Changeable Podcast

Joe Bailey is back on the podcast! Joe’s new book, Thriving in the Eye of the Hurricane: Unlocking Resilience in Turbulent Times, is all about resilience. After this conversation with Joe, resilience felt even truer and deeper and simpler than ever. It’s not that “you” are resilient, or “I” am resilient (whoever “you” and “I” are). The post EP180: Joe Bailey: Your Nature is to Thrive appeared firs...

Amanda Dorolek recently came across this podcast and my books and videos. To say that things are opening up for her is a massive understatement. She’s watching old beliefs and identities fall away. Her relationships are beginning to transform. How she sees anything and everything is changing. Although Amanda is no doubt in the beginnings of The post EP179: A New Listener Amanda Dorolek Interviews...

Surprise! It’s a bonus episode! This episode is a playback of a webinar I held this week about having a totally new, fresh experience of the holidays. I talk about thriving through this holiday season, not weighed down by over-eating, over-drinking, or over-spending habits that you’ll try to compensate for in January; stress, pressure, people-pleasing, and other The post Bonus Holiday Episode! Hav...

Birds don’t know how to fly or build a nest. They just fly and build nests. And we don’t know how to make it through life, make decisions, take action, feel better, learn new things, or change. Those things just happen. When we think we need to know how, we’re missing the fact that life lives The post EP178: Thoughts Don’t Cause or Interfere With appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

Kjersti experienced a range of chronic pain conditions from the age of 11. From headaches to ulcers to pelvic issues, her pain morphed and changed, often showing up in new ways. Kjersti tried many things to help alleviate her pain, but it was really when she began diving into the New Paradigm that she began really The post EP176: Thriving with Chronic Pain with Kjersti Ostvik appeared first on Dr....

In this episode, I share three examples of people who were suffering, to varying degrees, because they were carrying the past around without realizing it.  You’ll hear about someone who was positive that lockdown created the anxiety he feels today. You’ll hear about someone who wanted to know how The Little School of Big Change might The post EP175: How you’re Living in the Past and Not Realizing...

What if the concepts we call ‘choice’ and ‘regret’ have nothing to do with what actually happens in life? What if life lives us, and thought arises talking about intention, control, and a “you” who has intention and control…and that’s what’s happening when we say we made a choice? Likewise, what if regret is simply a The post EP173: Choice and Regret appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

In this episode, I share a practice I’ve been playing with. It’s a deep investigation into the actual experience of thought. It’s me asking “what is this thought thing, really?”It’s me walking right up to a thought and looking at it. Feeling it. Moving closer. Are there images, sounds, or other sensory reflections I find? Are The post EP171: Deeply Exploring the Nature of Thought appeared first on...

In this episode, my friend and coach colleague Piers Thurston and I discuss what it’s been like for our coaching to move from a focus on psychology to a focus on something closer to spirituality or nonduality. We talk about how life looks far simpler than it used to, and why, even given that, we The post EP170: A Conversation About Our Apparent Shift From Psychology to Spirituality appeared first...

Minds love dramatic, sensational statements. And if you don’t know better, you might be very tempted to take them seriously. They’ll say things like: “I can’t handle this”.“I don’t know how I’ll make it through.”“I’m lost. I don’t know what to do next.”“I’m barely keeping my head above water.”.But here’s the thing: Your mind saying these The post EP169: I Can’t Handle It! appeared first on Dr. Amy...

Siobhan came to the new paradigm a couple different times in the past few years. The first was to find freedom around some habits. She talks about going through The Little School of Big Change a few years ago, solidly focused on her behavior (which is NOT how I recommend doing it!). Even while tracking The post EP168: Siobhan’s Change Story: When Change Doesn’t Look How You Imagined appeared first...

The narrator exaggerates. It can be so dramatic. You’re not just feeling a little grumble in your stomach, you’re about to die of hunger. You’re not just coming up on a busy week, you don’t know how you’ll handle it all–it’s going to be horrible! These are examples of how a mind loves to add color commentary. The post EP167: Minds Dramatize appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

Your mind will never say “Okay, you can rest now. You’re perfectly good enough right now. There is nothing more to add or improve upon.” That’s just NOT what minds do. Brains have evolved to look for ways to keep us safe and alive. In the absence of many actual threats to safety, the story has The post EP166: Minds Think You’re Never Good Enough appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

Minds are always looking for problems to solve. This works out well for them given that they are also always creating problems. They create the problem and the solution. Can you sense how seeing this is incredibly valuable? If you believe that your mind’s problem solving activities are necessary–that minds are solving actual problems that require actual The post EP165: Minds Problem Solve appeared...

Your brain is a big ole’ know-it-all. Its job is to keep you alive, and the more it knows, the more assumed certainty it has, the better it can do that job. It’s a know-it-all because it loves you and it wants to do well by you. One of the ways minds scramble for assumed certainty The post EP164: Minds Compare appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

All minds do the same things. The details and content may vary slightly, but the tricks a mind gets up to are universal. The next five episodes of Changeable will feature 5 of these things all minds do, based on five chapters in my upcoming book: minds worry, minds compare, minds problem solve, minds think The post EP163: Minds Worry appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

In this episode, I share some of the most helpful themes that came up in the 4-week overdrinking workshop I recently led. Questions like: Isn’t alcohol different from other habits because it is a drug that involves physical addiction? (If we were trying to manage experience, this would probably make a big difference. But we’re The post EP162: How to End the Drinking Habit appeared first on Dr. Amy...

Anne experienced anxiety and worry for as long as she could remember. As is often the case, it showed up physically, as well as emotionally. She often felt sick, had headaches, and experienced pain that would move to different places in her body. She tried many things for her pain (including surgery), and some things for The post EP161: Anne Wilin: A New Experience of Chronic Pain due to Anxiety a...

When I initially heard the title my publisher proposed for my upcoming book Just a Thought, I absolutely, positively hated it.  I literally said (over and over) “there is no way that will be the title of my book”.And, well, things change. Within a couple months, I had a change of mind. Or a change The post EP160: How I Realized I Had Changed by the Example of my New Book Title, Which Was Hated app...

Phillip has been alcohol-free, after a lifetime of drinking, for a year this summer. He quit smoking this year too, after having smoked since the age of 13. But the fact that he no longer smokes or drinks are just details. They are incredible details, don’t get me wrong, but when you know Phillip, you The post EP159: Phillip’s Change Story: Free from Addiction and Free to Feel Everything appeared...

I recently heard something so simple. Everyone who is suffering is preoccupied.  Preoccupation is the only problem there is. Some thought has occupied our focus such that we’re no longer sensing what’s there pre thought. The world we experience is a perfect reflection of what we’re preoccupied with. I think you’ll sense a whole new level of simplicity The post EP158: Preoccupied appeared first on...

Brains generalize in order to make sense of the world in the most predictive, efficient way possible.  And while there are a lot of necessary benefits of this, there are some drawbacks too. We lose some nuance and fluidity when we’re hanging out in a highly generalized view of things. Our experience tends to be The post EP156: How Generalizing is Keeping you Stuck in Habits and Anxiety appeared fi...

Me and Dr. Bob Solomon are major geeks for helping people be themselves again. From the time we’re babies, we’re taught how to be. Don’t cry. Be a good girl or a good boy. Say please. Be grateful. Do the right thing. This is the beginning of us being led away from what feels right to The post EP155: Being Yourself with Dr. Robert Solomon appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

I view anxiety as a habit. (To be fair, I view most things–including personality, identity, and moods–as habits too).People who struggle with anxiety ask me about this all the time. They say “I can see how nail biting or binge eating or drinking is a habit. But how is anxiety a habit?”“Where’s the habit in The post EP154: Where’s the Habit in Anxiety? appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson .

Maria Brigantino helps people become free of eating issues because she’s been there herself. In this episode, we talk about how Maria went through anorexia, bulimia, obsession with her weight, and early trauma to where she is today–feeling grateful for these struggles and the deep peace they revealed to her. She shares how relief from her The post EP153: A New Way to Stop Binge Eating with Maria B...