100% Awesome Podcast

Last week, my son, Caleb and I competed in our very first SwimRun competition, in which we ran nearly 16 miles up and down the hills and trails of Mackinac Island and swam over 3 miles in the cold water of Lake Huron. It was an awesome experience that neither of us will ever forget. As with any goal, along the way, we learned lots about ourselves, our capacity, and our brains and we think the less...

Whenever we start a new goal, we feel motivated and excited and determined. And we're pretty familiar with the end of a goal as well, when we either achieve what we want or we don't. But what happens in the middle? While we all recognize the determined beginning and the satisfying achievement or disappointing failure at the end of a goal, there are parts in the middle that nobody talks about.  And...

We live in a world of opposition. For every one of us, the fact that we are alive means that we will someday die. And when we choose to love someone, it means that we are inevitably also choosing loss and grief. This is what it means to be human. Our lives contain the possibility for so much joy and happiness and connection, but all of these experiences are really only available because the possib...

Our brain like to tell us that we don't have enough. They point out that we don't have enough time or money or energy or love. They are constantly scared about running out and not having what we need. But what if we can't actually run out of the things we need? What if there is always more not just available to us but always coming to us? What if abundance is the truth and scarcity is the lie?  In...

Right now, in the physical health space, there's a big push to improve and increase mobility. The idea is that the more mobility you have, the more ability you have to do the things you want to do with your body. If you can't move your body the way you want to, it can create limitations.  In the same way, the more mobility we can develop in our emotional lives—the more strength and flexibility and...

One of the hardest things to come by these days is quiet, especially inside our own heads. We live in a world where it's now possible to have a nearly constant stream of other voices, entertainment, distraction, and noise vying for our attention and taking up the space in our minds. This leaves very little time or space to listen to own thoughts and process our human experience. Over time this imp...

My daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks and as I have anticipated this big event in her life and the creation of her new family, I have thought a lot about the things that make an awesome marriage and the things I wish I would have known when I got married. Every marriage (and every relationship) requires work to be happy and successful, but for the most part, most of us are trying to...

For most of us, transforming and changing our lives can feel impossible and out of reach. But that's only because when we think about transformation, we tend to focus our attention on big changes that are made in a very small amount of time.  But it turns out that the smallest changes that often go overlooked are the ones that make the biggest impact in transforming our lives.  In today's podcast...

No matter what time of year it is, most of us have a lot of negative thoughts about our bodies. We've been told in countless ways that our bodies are not acceptable as they are, that they need fixing, and that we should be deeply ashamed of them. This is especially true during the summer. Since the early 60's, the idea of getting a "summer body" has purposely made us feel inadequate, implying that...

Today's podcast episode is a fun one! This seems to be the year of Taylor Swift and, along with all the other Taylor Swift fans, I have spent a lot of time over the last few months following her Era's tour and relistening to all her albums.  Taylor Swift is arguably one of the most popular and successful single music artists on the planet—and yet, she is also still a human being with a human brain...

Brain's don't want to have fun. They want to save energy and protect us from threats. They keep us safe by noticing how hard things are and so even when we're doing things we want to do, we can still feel a lot of negative emotion about it. This week's podcast episode is a continuation of our discussion last week on play and today we're talking all about fun. How do we have more fun not just when...

The benefits of play are well-documented. It is an important part of our mental and emotional health, but too often we trivialize or overlook it's vital role in our lives. For most of us, play comes last, after everything else, or often, not at all. But this is the time of year when we traditionally go on vacation, have more relaxed schedules, and allow ourselves to spend more time playing and it'...

New thoughts are like currency. You can use them to purchase and create new outcomes in your life anytime you want. But you don't have to come up with them all on your own. You can borrow new thoughts from anywhere. Today I'm sharing three of my favorite quotes from other people that I have borrowed to help me think about who I am, the choices I'm making, my value as a human being, and my relation...

Your brain is on a constant crusade to tell you how everything is terrible. And in many ways your brain is right. 😉 But…it isn't all terrible. No matter what, there is always good to be found.  That's the way this life was designed, with both good and bad. They always exist together, and just because your brain only notices the bad, it's important to know that it isn't ever the whole story.  It t...

Belonging is an important part of your human experience.  We often think that belonging is created by the place or the people we are with, but the feeling of belonging is just like any other feeling—which means it is created inside of us by our thoughts. Belonging isn't something that happens to you in the right circumstances, it's something that you create whenever you want to experience it.  In...

This is the time of year where many of us are celebrating the big moments—the culmination of things we have been working towards and the commencement of brand-new beginnings.  And while the big moments are exciting, to really change our lives, we have to stop putting our attention on the start line or the finish line and start paying attention to all the quiet, unassuming moments in between.  The...

Once you know that the way you feel and the things you do are being created by your thoughts, being able to manage those thoughts becomes a priority. But acquiring the skills to question and change your thoughts is just like any other skill—it takes practice. And, just like swimming or playing the piano or cooking, when we're trying to practice any new skill, the better the practice is and the mor...

As a mom, you are the giver of gifts. You gave your children life and you haven't stopped giving to them since then. Everything you do is for your children. You think of them first, last, and all the time in between and give everything you have to help them learn and grow and be happy. And even with all that, you sometimes still worry that it's not enough. Today on the podcast I'm sharing the thin...

Are you good at feeling happy? Recently I noticed that I pay a lot of attention to my negative emotions and sometimes I am much more aware of my pain than my joy. And while the goal isn't to be happy all the time, there is a lot of value in purposefully noticing, appreciating, and cultivating more happiness in our lives. Your emotions never make you good or bad. They are just an experience. But if...

Our relationships are the most important part of our lives, but they can also cause us the most pain. In the places where we want to feel the most love and joy and connection, we often end up feeling the most conflict, tension, and isolation. And even though we want to get along with and love the people in our lives, sometimes it feels impossible. But it doesn't have to be.    It's just that every...

Your brain has a native language system—a natural, native way of thinking about who we are and what we're capable of. We have used this language to create our identity and tell us who we are—and that informs what we do. That means that in order to change your life, you have to change this native language system. We have to learn to speak to ourselves in a new way, with new words, and new sentences...

When things in our life don't turn out the way we think they should or we struggle to create the results we want, we sometimes wonder if we need to try harder or if we need to turn things over to God instead.  Is getting a life we want a matter of striving or surrender? And how do we reconcile our agency and our power to choose our experience with God's will and his plan for us?  In today's podcas...

All of us want less conflict in our lives and less conflict in the world, but that desire often feels out of our control. It's easy to feel like the amount of love we get or the amount of conflict we experience is up to other people and their choices. But the truth is that everything we feel—whether it's love or hate or anything in between—is always up to us. And that means that if we want to have...

When you think about what you want for your life, one of the things that can get in our way is the fear that what we want might be selfish.  Going after our goals, following our desires, and paying attention to the things we want can feel self-serving and self-focused and sometimes we are suspicious of our own desires. What if we want isn't good? What if it takes time and energy away from the othe...

The hardest battle we all face is the one inside our own heads. But most of us think it should be easier in there than it is. We think we shouldn't have to fight so hard to feel good about ourselves or positive about our lives.  But once we understand that the opposition our brain creates is there on purpose, and that nothing has gone wrong, then we can stop resisting our brain's opposition and st...