Rebel Buddhist - podcast cover

Rebel Buddhist

Ana Verzonewww.anaverzone.com
Rebel Buddhist is all about freedom - inside and out - so if you want to tame your mind but not your life, this podcast is for you. In each episode, Master Certified Coach Ana Verzone, DNP, will teach you practical, effective tools from the fields of psychology, eastern spirituality, and self-coaching so you can train your mind to work for you instead of against you. Learn how to get out of your own way and cultivate the compassion and resilience you need for this wild new world. Explore how you can discover your own path to enlightenment and live an adventurous life with no regrets. Start now by downloading the free Rebel Buddhist Training Kit at RebelBuddhist.com
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Episodes

Why We Hurry Towards Our Goals

This week is about why we hurry. Not the kind of hurrying when we are trying to make it on time to a party or a meeting, but when we hurry towards our goals . Why we rush. Why we feel pressured to achieve our goal – like yesterday . I speak from experience here when I say feeling that pressure to achieve our goals faster feels pretty crappy. So let’s jam about freeing ourselves from this sense of urgency. After giving birth to my daughter 7 years ago, I decided it was the perfect year to hit 6-f...

Feb 10, 202219 minEp. 91

The Antidote to Doubt

Doubt it a totally normal experience. It’s comes with the territory when you’re a human born with a brain. It functions to try and keep us safe...to assess potential danger and protect us. However, it keeps us from experiencing true inner – and outer – freedom. In Buddhism there is he concept of the Five Hindrances, which are mental states that impede progress in our meditation practice and our daily lives. They can also lead to unhelpful - or even harmful - actions. These hindrances are: Desire...

Feb 03, 202222 minEp. 90

How to Manage Criticism Anxiety

Correction: The original source for the quote about "The Man in the Arena" was incorrectly stated as Thomas Jefferson - opps! Didn't have my chai yet! The correct author is Theodore Roosevelt. One of the hardest parts of starting the Rebel Buddhist Podcast for me was anxiety around receiving possible criticism. If someone says something on a social media post or a blog post, I’m able to respond and maybe even point out where they misunderstood or something. But for a pod, someone can just say so...

Jan 27, 202224 minEp. 89

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

I was reflecting a lot on my life when I grew up in the ‘hood with so little, and when I lived out of my car for 7 years as a climbing guide and how my life was so simple and I made hardly anything and bought hardly anything and I was so so so content . And while I was content, I admit that while I had confidence in many areas - guiding and my dreams and purpose and my power as a wild woman living in the mountains…I had a lot of doubt if I had what it took to create a different kind of abundance...

Jan 20, 202231 minEp. 88

The Problem With Being Right

If you haven’t realized, I have a bit of a stubborn streak. I like to be right. It’s a thing I do. Once, when I was arguing with someone because I knew I was right and I just couldn’t let it go, he said, “I can tell you really like to be right.” It was just an observation - not a judgment. He even said it kind of nicely. “You really like to be right.” And I was like, “YES, I like to be right? Why would I not ? Do you go around letting people think things that are wrong?” And he looked at me like...

Jan 13, 202224 minEp. 87

Sneaky Lies We Tell Ourselves

There’s a saying, “People will doubt but you say but they will believe what you do.” And this is because it is well-known that what we say isn’t always what we mean. What ultimately matters is what we DO. How we show up in the world.

Jan 06, 202224 minEp. 86

Greatest Hits Vol. 3 - Forgiveness

Here we are - at the end of the year, maybe looking back and wondering how it all happened the way it did. Maybe holding some grudges or deep resentments...or shame about how we showed up. The good news is, if we want to, we now have a chance to do things differently. Ultimately, we all get to choose how we want to show up every day , but there’s something significant about how we move into the next year and how it can set the tone for what is to come. You know we’re all about Freedom here at th...

Dec 30, 202125 minEp. 85

Word of the Year - Your Medicine

We’ve arrived at the final few days of the year, and how we participate in this transition will set the tone for the next one to come. If we want to be active creators of our own life instead of massive observers of our life (letting things happen TO us), it’s important to get clear and move, think, and feel with intention . One of the best ways we can do this is by trying to think of a phrase or word that encapsulates our intention. It may sound cliche or too woo-woo to pick a “word of the year...

Dec 23, 202116 minEp. 84

Vulnerability & Lovingkindness

Lovingkindness is foundational to cultivating wisdom and compassion in our mindfulness practice. A lot of people feel like mindfulness is a peaceful and relatively sterile thing where we are aware of our surroundings, but I’ve found that at deeper levels of mindfulness, there is also an element of love. So yes, we can mindfully move through the world with love. But when you’ve had life challenges, that can be hard to do, right? It takes work. We long to love - to be vulnerable - without holding ...

Dec 16, 202139 minEp. 83

How to Live in Polarity

We are all complex beings, made up of contrasts. Discipline and wildness. Security and freedom. Worldly and divine. There are dichotomies everywhere. It’s part of nature, and we are all a part of that. Yet often we are asked to choose only one aspect of ourselves and lose or leave the other. And for many of us, our culture believes it’s hypocritical to stand with one foot in each contrasting space. The place that deep work happens is often when we are recognizing and living in polarity . It’s wh...

Dec 09, 202129 minEp. 82

The Importance of a Daily Routine

Today is about one thing that could make a huge difference in your life - with relationships, health, creativity, and especially our mental health.

Dec 02, 202132 minEp. 81

How to Not Lose Yourself in a Relationship - Part 2

What we talked about in Part 1: // Attachment theory and mindfulness of emotions and thoughts // How patriarchal society predisposes us to certain thoughts + beliefs and filters our relationship experiences // How it makes sense that anxiety leads to crazy thoughts and actions // Why those actions could end up leading us to lose ourselves in a relationship // The FIRST step in healing: offering ourselves self-compassion This week, we’re going to dive deeper into more tools and concepts. The firs...

Nov 25, 202126 minEp. 80

How to Not Lose Yourself in a Relationship - Part I

Does this sound like you: // You obsessively check your texts to see if so-and-so has replied yet // If they don’t, you start to spiral about if they still care about you, or what might be wrong. // When you receive an email, you have a sort of mini-panic because it could be bad news about someone being upset with you - even though you haven’t even opened it yet. // You overreact to minor feedback, or get overwhelmed by jealousy. // Or maybe you avoid conversations because you don’t want to upse...

Nov 18, 202132 minEp. 79

Grief and Loss

There are lots of forms of grief and loss. The most obvious is when someone has died, but we can also grieve in many other ways, like the end of a relationship, the diagnosis of a serious illness, not being able to have a baby, or the loss of a dream. We all will go through some form of loss at some point. It’s inevitable. I get emails regularly from people who are grieving or even holding themselves back from feeling that grief. We can sometimes steer away from talking about hard things because...

Nov 11, 202139 minEp. 78

Change Is Inevitable

This Episode is all about change – and your ability to adapt to it. We all know that nothing is permanent, but we still like to hope that things won’t change too quickly. And while we know we’ve made it this far in life, we still often question our ability to be able to handle what life might send our way. The inevitability of change and your ziji – your inner radiant confidence that you will be able to handle what comes - are inextricably linked. Surely we’ve all experienced lots of change in t...

Nov 04, 202130 minEp. 77

Living in Breakthrough

I love sharing my daily adventures… especially when they involve a gorgeous, sunny day in Hawaii or an epic alpine lake in Alaska! But social media shows a filtered version of peoples’ lives - sometimes literally. No one has this super happy blissed-out life where it’s gorgeous views and amazing fulfilling adventures all the time. That’s only half the picture. And while we may not see the messy sides as often, those messy sides are just as important – and necessary – to live a life in breakthrou...

Oct 28, 202140 minEp. 76

Stop Apologizing

“I’m sorry I made you mad.” “I’m sorry I upset you.” “He hurt my feelings.” We hear these things and say these things throughout our lives and assume they are true. But they are not. In reality, believing that we can control how people think and feel actually keeps us from accessing genuine compassion and kindness. Over the past few months, I’ve talked a lot about how other people and external circumstances don’t cause our feelings, but rather it’s our thoughts about them and what they do that c...

Oct 21, 202127 minEp. 75

How to Set Healthy Boundaries

In my life, there is almost NO consistency. Which can be awesome for spontaneous journeys or trips and fun nights-in doing silly things with my daughter and husband. But it can also be an absolute pain in the butt when it comes to the simple things in my marriage like who is cooking dinner, or who is picking our kid up from school or even who is going to be home that weekend! To minimize the chaos (and keep us both semi-sane), my husband and I have LOTS of conversations about these things that m...

Oct 14, 202136 minEp. 74

How to Be Your Own Guru

I get asked a lot where the name for my podcast, “Rebel Buddhist”, came from. Often people will say, “Wow - I can’t imagine a rebel Buddhist with like guns, or weapons - isn’t that the opposite of Buddhism? Isn’t that a kind of...oxymoron?” And I’m thinking, “That’s not exactly the definition of ‘rebel’ that I had in mind.” Here’s where I’m coming from: My main motto is, “Free Your Mind, Free Your Life.” When you free your mind of the things that no longer serve you, the freedom you experience i...

Oct 07, 202129 minEp. 73

Work as Love

“Work is love made visible.” Beautiful, right? But for a lot of us, it might also sound like a load of bullsh*t. After all, work environments can be super unhealthy, both in their culture and environment. And I know that a lot of you Freedom Junkies want to have freedom of time, money, energy, and location, but your work place may not offer that. You’re not alone. These days there are a lot of messages that tell us that the only way to be really happy and truly free is to quit your job and becom...

Sep 30, 202119 minEp. 72

How to Find Your Purpose

I have a lot of Freedom School students who come to me stressed out and anxious because they have no idea what their life purpose – and they’ve been waiting a long time to figure it out. They have a longing – as we all do – to know what and who and how they are “supposed to be” in this world. I know it’s totally cliché to for a life coach to be talking about life purpose - but it actually makes a lot of sense because it creates a lot of suffering for people when they don’t know. It’s also why I’...

Sep 23, 202128 minEp. 71

Maximizing vs Satisficing

I’m currently caught in the middle of a fairly common decision: what fun thing do I want to do this weekend? If you have FOMO, you know you can spend some serious energy debating all the options: outdoor music, road trip, camping with friends, and outside of a pandemic, which party/band/event to go to. Lots of times, when we have a decision to make, we sit and debate because we want to make the “best” choice. But really, sometimes we never know what the “best” choice is until we’ve made the deci...

Sep 16, 202129 minEp. 70

Having Enough - Finding Your Balance

As a life coach, I dislike - maybe even loathe - seeing business coaches talk about “making six figures off your first launch.” Or when they use cheesy marketing ploys that promise six-figures... but only if you study their blueprint, map, or 6-week program. Why? Well, who came up with 6-figure earnings being THE GOAL anyway? I recently took a good look at my own finances with the goal of finding out what my true minimum income would be for me to not just pay my bills, but to be happy and feel f...

Sep 09, 202133 minEp. 69

Integrity - Living Your Truth

For me, when I’m not in alignment with my truth and my values, I feel hollow inside. I feel that sinking feeling and my heart feels restless. I can’t sleep as well, I am quick to lash out or exaggerate truth, and my body tenses up.

Sep 02, 202131 minEp. 68

Greatest Hits Vol 2 - Why adventure is essential to our evolution

Today, we talk about adventure and being devoted to it. Adventure is essential to our evolution. When I was a child, I would get soooo bored. I was an only child in a poor neighborhood that had so much gun violence I wasn’t even allowed to play in the front of the house because of all the drive-by shootings…let alone walk to a friend’s house. I made a promise to myself that when I grew up, I would never—ever—feel bored again. While this promise ended up creating a full-blown addiction to adventu...

Aug 26, 202120 minEp. 67

How to Fail Perfectly

This week’s pod is all about how to fail – and do it well… and fair warning, it’s got some tough love in it! Now, many of us give up too easily and we complain about our perceived failures way too much, right? And we both know that what I teach is all about freedom - to free your mind and free your life. The thing is: avoiding failure – having low failure resilience - is costing you your dreams, success, growth, learning, and expansion! When I see someone who is afraid to fail and not willing to...

Aug 19, 202129 minEp. 66

The Art of Doing Nothing

This past weekend was my BIRTHDAY! Normally, when it comes to celebrating a big day in our lives, my family goes exploring or takes a wild trip somewhere. So when my husband asked me what I wanted to do and I just said I wanted to go to our yurt and relax, he was more than just surprised. He didn’t even quite understand the concept. To him, doing nothing meant doing something mellow. After settling into the yurt, I decided I’d love to drive out to one of my fave restaurants in a small town nearb...

Aug 12, 202125 minEp. 65

Cultivating Radiant Inner Confidence - Ziji

If you’ve been around me for any time at all, you’ve definitely heard me talk about Ziji. Ziji is all about confidence. But not just any confidence. Ziji is a Tibetan word that means radiant inner confidence. What makes it so...essential to a full, meaningful life of freedom, adventure and purpose? Let’s start by imagining what life was like before anything “bad” ever happened to us. As we grow and learn, we see the outside world as a place with both good and bad experiences. Over time, as we ex...

Aug 05, 202125 minEp. 64

Being Human is Hard - the First Noble Truth

How many of you think life can often be a little...difficult? Yeah, me too. But what I’ve found is that when I stop resisting that life can be hard sometimes, and when I stop thinking something has gone terribly wrong just because things aren’t easy or I’m not happy, then I can start embracing life more fully and savor the good times even more. Today I want to talk about how while being a human is hard, accepting that truth can be to our advantage. When the Buddha first taught, he could have tau...

Jul 29, 202129 minEp. 63

Commitment and How to Take Massive Action

I’m sitting here looking at Blackburn Mountain and the Staircase ice falls - one of the biggest ice falls in the world - and I was reminded of all the hard things I’ve experienced on mountaineering trips and how amazing it felt to achieve our goals...or sometimes, to even have just survived. And that inspired me to talk about massive action vs passive action and how that all relates to commitment . First, a few brief definitions - massive action is keeping on taking action until you achieve your...

Jul 22, 202118 minEp. 62
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