I have come to realize on my own journey that you can’t ever change something permanently when you hate it. It seems like a contradiction. After all, if you didn’t hate what you want to change, then you wouldn’t want to change it, right? This can be a very tough concept to get your head around, but bear with me today as I take a shot at explaining it to you.

As human beings, we have a very limited perspective of the world around us. It’s something to which we don’t usually give much thought, but science even tells us that the human brain and the human eyes are only able to perceive a negligible percentage of the electromagnetic light spectrum.

When it comes to teaching Thought Work, I am ultimately teaching how to take charge of your own authority. Many of us, especially women, will believe what someone else says or thinks about us over our own opinions, and some of us do this without even realizing. We don’t realize that we aren’t claiming our own authority.

Living with resentment, even if it’s in the basement of your mind rather than the living room, can be very draining to our batteries and can make for a very difficult way to live. I should know, because one of the things that drew me to Thought Work was how it helped me look at my resentment in a new way.

Most of us are taught from a young age to be good, and some of us have come to think of this as a bad thing, that rules stifle creativity and individuality. Rules can be a good thing, but because we learn them as children, we sometimes shape our identities around them and think that we can never be good enough.

I am so thrilled to welcome Kristen Gilliland to today’s podcast. Kristen is an organic chemist by training and is currently working at the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery here in Nashville, currently acting as Director of Outreach and Advocacy. In that role, she teaches neuroplasticity to teenagers.

Many of my clients like to be in control and take on a lot of responsibility, and when I tell them that they are responsible for their thoughts, they tend to take on even more responsibility. That’s why I want to take this episode to discuss responsibility - what you are responsible for and what you’re not.

Here in Nashville, there have been peaceful protests lately trying to push legislators to place a ban on assault rifles, and most of the people protesting were teenagers. This really got me thinking about positive things that I would like to share with today’s youth, and I narrowed that down to six things, hence today’s episode.

Dr. Jay Wellons is the author of the beautiful memoir All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience. He is the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.

I did my first webinar three years ago, so I went back and revisited that webinar only to realize that it was much better than I feared. I was undoubtedly nervous and am much more confident now, but I was much better prepared for it than I had realized.

Many of my clients are women in midlife, and most of them are working and/or taking care of children. Many of them are also dealing with issues involving aging parents, and that often leads to them worrying about their own aging.

What is self-sabotage, and why does it feel so terrible? Self-sabotaging is when we create unnecessary problems for ourselves that get in the way of our goals, and part of the reason that it feels awful is that we blame ourselves for it; we think that we are the problem.

I have talked a lot on the podcast about how to reduce unnecessary suffering, but if there is unnecessary suffering, then that begs the question of whether or not there is necessary suffering. The short answer is yes, and it’s something that some people call clean pain.

Listen in today as I share a story about a client who felt conflicted between her compassion for her mother who was going through a tough time and her responsibilities toward her job, a story that serves as a perfect example of the Thought Work that I teach and talk about on this podcast.

If I were to ask you how you use your personal power, what would you say? Do you know what your personal power is? Your thoughts are energy, and energy animates your body. What you choose to think and believe acts as your own personal steering wheel, and every single one of us underutilizes this power.

I have a client who recently expressed worry that she isn’t doing enough for her kids, an example of how we set ourselves up to be spinning and anxious. How do you know when you have or haven’t done enough?

I recently took a trip to Canyon Ranch in The Berkshires, the ever glorious destination health spa. I went by myself for my birthday, and listen in today as I talk about how that went for me and how I have changed so much since the last time that I went.

I have a very special guest today. Sam Quinones is a New York Times bestselling author and much admired journalist, and he also happens to be my husband. He is a great guest for this podcast because he has achieved something many of us seek - a career that doesn’t feel like a job.

We all have similar blindspots when it comes to our belief in our ability to change. In this episode I share common misconceptions about what it is really like to change.

We don’t always realize it, but we hold onto things - both material and immaterial - mostly out of fear that there won’t be something to replace them. However, not all of those things serve us, and we can’t allow new things to enter our lives without making space for them.