate goal. Imagine if he started crying after taking steps because he fell down… That would be such a disservice to his accomplishment and the progress he’s made to date. But instead he is satisfied with how things are right now, taking little baby steps, because what he’s capable of now. This is also his new training ground, his way of getting stronger and more confident, so that he can continue to improve and pursue walking on his own.

What we all have to learn from my nephew is that it’s important to achieve smaller milestones on your way to bigger goals. In fact they are worth celebrating because it’s an indicator that things are moving forward. Also remember that you need to start somewhere. Even if it’s just the most basic, most simple, not even useful version of what you ultimately want to do, it’s closer than you used to be, which should give you optimism that you can make it the rest of the way. 

Let’s wrap up by reflecting on this question - What are the baby steps to your bigger goals?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.