Help Me Be Me

It’s really hard to stop yourself from helping someone out, doing it for them, giving your time and energy, saying what you said you wouldn’t do again, or diving in head first to a partner – especially when chemicals take over. Because that’s who you are! A giving and loving person! It can feel almost like a commitment to being true to yourself, because when you have all the understanding of someone’s voids – you feel compassion. And even if you didn’t want to try to make them happy or fix something, you feel obligated – mostly by yourself you’re your own inner voice. It’s also because you like them so much and you want to make them happy. To fight against this habit will feel wrong, unnatural. And super uncomfortable – and it makes others so happy. It’s a confusing dilemma – to NOT follow your instincts will make you might feel like you’re not being yourself. You want to be loving and give your best for someone you love. It’s a catch-22. And so the flip side of this is you end up doing it all: you’re the saver who comes to the rescue and others will continue to disappoint you on a loop. Like you’re surrounded by children. You end up feeling resentful toward others for not giving you the love and care and THANKS you deserve, but you can’t stop yourself from being there for them and helping them live better lives. It feels good to be helpful. This end result leaves you and whoever else you are stuck to in life, fighting or empty – battling for love and care and attention. And you’re not asking so much at all – just for a tiny bit of love and support at SOME time in life. Or just for them to not be so destructive. This one’s for Ty – great topic! Thank you! If this helps you in any way, consider making a monthly donation at HelpMeBeMe.com thanks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi peeps, this is a little power-up reflection exercise for anyone who has just had the wind taken out of them by a life gut-punch. Whether you lost a job, didn't get a second date, or just had a person tell you in whatever words that you're a loser - this is perfect for you. Heart to heart, directly from my brain this morning. Hope you enjoy. And NO, you're not crazy, your life's not over, and you're not alone. xox Sarah May B. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh shit. This is bad. I’m not wrong, they’re wrong. Ouch this hurts. I wish this wasn’t this way. Why does everyone hate me? I hate everyone. I am dreading going to this place. I wish I never dated that person. They’re probably talking shit about me. I should be doing better by my age. I haven’t done anything with my life. No one loves me. I look like shit. These are the voices of worry, shame, fear, regret, pain of various forms – the loops that play out and push us to solve for x or act according to x. This is when you can’t find your way out of a situation and instead your life just gets smogged over by the situation: when you know that something is wrong and because of it, you feel terrible inside. Life suddenly loses its highlights. You ask for advice, you work on plans to overcome it, you wish on it, pray on it, lament it, replay it, try to aggressively work on alleviating it, or you hide from it and numb it. And it thickens. It’s the one thing that really catalyzes a whole lot of other beliefs – and you can’t seem to figure out a workaround. When an emotion sticks inside us it CONTROLS US and often pushes us to act on its behalf – like a little demon with a joystick inside your brain. So if this sounds vaguely familiar, this is an episode for you. There are three parts – the what, the why, and the how - the tools! Before I go on I wanted to let everyone know about my second podcast called “Love is Like a Plant” with Ellen Huerta of Mend. She’s building an app to get you through a breakup. Check us out – it’s all about relationships and dating. Anyhoo. The what! If you like what you hear and you want to support this show visit me on Patreon or head to HelpMeBeMe.com and click donate! xox Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I did this myself and it worked for my so I wanted to offer it to you! This is a little refocusing exercise to help you let go of anger and resent - especially if you're fixating on something that bugs you. Whether it's a friend, a partner, a boss - you can train yourself to remember your kind and loving state. It comes down to a simple re-focusing practice when you need it most. xox Sarah May B. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is also known as gas-lighting – based on a Hitchcock film where Ingrid Bergman was made to feel crazy by her husband. What I am going to talk about is what to do and how to recognize when someone is intentionally keeping you feel off-balance or pushing your buttons to make you into the bad guy. It’s a control tactic, and it’s extremely cruel – not to mention, when done overtime it can make you believe you can’t trust your own instincts. You will start to lose a connection to your own gut instincts because someone is making you believe that they might be wrong, consistently over time. It can stall you from actually reaching the solution to an issue, and even blind you to real and dangerous truths happening right in front of you – on a greater and greater scale. Because over a long period of time – no matter how rational and confident you start out, eventually you catch “the sickness” of the manipulative behavior. Long story short – it’s DANGEROUS and NOT COOL and you shouldn’t be tolerating it or be around it – at all. This is an episode to give you a starting point for helping yourself out of this situation. Three parts – what why and how, the tools. Apologies for the background sounds - I recorded this after work in the car so there are helicopters around me! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How good relationships turn into bad relationships, seemingly out of nowhere. Whether that’s with fights that ensue endlessly, or one partner suddenly betrays the other partner – this kind of behavior can make you feel mystified, angry, and stuck. So I want to shed a bit of light on a potential reason behind these changes – if you once had a healthy and mutually rewarding relationship, this might give you a starting place for the work that has to be done. OR at the very least enlighten you as to what happened. My other name for this episode is Family Ties. You’ll know why if you listen to this. Does any of this sound familiar? “I thought I married someone who loved me and they seem like they hate me now.” “This behavior came out of nowhere – one day she told me she didn’t love me anymore.” “I can’t believe this happened – I want to ask her, was it worth it?” These are the kinds of things I hear often from my One-On-One clients, especially when it comes to break-ups. It’s a very common experience to suddenly see your partner change into someone you don’t know, you didn’t think they’d be. It can make you feel stupid like you should have known better. It can make you feel assaulted – like you just got a hard slap for no reason whatsoever. It can make you feel you can’t tell up from down and the world is not what you thought it was. There’s a reason why this is happening, just like there’s a solution – if you want one. Before I get started I want to tell you that this is much more abbreviated than it should be, because this is such an intricate and amazing topic. If you’re interested in learning more about it I will post a link to my reading material on my website in the blog version. It’s worth a read – called Intimate Partners by Maggie Scarf. A blow your mind amazing book. There are three parts: the what why and how – the tools. Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB Thanks! If you like what you hear, check out my other podcast called Love is like a plant with Ellen Huerta of Mend! xo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For those who can’t stop trying to convince themselves they’re bad with self-destructive actions. This one is for Nikki. Why do we destroy relationships with those who love us? Why do break our own trust, betray our own dreams, and rob ourselves of happiness and safety as soon as we get close to it. It’s a mystifying loop of behavior that has powerful effects on everything about our life: a chain reaction that keeps us hiding or running from the ugly truth of what we’ve done. Just like an addict, you live with a subconscious awareness that you will inevitably destroy whatever good you might have – and that anxiety is overwhelming and scary. Like a lurking future of pain awaits you just around the corner. Happiness is immediately blocked by the overwhelming sense of dread that it will soon be lost. And so you self-medicate the fear and cling more tightly to what you want so badly. When you do inevitably self-sabotage and act out in ways that betray your values and the values of your partner, the experience is laden with fear and the resulting shame is soul-crushing. Like you just woke up inside a nightmare. You have an almost separate self who is doing these things despite you. I want you to know there’s a simple reason behind your cycle of behavior that you must CHOOSE to learn. It’s not who you are, it’s a tactic that you learned to cope with unrelated pain and anxiety. There are three parts: the what, the why, the how. Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB Thanks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Can’t I Change? Why Can’t I Reach My Goal? Hi friends, this is a power-up for anyone who wants a change and has wanted it for a long time, but you just don’t seem to get there and you’ve pretty much accepted it or given up hope. I am addressing a number of changes: maybe you want to be healthier, you want to find love, you want a different job, whatever it is – you want something – badly, but you’ve all but accepted that it’s not going to happen. There are too many obstacles so while you want this thing, you’ve been living without it for a very long time – and that’s the fate you’ve been dealt. I want to propose a theory I have and I am coming from a place of love – and I’d just like to ask you to attempt to believe what I’m saying is true, for you. Just for the sake of openness – treat it like an exercise. In other words – try it on “as if it were true” as your first stance, and don’t allow your defensive reflexes to stop you. I have them too – we all do, the voice that says, “False! This doesn’t relate to me at all– that’s not true in MY case…” I hope you enjoy this and if it helps you at all consider a monthly donation. Even something as small as a cup of coffee helps me keep this show going. Visit Patreon.com/SarahMayB or TeaspoonOfHappy.com/donate xo! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a power-up episode all about how to be more present in your everyday life – specifically when it comes to your human interactions. This is something I decided to record after reading (listening to) “When Breath Becomes Air” and this episode of All in the Mind – the guest is this amazing woman called Christine Bryden who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers in her 40s. She’s amazing and so is this interview. Her latest book is called “Before I Forget.” Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy – it’s very much my train of thought, so be forgiving… Xox Sarah May B. When Breath Becomes Air: http://amzn.to/1LmSgmo All in the Mind: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/2015-12-13/7012970 Before I Forget: http://amzn.to/1LmShHc If you're looking for more content, subscribe to "Love is Like a Plant" by new podcast with cohost Ellen Huerta of LetsMend.com – it’s all about love and break-ups: https://soundcloud.com/loveislikeaplant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why sometimes people aren’t honest with us and sometimes we’re not honest with ourselves. This one’s written for a person who contacted me who’s newly single and dating quite a bit. He has a few different partners and has had a lot of difficulty saying he is doing so because it goes against everything he wants. This is all about how the simple act of being honest can change your life in awesome earth-shattering ways. I talk about honesty and dishonesty and how it comes into play in our relationships. So if you’re the type of person who dates and doesn’t tell the other person where you’re really at – or if you’re super jealous and suspicious about your partner and it drives you mad, or if you’re a regular person dealing with regular relationship power-plays— this is for you! Help Me Be Me is advertising free and takes hundreds of hours to create. If you enjoy my work or it improves your life, consider a monthly donation: even something as small as a cup of coffee makes a big difference. Head to HelpMeBeMe.com/donate or visit Patreon.com/SarahMayB Thanks! xox Looking for more? Check out my other podcast with cohost Ellen Huerta of LetsMend.com Check us out on Soundcloud and iTunes – our show is all about love and heartbreak, called Love Is Like a Plant. Yay! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, in honor of Valentine’s Day I wanted to share the introduction to “The Break-Up Album” my podcast album coming out later this year. Why? Because it can be a difficult holiday for many of us – the pressure is on! And if you’ve recently been through a break-up, Valentine’s Day can be like a party to celebrate your pain – it salts the wound and makes you feel like you’re not good enough because you don’t have a person to call your own. But in reality, you’ve been given a gift – if you choose to see it that way. That’s what the Break-Up Album is all about! Making this break-up into the best thing that ever happened to you. Which I believe it can be. So with that – take a listen to the introductory chapter of, “The Break-Up Album” available later this year. If you’d like to be added to the pre-order mailing list, head to HelpMeBeMe.com and click on the album. Sending you much love this week and every week!! xox Sarah May B. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Love shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t feel like it’s your lifeline – that you will fall into a million pieces if someone else chooses to break up. This kind of chemical bond is similar to that we universally associate with High School romance: hormones are high and we reach sometimes addiction-level chemical intoxication. But that’s not how it should feel when you pass the hormonal bump. Like such an intensely devastating and all-consuming obsession. Past the initial courtship stage, love shouldn’t be tied to NEED and it shouldn’t be able to command your mood and focus. So if you experience it this way, and it causes you to do things that betray yourself and put your needs aside those of another. If you find yourself all-consumed by the actions or thoughts of another to the degree that it controls your happiness – this is an episode for you. It’s about the particular reasons that this kind of attachment happens to you, that you might not be able to see are operating – or know are optional. To you it probably just feels like “you” and who you are, not some other powerful unseen force. Because most people who operate like this think of it as a measure of how MUCH they love, or their ability as a person to bend and adapt. Not so. This is an unhealthy form of attachment that can be tweaked once understood. This is an episode to educate more than anything because awareness is the first step to change. So listen to this with the goal of simply taking it in. I WANT TO HELP YOU begin the process of the kind of loving that can be done from a safe and balanced distance. From a comfortable place inside yourself, that protects you always. It’s a way of being that allows you to create healthy boundaries, and choose mates who are capable of loving you, and more importantly – makes you capable of receiving it. Because truly we teach others how they should love us, by how we love ourselves. If you are not protecting your needs and giving yourself care and gentle loving attention, then you’re also telling others not to. With that, here are the three parts! Part 1 is the what, Part 2 is the why, Part 3 are some steps to take now. Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com Thanks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi lovies! This is a Power Up to do with a friend, your hubby, or just solo with a pen and paper. Caveat: This leans more heavily into the self-help genre than most of my podcasts, but despite that – it’s super fun and more importantly, it’s beneficial to your quality of life! I think so much of personal growth is getting over that hump of “OMG this is stupid” and just doing it anyway even though you sound like a cliché. So with that – I want to offer you a Gratitude Practice that’s best done with a friend or significant other. A way to look at your growth and foster what you want more of moving forward. Enjoy! xox Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB Thanks! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi there! This is the second half of episode 70, about bettering your outward-facing self to get more of what you want and deserve. This one is all about how to ask for a raise and ways to set up the most successful outcome when negotiating your worth. This episode is structured differently than past episodes. Part 1 is about grooming and creating more value in yourself as a professional, plus ways of showing others that value. Part 2 is about how to ask for a raise in the most hard to argue with and amicable way possible – how to make it easy for a boss to give you what you want vs unintentionally souring the position you have. Part 3 is about how to go into a new job interview – the best way to present yourself and also dictate your value to the perception of another. How to ask for what you want and create the right image. I believe you are capable and perfect for anything you choose to do with all your heart. If it is not in the cards – find a new pathway – a side entry or a different avenue that rewards that part of yourself. And check where the motivation is coming from. If you’re doing something because you want to tell others you’re doing that thing, it’s not the right reason. If you’re doing it because it comes naturally – and feels right – or it is something you love passionately, then you’ll do it anyway. Follow your inclinations. Listen to what fits or flows. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t do something. They are saying that for their own reasons – usually fear, or deep unhappiness. This life comes down to YOU and what YOU decide you want to do during this part of it. No one else makes that call but you. Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB Thanks! x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi peeps! It is moi, Sarah May. This is Part 1 of a two part episode. Part 2 will be solely focused on how to ask for a raise and how to tell someone your value when you apply for a new job. This is for anyone who is insecure or has a hard time with confidence at work or socially. Maybe you are introverted or sensitive, so this prevents you from speaking up or saying what you think. Or maybe when you do assert yourself it hurts to hear what people say back to you that’s critical. Maybe you feel intimidated by those around you and they use tactics to make you feel worse. Because in an unseen but felt way, your life overall is guided by this theme of fear, low self-confidence, low self-worth: instead of an upward climb, it’s a torturous plateau full of mental battles and fearful anticipations. And you want to do the things that everyone else does – like speak up with confidence, demand a raise, let go of what other people think, have faith in the value of your own opinions, and be a boss. It’s just that pesky inner voice that seems to get in the way. Help Me Be Me takes hundreds hours of create. If you get any value out of the work I do or it helps your life, please consider a monthly donation. Even something as small as a cup of coffee helps this show exist. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/sarahmayb Thanks! xo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Heads up, this is recorded on my iPhone, so forgive me, it’s not the best quality – it’s a post-yoga reflection that I just had to record for you as soon as it came to mind, so I hope you enjoy it. It’s a short meditation to do as we enter this new year full of awesome potential. A way to check in with your thoughts and reorganize them so that you can better your trajectory, see what you’re holding onto that’s not serving you, what’s playing on a loop in your head, and what has manifested in your life that you might want to tweak. Much love and have a happy new year! Xo Smile loves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I know the holidays are just a few days away– which can bring up a ton of uncomfortable feelings especially if you have not-so-loving-family members. This is for anyone who has family, or anyone in their life who is meant to be nice to them and instead has chosen to close off and be mean. This could be your significant other’s family or your own family, like for example – your parent married into a new family and you feel excluded by them. So this is for anyone who has a significant other with a family who doesn’t accept or acknowledge you. Or maybe they constantly divide you and your spouse. Maybe this isn’t your significant other – maybe it’s a friend or your family – like if a parent remarried, or your family has dysfunctional ways of relating to you. This is for a friend who wrote to me – hang in there. I know this ain’t easy and it takes the strongest person to manage it. If you are helped by this podcast and find value in it, consider making a monthly donation - even an amount as small as a cup of coffee. Visit HelpMeBeMe.com or find my page on Patreon. xo! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s no shocker that working all night and all day with a million different deadlines can lead even the most inspired and motivated individuals to burnout and depression. Careers and schools often demand it, and it becomes the norm – hopefully for only a short time in your life, but regardless – it’s dangerous for your body and soul and can take a toll on the future-you and your success as a professional AND happy individual. So this is for people who are in creative fields, schools, or professions that require they go hard for extended periods of time – causing them to burnout mentally and motivationally. I have some information to empower you to make better decisions, plus some tools to help you if you’re already stuck in an overworked depression. And ways to temper the stress and anxiety of intense deadlines and assignments moving forward. I know there’s a lot written on this subject but I will offer you a more practical set of solutions so that you can actually implement them starting NOW and not in six months, when “things calm down.” This one is for my new friend in the Netherlands – Nathalie. xo There are three parts – the what, the why, the how – the tools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you guided by a belief that something is wrong with you? That you’re not good enough, and that you are fooling everyone – pretending you’re like them, but soon enough they’re going to realize you’re not talented, cool or smart. Maybe you constantly strive to build the life of someone worthy, but always seem to feel just as worthless as before: you’re never thin enough, you’re not as successful as you’d like to be, or maybe you’re living a life that you know you don’t want but you’re too afraid to do anything about it because it’s going to show the world that you’re a weak and shameful loser. So it’s better to just stay safe, and protected in the lie. Even though you feel suffocated and stifled by this life. Well if this sounds like you then you’re in good company – this is a universal human trait: to feel that we’re not good enough. And that’s because so much of the self is defined by things we learn from others. The brain we use to drive and make money is also the brain that computes risk based on a very specific structure we’ve built via our life experiences. So it’s natural to have grown up with a set of beliefs that are – to say the least – not in favor of your confidence and self-love. So if this sounds like you I hope to offer you some relief in the form of understanding, plus a few tools to manage the affects. As usual there are 3 parts: the what, the why, and the how: the tools. This one is for Guy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all want to be nice and caring people – because it feels good. It rewards us. However we are human and sometimes it can be a challenge to stay in that mindset, especially if people are deliberately cruel and hateful. Anger and hate become a natural reaction – or to simply shutdown and ignore. For the same is true of fearing those who hate: when you don’t understand someone and their beliefs betray everything you hold sacred, it’s a feeling that can touch every nerve inside you and incite the same thing – inside you. A hate and intolerance for their beliefs. It’s tough to be willing to understand others, especially when they express hate, brutality or intolerance. Like looking into the face of someone filled to the brim with fire and toxic sludge, spitting at you – it can offend every sense you have to witness such a thing. And worse, it can infect you and bring you down. There are lots of toxic people out there, and the natural reaction is to stay as far away from them as possible. But when it comes to people you love, you work with, or you can’t shut out of your life – this is a set of tools to help you understand them and better relate to them. In the face of intolerance, the self-protective instinct is to run away – to shut down to them and soothe the hurt, lest this hurt you anymore. But this is only a temporary fix to manage the situation. There is a state you can graduate to – PAST this point of managing and shutting off – one comparable to enlightenment: compassion. It’s challenging but also freeing, and it can be a powerful solution when it comes to someone you care about or must deal with in your life – for example a loved one or family member. I hope you enjoy! xo For more of my writing head to TeaspoonOfHappy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is for anyone stuck in a place of self-hate and inaction. Someone in a shitty place in life, depressed and hopeless: hating on themselves, where they are, and at a loss for where to go from here. Maybe you have people in your life who love and encourage you and you hate that you’re bringing them down – yet you can’t figure out why your life just sucks so much when others get to be happy. You feel it is unfair for both of you. However – if you suffer severe depression, it’s probably not for you. I know that chronic depression is one of the hardest things to battle. And for some, it’s paralyzing – like worse than death. It’s like being a human zombie. I am terrified of depression – it’s the worst kind of pain. So if you suffer that, you might not like this post – because it assumes that you have some power in the situation. If you are a sufferer who is incapacitated by your depression, this is not for you. I feel for you, and when I have enough to offer you, I will create an episode just for you. There are three parts. The what, the why and the how. Let’s do this! xo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to stop trivial couple arguments that involve endless semantics debates – the ones usually started by faulty communication that are pointless and seem to last forever. This is a follow-up episode to last week’s episode which was about better loving - it’s all about a modern condition many couples are suffering in greater and greater numbers: the stupid arguments we get into with our awesome significant others – over stupid little things like corrections and blame. The couples’ court battle of technicalities. What does that mean? Endless arguments with your significant other argued with technicalities – who said what, who’s right, who’s wrong – what I meant when I said that thing, no YOU said that which is what made me say that. You always do this! Can we not? Please? Can we stop this stupid fight? You’re the reason this started! I’M the one who’s trying not to fight— etc. We’ve all been there, and we all don’t want to go there – ever! Because it’s a massive time and energy suck and it usually results in nothing positive or helpful. It’s just a way to ruin a nice night or make us ready to fight for the rest of a Saturday. So why does this happen to modern couples and how do we get out of it? That’s what this episode is all about. As in all of my blogs, there are three parts – the what, the why and the how – the tools. And I’ll put my references in the blog version of this post. Yay! This one’s for Matt. Hope you enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is for people in a loving relationship and you’re working to give love BETTER to that person. I have a lot of tools in this one – many of them are for being the most effectively supportive if your partner is suffering. Many of them are for breaking through to an empowered position when the powerful patterns take over – when intimacy is not fun or simple romance, and you are both struggling to find a path to be loving in the midst of life stress and conflicts. Because, relationships are very confusing – they’re personal. When two people get intimate, another human becomes a very major your focus – you cannot separate yourself completely when you operate as a pair. And that can make you feel frustrated, overwhelmed and powerless - And when someone it comes to one partner’s suffering, it can be very difficult to deal – because it’s your life, too. There are three parts – the what, the why and the how – the tools. This one is for Katie – I hope this helps!! For the blog version check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com later this week. Smile lovely friends!! xox Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a different kind of power-up episode to inspire a positive state of life. It’s a simple one that I offer you as you begin your weekend. And yes, it’s called “A teaspoon of happy” – just like my blog title! What does that mean? It’s super cutesy and girly, yes. It sounds good on a site like Hello Giggles, yes. But it’s actually my methodology – my approach to happiness. Because I think of it as a recipe. One I would like to offer you. I hope you enjoy! xox Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just like stress can cause you to get a tight knot in the muscles of your back, so too can other parts of your body hold tight to things like fear or anger or even malform due to a particular belief system. Things like a pervasive feeling of lack in life can manifest in physical form in the way we digest food. You’ve probably heard things like this a million times and thought to yourself, “Ha - yeah right!” Because it’s a heady concept and not something you could TEST with a beaker tube. The power of the mind over the body comes off as super new-agey and therefore we all to often put it in the bullshit pile. But the affects of how we hold onto emotional pain are quite severe, they manifest in disease and damage your gene code for future generations– so in my opinion, why not lean in favor of, “do something about it, regardless” because there’s nothing to lose, everything to gain. OR, even just decide to stay open to what I am saying purely for the sake of practicing openness. In broad strokes, I will go through some of the connections between emotions we hold onto and where they tend to get stuck in our body- plus a few tools to do something about it. There are several books on the particular topics that I will post at the end of the blog version of this podcast, but in truth – if you suffer from chronic pain go to a doctor! And if you suffer severe emotional pain, see a therapist! This is not a substitute for either of those. So you know what you’re getting into – this is an episode all about the body, with a lot of yoga poses to soothe particular negative emotions that get stuck in your body. If that doesn’t appeal to you – you probably won’t like this episode– but I will bet you get something valuable out of it regardless. This is about the body, so I’m going to talk about things like pooping – so if that’s not what you want to listen to right now, then maybe save this for another time. There are three parts – the what, the why and the how. I hope you enjoy lovely peeps. xoxoxo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi peeps! This is an emotional power-up episode for those who hate to be bored, who have a constant habit of hurrying through life. For increasing mindfulness around the habit of rushing: when 'it’s not enough, you’re not there yet, life is frustrating, why are things so slow, stupid, boring' etc. It’s easy to get into a kind of permanent unconscious state – being in a hurry comes with the speed of pretty much all technology. It’s your job to be deliberate about slowing yourself down. So in the moment you recognize yourself rushing – or impatient, stop and take a look around in that moment. Really recognize the details inherent in that moment and appreciate them. Think to yourself that maybe, they are exactly as they are for a very good reason. The way they are is the way they should be – and you are not meant to be further ahead than you are. Witness what there is to appreciate in the individual moment. And practice just being with it. Accepting it. As exactly what it’s meant to be – even if that’s nothing exciting. See the value in that moment being just that: a moment. It doesn’t have to be – and shouldn’t be “SOMETHING” for it to have value. Why? Because a sentence needs air, it’s with the pauses – with pacing, comes a natural texture and flow. It’s where our experience can drink up the organic beauty vs. muscle and control it. Like fighting a current when you can instead just flow with it. Smile lovely friends! Have a request? Write me! @sarahmaybee or [email protected] xo For more of my writing, check out http://www.TeaspoonOfHappy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re in a place of constant frustration with your current life – wanting to be somewhere in the future or wishing life was better, like it was in the past. Maybe you are working toward some kind of personal growth and you’re getting mad at the slow speed its happening. Or you’ve been struggling to make something happen for a long time and it’s not happened yet – and you’re getting super bummed out. This one is dedicated to my Grandma, Irene May – who recently passed. She was one of my favorite people I ever had the privilege to know. This is all about shifting perspective toward openness. Becoming receptive and loosening your need to control. There’s a meditation, plus an acceptance ritual – it’s chocked full of stuff! I hope you enjoy. xox Smile y’all! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you in a state of “I hate this” or “people are morons” or are you just generally over something about life? Well this episode is for anger of all kinds – from crankiness to annoyance, all the way to pure hatred and ‘fuck this shit to hell.’ What I am really addressing is the mental and physical state itself – because it’s not what you want, it can wreak havoc on your body, those around you, and worst of all, it perpetuates itself. Unhappiness cultivates unhappiness. If you’re interested in listening to this I assume that’s because you are well aware this is bringing you down and it’s not what you want – but you can’t seem to help yourself out of the situation because there are external factors that make that impossible. Life is full of triggers – work, traffic, not to mention – other angry people, so this is to address how you can remove their affect regardless. So without further ado – there are 3 parts to this puppy – the what, the why, and the how: the tools. Yay. Let’s do this! Check out TeaspoonofHappy.com later this week for the blog version of this post. Smile friends! xo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, this is an emotional cleansing power up episode for clearing sorrow and stress and emotional muck. It's best to listen to it while you take a short walk outside. It’s a visualization meditation of sorts, one you can do with your eyes open. If you can’t do this while walking, I recco you do this while in a yoga inversion of some sort. It focuses on calming your nervous system with breathing exercises, and its one I do myself - quite often. I hope you like! xox Sarah May B. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For when you’re in the break-up zone that causes you to obsess over the person you just broke up with. This is for anyone who has just been broken up with or broken up with a person that they felt they loved – and now you’re obsessing and even Facebook stalking this person. Maybe you know this is not helpful but you can’t stop wanting to know what they’re doing, who they’re with, who they’re seeing now and what that person looks like. And that is hurting you even more! But it’s an obsession and you can’t stop. Firstly – I am so sorry you’re here! This time will end. You are in the hardest part right now – and the more you can do to be self-loving and be nice to yourself, the faster this will end. I’ve been here myself and it blows. But you can half the time you suffer if you do everything in your power to do what you know is best for yourself. And that includes some healthy tough love when it comes to policing yourself and what you allow your focus to rest on. This kind of a break up is way worse because it’s hitting you on multiple fronts – in other words, this is not just about the loss of love. With all break-ups, time is the greatest healer – but in addition to that, I want to empower you with some insight into your “why” so that you can begin to separate from the process you’re victim to, currently: the obsessing and salting the wound. So you can see the difference between the kinds of suffering: and see what is NOT truly coming from love. As usual there are three parts. The what the why and the how – the tools. This is for Chelsea. I heart you girl! Hang in there. X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi peeps! This is an episode with a short meditation in part 3. It covers why soothing your body and reducing the chatter in your brain is the key to your ultimate happiness. As a society we tend to get hyper focused. We get into the groove of our job or our relationships – and we get stressed by how many things there are to worry about. Am I doing well as a person? Am I successful?” When will I get to the right level? How can I be more of what I want to be? Suddenly we’re looking straight down at our feet and trying to take bigger steps instead of keeping our eyes to the beautiful sunrise on the horizon. This is almost like an introduction to my podcast in that it is truly the KEY to every positive change you want to make in your life. It is also the key to happiness and also the key to finding your life’s purpose. What is it? Ready? Listen intently. Consciousness: Feeling the feelings that are going through your body as they come. Being fully connected to that awareness and not “occupied” be a roaring sea of thoughts or rapid firing fears and analysis. Sometimes it’s like facing a roaring lion because some terrible awful stuff lives inside us in many moments of our life. Feeling hopeless, or worthless or afraid of what if’s to come. And yet, we must allow ourselves to feel those things - it's the key to building your ultimate life. This is an episode with three parts. The general what, why, and then as a tool, I end with a meditation. Check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com later this week for the blog version of this post and I hope you enjoy this! Smile lovelies! xox Sarah-May Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This one’s for planet earth. We all have an internal self portrait –and that is created by the way we feel about who we are. There are SOOOOO many factors that control how we feel about ourselves – and what we perceive as our flaws. And that’s why BD is such a big problem: it looks and acts like “normal” self-image concerns. It walks and talks like vanity. And, yet, it destroys the average person’s happiness in so many ways across a lifetime, unchecked. Your self-image is a distorted hallucination – one heavily affected by your fears, vulnerabilities, your brain chemicals, and the way you integrate information from the world around you. AND when it comes to how we view our flaws, it has no connection to how the world views you or your actual physical appearance. That’s one reason this is such a powerful and rising problem is because it’s a kind of suffering that’s veiled as “normal.” An every-growing percentage of the population is dissatisfied with some or many traits of their physical appearance. When everyone you know obeys the same standard and marketing and media reinforce the irrational bar – how would you ever know there was another option? For the resources mentioned check out teaspoonofhappy.com later this week. Smile y'all! Xo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is for people who are aware of when old issues are entering their present and they know they don’t want that to be happening. Our old memories operate like a trigger/pattern system. Think of it as a pinball machine called “My Pain Game” and it makes the shape of your brain with all sorts of memories that you allow to define who you are, what is allowed to affect you and what you focus on and feel. You have that little pinball that lies latent but when it’s triggered – it shoots around your brain and activates different zones of pre-set actions. Those zones are things like, “ There are two little paddles you get to control at the base of this game. Your emotionally driven reaction depends on where you choose to hit this ball. If you hit it hard, it shoots into “pain and drama.” When you don’t hit it at all, it drops off the board. The point being – you are the one who keeps the ball in play. So when it goes into a certain area, it activates new triggers that are not controlled by you. Those little “hot spots” that shoot it even harder – these emotional hotspots take over the game and the ball will shoot around the table at top speed. The ball makes its way around and back to our hands – and what we tend to do is shoot it back up again, causing it to replay the series of triggers we have all over our “memory of self.” Just like a pinball machine – often it feels in our mind like we have no control and we are not to blame for this patterned response. However – ultimately we have control, and we can choose to keep the ball in play or not. Our power comes into play when we actually choose to USE that control in the moment it counts. When we have the brief moment of awareness – that we are about to play out our game again. Aren’t you sick of the game? I bet you are – because what you’re losing right now is quality of life. If your old pain is old enough, it’s likely voiced by the rationale of a child – so the childhood logic, which is petty and small – is still operating you. Even if the situation is recent and totally unrelated to your childhood dynamics –the same baggage will pilot you when a trigger comes up. Don’t let it. You’re a grown up now. And grownups can look at things and put them down already. Old pain is totally unnecessary and the only person it robs is YOU. You hurt you by wasting your valuable moments in an old automatic loop of behaviors and thoughts and reactions. Who wants to play this now? It’s old, dusty and not fun. For more visit Teaspoonofhappy.com and please review me if you like this! xo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jealousy, or a perception of your insecurities come to life. How does it sneak into your mind? Your darkest thoughts in your most fearful voice begin scratching at your feelings, dragging you down and causing you to act as your lowest self. You assume you are less than and life is against you somehow. You're either not enough, or something else outside of you is not enough. What is this emotional state? Your lowest form of self, the self that is motivated by fear and hate, put in a threatened defensive position. Think of it as You minus your awareness of what is good and loving in this world. This low emotional self is also called your irrational self. Most of jealousy acts as a hallucination. It does not show you reality it shows you insecure self-loathing reality: in that world, no one likes you and all the fears you have about yourself are true. For many of us it is clear that we are in an emotionally charged, irrational state – however, we cannot stop ourselves from wanting to “solve” for the perceived insult. “Is it true?! If so, how true? I need to know!” Nothing will quench the irrational need to compute “why” we have been betrayed: we go into loops of solving, calculating, tallying, replaying. And jealousy has a very potent ability to madden us for that reason: it’s all consuming, it belittles us, and we are aware it’s inside of us and us alone. A self-inflicted pain with the power to torture and haunt our every moment. You will never arrive at your truth through jealousy - you can only do that from a calm, objective vantage point - so this is all about stepping back from the emotion so you can regain your sound thinking. The power behind jealousy is also the key to undoing it: it does not live in reality – it lives in our reaction to reality. So we can indeed help ourselves when we struggle in the triggered moments. Hopefully, I will offer you a few tools to help you navigate out of it and back to your true and highest self: grounded, making decisions from a balanced and sane mindset. There are three parts: The what. They why. The how: the tools. This one is for Fran - thanks for writing me and I hope you likee! xox Sarah May B. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For when you can’t stop feeling worried or obsessed with what is threatening your stability in life – a stress response based on past traumas or recent ones, for that matter. In this episode, ‘survival mode’ is the term we are giving a pervasive sense of fear and stress and anxiety over issues that are not a real threat, though they are experienced in hypotheticals. Survival mode drives people to obsessively think about painful things: things past, things to come, analyzing and solving endlessly. In other words – like the worst version of brain overdrive you can imagine and all the time. It’s so powerful that it takes over your life. This can come in varying degrees – from intolerable writhing panic to manageable but potent worry. Regardless, it’s always something that keeps you outside of your life – unable to truly engage and enjoy it as you see others do. Living in survival mode, you want to run and you don’t know where. This one is for Heather! I heart you girl – hope this helps the teensiest bit. For more of my writing head to TeaspoonofHappy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is for anyone who has conflicts with someone they care about who wants to figure out ways to get out of those conflicts fast and productively. It’s about our emotional baggage – specifically the unmet needs from our childhood, and how those block us from being able to see and receive the love from people in our life currently. I will focus on how to get out of conflicts and pain and move into happiness and get more of what you want. How to better love others and better encourage love back. It’s a set of tools to stay out of blaming and resenting and let go of what you think they should do. So that you can empower yourself to get to more of what you DO want – which is shared affection and happiness. Hi friends! I’ve been away for a bit because I got hitched! It was awesome and wonderful. And now I’m back! I will do the usual 3 parts: The What, The Why, The How – the tools. And to be clear – this is about all relationships that involve conflicts between the needs of others and your own. About relationships that involve needs of others and your own – and when those don’t match up. For more check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com Smile peeps! xo This one’s for Lara from Spain – thanks for writing me girl! :) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is about noticing negative thought patterns when they’re happening. What are negative thoughts? Bad habits. They’re not You – they’re the voice of a bad computer framework operating through you being fed by a chemical addition. You are now used to the chemical results of this thinking, so your brain wants to repeat it. They are the trained in ways of being – basically muscle memory but in your brain. So based on old experiences, just like a river wants to flow down the lowest path, so do your thoughts follow existing trained in currents. The more often you have these thoughts – the stronger the habit becomes. In other words, you have trained in the path of the river with repetition. As a result of that – you now perceive and look for this thought habit in your everyday life – like if you’re thinking of mean people who hate you, you will see mean people who hate you. Because it’s your mindset now. Plus, now that you are looking for this thing, you find it – so negative thinking becomes self-fulfilling. What is most important about all of this: it’s all totally unconscious. The fact that they’re unconscious is also the key to stopping these thoughts! This episode is broken up into three parts. What. Why. How aka Tools. For the blog version, check out TeaspoonofHappy.com later this week. It also has my book references for anyone who wants to read further. Smile friends! xox For more of the Buddhist psychological types – check out “The Chemistry of Joy” – linked here: https://goo.gl/diu91t Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is for a person who filled out my survey – I don’t know your name, but this is for you! I hope it helps. You asked how to break out of the vicious cycle of a narcissistic relationship. Because it can be extremely terrifying and painful and feel much like a hostage situation. The reason is that if you are in a relationship with a narcissist – you know how ruthless and dark their punishing can be. It also goes deep into your heart strings, puppeting you around like a raw nerve. In other words – they are master controllers and know exactly what to do to make you do what they want. And also they are WILLING to do it, at all costs. This episode is 3 parts – the what, they why, the tools. I will also provide a download for you on my site in case you are in a bad place and need to get a map out of this. For more check out Teaspoonofhappy.com and enter the headspace contest to win a year of free meditation!! Smile lovely friends - and look for the blog version of this post in the next week on Teaspoon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is a slashie? A creative person who knows that their day job isn't their real job: a busboy/actor; waitress/screenwriter/photographer; singer/production designer/legal secretary. Your slash is your professional makeup. In other words, most of us - if we are honest with ourselves. Because a creative thinker is many things, today if you are a slashie you are forging a new path in a wide open sea of opportunity, but you likely haven’t solved for that single, money-making passion just yet. But that’s a good thing – unlike how it might feel to a slashie – this stage is part of the process. Slashies are a growing percentage of the workforce because careers nowadays don’t have “work experience.” A creator can build a new app/community/business overnight and because of that, new job definitions are being invented every day. Thanks to equal opportunity of the internet, it’s like a claim-jumper era for creatives with a desire to build something new. It can be hard to choose a new career or even entertain the idea because if you are an adult, you want to be stable and have security. Because, hey - when you're a grownup, that’s what you are supposed to do. Thankfully nowadays there are all sorts of new avenues for creative thinkers to pursue professional careers based on their particular aesthetic and passions. So that’s what this is about. Five ways to better pursue your creative passions and figure out what can take your slashes to a more convenient or purpose-driven definition – for you as a creative voice with one lifetime on this earth. References: For the instagram marketing webinar head to: Ilovecreatives.com For B-school head to marieforleo.com For General Assembly, head to generalassemb.ly To find my reading list, head to: teaspoonofhappy.com/reading-list Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emotional Eating in this episode translates as negative soothing habits around food that relate to specific emotional states. So, depending on your dynamic, that could mean binging, constant eating in an unconscious state, or feelings of powerlessness with a complete lack of control that feels similar to being possessed or out of body. If you’re not an emotional eater, if you have pretty much any negative emotional-soothing habits, you will likely get something out of this podcast. It’s about how we have grown patterns of soothing – and also a few tools for objectively tackling them at the root. Food is often a metaphor for how we deal with fear. And pain. We either soothe we run we lash out we deny. In Buddhism, they call these psychological types out as the grasping/fear type, the rejecting/anger type, or the denial/adrift type. So depending on your type, you will react to stress in a predictable set of ways if you have grown used to coping with specific bad habits. For example – with food. There are 3 parts to this episode: What, Why, plus 3 Tools that work for me – that can give you a starting point. I will post the blog version on TeaspoonOfHappy.com later this week with my reading references. And if you haven’t already –check out the contest to win a year of meditation! Headspace y’all. It’s the ish. Head here to enter that little gem: http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com/headspace-contest And smile! Xox Sarah-May Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a little power-up episode about creating more joy-filled and memorable moments in your life. Happiness is a thought-habit that for many of us, requires constant maintenance and deliberate focus. Though there are many reasons to feel grateful for our life – they’re all around us all the time - in order to be capable of feeling that value, we need contrast. Contrast meaning the complimentary opposite of gratitude and appreciation: pain or difficult striving. In other words, a constant state of awareness of value (happiness) often arrives from a true understanding of its absence (pain). Without that contrast, it’s easy for life to get stuck in a middle array of emotions – a permanent state of “so-so” or “okay.” When you live in this state for long enough, powerful emotions like gratitude and happiness are assigned to a set of general milestones (birthdays, weddings, getting a promotion etc) but outside of that it can be frustrating to find a true sense of joy. The real kind – that moves you to tears, or sticks in your memory for the rest of your life. So that kind of joy is what I want to talk about. You have the power to create that range in your life, minus the negative contrast. It’s a super power you are likely unaware of until you actually put it to use: but when you approach life in this way, you are also expanding your capacity to feel love, gratitude and happiness. So if you’re interested in having more of those real joyful moments, this is a podcast for you. And if you want to read the blog version of this I will post it shortly on TeaspoonOfHappy.com Smile lovely friends! xox Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is about the value of stepping back from your preoccupations to do more nothing. Busyness is a cultural habit that is also an addiction. Physiologically as well as on a level of personal identity. Are you one of those people who is sooo busy and you can’t tell where the time is going? When you see someone and they ask how you are – do you find yourself inclined to say, “I am soooo busy.” It’s a state we can all relate to. It’s also often a boast hidden in a complaint. Culturally we have all agreed to take on this state of life – thanks to texting and smart phones and email and social media. They are making you mentally connected to all people and obligations and stores and humans simultaneously. Hence- the empty private time with yourself, alone is gone! The biggest downside of the busyness pattern is you trade your life, day by day, to this insecurity. It can happen without you noticing, quite simply because your not present. You are caught up in your busy thoughts. So that’s what today’s podcast is about: slowing down – and stopping. Literally, I am going to promote the idea of doing nothing. Nothing but being. Hanging out. Nothing on your agenda. No one to respond to – nothing to pick up, attend, return. When was the last time you sat in an extended amount of time – like that? The episode has three parts. Part 1: Why aim to do nothing. Part 2: Self-Diagnosis. Part 3: 3 Tools to help you free up your time. And to download the Journal Exercises mentioned in the episode head here: https://teaspoonofhappy.squarespace.com/busyness AND if from April-June 2015, if you haven’t yet, please enter the Headspace contest to win a year awesome mind-soothing meditations! http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com/headspace-contest This episode is dedicated to Irene May Bates - my grandmother and one of my heroes. She makes the most valuable moments in your day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, This is my personal list of what to look for when choosing a therapist, plus a few basic tactics to attack the task. Take what helps and leave the rest! It’s an amazing and important gift to give yourself and it’s more worth it than anything you will spend money on for the rest of your life – quite simply, because it will change your life – everything about it and everyone in it – for the better. I send you my love and positivity – and if you have time, please please leave me a review on iTunes – it’s super important to me and I love to read them. And if you haven’t already, please enter the contest to win a year of Headspace! If you are listening to this in the months of April to June 2015. Enter here: http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com/headspace-contest For the blog version check out http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com later this week! xo! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi peeps! This is a power-up episode to create one small positive change in yourself starting today. I want you to look at one thing in your life that you can and will change for the better. Because it's all about upkeep and the trajectory as a whole. What can you do today that will take no effort at all? Let's tackle that together - because you would be amazed at how easy change is when you don't feel the affects one tiny bit. It's spring, y'all! Let's do some soul cleaning! For more of my writing and to sponsor me head to http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com I heart you all! Smile! xo Sarah-May B. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is for anyone who is currently romantically involved with someone who is not treating you well and you are taking it, and it hurts. You know it’s not right but you can’t seem to leave it for some reason. This situation betrays your foundational values, and in staying in it, you betray yourself and what’s important to you. What do you want for your future? Because you get to decide what’s important to you. That’s what this episode is about. Are you tolerating and accepting less than what you want from another? Are you giving more and receiving less? Are you operating on less than a trustworthy bond? Are you dating someone who won’t commit to you or maybe they don’t want the same things you want but you’re still hanging around “just because you don’t have anything better at the moment.” Maybe you are in a committed relationship but you want more – you want better – you want this to go to the next stage: moving in, getting married, or just better treatment – but this person is “complicated” and it’s not how they roll. Maybe you break up occasionally but always end up getting back together. Maybe they decide they need a break and then they come back again as soon as you become too visibly independent. In case you are wondering, yes, this is for every gender and all kinds of relationships because it’s a topic that relates to your relationship with yourself. It doesn’t have to be a guy doing this to a girl – everyone can be squirrely and everyone can want and expect a real relationship from a person they choose to share their life and soul with. It’s all a valid and realistic dream and goal to have. And it’s something you choose for yourself. It’s a common situation to be in for an adult. You end up in a relationship that’s not aligned with what you want for yourself and you can’t figure out an exit and you just kind of get stuck. What I am going to do is hopefully enlighten you as to why you’re there and what needs to change for you to confront the change that needs to happen for you to get to where you’re meant to be. Where are you meant to be? In a mutually loving and supportive relationship based on the terms and values that you choose for yourself. So, with someone who deserves your love. So let’s go there together, shall we? Emma this one is written for you. I hope it changes the way you see things so that you can change what it is that has you stuck, presently. xo! For more of my writing head to http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com To check out the Personal Priorities Pond I mention in the episode, head here: https://soundcloud.com/helpmebeme/episode-44-personal-priorities-pond-a-self-esteem-building-exercise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi loves, this is to use anytime this week or this month – it’s a little tool for regaining control of the wheel of your person, in the face of enduring places, people or situations that are not to your liking. It’s called “Happy Place.” The situation, though it sucks and tests your tolerance and ability to pursue what you want despite this situation – is NOT helped by your succumbing to focusing on the pain and unhappiness. Anger is toxic to your body so you are not only hurting your physical health, you are actively causing yourself MORE agony by focusing on it while it’s happening. Often we have an unconscious habit of savoring the sheer magnitude of annoyances in our life and relishing our increased stress or fatigue or the level of idiocy around ourselves. That unconscious savoring is your worst enemy. Is taking time to acknowledge what it is you don’t like and you might not even notice you’re celebrating it again and again because it’s a habit. So now’s the podcast power up to make note of it! The stupid-crap-from-my-day-celebrations stop today! This week! Yay for today! For more of my writing- including my newsletter, head to Teaspoonofhappy.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is self work? It’s acknowledging something in yourself that needs to be addressed for the sake of growing. It’s what you decide to do when you look at your life and decide you’re not so stoked to be where you are. It’s a moment of clarity – or fed-up-ness with the conditions of yourself and your inability to do anything about them – maybe you’ve been stuck in a pattern you want to break, or you looked up one day and realized you aren’t where you thought you’d be and time is flying by. Most importantly, self-work is the beginning of your life in many ways. It’s the moment you become aware that you have the power to create the self you want to be, in every shape and form – and because that is such an epic and wonderful thing – you make the decision to act on that information by taking steps in an educated direction toward doing that work. And what a profoundly exciting move that is. In my opinion, it’s the best decision you could ever make in your life. I gotta admit, this post made me a bit choked up. I hope you enjoy it – and if you did, please visit my new Patreon.com profile! If you like this content, please support it – any amount counts. Sending you my love and lots and lots of positivity. xox Smile my lovely friends! Xox Sarah-May B. To sponsor this podcast, you can visit: https://www.patreon.com/sarahmayb If you have a moment, please take this survey - it will help me help you, better – which is what I dream to do! http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com/blog/survey Thanks in advance! xoxo And, I hope you dig my new Podcast theme - it's by Booker Hill Music, right here on Soundcloud! Check 'em out! https://soundcloud.com/booker-hill-music/treetops?in=booker-hill-music/sets/all Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Personal Lily-pads: A Self-Esteem Building Exercise Around Priorities Hi peeps, this is an exercise for you to use to improve your personal alignment with your priorities and simultaneously boost self-esteem. It’s actually a process used to heal in any injury in the body – you strengthen the muscles around the area that has been injured in order to give it the time and support to heal. For example, when you hurt your shoulder, you might be told by doctors to strengthen the muscles around it. The same goes for your personality. The more of yourself that you dedicate to diverse passions and strengths, the stronger you become and the more confident you feel. It’s also how you can heal yourself the most quickly. When it comes to a painful loss of a part of your definitions of self, your other passions and roles can grow bigger and help support you in the place of what is gone. So if you are looking to become more stable and confident, this is a self-esteem building exercise for you – and I HIGHLY recommend you do it in a journal. It’s a process that applies to everyone and it has to do with the various skills and passions and practices that identify you to you. For more of my writing head to teaspoonofhappy.com xo! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your relationship with your parents can be attached to a lot of big feelings of hurt or anger because it’s such a major relationship in your life! Your parents! So if you are struggling with your relationship to them it can be emotionally overwhelming to say the least. So this is a podcast for when you end up getting hurt by your parents so you cut them out of your life in some degree to protect yourself. Maybe you hide things from them because you know they won’t be able to understand, or you try desperately to get their approval and they never give it no matter what. OR maybe you try to keep a balance but always getting burned in the end by something thoughtless they do to you. Or maybe you’ve cut them out of your life altogether because it’s just too painful. So if any of this sounds familiar, this is a podcast for you. Because this is one of the most relevant relationships of your life, it can have a really powerful affect on your emotions and your understanding of your very self. This one’s for Ken – thanks for the suggestion! This is a big topic and is sure to reach a lot of people – thank you!! For more of my writing head to http://www.TeaspoonOfHappy.com and check out the blog for the written version of this podcast. I send you my love and if you have any requests, by all means send me an email! Smile y’all! Xoxoo Sarah May B. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, yes, this is a melodramatic title but it’s because this is a big deal and it’s causing millions of people to suffer from a whole slew of different side effects. Maybe you’ve felt it – anxiety, worry, a lack of focus. You feel hollow and nothing seems to quench it. You get a little retail therapy because you’re kind of just “meh” about life, just unfulfilled. It’s a modern condition that robs many across the globe of their happiness, inner peace, and keeps them trapped in helpless inaction. What I am explaining is a false identity of “self” that manifests from the dominance of our thoughts. Thoughts that appear to us as the voice of our soul – that dictate how we are feeling, what we want, what we need, what we’re worried about – what we should be doing. And often, all at once. Our thoughts often won’t shut up regardless of how hard we try to soothe and distract. They also mislead us into thinking we can find happiness and relief if we just follow their orders. But this is what this episode is about. The condition is the thoughts have staged a coo. Contrary to how it might feel, thoughts are not You. Think of them right now as they are passing through your mind. They narrate in your voice. They chatter of needs, they report feelings – but these thoughts are not “YOU.” Who are you then? You are the one observing your thoughts. You are a being – you are Awareness. Whichever term appeals to you more. One perceiving the physical through the use of this body. And at one point in your life – probably so far back that you can’t remember it, you had no thoughts like this. You had no constant inner monologue. You were probably around 7 years old, sitting in a classroom – bored, but your mind was completely silent. No narration. Just you, there, totally present, and observing. So if you suffer from this condition, I am going to describe how it works, in my laymen’s words in the hopes that you will be able to understand it and then perceive it. The tools to help it? The tool is just this podcast. It’s aim is to remind you that you are Awareness. That’s all. How to get outside of this prison. This is for you, Christina! Hope you like it!! xox Smile y'all! For more of my writing head to http://www,TeaspoonOfHappy.com I will post the blog version of this later this week. If you want to do your own reading, this information is all straight out of two books, "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle and "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself" by Dr. Joe Dispenza Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices