Self-Coaching

Fear is a natural, protective part of life. Without fear, our species would long ago have become extinct. In this Self-Coaching podcast, I discuss not how to become fearless (that would be dangerous) but how to fear less. How do you know if you’ve become too fearful? I offer seven signs to help you differentiate between realistic, unavoidable fear, versus your level of neurotic, unnecessary fear. It’s important to understand that neurotic fear has a systemic, corrosive effect on your happiness, your mental health, and your physiology.

What’s so bad about procrastinating? For starters, procrastination slowly erodes the quality of your life by turning your days into a series of missed opportunities and mounting stress. When you delay important tasks, you trade long-term growth and peace of mind for short-term comfort. Over time, this leads to constant pressure, guilt, and a lingering sense that you’re falling behind. Goals remain unfulfilled, relationships suffer from broken promises, and your confidence takes a hit as unfinished responsibilities pile up. What begins as a harmless habit quietly chips away at your time, your potential, and ultimately, your sense of purp...

Maybe you’re not depressed and you’re getting along as well as can be expected, but maybe you’re feeling aimless, unfulfilled, or disconnected from a sense of purpose. Or maybe you’re holding out for some clear, passionate, lightning-bold kind of ‘ah-ha’ revelation that will rescue you from your ho-hum life. If this sounds like you, then perhaps this Self-Coaching podcast is just the ticket for understanding how boredom has become nothing more than a habit that can be challenged and replaced with your innate potential for living a more stimulating life.

We naturally become bored when our brain isn’t entertained, emotionally engaged, or sufficiently challenged. I’m sure you’ll agree that to some extent, boredom is an inescapable part of life. But how can you tell if your life is too boring? In this Self-Coaching podcast, I discuss the need to determine to what extent boredom may play a disruptive role in your life. Whether it’s a mismatch between ability and challenge, attention issues, or low dopamine, boredom can result from many causes. As much as we think of boredom as a negative, restless experience, there is a bright s...

The inability to say ‘no’ is a habit, a habit of insecurity. Whether it’s the fear of disapproval or rejection, a desire to please, guilt, low self-worth, or simply wanting to avoid conflict, when you find yourself saying yes when you’d rather be saying no, then you need to listen to this episode of Self-Coaching. Learning to say no requires some psychological grounding, but more importantly, it’s understanding that standing up for yourself is a skill. A skill that can be learned. I offer five simple techniques for learning to respect your boundaries while assertively (with kindness) taking car...

Do you ever wish you could be more positive, more optimistic? If so, this Self-Coaching podcast may be just what you need. Did you know that optimism isn’t just a personality trait; it’s a skill. A skill that you can actually build. Join me as I talk about some simple steps and exercises geared to help you focus on possibilities, not problems, reframing reflexive negativity, and learning to risk trusting that you can, in fact, handle what life throws at you.

Life’s demands, challenges, scares, and fears can really pile up. Sometimes it just feels like too much. The tumult of feeling overwhelmed is something that happens to all of us and although we can’t control life and the many challenges we encounter, there are things we can do to minimize, if not, eliminate the chaotic experience of feeling out of control. In this Self-Coaching episode I offer strategies for coping when we begin to feel powerless and victimized by life and/or our emotions. Avoiding getting overwhelmed isn’t about pretending everything’s fine—it’s about building little habit...

Mark Twain once said that courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Although it’s tempting to wish you were fearless, without fear, our lives would quickly become reckless and threatened. Fear, healthy, objective fear is an essential component of our genetic inheritance, but irrational, neurotic fear is not. In this Self-Coaching episode, I discuss the difference between normal and neurotic fear and strategies to minimize needless neurotic struggle.

In everyone’s life, there are ups, downs, happy times, and anxious times. But one thing is certain: life undulates. I call these undulations, waves--psychological waves. Think of waves as life’s challenges. Some waves consist of circumstantial, externally driven challenges, e.g., illness, financial struggles, loss, and so on, while other waves are psychological, driven by habits of insecurity. One thing about waves, circumstantial or psychological, they…undulate—they come, and they go. Waves eventually subside, allowing us to enter a trough state of potential calm. I say potential because for anyone suffering from anxiety, depression, or emotional struggle, being in...

Self-Coaching is not just another form of coaching; it’s a unique CBT-based program based on the idea that anxiety, depression, and other emotional struggles stem from learned habits of insecurity and self-doubt—habits that can be broken. To liberate yourself from struggle, you need to understand the fundamental ‘why’ you struggle in the first place. Why, no matter how much you’ve tried, nothing changes.In this week’s episode, I offer a step-by-step strategy that will teach you to become your own best coach, enabling you to overcome feeling powerless and victimized by life.

How would you define ‘burnout?’ Essentially, it’s a feeling you can’t go on—there’s just no more gas left in the tank.  You may feel anxious, depleted, or simply stuck. Many components contribute to feeling burned out, chronic stress, fear of failure, self-criticism, not feeling good enough, being overcommitted, bored, and so on. Burnout isn’t just psychological; the relentless stress you feel is dumping stress chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol into your body, inevitably leading the way to anxiety and depression. Join me in this Self-Coaching weekly challenge as I discuss some simple practical strategies designed to help you avo...

Are you tired of being manipulated? Saying yes when you’d rather be saying no? In this Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn how manipulators tend to bend you to their will by using tactics like guilt-tripping, playing the victim, or simply wearing you down. Join me as I explain how to set clear boundaries, avoid over-explaining, and use techniques like “Broken Record” to ensure that you don’t have to feel manipulated or bullied by coercive people who aren’t at all concerned about your attempts to resist and are only concerned about twisting you to do their bidding.

Regardless of age, gender, background, or profession, for many, no matter how much they try or succeed in life, they believe they’re frauds. Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling of self-doubt and inadequacy, despite evidence of success and competence. People experiencing it often believe they’re frauds or undeserving of their achievements, fearing they’ll be "exposed" as unqualified and embarrassed, even if they’ve worked hard and accomplished much. Join me in this week’s Self-Coaching challenge to dispel the feeling that you’re living a lie. The “lie” has been based on the insecurity premise that you’re a fake, a phony...

Beware of the saying: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” All too often, we cling to the short-sighted safety of attempting to control life. But sometimes, because of insecurity, a normal need for control becomes excessive as we desperately try to over-control life and outcomes.  The problem is that the more we rely on insecurity-driven habits of control, the less we rely on our natural resilient ability to trust self and life. Rather than letting go and allowing life to unfold, we gravitate toward perfectionism, rigidity, and neurotic self-distrust. You may have become convinced that over-co...

Most people, at one time or another, will ask, “What’s the purpose of life?” More accurately, we should be asking, “What’s my purpose in life.” For some this isn’t a difficult question to answer, yet for others, it remains a total mystery. A sense of purpose isn’t something reserved for only those fortunate, happy, successful people; it’s a potential that resides in each of us. Unfortunately, one’s purpose may be submerged, unrealized, or covered over by neurotic distortions. While there’s no simple, one-size-fits-all answer, join me in this week’s Self-Coaching challenge as I offer suggestions that...

Developing self-discipline and willpower What stops you from achieving your goals? What exactly is the resistance that keeps you from taking charge of your life and realizing your intentions? As complex and multifaceted as the answer to this query may be, one way or another, it all boils down to self-discipline. From a Self-Coaching perspective, self-discipline and willpower depend on the ability to willfully endure the transient discomfort of changing who and what you are. You weren’t born with self-discipline, you acquired it. Like a muscle, you need to develop your self-discipline muscle, one challenge at a time. So, if...

Let’s be honest, we live in a world of imperfection. we are imperfect. No matter how fastidious you may be, there will always be banana peels to slip on in everyone’s life. “Why did I do that?” “If only I worked harder.”  The old could-a, would-a, should-a’s. Every challenge, no matter how small, is an opportunity to grow in self-respect, confidence, and self-trust. Every setback is an opportunity to grow in self-respect, confidence, and self-trust. It’s true we can’t prevent regrets, but we damn well can minimize and avoid most of them. In this Self-Coaching episode, join me as...

Bumble bees are not supposed to fly. Their body weighs too much, and their wingspan is too short. Thank goodness the bumble bee doesn’t know these facts. What are the supposed “facts” that are holding you back? Sure, there are challenging circumstances in your life. But it’s not life circumstances that are holding you back or making you feel anxious or depressed, it’s your reaction to these circumstances When it comes to happiness, we often hold ourselves back psychologically through self-imposed limitations and mental barriers, many of which stem from past experiences, cultural conditioning, or deeply ingrained, habituated...

I’m sure you’ll agree that changing neurotic perceptions characterized by excessive worrying fear or emotional hyper-reactivity is easier said than done. In order to change the way you perceive and think about yourself and the world, it will take what we might call intentional effort. Efforts to reframe the thought patterns that have become reflexive habits while also managing and regulating your emotional/physiological responses. Once you understand how you’ve been compromised by neurotic perceptions and thoughts, then it’s time to apply a Self-Coaching approach that will allow you to reverse the grip that irrational, anxious struggle...

Ever notice how silly someone else’s worry seems to you? How many times have you told someone to stop making mountains out of molehills? Unfortunately,// if worry has become your knee-jerk reflexive response to life challenges, then mountain-making is what you do best. People make mountains out of molehills for a variety of psychological, emotional, and social reasons. This often stems from an inability to put issues into perspective, where minor inconveniences are perceived as major crises. And if you struggle with stress and anxiety, you’re probably no stranger to amplifying small problems, making them seem disproportionately ‘mountain’ like.

In everyone’s life there are challenges, some big, some small. When faced with adversity, hope can help us weather our storms. What exactly is hope? There’s no doubt that hope involves our emotions, but did you know that hope itself is not an emotion? Hope is a way of thinking. This means that hope—OR HAVING a hopeful attitude-- can be learned or coached. It’s true that hope may not mitigate the inevitable challenges we must face, but hope isn’t about what’s coming around the corner, it’s about releasing ourselves from the despair of hopelessness i...

In this Self-Coaching podcast, I’m introducing a new format: weekly Self-Coaching challenges. My intention is to provide bite-sized, motivational instructions that can be practiced each week to enhance your Self-Coaching efforts. Today’s challenge is an exercise in ‘creating a bubble’ of separation from your world of “have-tos.” By practicing being more responsive to your ‘whims,’ you open yourself up to glimpse the life that awaits you.

Today’s Self-Coaching episode addresses the crucial role that optimism and pessimism have on your liberation from emotional struggle. Although I’ll be talking about optimism in next week’s podcast, I felt it was crucial to first address what happens when we identify with pessimism, “I’ll never get better,” “life’s too hard, I just can’t handle it.” This is the voice of pessimism, which has become an entrenched habit of ego identification—in a very real sense, you become your pessimism. And when this happens, you begin what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the neurotic thinking associated wi...

Perhaps the best way to describe Responsive Living would be the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) phrase Let go, let god. The simplicity of this adage may escape you,// but trust me, it’s quite profound. In AA parlance, it has to do with letting go of compulsive, destructive thinking and handing yourself over to a higher power. From a secularized, Self-Coaching standpoint, Responsive Living is learning to let go, let life. Translation: letting go of trying to over-control life, and instead learning to risk letting life unfold spontaneously without anticipation, worry, or fear. Join me in this Self-Coaching episode to explore th...

Releasing yourself from struggle You’ve heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words. When you get caught up in the incessant chatter of insecurity-driven thinking, having a simple picture in your mind can be far more useful than a thousand words of analyzing or trying to understand the “whys” of your suffering. In this Self-Coaching episode, I provide two compelling, fail-safe visualizations that you will want to use over and over again whenever your mind feels hijacked by insecurity-driven ruminations of emotional struggle.   Why are visualizations so powerful? Simply because the brain likes, even craves, visual images...

How exactly do you stop allowing yourself to be manipulated by neurotic thinking? The simple answer to this question is best summed up by something my grandmother was fond of saying: You can’t stop a bird from flying into your hair, but you don’t have to help it build a nest. You may not be able to stop neurotic thoughts from percolating up into consciousness, but you don’t have to passively allow your conscious mind to become part of the “nest-building” problem. This is the essence of Mind-Talk’s Step Two, stopping the progression of insecurity-driven thinking. In this Self...

If you do nothing about your thinking, nothing will change. If you do something about your thinking, you will change. In this Self-Coaching podcast, I will introduce you to the first of four steps involved in Mind-Talk. Mind-Talk is my unique technique for ensuring liberation from anxiety, depression, and all emotional struggles. Today's episode with teach you two critical exercises: Detached Mind-Checking and Critically Observing. Once you learn these simple techniques, you will no longer feel victimized by the inexplicable, habituated, neurotic thoughts that have prevented you from the solace that you long for.

It’s critical for you to understand that when it comes to your awareness, your conscious thoughts are not alone. With conscious awareness, you can, for example, be totally conscious and aware of your compulsive, worrisome ruminations: What if I get sick? What will happen to my job? What if I lose my job? What if...? but equally unconscious of the reflexive insecurity that spawns these neurotically laden thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. So, the question is this: with all the cross-fertilization—conscious-unconscious melding—how in the world do we separate truth from untruth, facts from emotionally driven fiction? In this Self-C...

In today’s Self-Coaching podcast I want to introduce you to my technique of Mind Talk. Mind Talk is a four-step program that will allow you to assert the full power of your conscious mind in order to neutralize the distorted, neurotic thinking that sustains anxiety, depression, and all emotional struggle. This technique is the core of my philosophy of Self-Coaching and will require a series of podcasts to fully equip you with the foundation necessary to succeed in liberating yourself from your struggles. Today’s episode is the first of the series. I begin by laying the preliminary groundwork for...

If you’ve been listening to my recent podcasts, you would have heard me say that the reason you struggle emotionally is that you have become a passive victim of old, insecurity-driven habits. And make no mistake, a passive mind will always be susceptible to manipulation by insecurity. Essentially, a passive mind, one that capitulates to the doubts, fears, and negativity of insecurity, insists that neurotic struggle is….well, just the way it is. Bull! Once you awaken your sleeping giant of consciousness (active-mind) you can learn to overcome neurotic passivity and begin the important process of neutralizing reflexive, anxious thin...

In today’s Self-Coaching podcast, I talk about decontaminating and neutralizing the destructive, reflexive habits of the past that operate just beneath your level of consciousness. These less-than-conscious influences, which I call part of your shadow personality, are the reason why we struggle. Keep in mind that these habits are less than conscious, not unconscious!Using my Self-Coaching technique of ‘mind talk,’ you can learn to bring these destructive habits out of the shadow and into the full light of conscious awareness. Once exposed, you can apply my four steps that will help you begin a process of neutralizing the neurot...

We all have what I call a ‘shadow personality.’ Although a non-nurturing parental environment can be a major contributor to the shadow personality, any disruptive developmental challenges that all children face—fear, poverty, separations, loss, illness, and so on, can result in feelings of vulnerability and insecurity. These influences comprise the shadow of your here-and-now personality. Like the backdrop of a play, the shadow personality has an indirect, reflexive influence on your life. And it’s these influences that constitute the insecurity-driven habits that fuel your emotional struggles. In this podcast, I introduce a new Self-Coaching tool: conscious correction. With consciou...

Let me wind up my Self-Coaching series on the non-nurturing parental environment with a discussion of the indifferent parent and the defective, abusive parent. Although these examples represent extreme forms of defective parenting, to a greater or lesser extent, they play a part in the lives of many who suffer emotionally as adults. Essentially, the indifferent parent is one whose life and personal needs supersede their child’s. This type of parent may be openly neglectful and distracted. They are less likely to be held to account for the damage this lack of connectedness has on a child’s sense of w...

Last week’s podcast dealt with the overcontrolling, anxious parent. In this Self-Coaching podcast, I distinguish between the overcontrolling parent and the co-dependent parent. Whereas the overcontrolling parent is invested in controlling and protecting every aspect of a child’s life, the co-dependent parent lives vicariously through the child to compensate for their own shortcomings. Because of their own emotional neediness, this is a parent who, rather than being the source of emotional stability for the child, winds up using the child to feed their own fragile ego.

Back around 1969, overly anxious, controlling parents began to be called “helicopter parents.” Helicopter parents have a tendency to hover over their children—helicopter-like—micromanaging every aspect of a child’s life, saying, “Watch out!” “Don’t pet that dog!” “Don’t eat that.” The child becomes merely an extension of the parent’s anxieties, fears, and insecurities. In an attempt to stay one step ahead of anticipated mayhem, helicopter parents just can’t help jumping in and getting involved. Too involved! Join me in this week’s Self-Coaching episode as I explore the ego-shaping influences of growing up with anxious parents.

In the Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn that by recognizing the similarities between your present-day insecurities and the nurturing/non-nurturing environment provided by your parents (as well as other significant shaping influences) during your early developmental years, you give yourself an important edge. You gain the ability to step apart from your own personal mental congestion and recognize how your present struggles have been shaped by your early learning and conditioning—the programming of your brain.

In this Self-Coaching episode, I ask the question: is it possible for therapy to become…addictive? No question that receiving professional guidance and perspective can be appropriate in times of intense stress or duress, but over time, ongoing palliative therapy can easily morph into a dependency. Especially when you begin to believe that you don’t have to deal with your day-to-day struggles; I’ll just wait until I see my therapist. Once you become convinced that you don’t have to handle your struggles anymore, or worse, that you can’t handle them, then the die is cast. Why do you thi...

I’ve been a psychologist since 1977; in my many years of private practice, I’ve come to see that there are seven thinking traps that most people who suffer from anxiety, depression, or emotional struggle have in common. So, if you're frustrated with your life or your lack of happiness, I can’t tell you how important it is for you to be aware of these tendencies.In this Self-Coaching episode, you’ll learn the problem with using:• Should statements• What-iffing• Tunnel vision• Mind Reading• Have-to thinking• Black-and-White thinking

Join me in a rather embarrassing disclosure from my early days of innocence. It all began in seventh grade when Father Devine, my parish priest, gave the boys in my class an ominous admonition, one that altered my behavior for decades to follow. The problem wasn’t what Father Devine said, it was my misinterpretation that led to my problem. All kids try to make sense of information that is often lacking or fragmented. Most of the time there is little fallout. Occasionally, like with my story, faulty interpretations can lead to self-doubt and unrealistic fear, stoking the flames of vu...

In this Self-Coaching episode, I discuss lying--the good kind, the bad kind, and the ugly kind. Simply put, lying is the willful substitution of fiction for fact. Not all lying is bad. In fact, what we typically call white lying can actually be considered beneficial. Call it what you like, being diplomatic, kind, or generous, it’s all the same thing: choosing to filter our true feelings in order to avoid unnecessary conflict by hurting others. Clearly, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I shudder to think what this world would be like if we had no filt...