Rebel Buddhist
209 episodes - English - Latest episode: 23 days ago -Rebel Buddhist is all about freedom - inside and out - so if you want to tame your mind but not your life, this podcast is for you. In each episode, Master Certified Coach Ana Verzone, DNP, will teach you practical, effective tools from the fields of psychology, eastern spirituality, and self-coaching so you can train your mind to work for you instead of against you. Learn how to get out of your own way and cultivate the compassion and resilience you need for this wild new world. Explore how you can discover your own path to enlightenment and live an adventurous life with no regrets. Start now by downloading the free Rebel Buddhist Training Kit at RebelBuddhist.com
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Episodes
Greatest Hits Vol. 5 - How to Live With Contrasting Beliefs
May 05, 2022 08:00 - 31 minutes - 21.3 MBHey hey, Rebels! This week will bring to you another Rebel Buddhist Greatest Hits Episode about how to live with contrasting beliefs… while I go on my long-awaited semi-silent meditation retreat. (I had almost canceled due to COVID, but I’m officially out of the risk window and tested negative! I’ll be back with a new episode next week. _ We are all complex beings, made up of contrasts. Discipline and wildness. Security and freedom. Worldly and divine. There are dichotomies eve...
Start Close In
April 28, 2022 08:00 - 18 minutes - 12.8 MBI had a recent client who had a really tough time with letting go of the “how” before allowing herself to be happy, relaxed, and free. Everyday she felt anxious and even downright panicked because she didn’t have “The Plan” for how to create the life she wanted. I feel like all of us can relate to this, right? We often want focus on how to create the amazing things we want. We decide what we want to create, then we spend a lot of time wondering about how it will work. The logistics o...
Own Your Accomplishments
April 21, 2022 15:25 - 18 minutes - 13 MBIn the past, I’ve talked a bit about imposter syndrome and why it totally makes sense that it arises because of the societal structure we live in (hello consumer-based, patriarchal society). Today, I want to share an amazing tool that I started to use to overcome my own imposter syndrome. Because yes… it still pops up. And whether or not you have a business like me, imposter syndrome and self-doubt will arise in your life, too: in relationships, at work, or even when we plan a solo trip or ...
How to Know You're Making Progress
April 14, 2022 08:00 - 22 minutes - 15.3 MBThis week is Episode 100 of the Rebel Buddhist Podcast! If you’re new to the pod, then welcome! If you’ve been around for a while - welcome BACK! Today, I want to talk about how to know if you’re making progress on your spiritual path. Often, we think we’re not, but it’s usually because we are attached to our expectations… how we think progress is supposed to look. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that being attached to expectations can really screw us in the end and make us pretty unha...
Rebel Purpose
April 07, 2022 14:19 - 13 minutes - 9.05 MBAre you confused about what your purpose is – your soul purpose? If so, this Episode is for you, because confusion about one’s purpose is often a sign of something more insidious going on. I noticed a pattern in my Adventure Mastermind groups when people are confused about their purpose. It seems so...legit to say we are confused. We can think, “I am so confused about what I’m supposed to be doing! I want to be clear first so that I don’t waste time, money and energy on the wrong thing. If...
How to Stop Hustling
March 31, 2022 08:00 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBYou may have heard me say that being an entrepreneur can be filled with spiritual growth. I still believe this 100%. I have never expanded my comfort zone, dug deep with my limiting beliefs, learned to cultivate deep compassion for myself, and committed to serving others so much that I was willing to do scary shit as I have when being an entrepreneur. Sure, my work in refugee camps in war zones and other challenging humanitarian environments helped me to act on compassion for others - b...
Psychedelics and Spiritual Practice
March 24, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutes - 26.3 MBTo a lot of people, the words psychedelic and spiritual are paradoxical. But the use of psychoactive substances in shamanic, religious, and spiritual practices is found throughout history, with evidence from thousands of years ago. In this episiode, we will be talking about psychedelics and spiritual practice and if there is a helpful role for them…or the potential harm. Let’s start with some definitions: Psychedelics are a class of psychoactive substances that produce changes in per...
Unplugging in an Uncertain World
March 17, 2022 08:00 - 30 minutes - 21 MBSo many humans are on edge right now. A lot of this uncertainty has been going on since before the pandemic and this recent war… and there will be unrest and epidemics all over the world at any given time. I say this not to diminish what is going on, but to remind you that this week’s topic can be of benefit at all times, because there is never any predictability or guaranteed security. Impermanence is a law of nature. But we can still find a way for us to best navigate and stay human amids...
Staying Aligned in Everyday Life
March 10, 2022 09:00 - 26 minutes - 18.3 MBLast week, after DAYS of countdowns and chaos, my daughter and I packed up, grabbed the dog, and got on a flight to Hawaii. We were already over the Pacific ocean when the pilot announced they would have to turn around because of issues with their communication system. So we fly back, get in line for another plane, and then I get called up to the gate agent, who told me I couldn’t be on the next flight because my dog had to be on a flight that landed before 11:30pm. Uh oh… I’m al...
Greatest Hits Vol. 4 - The Power of the Pause
March 03, 2022 09:00 - 37 minutes - 25.9 MBHey, my wild and whacky humans! Well, life rarely goes as we expect, right? This week, it was my travel plans that were affected… on my way to my home in Hawai’i, no less! So in solidarity of the absolute chaos I’ve been attempting to weather this week, I wanted to bring you a new Rebel Buddhist Greatest Hit: The Power of the Pause. Because we could all use a moment to stop, take a breath, and re-align these days! I’ll be back next week with a new episode where I dive even deeper into why ...
Wake the F*ck Up
February 24, 2022 09:00 - 24 minutes - 16.9 MBIf you’re new to the squad, you may not have heard about my weekly live streams every week in the Rebel Buddhist Facebook group. They’re called “Wake the F*ck Up Wednesday,” and since they’re in the morning for most of us in the U.S., a lot of people think the name is because I’m a morning person and I really love to wake everyone else up with explicatives like, “Hey! Wake the F*ck Up!” While I often start the live stream that way, it isn’t why I named it that. That story starts over a d...
Be the Change
February 17, 2022 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.23 MBThis episode is all about being a leader in this world and our own lives every day. It’s about entering the room and turning the vibe into what you see would be the most skillful at the time - instead of automatically letting that vibe affect and change you, which is more reactionary. Sort of like the difference between a thermostat – which regulates the environment – vs a thermometer, which reacts to the environment. Here’s an example many of us have experienced: you’re on a plane and a...
Why We Hurry Towards Our Goals
February 10, 2022 09:00 - 18 minutes - 13 MBThis week is about why we hurry. Not the kind of hurrying when we are trying to make it on time to a party or a meeting, but when we hurry towards our goals. Why we rush. Why we feel pressured to achieve our goal – like yesterday. I speak from experience here when I say feeling that pressure to achieve our goals faster feels pretty crappy. So let’s jam about freeing ourselves from this sense of urgency. After giving birth to my daughter 7 years ago, I decided it was the perfect year to h...
The Antidote to Doubt
February 03, 2022 09:00 - 22 minutes - 15.3 MBDoubt it a totally normal experience. It’s comes with the territory when you’re a human born with a brain. It functions to try and keep us safe...to assess potential danger and protect us. However, it keeps us from experiencing true inner – and outer – freedom. In Buddhism there is he concept of the Five Hindrances, which are mental states that impede progress in our meditation practice and our daily lives. They can also lead to unhelpful - or even harmful - actions. These hindrances are...
How to Manage Criticism Anxiety
January 27, 2022 17:01 - 23 minutes - 16.2 MBCorrection: The original source for the quote about "The Man in the Arena" was incorrectly stated as Thomas Jefferson - opps! Didn't have my chai yet! The correct author is Theodore Roosevelt. One of the hardest parts of starting the Rebel Buddhist Podcast for me was anxiety around receiving possible criticism. If someone says something on a social media post or a blog post, I’m able to respond and maybe even point out where they misunderstood or something. But for a pod, someone can jus...
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
January 20, 2022 16:06 - 30 minutes - 21.2 MBI was reflecting a lot on my life when I grew up in the ‘hood with so little, and when I lived out of my car for 7 years as a climbing guide and how my life was so simple and I made hardly anything and bought hardly anything and I was so so so content. And while I was content, I admit that while I had confidence in many areas - guiding and my dreams and purpose and my power as a wild woman living in the mountains…I had a lot of doubt if I had what it took to create a different kind of a...
The Problem With Being Right
January 13, 2022 09:00 - 24 minutes - 16.5 MBIf you haven’t realized, I have a bit of a stubborn streak. I like to be right. It’s a thing I do. Once, when I was arguing with someone because I knew I was right and I just couldn’t let it go, he said, “I can tell you really like to be right.” It was just an observation - not a judgment. He even said it kind of nicely. “You really like to be right.” And I was like, “YES, I like to be right? Why would I not? Do you go around letting people think things that are wrong?” And he looked at m...
Sneaky Lies We Tell Ourselves
January 06, 2022 09:00 - 23 minutes - 16.4 MBThere’s a saying, “People will doubt but you say but they will believe what you do.” And this is because it is well-known that what we say isn’t always what we mean. What ultimately matters is what we DO. How we show up in the world.
Greatest Hits Vol. 3 - Forgiveness
December 30, 2021 09:00 - 25 minutes - 17.3 MBHere we are - at the end of the year, maybe looking back and wondering how it all happened the way it did. Maybe holding some grudges or deep resentments...or shame about how we showed up. The good news is, if we want to, we now have a chance to do things differently. Ultimately, we all get to choose how we want to show up every day, but there’s something significant about how we move into the next year and how it can set the tone for what is to come. You know we’re all about Free...
Word of the Year - Your Medicine
December 23, 2021 09:00 - 16 minutes - 11 MBWe’ve arrived at the final few days of the year, and how we participate in this transition will set the tone for the next one to come. If we want to be active creators of our own life instead of massive observers of our life (letting things happen TO us), it’s important to get clear and move, think, and feel with intention. One of the best ways we can do this is by trying to think of a phrase or word that encapsulates our intention. It may sound cliche or too woo-woo to pick a “word of t...
Vulnerability & Lovingkindness
December 16, 2021 09:00 - 38 minutes - 26.8 MBLovingkindness is foundational to cultivating wisdom and compassion in our mindfulness practice. A lot of people feel like mindfulness is a peaceful and relatively sterile thing where we are aware of our surroundings, but I’ve found that at deeper levels of mindfulness, there is also an element of love. So yes, we can mindfully move through the world with love. But when you’ve had life challenges, that can be hard to do, right? It takes work. We long to love - to be vulnerable - without...
Vulnerability & Lovingkindess
December 16, 2021 09:00 - 38 minutes - 26.8 MBLovingkindness is foundational to cultivating wisdom and compassion in our mindfulness practice. A lot of people feel like mindfulness is a peaceful and relatively sterile thing where we are aware of our surroundings, but I’ve found that at deeper levels of mindfulness, there is also an element of love. So yes, we can mindfully move through the world with love. But when you’ve had life challenges, that can be hard to do, right? It takes work. We long to love - to be vulnerable - without...
How to Live in Polarity
December 09, 2021 17:05 - 28 minutes - 19.8 MBWe are all complex beings, made up of contrasts. Discipline and wildness. Security and freedom. Worldly and divine. There are dichotomies everywhere. It’s part of nature, and we are all a part of that. Yet often we are asked to choose only one aspect of ourselves and lose or leave the other. And for many of us, our culture believes it’s hypocritical to stand with one foot in each contrasting space. The place that deep work happens is often when we are recognizing and living in po...
The Importance of a Daily Routine
December 02, 2021 09:00 - 32 minutes - 22 MBToday is about one thing that could make a huge difference in your life - with relationships, health, creativity, and especially our mental health.
How to Not Lose Yourself in a Relationship - Part 2
November 25, 2021 09:00 - 25 minutes - 17.6 MBWhat we talked about in Part 1: // Attachment theory and mindfulness of emotions and thoughts // How patriarchal society predisposes us to certain thoughts + beliefs and filters our relationship experiences // How it makes sense that anxiety leads to crazy thoughts and actions // Why those actions could end up leading us to lose ourselves in a relationship // The FIRST step in healing: offering ourselves self-compassion This week, we’re going to dive deeper into more tools and concepts...
How to Not Lose Yourself in a Relationship - Part I
November 18, 2021 09:00 - 32 minutes - 22.3 MBDoes this sound like you: // You obsessively check your texts to see if so-and-so has replied yet // If they don’t, you start to spiral about if they still care about you, or what might be wrong. // When you receive an email, you have a sort of mini-panic because it could be bad news about someone being upset with you - even though you haven’t even opened it yet. // You overreact to minor feedback, or get overwhelmed by jealousy. // Or maybe you avoid conversations because you don’t want to...
Grief and Loss
November 11, 2021 09:00 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBThere are lots of forms of grief and loss. The most obvious is when someone has died, but we can also grieve in many other ways, like the end of a relationship, the diagnosis of a serious illness, not being able to have a baby, or the loss of a dream. We all will go through some form of loss at some point. It’s inevitable. I get emails regularly from people who are grieving or even holding themselves back from feeling that grief. We can sometimes steer away from talking about hard th...
Change Is Inevitable
November 04, 2021 08:00 - 30 minutes - 20.7 MBThis Episode is all about change – and your ability to adapt to it. We all know that nothing is permanent, but we still like to hope that things won’t change too quickly. And while we know we’ve made it this far in life, we still often question our ability to be able to handle what life might send our way. The inevitability of change and your ziji – your inner radiant confidence that you will be able to handle what comes - are inextricably linked. Surely we’ve all experienced lots of ...
Living in Breakthrough
October 28, 2021 08:00 - 39 minutes - 27.1 MBI love sharing my daily adventures… especially when they involve a gorgeous, sunny day in Hawaii or an epic alpine lake in Alaska! But social media shows a filtered version of peoples’ lives - sometimes literally. No one has this super happy blissed-out life where it’s gorgeous views and amazing fulfilling adventures all the time. That’s only half the picture. And while we may not see the messy sides as often, those messy sides are just as important – and necessary – to live a life in breakt...
Stop Apologizing
October 21, 2021 08:00 - 26 minutes - 18.3 MB“I’m sorry I made you mad.” “I’m sorry I upset you.” “He hurt my feelings.” We hear these things and say these things throughout our lives and assume they are true. But they are not. In reality, believing that we can control how people think and feel actually keeps us from accessing genuine compassion and kindness. Over the past few months, I’ve talked a lot about how other people and external circumstances don’t cause our feelings, but rather it’s our thoughts about them and what they d...
How to Set Healthy Boundaries
October 14, 2021 08:00 - 36 minutes - 25.1 MBIn my life, there is almost NO consistency. Which can be awesome for spontaneous journeys or trips and fun nights-in doing silly things with my daughter and husband. But it can also be an absolute pain in the butt when it comes to the simple things in my marriage like who is cooking dinner, or who is picking our kid up from school or even who is going to be home that weekend! To minimize the chaos (and keep us both semi-sane), my husband and I have LOTS of conversations about these thing...
How to Be Your Own Guru
October 07, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.1 MBI get asked a lot where the name for my podcast, “Rebel Buddhist”, came from. Often people will say, “Wow - I can’t imagine a rebel Buddhist with like guns, or weapons - isn’t that the opposite of Buddhism? Isn’t that a kind of...oxymoron?” And I’m thinking, “That’s not exactly the definition of ‘rebel’ that I had in mind.” Here’s where I’m coming from: My main motto is, “Free Your Mind, Free Your Life.” When you free your mind of the things that no longer serve you, the freedom ...
Work as Love
September 30, 2021 08:00 - 18 minutes - 12.9 MB“Work is love made visible.” Beautiful, right? But for a lot of us, it might also sound like a load of bullsh*t. After all, work environments can be super unhealthy, both in their culture and environment. And I know that a lot of you Freedom Junkies want to have freedom of time, money, energy, and location, but your work place may not offer that. You’re not alone. These days there are a lot of messages that tell us that the only way to be really happy and truly free is to qui...
How to Find Your Purpose
September 23, 2021 08:00 - 27 minutes - 18.9 MBI have a lot of Freedom School students who come to me stressed out and anxious because they have no idea what their life purpose – and they’ve been waiting a long time to figure it out. They have a longing – as we all do – to know what and who and how they are “supposed to be” in this world. I know it’s totally cliché to for a life coach to be talking about life purpose - but it actually makes a lot of sense because it creates a lot of suffering for people when they don’t know. It’...
Maximizing vs Satisficing
September 16, 2021 08:00 - 28 minutes - 19.7 MBI’m currently caught in the middle of a fairly common decision: what fun thing do I want to do this weekend? If you have FOMO, you know you can spend some serious energy debating all the options: outdoor music, road trip, camping with friends, and outside of a pandemic, which party/band/event to go to. Lots of times, when we have a decision to make, we sit and debate because we want to make the “best” choice. But really, sometimes we never know what the “best” choice is until we’ve made ...
Having Enough - Finding Your Balance
September 09, 2021 08:00 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBAs a life coach, I dislike - maybe even loathe - seeing business coaches talk about “making six figures off your first launch.” Or when they use cheesy marketing ploys that promise six-figures... but only if you study their blueprint, map, or 6-week program. Why? Well, who came up with 6-figure earnings being THE GOAL anyway? I recently took a good look at my own finances with the goal of finding out what my true minimum income would be for me to not just pay my bills, but to be happ...
Integrity - Living Your Truth
September 02, 2021 08:00 - 30 minutes - 21.1 MBFor me, when I’m not in alignment with my truth and my values, I feel hollow inside. I feel that sinking feeling and my heart feels restless. I can’t sleep as well, I am quick to lash out or exaggerate truth, and my body tenses up.
Greatest Hits Vol 2 - Why adventure is essential to our evolution
August 26, 2021 08:00 - 20 minutes - 14.1 MBToday, we talk about adventure and being devoted to it. Adventure is essential to our evolution. When I was a child, I would get soooo bored. I was an only child in a poor neighborhood that had so much gun violence I wasn’t even allowed to play in the front of the house because of all the drive-by shootings…let alone walk to a friend’s house. I made a promise to myself that when I grew up, I would never—ever—feel bored again. While this promise ended up creating a full-blown addiction to...
Special Replay: Why Adventure Is Essential to Your Evolution
August 26, 2021 08:00 - 20 minutes - 14.1 MBToday, we talk about adventure and being devoted to it. Adventure is essential to our evolution. When I was a child, I would get soooo bored. I was an only child in a poor neighborhood that had so much gun violence I wasn’t even allowed to play in the front of the house because of all the drive-by shootings…let alone walk to a friend’s house. I made a promise to myself that when I grew up, I would never—ever—feel bored again. While this promise ended up creating a full-blown addiction to...
How to Fail Perfectly
August 19, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.3 MBThis week’s pod is all about how to fail – and do it well… and fair warning, it’s got some tough love in it! Now, many of us give up too easily and we complain about our perceived failures way too much, right? And we both know that what I teach is all about freedom - to free your mind and free your life. The thing is: avoiding failure – having low failure resilience - is costing you your dreams, success, growth, learning, and expansion! When I see someone who is afraid to fail a...
The Art of Doing Nothing
August 12, 2021 08:00 - 25 minutes - 17.6 MBThis past weekend was my BIRTHDAY! Normally, when it comes to celebrating a big day in our lives, my family goes exploring or takes a wild trip somewhere. So when my husband asked me what I wanted to do and I just said I wanted to go to our yurt and relax, he was more than just surprised. He didn’t even quite understand the concept. To him, doing nothing meant doing something mellow. After settling into the yurt, I decided I’d love to drive out to one of my fave restaurants in a s...
Cultivating Radiant Inner Confidence - Ziji
August 05, 2021 08:00 - 25 minutes - 17.7 MBIf you’ve been around me for any time at all, you’ve definitely heard me talk about Ziji. Ziji is all about confidence. But not just any confidence. Ziji is a Tibetan word that means radiant inner confidence. What makes it so...essential to a full, meaningful life of freedom, adventure and purpose? Let’s start by imagining what life was like before anything “bad” ever happened to us. As we grow and learn, we see the outside world as a place with both good and bad experiences. Ove...
Being Human is Hard - the First Noble Truth
July 29, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutes - 30.1 MBHow many of you think life can often be a little...difficult? Yeah, me too. But what I’ve found is that when I stop resisting that life can be hard sometimes, and when I stop thinking something has gone terribly wrong just because things aren’t easy or I’m not happy, then I can start embracing life more fully and savor the good times even more. Today I want to talk about how while being a human is hard, accepting that truth can be to our advantage. When the Buddha first taught, he could...
Commitment and How to Take Massive Action
July 22, 2021 08:00 - 17 minutes - 12.3 MBI’m sitting here looking at Blackburn Mountain and the Staircase ice falls - one of the biggest ice falls in the world - and I was reminded of all the hard things I’ve experienced on mountaineering trips and how amazing it felt to achieve our goals...or sometimes, to even have just survived. And that inspired me to talk about massive action vs passive action and how that all relates to commitment. First, a few brief definitions - massive action is keeping on taking action until you ach...
Perfectionist Procrastination
July 15, 2021 08:00 - 22 minutes - 15.7 MBI’ve always loved learning. In high school, I would even leave my friends while we were partying to do homework as they shouted out “stoner nerd!” In college, I’d bring my books with me to the beach and spend most of the day reading with occasional dips in the ocean. I went on to go to graduate school (not just once!), including getting my doctorate. As a mom, I don’t dig playing with dolls with my kid, but I’ll spend a whole day exploring nature and taking field notes with her - easily. ...
How to Avoid Unnecessary Suffering
July 08, 2021 08:00 - 21 minutes - 14.8 MBI’m all about living life to the fullest. From mountain climbing to hiking to enjoying a week at the yurt to jamming to some seriously amazing music at a local festival… But one thing that I see getting in the way of that is that we, silly humans, turn on ourselves a lot. Like when someone says something shitty to us and when we are reacting in anger or whatever emotion, we’re also ultimately disconnected from our inner life. And when we do that, we aren’t living life to the fullest. We ...
The Mother / Father Wound
July 01, 2021 08:00 - 42 minutes - 29.7 MBWe got the parent wound from whomever took care of us the most during our formative years. Despite their best intentions, they messed us up. Or at least that's how we often think of it. In reality, it also has a lot to do with how we relate to our experience with them. The mother/father/parent wound comes in all shapes and sizes: They can involve one parent or both. They can also be caused by a parent who was absent. They can occur if a parent is overbearing, neglectful, abusive, hype...
How to Manage Anxiety
June 24, 2021 08:00 - 32 minutes - 22.8 MBAnxiety and I go wayyyy back... I can remember these mild OCD tendencies and weird tics I had as a kid, like blinking all the time or not wanting to step on cracks in the sidewalk or needing things to be symmetrical. And I freakin’ loved counting things! Over time, I learned how to manage my anxiety, but I still get waves of it. A lot of us (nearly 1 in 5 adults in the United States) are living with anxiety disorders, and women are more than twice as likely to develop anxiety than men. ...
Upper Limit Problems
June 17, 2021 08:00 - 21 minutes - 15.2 MBI'm a type-O blood type and am usually good with biological challenges - viruses, bacterial infections, street food in foreign countries. I almost never get sick. So when all of a sudden I had laryngitis and no other symptoms...I was confused. And BUMMED. I was about to launch my podcast and had blocked out a complete week to record, my Freedom School launch was going so well, and I was spending some mommy-daughter time with Maia while Thai was in Utah. But after some reflection and som...
Spiritual Bypassing
June 10, 2021 08:00 - 40 minutes - 27.8 MBIn college I had a friend who, whenever I was relaying something challenging in my life, she would say, “Don’t worry. It’s all good!” And then she’d glide away on her rollerblades with a big smile on her face. I loved that damned girl, and I know she had good intentions, but when she said that it would totally piss me off and I’d want to shake her and be like, “It is NOT ALL GOOD!” Spiritual bypassing is a tendency to use spiritual ideas, explanations, and practices to sidestep or avoid com...