Naming the Real Brandon Cook
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- Educación
In an era of polarization, confusion, and “fake news,” discerning and naming what is real—what satisfies, what has substance, what is meaningful—is more important than ever. The Naming the Real Podcast is about doing just that: rightly naming the beliefs, attitudes, practices, and behaviors that will help you transcend our cultural anxiety and lead a flourishing life, for the sake of the world.
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A NtR Short: Owning the Morning: Writing Your Grounding Story
In this Short, we explore a simple two-step practice for seizing the day rather than letting the day seize you. The practice is straightforward: a commitment to spend a few moments in a slow, unhurried posture combined with a consistent engagement of your “grounding story.” In this episode, we explain what a grounding story is, how to create one, and how you can use it to pursue freedom and clarity every morning.
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A NtR Short: “Discharging a Loyal Soldier”: How to Release Parts of Us That Once Kept Us Safe…and Now Keep Us Stuck
In this Naming the Real Short—a bonus episode in our Storytelling Series—we explore the idea of “discharging a loyal soldier,” which is releasing a belief/part of us that kept us safe but now keeps us stuck. By thanking the part, releasing the part, and re-assigning the part to a new role, we can transcend the places where we’ve got mired and move to greater flourishing.
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You’re Not Crazy for Talking to Yourself: How to Dialogue with All Your Parts (Storytelling Part II)
The person that we are includes many parts, organized around our true Self. But many times we feel stuck, because we believe our most frustrated or seemingly dysfunctional part is our actual identity, or because we don’t how to integrate our parts into a greater whole. In this episode, we consider the reality that you aren’t crazy for talking to yourself—far from it! That, in fact, dialoguing with our various parts can release us into freedom. To that end, we consider a rubric for having mindful conversations with our parts, which can call our entire being into wholeness and flourishing.
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A NtR Short: Far From Rome (How Celtic Spirituality Changes How We See the World)
In this episode—our first Naming the Real SHORT—we explore the two primary ways that Celtic spirituality helps us see the world differently than the way promulgated by Western Imperial Christianity.
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Telling Hard Stories: The Power to Heal Our Bodies and Transform Our Souls (Storytelling Part I)
Human beings tend to resist and avoid; it’s a default state for us. But resistance and avoidance lock us into a life of gray horizons—on automatic, far from the thrill of fully feeling or fully flourishing. And yet we are never without tools to get us unstuck. In this episode, we explore the incredible power of telling hard stories for reinventing what we see as possible. We dive into some fascinating data and science around what telling hard stories does for our bodies. And we lay out practical steps for taking on your own stories. Finally, we close with an example of a hard story.
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Finding the Garden Within: Dealing with the Brain’s Inner Voices of Accusation (Science, Scripture, and Spirituality Part IV)
Most people feel, to some degree, that they are on trial, that they must prove themselves and “be enough.” Some people experience such accusations in the form of an inner critic who torments and even terrorizes. How do we transcend such inner accusation? In this episode, we look at ancient wisdom as well as modern neuroscience—including the research of Jaak Panksepp—to understand how our brains work, which can point us to a path of freedom. Through intentional practices such as naming, learning to feel emotions more deeply, and playfulness, we can transcend the inner voices of accusation and cultivate a liberating peace within.