100% Awesome Podcast April Price

We’ve just finished commencement season. At some point in our lives, most of us have sat in the audience of a commencement speech thinking that everything good in our life was about to start. 
But then time passes and maybe 5 or 10 or 20 years later we can find ourselves looking around and thinking: Is this it? Is this what being an adult was gonna be like? Is this how it was supposed to turn out? Most of us had big plans to change the world, but maybe after a few decades, it just feels like the world changed us instead.
 
I think the problem is our expectations.  I think commencement speeches and the happily-ever-after we see in the movies and on social media are all selling us the idea that life is supposed to be big and magical and exciting, and you are supposed to be happy and successful and gorgeous and killing it all the time. 
So today I wanted to give a kind of “anti-commencement speech” and reframe your expectations about what life is supposed to be like, so that you can feel better about yourself and your very ordinary, normal human experience, and hopefully answer the question, “Is this it?” along the way. 

Most of us are good at being hard on ourselves. We know how to be disappointed and disgusted and frustrated with ourselves and we’re experts at being critical and condescending of the parts of us that we don’t like. Treating ourselves this way comes naturally (because of the way our brains work) and we’ve also had a lot of practice doing it. 
What doesn’t come naturally is being kind—especially to ourselves and especially when we are struggling. We’ve all heard the advice to be kind to yourself, but how do we do that, especially when we make mistakes or feel like we don’t deserve kindness? 
In today’s episode I’m answering that question and teaching you how to develop a practice, habit, and culture of kindness with yourself.
Your relationship with yourself is the most long-lasting, long-term relationship you will ever have and learning how to relate to yourself with kindness is a superpower that will serve you in every area of your life.
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Sometimes it can feel like your brain is the enemy, but there’s actually a really significant survival advantage for everything your brain does. 
When humans first showed up on the scene, we had no camouflaged skin, no super hearing, we couldn’t fly or swim. We couldn’t see in the dark or breathe underwater. We didn’t have claws or huge teeth or thick fur. The only thing we had was a three-pound pile of flesh secretly stashed in our skulls and that one advantage that allowed us to survive and thrive on this planet.
Today on the podcast, I thought it would be fun to imagine what self-help might look like in the Stone Age to demonstrate why your brain does what it does and why it takes so much awareness, intention, and energy to try and think differently.
Your brain is a miracle. But it is also misinformed about what’s best for you and I hope today’s podcast will help you have a brand new appreciation for the way your brain works and feel much more empowered to redirect it. 
 

Nobody likes feeling bad, but what can make it even worse is when we think we’re bad for feeling bad.
Even though our emotions are always just information being passed from our brain to our body, it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that feelings have a morality—that there are good ways to feel and bad ways to feel. And this can make us suspicious and even ashamed of our negative emotions. 
On today’s podcast, I’m pointing out the negative rap that our negative emotions get and giving you some important things to remember when you feel bad. You’ll learn why you might conflate your negative emotion with wickedness, what your all your emotions really mean and say about you, and how to allow and embrace the experience of feeling…even when you feel bad.
 

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.