Rebel Buddhist
209 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 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
Letting Go to Grow
June 03, 2021 08:00 - 19 minutes - 13.3 MBSo many of us - myself included - have had the wrong idea of what will truly set us free. On some level we know it’s not things like paying off the debt, finding your soul mate, being location independent, losing the weight, finding the perfect job...(ask me how I know). But we forget this and we think, well sh*t, maybe it IS all that stuff. Or maybe it IS about that once you have kids. Or get older. We think maybe it IS what’s going on “out there” that we need to fix. So we waste tons ...
How to Make a Scene Like a Buddha
May 27, 2021 08:00 - 19 minutes - 13.4 MBOne time, years ago at a super fancy dinner, I made an entire room of rich people UNBELIEVABLY uncomfortable. The beginning of the dinner was great. Until… I’m entertaining those around me with a story about an avalanche in the Himalayas when I hear someone saying, “What are black people complaining about anyway? Slavery ended over 200 years ago. It’s not our fault anymore. It’s time to get over it.” What the whaaa???? I stop mid-sentence with the person I’m chatting with. I turn around a...
How to Forgive Yourself
May 20, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutes - 30.2 MBGuilt sucks. I was raised in a devoted Catholic family, and while there were some things I really appreciated about it, it also came with a healthy dose of guilt. I was constantly wondering if I was a bad person because of having to go to confession on a regular basis. I remember making stuff up during confession because we had to go so often, and I didn’t always think there was anything I did “wrong.” Over time, I learned to feel really guilty - not just about the big things, but about ever...
Gossip and Mindful Speech
May 13, 2021 08:00 - 25 minutes - 18 MBToday we’re talking about gossip and mindful speech. Gossip may at first seem to be something others do - but not “us.” However, it’s more prevalent than you might think. Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Pabongka Rinpoche, says, “Idle gossip is the best way to waste our human lives.” Kind of a serious stateent, right? So I thought it might be worth spending some time on. First, what is “gossip?” One definition is “casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically invol...
Self-Compassion
May 06, 2021 08:00 - 32 minutes - 22.8 MBAs a first-generation Filipinx-American, I was raised to believe that when things get hard, you push through, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get tough and work harder. So when I first heard of self-compassion, I thought it was just for people that didn't know what “real” suffering was like. I thought self-compassion was for wimps. As I’ve worked with many clients over the years, I’ve found that I’m not the only one who finds self-compassion to be a foreign (no pun intended) co...
Special Replay - Define Your Freedom
April 29, 2021 08:00 - 24 minutes - 17.1 MBWhat is true success? What is a truly “rich life”? What is a life of true FREEDOM? We all may have our own preconceived notions of what the answers to these questions look like – notions that are subliminally based on societal norms, familial or cultural expectations and the systems of power that order our world… Today, we’re digging into what “living a life of freedom” means to you – and how to move from just imagining this, to making it happen in the here and now. For me and for many of...
Greatest hits Vol 1 - Define Your Freedom
April 29, 2021 08:00 - 24 minutes - 17.1 MBWhat is true success? What is a truly “rich life”? What is a life of true FREEDOM? We all may have our own preconceived notions of what the answers to these questions look like – notions that are subliminally based on societal norms, familial or cultural expectations and the systems of power that order our world… Today, we’re digging into what “living a life of freedom” means to you – and how to move from just imagining this, to making it happen in the here and now. For me and for many of...
When Someone You Love Has Mental Illness
April 22, 2021 08:00 - 28 minutes - 19.9 MBI grew up with parents who both had mental health diagnoses: PTSD, depression, schizoaffective disorder… and it was FAR from easy. I remember how scared and embarrassed I'd be when my dad would be found walking around the block of the 'hood naked. Or the time he slipped a knife under my mattress telling me I had to be protected "just in case." I remember how unloved I felt and how scared I was when my mom would hit me. I also remember the inner struggles of wanting to love them so much but...
When Someone You Love Has a Mental Illness
April 22, 2021 08:00 - 28 minutes - 19.9 MBI grew up with parents who both had mental health diagnoses: PTSD, depression, schizoaffective disorder… and it was FAR from easy. I remember how scared and embarrassed I'd be when my dad would be found walking around the block of the 'hood naked. Or the time he slipped a knife under my mattress telling me I had to be protected "just in case." I remember how unloved I felt and how scared I was when my mom would hit me. I also remember the inner struggles of wanting to love them so much but...
When Fear is a Good Thing
April 15, 2021 08:00 - 21 minutes - 15 MBIn 2012, my husband and I took a cargo boat, which was way overloaded and inches from taking on water, for 3 days on the Niger river to Timbuktu. It was the most amazing adventure. If you look at the photo for this podcast (taken in the Sahara), we look so in love - but what’s not apparent is that we are fleeing a Touareg takeover in Timbuktu and driving across the Sahara to escape. We stopped once to pee (and took this photo). And we weren’t even supposed to do that! Ultimately, w...
How to Let Go of Regret
April 08, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutes - 20.3 MBYou may or may not know that my jam is helping people live a life of no regrets. Literally, it’s the first thing you see on my website. It says, “live a life of no regrets” because I’ve learned that it’s one of the things I do NOT want to feel after I’ve lived my life. And people will often say, “How can you...even say that’s possible?” Do you really believe we can not have regrets? Hell yes. Let’s look at the definition of regret: Regret from the perspective of psychology is ...
Spiritual Parenthood
April 01, 2021 08:00 - 27 minutes - 19 MBOne time I was complaining to one of my teachers that it was so much harder for me to progress spiritually since I became a mama. I wasn’t willing to leave my daughter for months to go on a retreat, and I barely found time to sleep, let alone meditate daily. I asked the teacher, whom I deeply trusted, “What should I do?” My teacher asked me if I had heard of Dipa Ma. Of course, I hadn’t. She explained that Dipa Ma’s specialty was helping householders cultivate their practice and helping...
Letting Emotions Be Your Guide
March 25, 2021 08:00 - 24 minutes - 17.1 MBA few weeks ago, I was speaking with a friend who thinks the whole thoughts-feelings-actions thing is too cerebral, and she said, “emotions are intelligent and show us deep truths!” And I thought, totally! They show us our thoughts which show us our most deeply held beliefs -some of which we may not be conscious of. Deep truths. Emotions and thoughts: They aren’t mutually exclusive. But I ALSO added that I believe they tell us truths about how we are living in alignment with our truth or ...
Karma's a Bitch - Or Is it?
March 18, 2021 08:00 - 27 minutes - 19.3 MBKarma... it's not necessarily a concept that many of us think of every day. More than likely, that word pops into our heads when we've caught ourselves acting like a bitch to someone who definitely didn't observe it. "Just wait till karma catches up with you...!" Others, myself included, have had some serious introspective moments when faced with our own mortality... or the death of someone close to us. I remember taking a long hard look at the afterlife and karma when I was first diagnosed...
The Power of the Pause
March 11, 2021 09:00 - 34 minutes - 24.3 MBWhen I was first diagnosed with cancer, I was in graduate school, living in a friend’s basement. Suddenly, I was overcome with nausea, and I felt...awful. Instead of being with that, my brain went into planning mode. I started researching the web for answers and networking about creating an action plan. There was no pause, just diving into control mode. Thankfully, my years meditation practice kicked in and reminded me to pause. I noticed a big void. Then big emotion. I started crying. ...
Jealousy and Sympathetic Joy
March 04, 2021 09:00 - 20 minutes - 14 MBToday we talk about those times when it’s hard to feel good about other people’s good luck and abundance, and maybe feeling a little - or a lot - jealous. Sometimes we don’t feel good about when a friend gets a new car, or the book deal we’ve been waiting years for, or the soulmate that we still haven’t met. But today you’ll learn that it’s totally normal, and that feeling “sympathetic joy,” or mudita, is one of the hardest qualities for most people to cultivate. I noticed that I would f...
Being Multi-Passionate
February 25, 2021 06:00 - 18 minutes - 12.7 MBIn this episode we explore one aspect of our Dharma, our purpose in life. People often think this is one thing. Like, when people say “I’ve always known I wanted to be a marine biologist, ever since I was a kid.” Or, “I just knew I was going to be a teacher.” But the truth is, many of us have multiple strengths and passions that we long to share with the world - especially freedom junkies like my clients, and like you rebels out there listening to this podcast - but we never give ourselv...
Being Muti-passionate
February 25, 2021 06:00 - 18 minutes - 12.7 MBIn this episode we explore one aspect of our Dharma, our purpose in life. People often think this is one thing. Like, when people say “I’ve always known I wanted to be a marine biologist, ever since I was a kid.” Or, “I just knew I was going to be a teacher.” But the truth is, many of us have multiple strengths and passions that we long to share with the world - especially freedom junkies like my clients, and like you rebels out there listening to this podcast - but we never give ourselv...
Money and Right Livelihood
February 18, 2021 09:00 - 18 minutes - 20.7 MBEvery now and then I get comments about charging for what I teach. Like how dare I teach certain tools and charge for them. How can I charge to help people to stop overdrinking? Or have less anxiety? Or how to manage their mind? Or how to feel free? They say it is very “unspiritual” of me, very “un-Buddhist” of me, to earn a living helping people this way. So I wanted to discuss the concept of “right-livelihood” more in-depth, because I think there are some big misunderstandings of what ri...
Desire and Attachment
February 11, 2021 09:00 - 31 minutes - 21.6 MBToday we dive deeper into how desire fits into our life when we want to continue to evolve spiritually and act in ways that are compassionate to the earth and to others. A lot of people think of desire as this thing that we develop… but really, we have desire wired into us as humans. The essence of what Buddhism offers and teaches through mindfulness, lovingkindness, and compassion, is freedom of the heart. Not “needing” things, not being attached to things. But rather inner freedom. As a ...
The 4-Step Visualization Technique for Any Situation
February 04, 2021 09:00 - 18 minutes - 13.1 MBLast week we talked about how important it was to be able to start to embody the person you need to be in order to create the future you want – you need to already think feel and act like that person who has already achieved the things in life you want to manifest. Whether that is a future of more kindness. More freedom. Most justice for all... no matter what you want to manifest, the principles are the same. And like you may have heard me say before: the things we talk about here don’t pic...
How to Manifest Your Ideal Life
January 28, 2021 09:00 - 22 minutes - 15.6 MBUs humans tend to think that it is only when we finally achieve our goals or dreams that we can feel more confident and happier and experience more self-love...and more worthy. And not before. But this is actually backwards...and I explain why in this episode. What a lot of people miss is that in order to manifest that life you just visualized, you need to start BEING - thinking, feeling, ACTING as the person who already has manifested those things And this is probably the most important ...
How to Disagree Like a Buddha
January 21, 2021 09:00 - 33 minutes - 34.3 MBThe other day someone had posted a comment on a FB post I made and she said, “Please unfriend me. We obviously have different beliefs.” And this really stood out to me because I thought it was so...immature to not want to see differing opinions. But it’s quite pervasive these days, right? So I replied, “Actually, we aren’t friends on Facebook, but if we were you are always welcome to do so. But I want to invite you to consider that unfriending people just because they disagree with you mi...
How to Let People Be Wrong About You
January 14, 2021 09:00 - 23 minutes - 16.4 MBI have a special treat for you today - after the last few episodes, I have received a LOT of comments and questions about how to not care what other people think about you. Another way I think of this is how to let people be wrong about you. And did you know that my podcast episode on exactly this topic was the MOST popular one of 2020? It’s true! I am one to follow signs that come my way - not signs that tell me about rule - no...as you know by now, I like to break rules that don’t make ...
True Freedom
January 07, 2021 09:00 - 12 minutes - 8.72 MBWe’ve heard stories of people that have taken prison sentences and transformed them into opportunities of spiritual development, or those who have taken extremely challenging life circumstances like tragic deaths and came out the other end, and people who don’t have the financial freedom to travel or not worry about paying the bills, but who feel joyous and free on the inside. How is that possible? While there are certainly many inalienable human rights that can help to define what freedom...
How to Forgive
December 31, 2020 09:00 - 22 minutes - 15.5 MBYou know we’re all about Freedom here at the Rebel Buddhist – inside and out. One of the things I’ve found that we can do to give us the most emotional freedom in the next year is to partake in the courageous act letting go of things that no longer serve us, and one of the most radical acts we can do to let go, one of the things we can do for ourselves that can truly help us feel more light and free...is forgiving. So that’s what we’re talking about in this New Year’s Eve podcast episode: ...
Living in Alignment
December 24, 2020 09:00 - 16 minutes - 11.7 MBIn last week’s episode I mentioned that I call the process of reflecting on the past year and creating intentions for the new one REVIEW, REFLECT + ALIGN. Today we dive into the alignment part, because when we are in alignment, if feels damn good. When we are happy, what’s often going on is that our outside world is in alignment with our inside world There is consistency, integrity, with what we value and how we are living our lives So when we think about what we want to create in the ne...
How to Review Your Year
December 17, 2020 09:00 - 14 minutes - 11.3 MBEver have a New Year resolution you didn’t follow-through on? You’re not alone! “Resolutions” seem to resonate less and less with how people want to enter into the New Year. After all, more resolutions are broken than kept, and that doesn’t feel like a way to enter the New Year with integrity. With traditional resolutions, people often find themselves stuck in the same place year after year – even with having the best of intentions and setting achievable goals that seem totally doable. Goal...
Why We Need to Adventure
December 10, 2020 09:00 - 17 minutes - 12 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 ...
How You See Yourself
December 03, 2020 09:00 - 24 minutes - 17.3 MBSelf-image, at its core, is the way you see yourself. By “see” I mean how you interpret and think about yourself – not just the factual way you see yourself but also the opinion that you have of yourself. An important concept to understand is that self-image is totally subjective. It is totally up to YOU. Your opinion about yourself. It isn’t factual. We spend a lot of time being concerned about what other people think of us. We spend way more time trying to control or manage what other pe...
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
November 26, 2020 09:00 - 27 minutes - 19.2 MBThis episode is all about the most common ways I see people misuse thought work and mindfulness. When I coach people on how to self-coach, I get so many clients who are confused about the difference between a) changing your life, b) changing your feelings about your life, c) truly processing your emotions from those original circumstances, even if you’ve already changed them. That last one so important. Because usually, when we try to change the external world and circumstances without fi...
Practical Emptiness
November 19, 2020 09:00 - 21 minutes - 15 MBCircumstances are neutral. Another way of saying this? Things are empty of inherent qualities. Today, we’re digging into what a practical application of emptiness looks like in our everyday lives. This concept is really revolutionary in my book. So many buddhist conceptions are (even though they’re often seen as these quiet, calm, benign principles). In Buddha’s time, it was (and still is) revolutionary to accept that suffering comes from our own minds and not something outside of us. I...
The Power to Choose Your Feelings
November 12, 2020 09:00 - 30 minutes - 21.2 MBI’m going to let you in on a golden nugget of truth that maybe you’ve never heard before: feelings are optional. Yup, you read that right. The ability to feel a full spectrum of contrasted, complex emotions are an inherent and integral part of the human experience – it’s what makes our species who (and what) we are. But we do not have to be at the whim of some emotional rollercoaster. Feelings don’t happen to us. We get to choose how to feel. Try to wrap your head around this. The mo...
Welcome to Being Human
November 05, 2020 09:00 - 25 minutes - 17.5 MBHumans go through life thinking that feelings happen TO us. We think, “Ugh I am so stressed out, I wish it would stop!” Oftentimes, we act so confused about where it is coming from. Or we say, “OMG I am so irritable today.” Or in a funk. Or anxious. Or sad...maybe there’s some grieving going on. We feel powerless a lot of the time. Like our emotions can just take over and make us victims of a bad mood. The antidote? Really learning about feelings and how they work; making a concerted ...
Clearing Out Decision Clutter
October 29, 2020 08:00 - 27 minutes - 19.3 MBIn case nobody ever told you: life is about making choices. The ability to choose is an incredible power that we humans have, but it takes some serious skill to be able to use it wisely. Research shows that the average person makes roughly 35,000 remotely conscious choices per day. Assuming that most people spend around seven hours a day sleeping, and therefore choice-free (depending on the type of dreamer you are), that means we make about 2,000 decisions per hour...or one decision ever...
How to Be With Any Emotion
October 22, 2020 08:00 - 25 minutes - 17.8 MBThe Buddha taught that, to be free, we need to investigate every part of our human experience with an intimate and mindful attention. This includes emotions. Emotions aren’t “bad” in and of themselves. It’s what we do when we feel them – the thoughts that ensue, the actions we take as a result – not the emotion itself, that often causes our suffering. Practicing a mindfulness of emotions helps us to learn about ourselves and our mind. It helps us not get hooked by a difficult feeling, or ...
Mindful Communication
October 15, 2020 14:42 - 21 minutes - 14.7 MBHumans have a great capacity for communication. Yes, animals can communicate in other ways with unique sounds (probably telepathic ways we aren’t able to tune into...), but because of our cerebral cortex, we are capable of communicating complex plans about the future, stories about the past, and lots of amazing, abstract ideas. It’s a real evolutionary gift. But this level of communication can also get us into a lot of trouble. We can really hurt people, or act in ways that aren’t in al...
Can Money Buy Happiness?
October 08, 2020 08:00 - 30 minutes - 20.9 MBCan money buy happiness? Many great minds throughout history have tried to answer this age-old question. And I bet you’ve pondered it a time or two... Over the years, there haven’t been any great anwers eithe, leaving many of us still wondering if money can truly buy happiness, and others assuming that it does. As a result, millions of people have bought into the idea that they need to spend their lives chasing wealth as the way to happiness and wellbeing. Which totally works out for cap...
Define Your Freedom
October 01, 2020 15:19 - 22 minutes - 15.5 MBWhat is true success? What is a truly “rich life”? What is a life of true FREEDOM? We all may have our own preconceived notions of what the answers to these questions look like – notions that are subliminally based on societal norms, familial or cultural expectations and the systems of power that order our world. Today, we’re digging into what “living a life of freedom” means to you – and how to move from just imagining this, to making it happen in the here and now. For me and for many of...
How to Stop Feeling Like Shit
September 24, 2020 14:08 - 30 minutes - 20.9 MBAt an early stage in our lives, most of us have been taught that we need something outside of us to be happy – the right body, partner, job, car, house, bank account. Then somewhere along the line we also get taught something like, “True happiness comes from within.” And we think we’re totally on board with that. We think, “Right. It’s not stuff that makes me happy – it's things like kindness + compassion that make me happy!” The thing is, none of the above is true. Want to know why? Bec...
On Anger
September 17, 2020 08:00 - 41 minutes - 28.4 MBWhether or not you had a childhood marked by conflict, or grew up in an environment of rage, you have likely – at some point in your life – struggled with anger. Even in the closest relationships (especially in the closest relationships) anger and conflict are inevitable. And so, when they show up it’s not necessarily a bad thing – it’s not a “bad sign” about the relationship, per se, because what anger is most often showing us is that our basic, most fundamental needs are not getting met....
How to Coach Yourself: Applied Mindfulness
September 10, 2020 08:00 - 39 minutes - 27.3 MBAs a life coach, part of my job is helping people develop the tools and skills to be able to do something really crucial to their own long term growth: coach themselves. Yes, I am here as a sounding board, a listener, a co-conspirator and a co-mastermind in helping my clients create the lives they want and deserve, (as a kick in the you-know-what if that’s what they need!) – but I cannot do the work for them. We all have to do our own groundwork to free our minds, so that we can free our l...
The Problem with 'Either/Or' Thinking
September 03, 2020 15:00 - 26 minutes - 18.7 MBHuman brains love black-and-white thinking. Thinking in terms of absolutes: of ‘right or wrong’, of ‘good or bad’, of ‘all or nothing’. With black and white thinking, there’s no tension or resistance – none of the discomfort that comes with cognitive dissonance. Because things are either one way or the other way, and this allows us to settle into the comforting absence of ambiguity – the comfort of being 100 percent convinced that we’re right, or that we are good, or that they’re wrong, or ...
How to Improve Any Relationship
August 27, 2020 08:00 - 40 minutes - 28.1 MBHave you ever noticed that we think we need to control the world, and that – somewhere in the back of our subconscious minds – other people need to behave a certain way so we can feel good? We have so many rules for our relationships that we’ve stopped experiencing them and are locked into the expectations of how the relationship SHOULD be, instead. The secret is this: your relationship with anyone is dependent on your thoughts about them. That means that, in reality, our relationships are...
How to Drink Less
August 20, 2020 14:10 - 33 minutes - 23.4 MBEver find yourself wishing you could just stop over-drinking? You don’t identify as an alcoholic, per se – your drinking habits may be affecting your body or brain power a bit negatively, but they’re not affecting the lives of others or those you love – and maybe you don’t want to quit cold turkey, you just want to...reign it in a little? I hear you. I’ve been there too. And it ain’t easy. When I quit drinking, so many of my friends changed. When I stopped over-drinking, it made me less e...
Cognitive Dissonance + How to Create New Beliefs
August 13, 2020 10:00 - 35 minutes - 24.6 MBCognitive dissonance. It’s one of those big, fancy scientific terms you may have heard before but only have a vague understanding of what it actually means when you really try to think about it. The official dictionary definition? Cognitive dissonance is “The state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.” But in lay people's terms – and in terms of how to apply this concept to creating a life of freedom, ad...
How to Quit Buffering
August 06, 2020 13:56 - 30 minutes - 22.5 MBSo many of us use (or have used) buffering as a way of tolerating things that aren’t acceptable in our lives. We use alcohol to make a boring party more fun. We use food to get rid of that anxious feeling in our stomach when we know our partner will respond with anger when we bring up a difficult topic. We use Netflix to distract ourselves from a stressful job that we hate. What’s underneath this is: you have something in your life that isn’t great, something in your life that doesn’t real...
How to Expand Your Comfort Zone
July 30, 2020 05:00 - 22 minutes - 15.6 MBHere’s a golden nugget of truth I’ve learned the hard way throughout my life: the more you have an aversion to discomfort, the more you actually suffer. It’s totally ironic, right? If all you did was stay in fancy places, if all you did was protect yourself from discomfort and everything was always temperature controlled and soft and tasty and nice...the minute shit went wrong, you would have a much stronger reaction to it than if you had practiced being with discomfort and reminded yours...
How to Stop People Pleasing
July 23, 2020 08:00 - 27 minutes - 20.6 MBOne of the most common issues my clients come to me for coaching on is their tendency to people-please. On the one hand, we can feel good when we do things for other people. This is pure generosity and kindness. But with people-pleasing, doing things for other people is the MAIN source of joy and often comes at the expense of self-love and self-care. And the intention behind it stems from insecurity and fear. When we people please, we are not being authentic and living our truth. People p...
How to Make Decisions
July 16, 2020 10:00 - 32 minutes - 22.2 MBDid you know that the average person makes 35,000 ”remotely conscious” choices per day? If we are spending about seven hours a day sleeping and likely not making decisions (depending on the type of dreamer you are ;), that makes about 2,000 decisions per hour And it may sound like a crazy number, but according to researchers at Cornell University, we make 226.7 decisions each day on just food alone. As time goes on and life gives us more responsibilities, so does the range of choices we’...