Millennial Midlife

I hope that you are having an amazing new year so far! It is mid-January, which is the time of the year when a lot of people drop their New Year's resolutions or best intentions for change. So today I want to talk to you about how you might continue with these resolutions if you want to and any support that I can offer you. In the episode, you will learn how thoughts and feelings drive actions, an...

If you’ve ever found yourself saying you’ll go to the gym every single day or creating any other unrealistic plans that no human being can actually stick to, this episode is for you! We all do this to some degree, but why does perfectionism happen? In this conversation, I’m going to dig deep into how trying to be perfect keeps you stuck and how to help your brain start seeing things differently. T...

In this episode, we’re going to talk about goal setting and how to do it in a way that works for your brain. You’ve probably set New Year’s resolutions before, and chances are, they failed or didn’t work as well as you wanted them to. The truth is, we set goals because we think reaching them is going to make us feel a certain way - accomplished, worthy, talented, whatever it is for you. But your m...

Welcome to the New Year! I’m recording this episode just a couple of days after giving birth, and my postpartum experience got me thinking about the topic of creating a life that feels genuinely nourishing and brings you closer to yourself. If you’re a high achiever like me, it can be second nature to dismiss nourishing activities as something that’s not worth doing. Or you might secretly believe...

You’ve likely heard about your nervous system before, but you’re probably not sure how it works, what it does for your body, and, most importantly, why it matters. So, in this episode, I’m breaking down everything you need to know using simple and practical language. The truth is that your nervous system is constantly sending and receiving signals throughout your body that affect everything from y...

Today we're gonna talk about dread and how perhaps to feel less of it in your life. You can substitute pretty much any emotion in here for dread. So even if you don't tend to feel a lot of dread in your life, this will be applicable to you. If you're somebody who experiences the Sunday Scaries, or you dread upcoming social events or things like that, then this will be really helpful for you becaus...

If you often tense up when others around you experience big emotions, such as anger or anxiety, tune in. These situations come up a lot during the holiday season when we spend time with family, but you can use the mindset shifts in this episode at any time of the year to center yourself. How we respond to other people's emotions is typically ingrained in our brains as children. But now that you’re...

The holiday season is barreling towards us, and with it come family dinners, work parties, and just the general intensity of this time of the year. It’s easy to feel like you already know what’s coming and brace yourself for impact. But let me ask you a question, what if you could walk into these same situations but have a completely different internal experience? You can’t control your uncle drin...

Last week on Calmer Conversations, we talked about how I’m structuring my maternity leave. Go back and listen to that if you haven’t – it’s actionable even if you aren’t pregnant! Today, in this same vein, I want to talk about how you talk to yourself, but in the context of pregnancy. Again, this is something that even if you're not pregnant, it should be applicable to you. I'm at the end of a pre...

On the newest episode of Calmer Conversations, I'm going to talk about maternity leave, but before you totally shut off if that's not a place you are in your life or will ever be, the framing in which I'm gonna talk about it is figuring out what you like, because I think it's really important and it plays a big part in in my maternity leave and how I'm approaching it. So even if you're not going o...

A lot of times when I’m out walking, doing yoga, or meditating, I get a lot of clarity around new topics for the podcast. Today’s episode is one of those topics – emotional responsibility, or taking responsibility for how you feel. I wanted to bring this to Calmer Conversations because it’s something that comes up very often in my 1:1 coaching and group programs. This episode is bite sized and wil...

Today I want to talk about the rule of identity, and specifically past identity and future identity, in creating change in your life. That change could be something that feels relatively small, like you may want to feel calmer  (even though I would argue that's probably a big change), or it could be something really major, like you want to change careers or I you want to make a big move or do...

Have you ever set a goal, say waking up really early to work out before you get your day started… but then your alarm goes off in the morning and you hit snooze. You end up feeling disappointed, frustrated, and maybe angry. You set a new commitment to do better the next day, but then the cycle repeats. If so, this episode is going to be really interesting for you. We’re exploring the duality of th...

A lot of times in this work you’ll hear me mention “brain based change”, but what does this actually mean? When I am talking about using your brain to change, about using a brain based approach to creating change in your life, to feeling differently, to acting differently, what I'm talking about fundamentally is understanding what's happening in your head. This means understanding what is happenin...

As I'm recording this episode on September 10th, yesterday was my birthday and I turned 40, which feels momentous. So for this episode, I was thinking, because it was on my brain a lot yesterday and today even, that I might share a little bit about where I was 10 years ago in case that helps you and also just to give you a little bit more of an idea of my story and where I've come from and what's...

Before listening to this episode, I want you to take five minutes to end this thought: “I’ll be happy when…” or you can insert calm/successful/loved or whatever it is you’re desiring at this moment. Give yourself the opportunity to brainstorm and write down everything that comes up, whether it’s something big or small. The reason why I want to start to play with this question and the reason why we...

If you’ve listened to the past couple episodes of the podcast or if you’re connected with me on social media, you know that my family and I have recently moved from a small island in Maine to Virginia. Not only that, my kids are starting school for the first time ever. So in this episode, I want to discuss how I have been using her work to support myself and my children through the changes and shi...

In this episode, I thought I would share my personal experience of using the tools and skills I talk about in each episode of this podcast during a period of change and uncertainty in my own life. I’m sharing how I navigated the emotions and challenges that arose during our recent move (while being pregnant!) and how I stayed grounded and calm throughout the process. You’ll hear the importance of...

Today on Calmer Conversations, I want to talk about the difference between intentional thought work and toxic positivity. Sometimes when people find out about this work or sometimes when I get questions about it, they think that coaching or they think mindset work is really about only using positive affirmations or always keeping a positive mindset and I don't think that could be further from the...

Today I want to talk about silly thoughts, more specifically that there are no silly thoughts or that what we judge as silly thoughts are actually not silly. While this sounds a little bit funny to be using the word silly so many times, I think this is something that comes up quite a lot, particularly for people who have an active cognitive brain, consider themselves to be overachievers, or have a...

In this episode, we’re jumping into the second bonus tool of creating calmer change: allowing. If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes in this series, be sure to do that first! Now, allowing is a foundational skill that can be used to shift your mindset and bring intentionality into your life. When listening, you will learn the  concept of allowing and its opposite of resisting and h...

Over the past few episodes of the podcast we've gone through the foundational tools that I use and teach over and over again, and they appear in almost everything that I talk about and everything that I teach – that is awareness, acceptance, and curiosity. So tune into the past three episodes if you haven’t. But as I was recording the episodes, these two other tools kept floating around in my mind...

If you’ve missed it, we are in the middle of a three week series that's about working with your brain, specifically the three tools that I use daily and that I teach over and over again in different permutations with my clients, so they are underlying all of the work that I do. These three tools are awareness, acceptance, and curiosity. Last week, we talked about acceptance and the week before we...

Welcome to the newest episode of Calmer Conversations, right now we're in the middle of a three-week mini series on working with your brain and nervous system (so tune into last week’s episode if you haven’t already). Throughout the series, I'm talking about the three specific tools that I use and teach over and over again to create lasting change in my clients lives. Most of the work that we do c...

Over the next three episodes of Calmer Conversations, I'm going to cover three tools that I think are key in creating more calm in your life or making change in your life. These three tools are something that I use over and over again with my clients and that I use every single day in my own life – awareness, acceptance and curiosity. Today we are focusing on awareness. We're going to start at the...