100% Awesome Podcast

In an attempt to keep us safe and happy, our brain spends a remarkable amout of energy in places where it has no control.

For example, we can only make choices in the present moment, but have you noticed how often your brain time-travels into the future or back to the past trying to change or control things that it can’t?

Or maybe you’ve noticed how much time your brain spends thinking and worrying about the thoughts and feelings and opinions of other people? Again, this is a place where we don’t have any control because we don’t get to make other people’s choices, including how they choose to feel about us.
On today’s podcast, I want to bring your awareness to how much energy you are spending trying to control the uncontrollable and remind you that your most powerful place is the place where you have the ability to make choices. I’ll share a powerful visualization tool that will help you refocus your energy and your agency to control the things you can and let go of all the things you can’t.

I recently spent a week at a surf school in Costa Rica and had an incredible time.

On today’s episode of the podcast, I’m telling you all about my experience and also sharing some of the memorable lessons that I got from the trip, from the ocean, and from my surf coach that I have been thinking about since I got home.

While you might not be planning to go to surf school any time soon, we are all down here at earth school and I think the things I learned while I was trying to acquire this new skill will help you with the things you are trying to learn and master in your own life.

This week’s podcast episode marks 5 years of the show!

And today I’m sharing 5 important things that I have learned during that time as I have created this podcast.

No matter who you are or what you are trying to create in your life, your brain is going to create resistance and excuses and fear and these can keep you from creating the things you want.

So today, I want to inspire you and give you the help you need to overcome your brain.

Along the way, I’ll teach you that creation is an accumulation, it is imperfect, it is vulnerable, it is important, and it is unique—and I’ll show you how embracing these principles of creation can get you started and keep you moving towards your dreams.

Have you ever noticed all the tiny little things that make life awesome? It turns out that the more you notice, the better you feel.

Your brain, of course, wants to notice all the things that have gone wrong, but there are just as many things that have gone exactly right and it can feel really good to bring your awareness to them.

In today’s episode of the podcast, I’ll remind you of how fun it is to like things, teach you what you can learn from the U-curve of happiness, give you a daily practice to help you pay attention to the small but significant pleasures of your life, and make my own little tribute to some of the ordinary things in my life that I think are seriously awesome.

Sometimes our brains can miss the spectacular awesomeness that can be found in the most ordinary things in our lives and this episode is all about inspiring you to see them again for the first time.

I recently cleaned out my closet and intentionally decided, piece by piece, the items that I wanted to keep in my wardrobe and the ones that I no longer needed or wanted.

What if we did the same thing in our lives?

If I went through my life piece by piece and examined each element—my habits, my schedule, my relationships, my work, my faith, the thoughts and feelings that I have most, the things I spend my time on—are they all things that I really want to be choosing? Given the choice to put them in my life, would I choose them again? Is my life full of things that I intentionally want to be there?

In today’s podcast, I ask three questions that you can use to evaluate whether you are prioritizing the things that are really important to you so you can make sure your life is stocked with all the things you like and want.

This week I celebrate my 50th birthday which has me thinking about this episode of the podcast kind of like a halftime report. If I’m about halfway through my life (halfway through the game, if you will) I’m metaphorically going back to the locker room to take breath and evaluate how the first half of the game has gone.

I’ve been on earth for five decades and today I’m thinking about my life, assessing what I’ve learned and loved about the first half of my life, and the recording the lessons that have meant the most to me.

No matter how old you are or where you are in the course of your own life, I hope these lessons will change the way you experience your life and help you find more joy in all of it.

For those of us that live in the northern hemisphere, spring is a time of year where there are reminders everywhere about the true abundance of our lives.

Of course, we always live in an abundant world surrounded by an abundant universe, but because of hedonistic adaptation, most of the time our brain either doesn’t notice it or diminishes it down to nothing.

In today’s episode of the podcast, I’m sharing a few things that have caught my attention recently that have surprised me, humbled me, and reminded me how much abundance and grace fills our lives and is extended to each of us by God.

There’s never going to be a point at which your brain isn’t going to doubt you and question your ability to succeed, no matter how talented or capable you are or how many times you’ve succeeded or failed in the past.

Most of us are waiting for the doubts to go away. We think that if we could make our doubts go away then we would find our belief.

But on today’s episode of the podcast, I’m sharing the idea that belief isn’t the absence of doubt—believing in ourselves is a choice we are allowed to make even while we have doubts.

It’s your brain’s job to doubt you. But you never have to let those doubts stop you. Doubt is what your brain does. Believing is what you can do and today’s podcast episode is all about how to do just that.

Today on the podcast I ask and answer a question that you may occasionally find yourself asking: What’s wrong with me?

As humans it’s easy to wonder why we feel so bad, why we can’t seem to figure out how to be happy and productive, why we do the things we do, why it feels so hard to do the things we’re “supposed to do,” and why it often feels like we’re our own worst enemy…I mean, what it wrong with us?

Over and over, we ask this question, thinking that if we could just figure out the problem of us then we could fix it and finally feel better about ourselves and our life.

In today’s episode we’ll talk about why it sometimes feels so hard to be human and how to stop thinking that there’s something wrong with you—cause there isn’t! This episode will give you perspective, warmth, and understanding for the very challenging experience of being human.

From the moment we become parents we are concerned about the safety, happiness, and success of our children.

But how much of that is in our control? And how much of it is our responsibility?

In today’s episode of the podcast, I’m sharing three important distinctions that will allow you to improve the relationship you have with your children by releasing all the things you can’t control and focusing on the things you can.

You’ll learn the big difference between being a responsible parent and taking responsibility for your children’s choices, how your influence can make a difference, and how to know that your children have everything they need for their best life.