On the day this episode releases I will go for a run to celebrate 2,500 days of running every single day. Building a habit that lasts for 2,500 days doesn't just happen on autopilot. It takes a lot of hard work, intentionality, and planning. In this episode, I breakdown a process you can go through that will help you in identifying and creating a habit that has the ability to change your life. My run streak has made a huge impact on my own life and it has inspired others to improve their own liv...
Mar 28, 2022•20 min•Ep. 33
In this episode, we talk about the science behind our moods and why it is beneficial to have a better mood more often. We also learn practical strategies to help us improve our mood. The goal is not to try to experience happiness all the time, no matter our circumstances. Rather, the approach we want to take is to not let small, everyday annoyances derail our mood and ruin our day. Having a more positive mood can improve our health, our life satisfaction, and our success. Increased positive affe...
Mar 21, 2022•11 min•Ep. 32
A long, dark, and cold winter has left many of us feeling like we're in a funk. On the heels of a two year struggle through the pandemic, we're feeling exhausted, stuck, and unmotivated. This 8 step process can help you reset your mental, spiritual, and physical health, refresh your work life, home life, and relationships, and create a fresh outlook for your values and goals. After completing these steps you will feel less overwhelm and more clarity about how to move forward in this next season ...
Mar 15, 2022•23 min•Ep. 31
Pope Benedict XVI is quoted as saying, "The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness." The pandemic has increased our options for comfort these days. And many of us are doing all we can to seek comfort and avoid pain and discomfort. The circumstances in our current lives are ever-changing, overwhelming, and hard. It is so tempting to just move into survival mode, doing the bare minimum we can and then spending any free time we can find passively es...
Jan 31, 2022•24 min•Ep. 30
Flow is an experience of total absorption in the task at hand, where you completely lose track of time and space. Researchers, like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, have discovered that flow is the best predictor of well-being. The more often you are in a flow state, the more enjoyable your life experience will be. But all flow is not created equally. Sometimes our experience of flow doesn't lead to more meaning and satisfaction. Sometimes when we come out of a flow state we still feel stuck and empty. ...
Jan 17, 2022•29 min•Ep. 29
In early 2021, Adam Grant published an article in the New York Times that said, "There's a name for the blah you're feeling: It's called languishing." The article quickly went viral. Adam spoke to an experience that we had all been experiencing. Over the past couple of years, we have moved from grief and sadness to an overwhelming sense of languishing due to the pandemic and ongoing challenges of life. We just feel meh. Empty, stuck, stagnate, joyless. It's not mental illness, but we're definite...
Jan 03, 2022•18 min•Ep. 28
This episode will help you understand what it means to flourish in life. We talk about three aspects that are necessary to help us flourish. These aspects are fulfillment, balance, and presence. We'll learn what it looks like and how it feels to live our lives fully alive, flowing smoothly, and with mindful awareness and appreciation for the present moment. After going through a global pandemic, many of us are struggling to find our new normal and reengage in a fulfilling and meaningful life. We...
Jul 12, 2021•17 min•Ep. 27
Good emotional health is the ability to cope with both the highs and the lows in life. It involves being able to accept and manage any and all emotions we face with vulnerability and authenticity. You build strong emotional health by becoming aware of your emotions, learning to self-regulate in the midst of intense emotions, and developing healthy coping strategies to support you in hard times. In this episode, we learn healthy ways to accept and manage both the good and the bad so we can live a...
Jun 29, 2021•21 min•Ep. 26
A healthy approach to exercise is flexible, adaptable, pleasurable, and compatible with your daily life. It supports the healthy functioning of your body and is done from a place of positive motivations and beliefs. Exercising our bodies is extremely important, not just for our physical health but for our mental health and cognition as well. Many people approach exercise with an unhealthy focus on weight loss, disordered eating, and dysfunctional exercise practices that stem from self-criticism,...
Jun 08, 2021•23 min•Ep. 25
Improving your body image is one of the most important things we can do to support our overall health, wellness, and well-being. When we have a negative body image, our very motivation for pursuing health usually leads us down a dangerous road that often makes us even more unhealthy than when we began. This episode helps us better understand what body image is and provides practical strategies and inspiration that we can use to help us improve our body image. In this episode, you'll learn how a ...
May 17, 2021•17 min•Ep. 24
In this episode we talk about the what, why, and how of rest, relaxation, sleep, and sabbath. These four things can have an effect on every aspect of our health and wellness. When we don't get sufficient rest it can impact our physical, mental, spiritual, and relational health. Learn some practical strategies to help you begin to make small changes to focus on getting more rest and relaxation in your life. Links and Resources from this Episode: Four Dimensions of Health Sleep is your Superpower ...
May 09, 2021•22 min•Ep. 23
A lot of research has been done to help us better understand wellbeing. What makes up wellbeing? Does everyone have access to it? How can we increase our experience of wellbeing and what factors might hinder our it? In this episode, we talk about 9 building blocks of wellbeing that we can examine and adjust to help us experience more wellbeing and flourish. The 9 building blocks or pillars include the original 5 facets of the PERMA theory as well as an additional 4 areas that recent research has...
Apr 26, 2021•23 min•Ep. 22
If you want to reach the goals that you have set for yourself, the answer is not more motivation, more confidence, or more self-discipline. Confidence is trusting and relying on yourself to do the things you said you would do. You can't build that trust and reliance until you start taking action, no matter how you feel. In this episode, we talk about how we choose our actions to live the life we truly want to live. We discuss what it takes to start making progress toward our goals. If you're rea...
Apr 12, 2021•15 min•Ep. 21
We are continuing our series in which we are working to learn how to get ourselves to do the things we want to do, even when we don't feel like doing them. In episode 19 we learned how to accept our thoughts and feelings. In this episode we discuss the next step in the process, to choose a value-based direction and next step. We decide the person we want to be, we consider what is important to us, and then we choose our next right step based on these values, not on how we feel in the moment. Thi...
Apr 07, 2021•19 min•Ep. 20
Humans have around 6,200 thoughts per day. Some thoughts are helpful and some thoughts hold us back from doing the things we want to do. Our emotions also play a role in giving us the desire to do or not do the things we want. We have the ability to change our thoughts and feelings to help us do more of the things that matter to us. But we will still have some unhelpful thoughts or feelings that hold us back from living the life we want to live. This episode talks about how we can become more aw...
Mar 15, 2021•20 min•Ep. 19
There's a popular passage of scripture in Romans where Paul says something along the lines of "I don't understand myself. I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." I think we can all relate to this passage in some way. We know what we should do, we know what we want to do, but how do we get ourselves to actually do it. We long for the day when we will find some motivation, we search for the formula...
Mar 08, 2021•17 min•Ep. 18
People with a fixed mindset believe that their personal character, skills, intelligence, and abilities are fixed traits that cannot be changed. They believe you’re either born with it or you’re not. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be developed through hard work and effort. A fixed mindset keeps us stuck and afraid of failure and mistakes, but people with a growth mindset are constantly improving and growing. They seek out challenges and recognize ...
Feb 22, 2021•17 min•Ep. 17
Psychological Capital, better known as PsyCap in the world of positive psychology, is the psychological resources of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism that can help employees perform better at work and increase overall well-being outside of the workplace. We can use the acronym HERO to help us remember these important resources. This episode talks about what each of these resources means and how we can develop them in our own lives. Links and resources from this episode Episode 6: The Pra...
Feb 19, 2021•11 min•Ep. 16
Resilience is the ability to bounce back after adversity. We will all face hard times and suffering in life. Instead of resisting the hard, resilient people learn to face challenges and stressors, accept mistakes, and grow from failures. This episode will teach you practical ways to increase your resilience and come out of hardship stronger. Links and Resources from this Episode Episode 3: The Why and How of Better Relationships Episode 13: Managing Thoughts to Improve Mental Health Episode 14: ...
Feb 08, 2021•13 min•Ep. 15
Optimism can help us achieve more success at work, home, school, in sports, and every other area of life. An optimistic explanatory style also helps us live longer, healthier lives. This episode discusses the power of optimism and provides practical instructions for how to increase optimistic thinking to improve your life. Side note - starting next week, The Working Mom's Balance podcast will release new episodes on Mondays (instead of Fridays). Be sure to subscribe and come back on Monday for a...
Feb 05, 2021•20 min•Ep. 14
We are all experiencing a number of challenging circumstances these days which are taking their toll on our mental health and well-being. In this episode, I discuss the differences between optimism and pessimism and how we can learn optimism to decrease our risk of depression. Negative and destructive thoughts can have a powerful impact on our experience in life. Learn some strategies to replace your negative thoughts with thoughts that will help you live a happier, more successful life. Links a...
Jan 15, 2021•22 min•Ep. 13
Well, we are one week into 2021 and it has already been quite a year. In this episode, I share some personal thoughts and stories on the importance of my faith and how it brings meaning and purpose to my life. I also describe how the events at the U.S. Capitol building this week have fueled me to take a more active stand in living out my purpose. To thrive in our lives, it won't be easy, but research tells us the discomfort will be worth it. Listen in to learn how you can use the anger, fear, an...
Jan 08, 2021•20 min•Ep. 12
Happy New Year, friends! If 2020 taught us anything it was that change is inevitable and we need to hold our plans loosely because we never know what might be around the corner. This can make goal setting particularly difficult. There are still a lot of challenges and uncertainties as we enter 2021 and it can be hard to plan goals for the year when there is so much that we just don’t know about what 2021 will look like. In this episode, I share a process that can help us make progress toward our...
Jan 01, 2021•18 min•Ep. 11
This year has had both light and darkness. We hold the tension of experiencing good right along with the bad that has happened. In the story of Christmas, Jesus comes to bring light in the midst of the world's darkness. This episode provides some thoughts and reflections to remind us of God's goodness and hope that is available to us no matter the circumstances we are facing. Merry Christmas! Links and Resources from this Episode: Isaiah 9: 1-7 NLT Join the Working Mom’s Balance Email Club to ge...
Dec 18, 2020•9 min•Ep. 10
This episode begins with the reading of Psalm 42, a Psalm where the writer expresses his grief and disappointment about not being able to walk among the crowds of worshipers. Maybe we can relate. In the year 2020, crowds of worshipers are a bad idea. There are disappointments, we feel weary and discouraged this Christmas. Many of our traditions have been canceled or changed. We long for how it used to be. There is hope that the pandemic will eventually end and we will be able to return to normal...
Dec 11, 2020•12 min•Ep. 9
For the next few weeks, I will be sharing some thoughts and reflections on the Christmas story to help prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus. Christmas feels strange this year. Things won't be like we are used to and I'm struggling to get into the Christmas spirit. In this episode, I reflect on how God partners with God's created people to do the work of restoring God's Kingdom on Earth. We are invited to speed God's return by working with God to repair our broken and hurting world. As we m...
Dec 04, 2020•12 min•Ep. 6
Working moms are busy people with full schedules. We are always on the lookout for ways to develop systems and routines to help us become more efficient, figure out how to increase our focus and motivation while decreasing our distractions and tendency to procrastinate, and learn new time management strategies. Before we work on these solutions it is important to address a couple of important aspects related to our time first. You have the power to fill your time with whatever you desire. The pu...
Nov 27, 2020•13 min•Ep. 7
Next week may be Thanksgiving in the United States, but gratitude is something that we should practice on a regular basis to increase our happiness, decrease our risk of depression, and improve our overall well-being. Gratitude is one of the most effective practices for enhancing life satisfaction. In this episode, learn more about the benefits of gratitude, what gratitude actually is, and a few practices that you can do to help deepen your experience of gratitude in your life. Links and resourc...
Nov 20, 2020•19 min•Ep. 6
On the day this episode airs, I will go out for a run for the 2,000 consecutive day. My run streak has helped me learn a lot about how to find motivation and become more self-disciplined. In this episode, I talk about how I made it to 2,000 days and what I do to set myself up for success. I share the 3 things that scientists who study motivation tell us we need to develop intrinsic motivation to do the things we need to do. Links and resources from this episode: Streak Runners International List...
Nov 13, 2020•21 min•Ep. 5
Emotions are a part of life. Some people avoid and bury their emotions while others get stuck and ruminate on their emotions. Neither approach is healthy and productive. In this episode, we learn what emotions actually are, the importance of allowing ourselves to experience all emotions, and we discover how to manage our emotional experience in order to be resilient and thrive. Links and Resources from this episode: Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life by S...
Nov 06, 2020•21 min•Ep. 4
