Showing Up To Life
740 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★ - 7 ratingsA daily podcast for people who want to naturally reduce stress in their bodies and optimize themselves to THRIVE in their lives, and not merely survive.
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Episodes
EP 438: How Empathic Resonance Affects our Bodies (And why it Matters)
February 04, 2021 21:02 - 32 minutes - 30.1 MBIt’s very easy, at times, to think only of the effect our emotional dis-regulation has on others. But the basis for this empathic resonance, mirror neurons, are present within us as well and so we are subject to the resonance of others. You might have certain people in your life that just make you feel not-so-good when you hang out with them. Or maybe it's the other way. Maybe there are some people in your life that just bring you joy and good feelings when you see them or speak with them...
EP 437: Why Kindness for Others is also Good for Ourselves
February 03, 2021 21:15 - 35 minutes - 63.1 MBThroughout our daily lives, we have many interactions with other people. These can be anonymous and passing encounters with people in public spaces, or they can be intimate encounters with people we know and love. They can be in person or remote interactions via phone or video chat. But the one thing that all of these interactions have in common is that in every single instance, we will impact the person we are experiencing and they will impact us. Some of this impact will be subconsciou...
EP 436: How we Impact Those Around us (Whether we Know it or not)
February 02, 2021 19:35 - 30 minutes - 54.6 MBI used to think that as long as I wasn’t yelling at anyone, or otherwise causing problems for others, that my emotions were irrelevant to those around me. And boy was I mistaken!!! The reality, which honestly I learned the hard way, is that the people around me could sense my emotions. If I was experiencing positive emotions, people would feel uplifted and drawn to me. If I was experiencing negative emotions, people felt the drag and probably wanted to get the heck away from me. I learn...
EP 435: Perfectionism: What it is, What it Does, And how to Overcome it.
February 01, 2021 22:22 - 34 minutes - 62 MBToday’s topic comes by request from one of my amazing Patrons! If you would like to become a Patron of the show and support me and my work, you can sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/artburns What my Patron had asked me to cover today is the very important topic of perfectionism. I say it’s an important topic because I think a vast number of the 77% of American adults suffering from stress are also suffering from perfectionism. In fact, I think it’s quite accurate to say that perfecti...
EP 434: Personality Types
January 29, 2021 21:33 - 29 minutes - 53.5 MBWhen we are born into this world, we come with certain predispositions that make up a part of our personality. Western psychology would call this genetic coding, while eastern philosophies would call it Karma. Whatever you want to call it, this aspect of your personality is just part of the picture. The rest of our personality is influenced by our experiences with the parents, friends, teachers, coaches, etc. And as we take this influence and apply it, moment-by-moment throughout our liv...
EP 433: Negative Mental States
January 28, 2021 20:21 - 29 minutes - 53.6 MBOur emotions are our body’s built-in motivation system. Everything we do, we have our emotions to thank for the energy and drive to do. And as you probably know, emotions have a ton of strength and power! This strength and power is the main reason that we NEVER want to try to ‘Stop’ our emotions or stuff them inside or avoid them in any way. Doing so invites some very serious health concerns. But at the same time, negative emotions cause our bodies to suffer in the stress response and le...
EP 432: Practice Makes Permanent
January 27, 2021 21:38 - 34 minutes - 62.8 MBMost of the time, we tend to think of changes to our personality as powerful and significant events in our lives. To be sure, major trauma will certainly have the effect of changing one’s personality! But the reality is that our personalities are formed through what seem like tiny, insignificant experiences of our thoughts, emotions, and reactivity. These changes happen slowly, over long periods of time, and without any notification or warnings. Kinda like a houseplant growing: you don’t...
EP 431: Mindfulness of Habits and Reactivity
January 26, 2021 21:34 - 31 minutes - 56.1 MBHabits, essentially, are the product of unintentional practice. Every time you react in a certain way to an experience - the way in the past I’d have been angry this morning when I awoke to snow on the ground that prevents the bike ride I was looking forward to - you are teaching your body how to react in this way without your conscious awareness. Anything that your body knows how to do without the involvement of your brain is, quite simply, a habit. And your brain loves it! This is why ...
EP 430: Examining our Pet Peeves
January 25, 2021 22:17 - 32 minutes - 58.2 MBEver since I first heard the term ‘Pet Peeve’, I was baffled at the fact that we would love something that bothers us so much that we’d call it a ‘pet’. But at the same time, I had so many of these Pet Peeves that I just figured it was normal on some level. And for many years, I struggled with the things that ‘Always annoyed me’ and stress became a huge presence and hindrance in my life, affecting every aspect of my life and preventing my happiness in many ways. It was only when I came to...
EP 429: Motivation Through Self-Compassion
January 22, 2021 21:11 - 31 minutes - 57.2 MBI know I talk a great deal about Self-Compassion, but I’m doing it again today! In fact, I could easily talk about Self-Compassion every day and never cover anything else and you would still get just as much benefit! Self-Compassion is that important. And I bring it up again today because Self-Compassion is especially important when we are trying to learn something new… like, say… mindfulness practices. But seriously, any time we are trying to develop a new skill, we must commit to the p...
EP 428: Presence
January 21, 2021 20:21 - 47 minutes - 85.8 MBIn another fine example of how counterintuitive mindfulness is for many of us in western society, presence is something we’ve all tried to unlearn for our whole lives. When we’re toddlers, we’re taught to look forward to Christmas and Birthdays. When we go to kindergarten, we’re taught to look forward to first grade. And then to middle school… and high school… and college… and then we get a job and we look forward to getting a house and getting married… then we have kids and we teach them...
EP 427: How Acceptance can Change Your Life
January 20, 2021 21:38 - 33 minutes - 60.2 MBLike the concepts of Curiosity, Compassion, and Presence, the concept of Acceptance can seem counterintuitive to many of us in Western Society. We grow up learning that we should take charge of our circumstances and go out and get what we need through ambition and hard work. Now, the last thing I want to do is to take anything away from ambition or hard work! In the right perspective and in appropriate measures, these are wonderful and powerful qualities to possess! And fortunately, accep...
EP 426: How Compassion for Others Improves our own Well-Being
January 19, 2021 22:02 - 29 minutes - 54 MBWhen you think of compassion, you might consider it something that is ‘nice to do’ for others. Or maybe you say ‘It’s the right thing to do…’ Perhaps, the concept of compassion brings you closer to your religion or spirituality. However the practice of compassion aligns with your life or your world view, if you’re like most people, you think of it as an outward oriented action. In other words, you think of it as something you would do for others. I mention the benefits of Self-Compassio...
EP 425: How to Embrace The Beginner's Mind
January 18, 2021 22:27 - 37 minutes - 68.2 MBFirst of all, I want to express once again my gratitude for my Patron who has sponsored the amazing new microphone I’ve used in today’s recording! If you’re interested in supporting me, it couldn’t be easier! Just go to this page: https://www.patreon.com/artburns In today’s episode, I talk about a familiar, but super important topic: The Beginner's Mind. As you’ve heard me say plenty of times, with Presence, Acceptance, Compassion, and Curiosity, we can practice well being and positively ...
TEST EPISODE!!! - SOUND CHECK -
January 17, 2021 21:55 - 2 minutes - 2.23 MBHello! I'm coming at you on a Sunday afternoon to show you my awesome new microphone! Please let me know how it sounds!!! You can email me at [email protected] Wishing you well, Art
EP 424: Three Ways to Develop Mental Clarity
January 16, 2021 00:17 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBWe all get overwhelmed at times. And when we do, it’s like there’s a monkey bouncing around our mind so quickly and erratically, we can’t even keep track of it. Have you ever been stuck in this monkey mind, feeling like there’s no escape, and then had the opportunity to talk to someone about it? It feels much better after you get to talk about it, right? Well, the reason is that in verbalizing your thoughts, you articulate them in your mind first. It’s like getting the monkey to slow do...
EP 423: It's all About you!
January 14, 2021 23:59 - 35 minutes - 32.4 MBSo often, I used to find myself saying things like: “If this person or that situation would change, I could finally be happy.” And I would spend so much time resenting those people and situations that wouldn’t change for me. I would get angry that ‘they’ were taking my happiness and causing me to suffer. But the truth is that no person or situation is responsible for my emotions. I have the power to regulate my emotions. And so do you. Because your emotional reactions are based on the ...
EP 422: How to Reframe Failure With Self Compassion
January 13, 2021 23:39 - 29 minutes - 27.7 MBAs children, we are taught that failure is bad. This message comes to us in the subtle look of disappointment on a parent’s face. Or in the not so subtle big red F at the top of a test that must be signed by our disappointed parent and returned to our disappointed teacher. And then there is the straight-up cruel way our young peers will treat us in the face of failures big and small. Of course, since failure is a huge part of a kid’s life, these messages get repeated over and over until ...
Ep 421: How (and why!) to Teach Compassion to Kids
January 13, 2021 00:54 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBTeaching children mindfulness practices gives them the tools they need to regulate their emotions through presence, acceptance, and curiosity. Teaching children compassion practices gives them very similar tools to use in their interpersonal relationships for their whole lives. And teaching children self-compassion gives them the same vital tools to use in their relationship with themselves. All three of these are scientifically known to cultivate wellness and reduce the health risks asso...
EP 420: Why Should we Teach Mindfulness Practices to our kids
January 12, 2021 00:39 - 26 minutes - 24.2 MBI’ve been asked a few times to talk about how valuable it can be for kids to learn some of the basic mindfulness practices I talk about here. The answer, of course, is that it’s absolutely vital for kids to possess these skills!!! Because as kids grow up, every tiny experience they have, every emotion they experience, and every stress response that happens in their bodies is contributing to who they will become as adults. And by teaching children these simple practices and giving them the...
EP 419: What is the Purpose of Anger?
January 08, 2021 23:27 - 29 minutes - 27.7 MBWhether we’re looking at the events surrounding politics, or the divisive energy surrounding the global pandemic, it seems that anger is everywhere. As an emotion, anger is perhaps the greatest motivator. But the purpose of this powerful emotion, as with all the emotions we experience as human beings, is to motivate us to action. Unfortunately, this is not what happens for most people. For most people, anger is mere expression. And when we simply express our anger, without resolution of...
EP 418: In This Moment, What are you Nourishing?
January 07, 2021 21:54 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MBHave you heard the story of the two wolves? If not, check out today’s episode. The basic premise of the story is that each of us has the potential to be kind, compassionate, forgiving, generous, and happy. And we also have the potential to be greedy, angry, vindictive, violent, and unhappy. Which potential comes to fruition is our choice. Mindfulness and Heartfulness practices empower us to see, moment by moment, which potential we are feeding. And in this moment to moment awareness, w...
EP 417: How to Reduce Stress Through Heartfulness
January 06, 2021 23:53 - 30 minutes - 27.8 MBWhen we experience chronic stress, as 77% of American adults do, we put our bodies through a very dangerous level of hyper arousal that will ultimately lead to devastating health consequences. So how do we protect ourselves and reduce the chronic stress we experience? Stress is caused, at the most basic level, by the emotion of fear. The basic emotion of fear is opposite the basic emotion of love - our emotions exist to drive us away from what we fear or towards what we love. So when we ...
EP 416: Stress is not a Possession
January 05, 2021 22:52 - 28 minutes - 26 MB‘I have so much stress!!!’ ‘I am angry!!!’ ‘I am stressed out and I have anxiety!!’ These are terms I hear all the time as I speak with people who just can’t show up to their lives as a result of all these big emotions and stress. And while I don’t doubt the sincerity of people who say these kinds of things, I do object to the accuracy of these statements. We don’t ‘have’ stress or emotions. And we are not the stress or emotions we feel at any given time. The truth is that we experien...
EP 415: The Secret to New Years Resolutions
January 04, 2021 22:43 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBLet’s talk about New Years Resolutions. We’ve all tried, and few have succeeded, to make sweeping changes in our behavior. And the new year is a very tempting time for this effort! But the fact is that even though we feel as though we always ‘fail’ at these attempts, I don’t think that’s true. ‘Failure’ to lose 20 pounds, for example, looks like going on and sticking to a diet for 20 weeks and finding that we haven’t lost the weight. But that’s not what our resolutions usually look like...
EP 414: Your Inner Voice
December 31, 2020 22:22 - 28 minutes - 26 MBWe all have an inner voice we carry throughout our lives. For many of us, this inner voice is unforgiving and harsh. It punishes us when we fail... It tells us we’re not good enough... It convinces us we can’t do something before we even try. And in some ways, this inner voice itself can be a source of guilt and shame, causing a lifetime of suffering. But when we look back on our life with self compassion and curiosity, we can see that this inner voice is not our own invention. Instea...
EP 413: The Year in Review (Mindfully)
December 30, 2020 23:58 - 21 minutes - 20.2 MBAt this time of year, it is quite natural to review our experiences and take stock of what we’ve lived through. And while this is not, in and of itself, a bad process to go through, there are a couple of important and negative forces at play that will give us an inaccurate and negative view of what we’re examining. First is the negativity bias that makes us see the negative aspects of our experience more than the positive. Second is the way we are likely to be hard on ourselves in the fac...
EP 412: Curiosity > Conviction
December 29, 2020 23:02 - 27 minutes - 25.9 MBHow often do you find yourself defending your ideas, opinions, beliefs, or convictions? If you’re like I used to be, you’ll fall in your sword before you’ll admit that maybe your ideas and opinions are wrong in some way. And the same is true for our thoughts. When a thought pops into our mind, seemingly from nowhere, we are willing to believe the thought is true without the slightest challenge. Which is fascinating, because our thoughts don’t come from nowhere. Our thoughts arise from o...
EP 411: Have You Ever Wondered What it's Like to Work With a Coach?
December 28, 2020 22:54 - 24 minutes - 22.4 MBWhen I talk about how simple the practices of mindfulness and heartfulness are, people often ask: “If it’s all so simple, why do people need a coach?” And this is a great question! The reason these simple practices can be difficult to implement in our lives is that from our earliest age, we are taught to be mostly opposite to the presence, acceptance, compassion, and curiosity that feed our wellbeing. So how does a coach help? First, the coach offers some techniques. In my case, this me...
EP 410: Compassion: The Salve That can Heal our Bodies, Minds, and Spirits
December 24, 2020 19:47 - 25 minutes - 24 MB“Anger is an acid that does more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than to the person on whom it is poured” - Mark Twain This quote has lived in my memory for a long time and has helped me grow and heal from the damage caused by anger, resentment, and vengeful feelings I’d carried for most of my life. And what I’ve found is that if anger is an acid that damages me, then compassion is the salve that heals me. In today’s video, I share a few super simple compassion practices that w...
EP 409: Presence > Presents
December 23, 2020 22:16 - 25 minutes - 23.6 MBAh! December 23rd!!! I remember, back when I would get completely wrapped up in the gift giving aspect of the holidays, the 23rd and 24th were just a frantic blur of stress. Rushing around from store to store... Squeezing the shopping in between the parties... Maxing our my credit cards because I really couldn’t afford what I ‘needed’ to buy for everyone... It felt like the last leg of a marathon and by the time everything was wrapped - sometime around 2am on Christmas Eve, with a coupl...
EP 408: How to Have Compassion for Everyone
December 23, 2020 00:33 - 26 minutes - 24.4 MBIf you knew for sure that the person helping you at the register was suffering in some way, how would that impact the way you interact with them? Perhaps you would soften your voice a little... Maybe you would use kind words... And make eye contact and smile as you tell them to have a nice day. Of course, we would all do this if we knew someone was suffering. But we almost never assume the people around us are suffering. In fact, we usually assume the exact opposite, especially when we...
EP 407: Getting Through Difficult Times (Practice Included)
December 21, 2020 21:12 - 28 minutes - 26.7 MBThis time of year, it is completely natural to reflect back on where we are in our lives. But while reflection is natural and even healthy in some ways, it is important to recognize that our implicit negativity bias can make things seem more negative than they really are. And THIS year???? Well, let’s just say that in 2020 our collective negativity bias is turned up to 11! In today’s video, I offer three practices to help get through this holiday season with your mental, physical, and em...
EP 406: Right Now, is There Something You Can Accept?
December 18, 2020 23:29 - 30 minutes - 28 MBRight now, is there something I should accept? Whenever we find ourselves struggling through an experience, there’s a very good chance we have engaged in judgment. When we judge something as ‘Good’ we will struggle with keeping that thing as long as possible. And when we judge something as ‘Bad’ we will struggle to get rid of that thing as soon as possible. The struggle will manifest itself as stress in the body, which will only make things worse. The solution is to let go of what we mi...
EP 405: Empathy, Compassion, and Well Being
December 17, 2020 21:31 - 28 minutes - 26.8 MBWhen someone expresses themselves in an angry or threatening way, the first thing we do is act to protect ourselves. We retreat and we close down. Just wait for things to be safe again. But what if we do the opposite instead? If instead of retreating in fear, we open ourselves to understanding the reason for this person's behavior, we very likely will learn that they are acting from a place of suffering and fear themselves. And once we understand this, we become able to open up further ...
EP 404: How Recognition of Impermanence Leads to Empathy (And why That Matters)
December 17, 2020 01:02 - 29 minutes - 27.2 MBWhen we train ourselves to release the clinging and aversion to our internal and external experiences, avoiding the judgment and identification that gives rise to these unhealthy mental states, we open ourselves up to empathy. If we become so entangled with our own problems, suffering, needs, and desires, we can’t feel those of another. If we live in complete solitude, I guess this might be ok. But as human beings, we live in connection with others. Whether it is our family, colleagues, ...
EP 403: How to Accurately Measure Your Life
December 15, 2020 20:54 - 26 minutes - 24.8 MBFrom a very early age we, as humans, are trained to measure our lives in really big chunks of time. We are a ‘seven-year-old’ or we are a ‘sixth grader’. We look back and say ‘sophomore year was the greatest time in my life.’ We do quarterly projections and annual audits. And all this labeling and division of time makes us believe that life happens in these huge chunks. But life doesn’t happen in decades, or years, or quarters, or seasons, or even weeks, days, or hours. Life happens in...
EP 402: How to Plan for Your Well Being
December 14, 2020 23:33 - 35 minutes - 32.8 MBAs a matter of our habits, we are often unwittingly practicing the things that reduce our happiness and well being. And most of the impetuous for these habits are steeped in our society. That means that for most of us, living a ‘normal’ life means living an unhappy and unhealthy life. Is it any wonder our society has so much trouble with mental and physical health? Today I share with you a simple practice of creating a to-do list each day. But I invite you to do this to-do list in a par...
EP 401: The Importance of Resilience (And a Simple way to Develop it!)
December 11, 2020 23:06 - 31 minutes - 29.3 MBWhenever we’re feeling totally overwhelmed by our emotions, there’s a very good chance our bodies are in the stress response. And when we’re in the stress response, we’re in survival mode. This means that we are likely to perceive anything else that happens as a potential threat, which only increases the stress and makes us react - not respond - in ways that often cause consequences that result in more stress. I think you can see where this is going. And this is the strongest argument fo...
EP 400: How to Reclaim Power Over Your Emotions
December 10, 2020 20:53 - 29 minutes - 27.6 MBIn the same way that we perceive the outer world as an expression of our own nervous system - one person feels love and excitement when they see a dog that resembled a childhood best friend, while another recoils in fear from the implicit memory of a dog bite - we process our internal reality - our emotions - in a very similar way. I learned this through experience! While I am not at all proud to say this, the truth is that before I learned to regulate my emotions through the practices of ...
EP 399: How we Create our Reality
December 09, 2020 21:39 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MB‘We create our reality.’ This is something I’ve heard many times and it always seems to have a woo-woo kind of ring to it. But I think this concept transcends the spiritual woo-woo context. Just think of the simple way in which we perceive a green bush. A dog sees a grey bush. A lizard or a bee sees something else entirely. We only see a green bush because of how our nervous system translates the information it receives - in other words, it’s our perception of the world around us more ...
EP 398: Holiday Stress
December 08, 2020 21:55 - 27 minutes - 25.8 MBAh! The holidays!!! What a wonderful time of year! Right? But also, what a stressful time of year!!! It’s very easy to look at all the pressures this time of year - the cooking, the presents, the wrapping, the parties, the traffic - as ‘stressful’ activities. But not only is this an inaccurate way of looking at these things, labeling them as ‘stressful’ is actually making it all much more difficult and stress-inducing. The reason is that the stress is happening in our perception of these...
Ep 397: What REALLY Happened This Year?
December 07, 2020 21:33 - 28 minutes - 26.2 MBAt this time of year, it is very common and even natural to reflect on the past year of our lives. But this activity can become a trap that leaves us feeling inadequate and opening the door to depression, anxiety, and stress. Simply understanding the reasons for this trap is often enough to allow us to avoid the trap altogether! Here are two reasons why we might feel this downer as we reflect on the past year: First, doing this process unconsciously promotes inaccuracy and confusion. Th...
EP 396: Your Well Being Starts With Non-Judging Awareness
December 04, 2020 23:43 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MB‘If you had told me a year ago that my life could be like it is today, I would have called you a snake oil salesman and run away.’ Those are the words spoken by a client with whom I’ve had the immense pleasure of working with for the past year. And she’s right - if I were to tell anyone that I could change every aspect of their life, they would be very wise to run away. Heck, I didn’t even really make any of these changes for this or any other client. What I did was to teach her how to c...
EP 395: The Skill of Well Being (And How You Can Develop It)
December 03, 2020 23:48 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBWell being is not an accident. It’s not some kind of cosmic lottery in which some of us get to have well being and others don’t. Well being is a skill. And like any other skill - and I do mean any other skill - it is trainable. This means that with practice - and it turns out, not a whole lot of practice - you can develop physical, mental, and emotional well being. One of the easiest practices to develop well being - and the one that seems to create a permanent, physiological change in t...
EP 394: Are you curious? Or are you furious?
December 02, 2020 23:16 - 29 minutes - 27.3 MBAs we experience life and the actions and words of others, we often fall into a pattern based reactivity that leads to emotions like anger and resentment. These emotions, based in fear, will almost always trigger the stress response in our bodies, posing all kinds of mental, physical, and emotional health risks. Practices like forgiveness and compassion will help to mitigate the negative effects of stress by neutralizing it’s source, but it’s also possible to step further back and avoid th...
EP 393: What Forgiveness REALLY Means (It Might Surprise You)
December 01, 2020 23:43 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBLike many people, I grew up believing that forgiveness was a sign of weakness. I believed that forgiving someone for hurting me was tantamount to allowing them to hurt me again. Furthermore, I believed that by holding onto the anger for this person, I would somehow gain some retribution. By holding onto the anger, I would give this person their comeuppance. I know now, through very real medical and scientific evidence, that the complete opposite is true - that, in fact, by holding onto t...
EP 392: Non Identification
December 01, 2020 00:44 - 31 minutes - 29.1 MB‘I am _______’ The blank can be filled in with an emotion, a limitation to performance, a physical attribute, etc. But whatever you’re putting in that blank, the statement is simply untrue. No human being can be defined by any single aspect of existence. We are so much more than any description!!! A more accurate statement would be ‘I am experiencing _________ in my body right now.’ The trouble is that we tend to believe our thoughts and internal dialogue. So when we say ‘I am forgetf...
EP 391: Self Regulation is not just for you
November 27, 2020 23:42 - 25 minutes - 23.4 MB‘People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.’ In every situation - every moment of every day - we are resonating energy that those people around us are feeling. I know this might sound like some woo-woo fantasy concept, but it has been borne out in hard-nosed neuroscience. Self regulation allows us to resonate our authenticity, while dysregulation allows us to resonate the conflict inside us. In today’s video, I offer a very simple, yet powerful pr...
EP 390: The Power of The Pause (And How You Can Develop This Amazing Skill)
November 26, 2020 21:40 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBOne of the greatest tools we have to regulate our response to an emotional trigger is The Pause. When we pause for a few moments, we reclaim our power and shift from reaction to response. Of course, self awareness is still key to regulation, so the formal and informal meditation practices are incredibly valuable. But training ourselves to pause is a wonderful companion to awareness. Training yourself in this counterintuitive skill is as easy as setting a timer to go off a few times each ...