Staying Aligned - with Jamie Roddy

What if having a big ego isn’t thinking you’re awesome? What if it’s needing everyone else to convince you that you are? In this episode of Staying Aligned , Jamie takes on our wildly misunderstood idea of ego, from Freud’s psychology to Vedanta, Buddhism, and Christian mysticism, and somehow gets us from Brahman to perfect ears without losing the plot. We look at why insecurity and arrogance may...

Therapy can help us understand our wounds, recognize patterns, regulate our emotions and finally find language for experiences we couldn’t previously explain. But understanding why you are the way you are and organizing your entire life around why you are the way you are are two very different things. This week, Jamie asks whether our healing practices are actually making us freer, more resilient,...

Caring about your appearance isn’t automatically shallow, insecure, or vain. Sometimes making an effort is an act of generosity. But also...sometimes...not caring how people perceive you isn't as altruistic and spiritually aligned in the name of "authenticity" as you think. Jamie explores the difference between dressing for approval and dressing as an offering. When you already know your worth, pe...

Real charisma is not the ability to impress people. It is the ability to make them feel more interesting, more alive, and more themselves in your presence. In this episode, Jamie Roddy examines what boring hinge dates, Benjamin Disraeli, Martin Buber, Hindu darshan, Simone Weil, and Jesus can teach us about attention, curiosity, connection, and the spiritual art of truly seeing another person. She...

Finding your purpose has somehow become one of the great pressure campaigns of modern adulthood. We’re supposed to identify our calling, monetize our gifts, make an impact, leave a legacy, and apparently know exactly why we were placed on Earth. Jamie Roddy has other ideas about it though. In this episode of Staying Aligned , Jamie explores life purpose through Ikigai, creativity, motherhood, work...

“Walk a mile in their shoes” sounds lovely, but Jamie has a problem with it: sometimes you simply can’t. You can’t borrow another person’s nervous system, childhood, history, relationships, fears, losses, or particular experience of being alive. And even when you’ve experienced something that looks exactly like what they’re going through, you’ve only lived your version of it. After losing her belo...

When life falls apart, sometimes the worst thing anyone can tell you is that everything happens for a reason. Divorce, grief, job loss, financial crisis, illness, and unexpected endings can leave us with the same terrifying sensation: the ground we trusted has disappeared. We don’t know where we’re going to land, when we’re going to land, or what our life will look like when we do. This week on St...

Are people glad you came? This week, Jamie Roddy explores what it means to be a good guest—not only in someone’s home, but in their city, country, culture, and life. It begins with an admittedly unaligned encounter with a tourist in Beverly Hills and expands into a conversation about sacred hospitality, cultural humility, travel etiquette, gratitude, and the energy we leave behind when we enter so...

What does spirituality actually look like on an ordinary day? Maybe it looks less like appearing enlightened and more like leaving the world a little better because you were here. This week, Jamie Roddy shares The One Better Rule : every place you enter gets one tiny improvement because you were there. That might mean returning a shopping cart, cleaning up before leaving someone’s home, making a s...

Staying Aligned is Rebellion Altruism. A spirituality podcast for normal people just trying to be their best selves and have some peace in life. This episode: My stepmom recites nine words to herself before she gets out of bed: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. It's a Christian practice from the book of Galatians, and once you start looking, th...

Every algorithm you use is quietly deciding who you're allowed to become, one recommendation at a time. This episode is about the spiritual cost of that, using Spotify's endless Stevie Nicks loop as exhibit A. We go through what wisdom traditions across the world have always known about music (it's older than language, and every single one of them ends up singing), the real neuroscience behind the...

A gas station cashier named Itzamar was more spiritually aligned ringing up snacks than most people I know who meditate daily. This one's about arete, the Greek idea of excellence as full self expression, and why the way you wash dishes or answer an email might be your most direct spiritual practice. We cover Aristotle and eudaimonia, Brother Lawrence and how scrubbing pots made him a saint, Sufi...

Most of us spend our lives believing we'll finally feel peaceful once everything falls into place. But what if peace comes first? In this episode of Staying Aligned , Jamie Roddy explores the surprising truth that every goal we pursue is ultimately a search for inner peace—and why that peace is available long before our circumstances change. Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, Zen, Mother Teres...

You did your whole morning routine. You were aligned. You were good. And then that one person opened their mouth and suddenly you were not a spiritually evolved person on a growth journey; you were a fifth grader who just got cut from the line. This episode is about the actual hardest spiritual assignment, the one the brochures don't warn you about when you decide to become a better person: other...

What if the brain you've spent years trying to fix was never actually broken? In this episode of Staying Aligned, Jamie Roddy makes the case that the entire conversation around ADHD, anxiety, OCD, and neurodivergence has become dangerously one-sided. We are experts in what's hard about these brains. We have almost no fluency in what they're extraordinary at. And that imbalance is doing real damage...

What if the most aligned move you can make has nothing to do with your five-year plan? In this episode, Jamie Roddy makes the spiritual case for side quests... not the dramatic ones, but the small inconvenient yeses that somehow change everything. She shares how a golden Buddha in Chiang Mai led to the founding of Eden LA Interiors, and how talking to a stranger on a flight to Colombia led her to...

What if your most irritating coworker is doing more for your spiritual evolution right now than your meditation practice is? In this episode of Staying Aligned, Jamie Roddy takes on one of the sneakiest traps in modern spirituality: using inner work as a reason to withdraw from the very situations that would actually grow you. The retreat, the sound bath, the sacred morning routine... all beautifu...

You've crossed finish lines and felt nothing. You've gotten the thing and immediately needed the next thing. That's not weakness — that's the hedonic treadmill, and your brain is running it whether you like it or not. In this episode, Jamie Roddy takes the false idol problem through five wisdom traditions across 2,500 years — from Laozi to Sikhism to Ram Dass — and pairs it with current neuroscien...

A senior monk and a junior monk come to a river. A woman needs to cross. The older monk carries her over, sets her down, keeps walking. An hour passes. Then two. Then three. Finally the younger monk can't hold it anymore: "We are not permitted to touch women. How could you carry her?" The older monk looks at him and says: "Brother, I set that woman down miles ago. Why are you still carrying her?"...

What if.....This IS your highest timeline. And you're completely missing it?? Not the one you're working toward. Not the polished, figured-out, promotion having, clean house having, soul mate having life. This one. Right now. In this episode Jamie Roddy takes you through a complete reframe of the comparison trap. We talk about why "elevating to your highest timeline" culture might actually be keep...

What if the person who made you furious... didn't actually cause your feelings? In this episode, Jamie Roddy tackles one of the most radical and liberating ideas in conscious living: your emotions belong to you. Not to the person who triggered them. Not to the situation that lit the fuse. Yours. And that's not about letting anyone off the hook... it's about taking back every bit of power you've be...