600 Podcasts and Counting...
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Dr. Lise Van Susteren: Emotional Inflammation: A Condi...
Dr. Lise Van Susteren is a psychiatrist in private practice in Washington, DC, and has served as an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University. With her writing partner, Stacey Colino, she has authored the new book Emotional Inflammation: Discover Your Triggers and Reclaim Your Equilibrium During Anxious Times. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Dr. Van Susteren joins Tami Simon to discuss the modern condition she calls emotional inflammation, the primary drivers behind it, and her innovative RESTORE process for coming back into balance and wholeness in our lives. (1 hour, 2 minutes)
Dr. Rachael Wooten: The Liberating Power of Tara
Dr. Rachael Wooten is a Zurich-trained Jungian analyst and psychologist who has been in private practice as a therapist for more than 40 years. An enthusiastic interfaith activist, she has studied and practiced in Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and indigenous traditions throughout her adult life. With Sounds True, Dr. Wooten has written a new book called, Tara: The Liberating Power of the Female Buddha.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, you are invited to get to know Tara as a very real and deeply empowering presence in your own life, as Dr. Wooten introduces you to the radiant figure beloved by millions in Tibet and across the world. In conversation with Tami Simon, she also discusses the 21 traditional emanations of Tara, the first steps involved in embarking on a relationship with Tara, and how to enlist her help at this particular time in history. (1 hour, 7 minutes)
Cate Stillman: Awakening the Power of the Five Element...
Cate Stillman teaches audiences how to create health and wellness through yoga and Ayurveda on her weekly Yogahealer Real Thrive Show. She has published two books with Sounds True: Body Thrive: Uplevel Your Body and Your Life with 10 Habits from Ayurveda and Yoga and Master of You: A Five-Point System to Synchronize Your Body, Your Home, and Your Time with Your Ambition. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Cate about the Ayurvedic concept of the five elements. Cate emphasizes that these elements aren’t external qualities, but universal constants that live within you as well. Tami and Cate also discuss what we all can learn from Ayurveda during the COVID-19 crisis, including a “first aid kit” of practices to make the most out of days in quarantine. They talk about the inherent “superpowers” of the body and how to assess what elements you should focus on during practice. Finally, Tami and Cate speak on values you can embrace for greater productivity and what it truly means to have mastery over your life.
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Why the Summer is Surprisingly Busy—And What To Do A...
Many people find themselves surprisingly busier in the summer than they expect to be. The chief reason we’re surprised is that the summer brings new projects that we often don’t count as projects and we have to weave those projects in with the projects we set in motion in the spring.
Why don’t we count the new projects that summer brings? Simple—many of us don’t count “life” activities as projects or prioritize “life” activities in the same way we do “work” projects. There’s an artificial divide between the work we do and the “life stuff” we do.
But here’s the thing: regardless of whether something falls into the “work” or “life” bucket, it’s going to take time, energy, and attention to get done. My definition of project in Start Finishing is anything that requires time, energy, and attention to complete. The upshot of looking at things this way is that it helps us see more clearly all the stuff we’re carrying and trying to do.
So, what are some “life” projects?
Summer trips are projects.
Transitioning kids from being at school all day to being at home all day for the summer is a project. (As is transitioning them back into school.)
Figuring out how to keep said kids fed every day is a project (that then turns into a new daily routine).
Maintaining yard care equipment is a project (that then turns into a new weekly routine of taking care of the lawn.)
Cleaning out the garage is a project.
Getting the motorcycle and/or bike ready for the season is a project.
I could go on, but you get the point. All of those are summer-specific projects that fall in our laps after the spring. But when we’re setting plans in spring, we’re often not thinking about them because they’re not in our face in the same way as a kid asking where the milk is (where it always is!) or the weeds that are peeking over the window to the backyard.
If it were just that new projects blossom in the summer, it would be one thing. But conjoined with new projects blossoming is that many of us often want to work less in the summer—and, for some of us, the desire to slow down isn’t just emotional, but something primal or spiritual. The long, hot days of summer changes some of us from hard-driving, high-energy, can-do folk into a walking Jimmy Buffet song.
Though we find ourselves in this position every year, it can be hard to see the pattern. Part of it is just the pace of life, but the other part is that we too often think of ourselves as invariant robots rather than the animals we are. Every other animal adapts to the changing world around it—artificial lights and air conditioning may allow us to alter the environment, but the changes still affect us more than we like to let on.
If you’re finding your summer busier and more compressed than you’d like it to be, here are three questions that will help you sink into the season:
- What new or recurring seasonal projects emerged that you hadn’t planned for or didn’t fully acknowledge as a project?
- Which of the projects you planned in the spring can be put on hold or dropped to make space for this summer’s projects?
- Are there any shifts to project timelines or your daily work schedule that would help you keep momentum on your projects while sinking into feeling of summer?
You might also check out Samantha Brody’s Overcoming Overwhelm—it’s a fantastic book that explains how overwhelm shows up in our bodies, hearts, and heads and what to do about it.
Better to adjust now than spend the summer feeling like you’re behind and unable to enjoy the people, nature, and energy of the season.
Charlie Gilkey is the founder of Productive Flourishing, a company that helps professional creatives, leaders, and changemakers take meaningful action on work that matters. He is the author of The Small Business Life Cycle, and is widely cited in outlets such as Inc., Time, Forbes, the Guardian, Lifehacker,and more. He’s also an Army veteran and near-PhD in philosophy. He lives in Portland, Oregon. For more, visit productiveflourishing.com .
Pre-order your copy of Charlie’s forthcoming book,
Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done from your favorite retailer below!
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Mara Glatzel: What Do You Need?
We all have needs. Yet why is it so difficult to honor them? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Mara Glatzel about her book, Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty, and how we might begin to answer the profound question: What happens when we take radical responsibility for our needs?
Tune in for an empowering and indeed much-needed conversation about “giving ourselves permission to take up space in the center of our lives,” exploring: building a working vocabulary around needs and feelings, the disempowering stories we carry about what it means to have needs, the daily practice of identifying your needs, the harmful habit of consistently putting your needs aside, asking for the fullness of what you want, developing a strong self-partnership, shifting from people-pleasing to setting boundaries, Mara’s practice of “staying low and open and receptive,” self-care and “staying in the game,” making commitments that matter, knowing your job and their job when it comes to conversations about needs, the fallacy that one person alone can meet another’s vast and myriad needs, accessing your body’s intelligence, working in your inner landscape, sovereignty amid relationship and interdependency, the challenge of receiving everything you’re asking for, and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
Rachel Macy Stafford: The Soul Shift to What Really Ma...
In her new book, Soul Shift, Rachel Macy Stafford offers a practical approach to navigating a culture of distraction and depletion to find your way back to what delights your heart, makes you feel alive, and brings you peace. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Rachel about the attitude and actions involved in making a “soul shift” and learning to embrace what we know matters most to us.
Give a listen to a conversation that will help you radically reprioritize your to-do list with urgency and passion, as Tami and Rachel discuss recognizing the angels in your life; trusting your heart; the importance of getting quiet on a daily basis; shifting from control to surrender; living with “hands free and open”; the struggle of constantly proving your worth; shifting from a critical observer to a joyful participant in your life; reaching big goals through small steps; the gift of self-compassion; the empowering phrase “only love today”; the primary Soul Shift practices, including presence, finding true self-worth, letting go, authenticity, and self-forgiveness; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.