Tiny Bites of Wagaliciousness

In the northern hemisphere, summer is coming to an end. The season for vacations is closing. Did you take a vacation this summer? Did you mean to and did you let busyness run your life? Do you have friends you’d like to spend more time with and that didn’t happen either? Right now…right now!...figure out how many vacation days you have coming to you this year. Look at your calendar and decide when...

Do you remember the last time you had a relationship break up? Maybe it was a good friendship, or maybe it was a long-term, committed relationship. How did you react? Did you try to explain yourself to the other person? Did you apologize for you-didn’t-even-know-what and did you try to convince them they were wrong about you and wrong about ending the relationship? With great love, I want to ask y...

Are you a planner? Most of us plan some things carefully, some things generally, and let some things just happen as they happen. If you keep a calendar and a to-do list, that’s planning. My to-do list is designed to delight me instead of make me feel bad about the things that I don’t get done – maybe this planning process might be fun for you, too. On an app that syncs to all my devices I create a...

Do you live or work with someone whose life is continually filled with drama? They’re always at odds with a co-worker or a friend or current events – there’s always something they’re complaining about. Often their stories paint themselves as the victim, or the caring person who’s continually taken advantage of. They tell you their tales of woe, expecting sympathy from you and rejecting anything th...

If you have a tough relationship with a parent, you’re not alone. Many people struggle through adulthood because they’re still dealing with the same toxic person who raised them. Feelings of resentment and guilt are opposite ends of the emotional teeter-totter, and avoidance is practiced a lot. When you have to deal with that toxic parent, getting stuck in the emotional drama, often to the point o...

Recently my dog Kacey and I were entered in an obedience trial. She’s a smart girl who loves to work, and we’ve competed at this level successfully before. That day we were far from successful – as a matter of fact, I did something I’ve never done before. I asked the judge if we could be excused from the ring. Most people could consider that competition a failure. I consider it a turning point and...

This podcast is all about your wellbeing and success, and researchers around the world continue to pile up evidence that happiness is the pathway to both. Humans have a wide range of emotional responses to the world around us, and we’re hard-wired to have at least a slightly negative outlook on the world – we’re wary of new things and can be hostile in a heartbeat if something surprises or scares...

Are you good at forgiving? If so, that’s a sign that you are an emotionally intelligent, mature person. If not, that’s ok – it just means you have a little bit of personal growth you can work on. You might not have thought about it like this – there are new things for you to practice forgiveness about nearly every day. Any time we’re around people, things happen that we don’t prefer. Use the littl...

Have you ever had to spend too much time around a person who tries to mask their insecurities by belittling others? Many times people think a person like that is powerful – in truth, they’re so insecure about themselves that they hide behind the aggressive behavior. Sometimes they might be passive-aggressive, and sometimes they might say horrible things about another person, or maybe even you, lou...

Think about the last time you were angry. White-hot angry. Spitting nails angry. So angry you knew you’d never get over whatever it was you were angry about. Thankfully, most of us don’t get that angry very often. What I want you to think about, now that you’ve got that sharp memory dialed up, is how you didn’t feel any anger until I asked you to think about it. You were just minding your own...

Can you imagine life without music? As I write this, my favorite satellite radio station is playing in the background. Is that you, too? Do you have a playlist and a set of workout jams? Or maybe you listen to music less often – I bet you still enjoy it when you turn it on. You probably have a few favorite songs, if you create short social videos you probably like exploring the music you can use w...

Have you ever thought about what your superpower might be? Mine is the ability to take a complex topic like neuroplasticity and make it accessible and understandable. Need proof? You’re listening to it – this podcast dishes up neuroplasticity tools in disguises in 90 seconds or less every day. Back to you – what’s your superpower? This is something you could ask your family members, friends, and c...

Are you worried about something in your life right now? Most people worry – it’s a generational legacy that doesn’t serve us very well, yet we do it anyway. One of my favorite quotes is “Worrying is using your powerful imagination to create something you don’t want.” Abraham Hicks shared that, and when you’re in the process of worrying you do create something you don’t want: a stress reaction insi...

Have you ever thought of the you that you were 20 years ago? How about the you ten years ago – how did you change in that decade? Not how your life changed – how did you grow and change? What was the five-years-ago you like, and how have you grown and changed in the past five years? If you’re like most people – myself included – you don’t examine your personal growth often, if at all. Today,...

Do you know who you are? Think about it, and at some point today, I want you to write down exactly who you are. Not just who you are in relation to other people – wife, daughter, mother, uncle, nephew, grandchild – but who YOU are. Start the exercise with a strong personality trait – loyal, loving, fun-loving, studious – whatever feels truest and strongest about you. Then write down more adjective...

Do you work with someone who’s not exactly truthful? Maybe it’s just little lies in casual conversation, or maybe it’s a whopper like claiming they did work that you actually did. Those casual little lies can have big repercussions when they get passed around the office like a cute new puppy. Taking credit for your work puts you in a very awkward position – having to defend yourself with your boss...

Are you a good friend to yourself? Would you be shocked if I told you that you probably aren’t? Hear me out – good friends lift each other up when they’re feeling down. Good friends take care of each other. Good friends give each other little surprises now and then, and check in on each other to be sure everything is OK when they haven’t heard from you in a while. Let me ask you that question agai...

Do you know how to make a mental or even physical shift from a bad feeling to a better one? That’s not a skill most of us were taught in childhood, nor did we see a lot of people practice it so we learned to mimic it. We talk a lot about feelings on this podcast because your feelings are 100% in your control, and when your feelings are in the satisfied and above range – pleased, happy, joyous, etc...

Have you ever been betrayed by someone you sort of knew? It didn’t feel good, did it? Have you ever been betrayed by someone you knew well and trusted? Chances are, that hurt a lot worse. Know why? Because you had few expectations of the person you only sort of knew, and many many many expectations of the person you knew well and trusted. It’s not the betrayal that hurts so much, it’s the expectat...

Have you ever loved someone very differently than they loved you? Or maybe they didn’t even love you? Being in love with someone is such a good feeling, right up until it isn’t. We’re at our best when we’re loving – we’re holding someone in the best possible light, seeing their virtues and not their flaws, we’re considering the object of our affection in our daily decisions, and we’re focused on h...

Have you ever heard the saying, “you don’t really know someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes”? It’s a visual way to describe trying to understand someone else’s life, point of view, and motivations, and it’s great as far as it goes. You will never really know someone, no matter how long you’ve known them and no matter how many things you’ve been through together. You can know a lot abo...

Have you been the topic of gossip? Do you have a pulse? Both answers are the same – if you’re alive, someone somewhere at some time has talked about you with someone else. Gossip is a way for people to exchange information, to bolster their own sense of importance, and to create or deepen social bonds. Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events;...

Have you lived long enough to have been through a major life change that was upsetting? Losing a loved one, losing a marriage, losing a job you loved or a house you loved – there are a lot of different types of trauma and it’s part of the human condition that we go through a few between the time we’re born and the time we die. There are people who are very focused on discussing the traumas in life...

I was talking to a friend the other day. She’d just been let go by a company she’d worked for since before this century began. She was mad. Very mad. Seriously mad. As she vented to me, she was playing out scenarios of how she could get back at the person who fired her and at the so-large-everyone-in-the-world-knows-their-name corporation that released her. I let her talk. She didn’t want or need...

As you live more life by virtue of being alive, you learn things. You learn things about the world, about how you currently show up in the world, and even about how you want to show up in the world. You learn things about other people, too – maybe you learn that some of them really love you, and some of them just love what you will do for them. You start to notice that some people don’t respect yo...