The Self-Awareness and Self-Compassion Podcast

It’s important to refuel yourself regularly if you want to have the energy and inspiration to take care of others or make a huge impact on the world around you.

It is often our most selfish hobbies and downtime that allows us to have the energy to serve others.

This week we look at the signs and symptoms of overwhelm and explore ways we can provide more kindness and tenderness to ourselves to interrupt that trajectory.
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When life presents us with difficult situations, we often forget to pause and assess ourselves for all of the things we are capable of and offer. But when we do, we can bring so much more to the situation and give ourselves a lot more appreciation in the process.

Last week I listened to Matt Khan giving a Loving Kindness Meditation and this podcast explores my takeaways from that transmission. I really enjoyed it!

There are ways to a...

When we’re stretching for a goal, we often find ourselves procrastinating and not understanding why we aren’t doing it.

We can easily self-sabotage when working toward a goal by believing that it’s not worth bothering to try because we have unreasonable expectations about timelines.

One of the lies we tell ourselves is that we can start tomorrow, and we believe that somehow tomorrow we will feel better about it or it will be easier t...

Sometimes we have feelings about the hobbies we choose to pursue, despite starting with all good intentions.

Part of learning any new skill is coming to terms with being terrible at it in the beginning and facing our own frustration with this each time we show up to learn more.

We can get through a lot of the initial frustration by focusing on curiosity or interest in the process of learning how to get past each obstacle.

When we are ...

Friendships change throughout the course of our lives. As children, it seems like friendships are much easier to initiate than as adults. Friendships grow easily with shared experiences. 

When we are kids, we are put into the same environment and mutual situations as entire classrooms of peers, whereas in our adult lives, people live separate lives and have fewer shared experiences than they did when they were younger.

As our experie...

Depending on how you work best, you might prefer a schedule that is fairly rigid and has smaller bursts of scheduled activities, or you might thrive when you clock out multiple hours for work that fits a certain theme.

When I feel like there isn’t enough time to immerse in a subject, I avoid that activity like crazy. I can find all kinds of reasons to procrastinate when I feel like I will be interrupted when I get into something.

The...

Our bright and large emotional reactions to small things stem from earlier situations that we’re still dealing with emotionally.

It’s easy to roll with inconveniences when they are few and far between and we are otherwise happy, cared for, and well. When we are depleted emotionally and mentally, anything that impedes our progress in the day can set us off. When that happens, we resonate with our underlying unaddressed emotion. The i...

How do you use technology? Do you feel it benefits you? This week I share my experience using fitness trackers and the ways it has both helped me and stressed me out. 

How was my life different when I could only use analog feedback like writing down my workouts and weighing myself on the scale each day? What is it like now when I have instantaneous and constant feedback for how my body is moving, resting, breathing and otherwise fun...

What’s the emotion that’s sparked the most often by the sources of information and entertainment you consume or are exposed to?

Having a big emotion sparked makes it more difficult for you to respond to situations, it instead elicits reactions from you.

Some basic truths about what sparks emotional reactions in us can be helpful.

When we watch something visually, full of music, fast cuts back and forth and fast pacing, it primes you t...

How do you value your time? Is there a threshold of excellence you strive to achieve that holds you back from enjoying hobbies?

Sometimes we compare ourselves to people who make their living doing the craft that we’ve made into our hobby. And when we do that, it can eventually stop us from showing up and having fun.

Is there value in doing an activity for its own sake? Or does it always have to produce something or contribute to othe...

Researching my own ancestry opened my eyes to some patterns that seemed to emerge several times that surprised me. I feel like I have a deeper understanding of how money moves and flows through generations, the frequency with which people travel, and the general trials and tribulations of wars, diseases, and famines that strike all over the world and throughout all families’ histories.

I was able to see how names and ideas about peo...

This time of year is about a quieter execution of goals. The exuberance of the Spring and Summer have come to an end, and while that brings with it a sense of loss and listlessness – there is something wonderful about flowing into a slower pace of being.

There is a rhythm to life, and right now it wants to slow down and allow inertia to complete your projects and to accomplish things for you. What if it is okay to pull your foot off...

What is reasonable to accomplish in only three months or 13 weeks? As the end of the year approaches and panic sets in that we haven’t gotten everything done off of our lists of goals for the year, the kindest thing we can do is look back at what we DID accomplish. 

Believing that there is some way to do everything on your list in such a short amount of time when it already proved rather difficult if not impossible over the last 9 m...

Technology is always changing and disrupting industries. But the shift into using artificial intelligence on the scale that is being offered today seems deeper than any other shift that came before. Perhaps that is because this is the moment I am living through. 

I’m concerned that the source material will continue to feed on itself and the less we can screen or trust the sources of our information and creations. There’s a massive l...

Knowing that you have agency in your life and have the capability of making choices rather than having life imposed on you, allows you to choose your experiences and defines who you are. The power we have as individuals is to choose the flavor of the experiences we have by filtering them through our particular lens.

Asking how you want to experience events in your life is a calming question that allows you to show up the way you wan...

I tend to discount small actions as if I only get a little done it’s not enough. But, I don’t need to get everything done all at once, and what I’m capable of doing and showing up for is enough. Each day will be different, and it’s OK that sometimes you get lots done, and sometimes just waking up and getting through the day is all we can do. 

The smallest action makes a huge difference in our trajectory. And yet we seem to believe t...

What can we do when our mood has tanked and we’re in a loop of doom? This week’s podcast talks about depression, negative thoughts, and anxiety and recognizing the flow of emotion and thoughts so that we can head ourselves toward calmer waters.

We all experience low points. Returning to a place of empowerment asks us to consider what we’ve been holding on to, and if there might be something more helpful to guide us out of our funk. 

A chronic symptom of the culture we are in is that we want to consume more, do more, and be more all the time. Our expectation is that self-growth is the most positive thing in the world for us, but in the pursuit of having everything already done to perfection, we wear ourselves out and feel awful.

We should always ask of any thought or belief that we have, is this true? And is this thought or belief serving me well?

It’s so easy to...

This week’s episode explores how I inadvertently self-sabotaged myself while pursuing my sewing goals and how I got back on track.

Sometimes despite our best intentions, we overwhelm ourselves and not only tank our progress on the new thing but sap our energy everywhere else, too!

Listen to today's podcast if you need inspiration on uncomplicating your projects, clearing your space, and tapping back into your passion a...