Episodes

Maybe you’re not depressed and you’re getting along as well as can be expected, but maybe you’re feeling aimless, unfulfilled, or disconnected from a sense of purpose. Or maybe you’re holding out for some clear, passionate, lightning-bold kind of ‘ah-ha’ revelation that will rescue you from your ho-hum life. If this sounds like you, then perhaps this Self-Coaching podcast is just the ticket for understanding how boredom has become nothing more than a habit that can be challenged and replaced wit...

We naturally become bored when our brain isn’t entertained, emotionally engaged, or sufficiently challenged. I’m sure you’ll agree that to some extent, boredom is an inescapable part of life. But how can you tell if your life is too boring? In this Self-Coaching podcast, I discuss the need to determine to what extent boredom may play a disruptive role in your life. Whether it’s a mismatch between ability and challenge, attention issues, or low dopamine, boredom can result from many causes. As mu...

The inability to say ‘no’ is a habit, a habit of insecurity. Whether it’s the fear of disapproval or rejection, a desire to please, guilt, low self-worth, or simply wanting to avoid conflict, when you find yourself saying yes when you’d rather be saying no, then you need to listen to this episode of Self-Coaching. Learning to say no requires some psychological grounding, but more importantly, it’s understanding that standing up for yourself is a skill. A skill that can be learned. I offer five s...

Do you ever wish you could be more positive, more optimistic? If so, this Self-Coaching podcast may be just what you need. Did you know that optimism isn’t just a personality trait; it’s a skill. A skill that you can actually build. Join me as I talk about some simple steps and exercises geared to help you focus on possibilities, not problems, reframing reflexive negativity, and learning to risk trusting that you can, in fact, handle what life throws at you.

Life’s demands, challenges, scares, and fears can really pile up. Sometimes it just feels like too much. The tumult of feeling overwhelmed is something that happens to all of us and although we can’t control life and the many challenges we encounter, there are things we can do to minimize, if not, eliminate the chaotic experience of feeling out of control. In this Self-Coaching episode I offer strategies for coping when we begin to feel powerless and victimized by life and/or our emotions. Avoid...

Mark Twain once said that courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Although it’s tempting to wish you were fearless, without fear, our lives would quickly become reckless and threatened. Fear, healthy, objective fear is an essential component of our genetic inheritance, but irrational, neurotic fear is not. In this Self-Coaching episode, I discuss the difference between normal and neurotic fear and strategies to minimize needless neurotic struggle.

In everyone’s life, there are ups, downs, happy times, and anxious times. But one thing is certain: life undulates. I call these undulations, waves--psychological waves. Think of waves as life’s challenges. Some waves consist of circumstantial, externally driven challenges, e.g., illness, financial struggles, loss, and so on, while other waves are psychological, driven by habits of insecurity. One thing about waves, circumstantial or psychological, they…undulate—they come, and they go. Waves eve...

Self-Coaching is not just another form of coaching; it’s a unique CBT-based program based on the idea that anxiety, depression, and other emotional struggles stem from learned habits of insecurity and self-doubt—habits that can be broken. To liberate yourself from struggle, you need to understand the fundamental ‘why’ you struggle in the first place. Why, no matter how much you’ve tried, nothing changes.In this week’s episode, I offer a step-by-step strategy that will teach you to become your ow...

How would you define ‘burnout?’ Essentially, it’s a feeling you can’t go on—there’s just no more gas left in the tank. You may feel anxious, depleted, or simply stuck. Many components contribute to feeling burned out, chronic stress, fear of failure, self-criticism, not feeling good enough, being overcommitted, bored, and so on. Burnout isn’t just psychological; the relentless stress you feel is dumping stress chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol into your body, inevitably leading the way to a...

Are you tired of being manipulated? Saying yes when you’d rather be saying no? In this Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn how manipulators tend to bend you to their will by using tactics like guilt-tripping, playing the victim, or simply wearing you down. Join me as I explain how to set clear boundaries, avoid over-explaining, and use techniques like “Broken Record” to ensure that you don’t have to feel manipulated or bullied by coercive people who aren’t at all concerned about your attempts to...

Regardless of age, gender, background, or profession, for many, no matter how much they try or succeed in life, they believe they’re frauds. Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling of self-doubt and inadequacy, despite evidence of success and competence. People experiencing it often believe they’re frauds or undeserving of their achievements, fearing they’ll be "exposed" as unqualified and embarrassed, even if they’ve worked hard and accomplished much. Join me in this week’s Self-Coaching ch...

Beware of the saying: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” All too often, we cling to the short-sighted safety of attempting to control life. But sometimes, because of insecurity, a normal need for control becomes excessive as we desperately try to over-control life and outcomes. The problem is that the more we rely on insecurity-driven habits of control, the less we rely on our natural resilient ability to trust self and life. Rather than letting go and allowing life to unfold,...

Most people, at one time or another, will ask, “What’s the purpose of life?” More accurately, we should be asking, “What’s my purpose in life.” For some this isn’t a difficult question to answer, yet for others, it remains a total mystery. A sense of purpose isn’t something reserved for only those fortunate, happy, successful people; it’s a potential that resides in each of us. Unfortunately, one’s purpose may be submerged, unrealized, or covered over by neurotic distortions. While there’s no si...

Developing self-discipline and willpower What stops you from achieving your goals? What exactly is the resistance that keeps you from taking charge of your life and realizing your intentions? As complex and multifaceted as the answer to this query may be, one way or another, it all boils down to self-discipline. From a Self-Coaching perspective, self-discipline and willpower depend on the ability to willfully endure the transient discomfort of changing who and what you are. You weren’t born with...

Let’s be honest, we live in a world of imperfection. we are imperfect. No matter how fastidious you may be, there will always be banana peels to slip on in everyone’s life. “Why did I do that?” “If only I worked harder.” The old could-a, would-a, should-a’s. Every challenge, no matter how small, is an opportunity to grow in self-respect, confidence, and self-trust. Every setback is an opportunity to grow in self-respect, confidence, and self-trust. It’s true we can’t prevent regrets, but we damn...

Bumble bees are not supposed to fly. Their body weighs too much, and their wingspan is too short. Thank goodness the bumble bee doesn’t know these facts. What are the supposed “facts” that are holding you back? Sure, there are challenging circumstances in your life. But it’s not life circumstances that are holding you back or making you feel anxious or depressed, it’s your reaction to these circumstances When it comes to happiness, we often hold ourselves back psychologically through self-impose...

I’m sure you’ll agree that changing neurotic perceptions characterized by excessive worrying fear or emotional hyper-reactivity is easier said than done. In order to change the way you perceive and think about yourself and the world, it will take what we might call intentional effort. Efforts to reframe the thought patterns that have become reflexive habits while also managing and regulating your emotional/physiological responses. Once you understand how you’ve been compromised by neurotic perce...

Ever notice how silly someone else’s worry seems to you? How many times have you told someone to stop making mountains out of molehills? Unfortunately,// if worry has become your knee-jerk reflexive response to life challenges, then mountain-making is what you do best. People make mountains out of molehills for a variety of psychological, emotional, and social reasons. This often stems from an inability to put issues into perspective, where minor inconveniences are perceived as major crises. And...

In everyone’s life there are challenges, some big, some small. When faced with adversity, hope can help us weather our storms. What exactly is hope? There’s no doubt that hope involves our emotions, but did you know that hope itself is not an emotion? Hope is a way of thinking. This means that hope—OR HAVING a hopeful attitude-- can be learned or coached. It’s true that hope may not mitigate the inevitable challenges we must face, but hope isn’t about what’s coming around the corner, it’s about ...

In this Self-Coaching podcast, I’m introducing a new format: weekly Self-Coaching challenges. My intention is to provide bite-sized, motivational instructions that can be practiced each week to enhance your Self-Coaching efforts. Today’s challenge is an exercise in ‘creating a bubble’ of separation from your world of “have-tos.” By practicing being more responsive to your ‘whims,’ you open yourself up to glimpse the life that awaits you.

Today’s Self-Coaching episode addresses the crucial role that optimism and pessimism have on your liberation from emotional struggle. Although I’ll be talking about optimism in next week’s podcast, I felt it was crucial to first address what happens when we identify with pessimism, “I’ll never get better,” “life’s too hard, I just can’t handle it.” This is the voice of pessimism, which has become an entrenched habit of ego identification—in a very real sense, you become your pessimism. And when ...

Perhaps the best way to describe Responsive Living would be the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) phrase Let go, let god. The simplicity of this adage may escape you,// but trust me, it’s quite profound. In AA parlance, it has to do with letting go of compulsive, destructive thinking and handing yourself over to a higher power. From a secularized, Self-Coaching standpoint, Responsive Living is learning to let go, let life. Translation: letting go of trying to over-control life, and instead learning to r...

Releasing yourself from struggle You’ve heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words. When you get caught up in the incessant chatter of insecurity-driven thinking, having a simple picture in your mind can be far more useful than a thousand words of analyzing or trying to understand the “whys” of your suffering. In this Self-Coaching episode, I provide two compelling, fail-safe visualizations that you will want to use over and over again whenever your mind feels hijacked by insecurity-...

How exactly do you stop allowing yourself to be manipulated by neurotic thinking? The simple answer to this question is best summed up by something my grandmother was fond of saying: You can’t stop a bird from flying into your hair, but you don’t have to help it build a nest. You may not be able to stop neurotic thoughts from percolating up into consciousness, but you don’t have to passively allow your conscious mind to become part of the “nest-building” problem. This is the essence of Mind-Talk...