We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle
I’m Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed – the book that was released at the very start of the pandemic and became a lifeline for millions. I watched in awe from my home while this simple phrase from Untamed – WE CAN DO HARD THINGS – the mantra that saved my life twenty years ago, became a worldwide rally cry. Because we experienced the hardship of the pandemic collectively, many of us finally acknowledged what was true before COVID and will be true after: That life is freaking HARD. We are all doing hard things every single day – things like loving and losing caring for children and parents; forging and ending friendships; battling addiction, illness, and loneliness; struggling in our jobs, our marriages, and our divorces; setting boundaries; and fighting for equality, purpose, freedom, joy, and peace. On We Can Do Hard Things, my sister Amanda and I will do the only thing I’ve found that has ever made life easier: We will drop the fake and talk honestly about the hard. Each week we will bring our hard to you and we will ask you to bring your hard to us and we will do what we were all meant to do down here: Help each other carry the hard so we can all live a little bit lighter and braver, more free and less alone.
Episodes
1. The simple exercises Laurie conducts with her students at Yale to help them reset their brains and restructure their days in order to access happiness.
2. Why being “time famished” is one of the most common obstacles to happiness, the signals our bodies give us that we are starved of unstructured time, and what we can do to build more of it.
3. How understanding that our brains are wired as “comparison machines” incompatible w...
1. One easy thing we can do to increase our happiness by 1% when we’re feeling tired and overwhelmed.
2. Our misconception that happiness is about our circumstances–the next promotion, the new relationship–and the reality that often people with fantastic circumstances are miserable.
3. Why our emotions flow directly from our thoughts–and how we can improve our wellbeing by changing our mind’s interpretation of events.
About Laurie:
1. How do we build a squad of friends–people we can trust our truth and imperfection with, and who take responsibility for one another’s care?
2. How to know when it’s time to let a friendship go–and how we release one another without the hard feelings.
3. Why when we have a problem trusting others, it sometimes has to do with a lack of trust in ourselves.
4. Why Luvvie says her friends have rewired her brain, and answers the que...
1. A hilarious, profound take on judging people, and why Luvvie’s telling the world–and has often told Glennon–to: “Fix your face.”
2. How to prepare for hard conversations with those we love–including the lists Luvvie brings to those talks that help keep her calm and vulnerable.
3. The importance of sitting with the fear behind the questions: “Who am I when I am not giving something to somebody?” and “What is my worth when I have no...
1. What if we stop trying to figure out whether our feelings and intuition are “right” or “wrong”– and instead, just acknowledge them as real–and move toward them?
2. How Glennon is experiencing a little shift in peace, joy, and non-reactivity through her newfound relationship with meditation.
3. Why a lot of our suffering exists in the space between the Knowing and the Doing–and how life is at its best and most exciting when we shor...
1. Why do we spend our lives trying to become what our culture ascribes as “good” only to burn ourselves out, wake up, and realize: I thought it would all be more beautiful than this?
2. Why Glennon says that stillness has been her greatest teacher–and how she was able to find it in her most rock bottom moments.
3. How listening for and committing to the next right thing then leads us to the next thing–and why we should rush towards...
1. What we should STOP saying to people who are struggling—and what to say, or do, instead.
2. How Kate received the support she needed because people were willing to embarrass themselves in their attempts to show up—and why we shouldn’t be scared of doing it wrong.
3. Kate offers some words to a Pod Squader feeling anticipatory grief—and how to accept that we can’t always make it okay for the people we love.
About Kate:
Kate Bowler,...
1. Kate describes the overwhelming feeling of love—not anger—that she felt when she was sure she was near death.
2. Why it’s time we throw out expressions like “Everything is possible” and “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger,” and rewrite our cultural cliches.
3. Why Kate delights in celebrating the holidays—and how to survive the holiday season when there’s grief and loss and fear in all of us.
4. Kate and Glennon bond over...
1. What if we deleted the picture in our head of how it’s “supposed to be,” and looked at “what is” right now, as enough?
2. What makes a good apology–and why we shouldn't pretend that it is possible to reorder what we did to people.
3. Glennon describes “the ache”–and how it’s really love, coming and going, and making life more beautiful.
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1. Glennon, Abby, and Amanda share how opening up and being vulnerable on the podcast has changed their lives.
2. What your preparation style says about your personality—and how some people bring their “magic” while others bring index cards.
3. Abby recalls “the biggest bomb of her life”—and why she was nervous to join Glennon and Amanda on We Can Do Hard Things.
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1. Why Ashley says we have to talk about what hurts if we’re ever going to heal.
2. Glennon asks Ashley about the power of apologizing—and why Ashley says we must begin apologizing to the people we love.
3. How many of us are really good at loving other people, but often struggle to let ourselves be loved.
4. Why Ashley says that nothing has ever given her more peace and power than knowing that she doesn’t really need others to believ...
1. How to find a way to live in peace: to actually love complicated parents without compromising our love for ourselves.
2. How we can’t change our past—and why Ashley says that forgiveness is accepting the fact that the past is never going to be different.
3. The importance of being able to hold two truths at the same time: that, for some of us, our parents did the best they could—and it wasn’t close to good enough.
4. Why Ashley say...
1. Why embracing that it’s not possible to do everything brings freedom.
2. One change that Amanda made to get back into her body and reclaim her fire.
3. How to navigate our anxieties about the impending “return to normal” and how to hold onto the rhythm many of us have found comforting during the pandemic.
4. How Glennon’s been rethinking her popular Untamed quote “The braver I am, the luckier I get.”
5. How inviting more life into y...
1. What Tish said when asked, “Who has taught you the most about love?”— why it was the best day of Abby’s life, and led her to redefine what it means to be a mother.
2. Glennon declares herself a great adventurer, without movement: an inner travel guide—and how the new journal will help steer us toward our next right thing.
3. How the pandemic brought Amanda’s anxieties, traumas, and relational cracks, previously on a slow burn, ...
1. Brené and Glennon role play through a scenario on how to put boundaries in practice with family members this holiday season.
2. Why Brené insists that starting “a love affair with the thing you’re most afraid of” will change your life.
3. Glennon asks Brené the question she’s been dying to ask about how a woman’s work is defined and received in the world compared to her male counterparts.
4. How understanding that grief and loss...
1. Why Brené’s new book ATLAS OF THE HEART is a game changer for communicating hard emotions more easily.
2. Brené breaks down the difference between stressed and overwhelmed—and gives us tools to navigate both.
3. How our survival strategies from our families of origin can become both our superpowers and our stumbling blocks in our relationships and wellness.
4. How we can make sure our kids experience deep, steady belonging—even ...
1. Glennon gives you a beautiful Thanksgiving pep talk that has Amanda and Abby nodding along and rolling with laughter.
2. Why Amanda suggests that we can be free to be our full selves at the Thanksgiving table, if we also each bring our own damn casserole.
3. Why the best predictor of how a family member is going to act is how a family member has always acted.
4. We’re taking holiday-themed questions from our beloved Pod Squad ab...
1. How our second holiday hack—“Be unsurprised”—eliminates walking on eggshells around family, and leaving holiday gatherings feeling badly about ourselves or our people.
2. Amanda shares the first time she broke her family’s biggest holiday tradition—and how it’s now one of her most precious memories.
3. Abby remembers watching her mom stress out by preparing and perfecting every holiday detail—and the change she made to minimize...
1. How a marathon is an analogy for life: the danger of comparison, the ride of emotions and self-doubt, that love is fuel, and that the world needs both runners and cheerers.
2. The question Abby kept asking herself throughout the race—and why she’s still wearing her marathon medal while doing the dishes and running errands.
3. Why race day was so profound to Glennon— even though she is strongly committed to NOT running—and how s...
1. Gabrielle shares—as rawly and honestly as we’ve ever heard—about the “emotional chaos” of her years experiencing miscarriage, infertility, and surrogacy.
2. Gabrielle and Abby discuss the label and perception of “stepmom”—Gabrielle shares what she avoids at all costs in that role, and the most vital part of the role for her: consistency.
3. How Gabrielle coached her NBA husband Dwyane before Zaya shared with him that she is gay, a...
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