Joyful Living

April is turning into SUCH a powerful month of episodes of the Joyful Living Podcast! All of this month’s episodes, starting with Episode 39, have been building on each other to give you some powerful strategies and insights to support creating a life you truly LOVE. In last week’s episode, we discussed how to take our BIG + BEAUTIFUL plans/schedules and harmonize them with creating in flow, rather than force. Taking these principles even deeper, today’s episode of Joyful Living dives into the art of receiving, as well as getting totally authentic about resisting our temptation for “done-ness” or “arrival” mentality (which is really another form of perfectionism).

After the last episode of the Joyful Living Podcast, you are most likely feeling so excited about implementing your plans and schedule to create a life you love! But with all plans, LIFE HAPPENS. Sometimes that can feel REALLY discouraging and we can get derailed from creating what we desire as a result. In today's episode we're going to dive in to how to work with the plans and schedules while also shifting into creating in greater flow.

Are you ready for some POWERFUL clarity to support you creating and LIVING a life you love? I'm so excited to share this special episode of the Joyful Living Podcast with you today! Over the past 6+ years I've used a powerful 4-Step path to navigate creating the success and joy I now enjoy. Step by step, week by week, this process has kept me on track with my goals and dreams. Today I am sharing my secret weapon with you. Using this process is what makes some people look at me and scratch their head wondering, "how does she get ALL that done?"

So many powerful insights in this special episode of the Joyful Living Podcast! Author, Misti Stevenson, joins us for an in-depth discussion on finding joy, even in the midst of anxiety, depression and family struggles.

If you want to experience greater success in life, time to put your joy as a priority NOW. It can be so easy to put off joy for "someday" or "when I lose those pounds/make all that money/etc." that we are missing one of the greatest secrets to creating what we desire: LIVING IN JOY NOW. Special guest Tiffany Peterson joins us for a powerful conversation about how to claim and receive more joy now. There are SO many golden nuggets in this episode of Joyful Living!

Are you ready to feel joy even more deeply? Are you ready to experience it more frequently in your life? Are you simply ready to feel more alive? This powerful episode of the Joyful Living Podcast offers some very simple, yet transformational insights and practices on how to experience joy more deeply than ever before.

Most of us have heard the quote most often attributed to Steve Jobs that says: "the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do" (full quote in this awesome video from Apple). But today it's time to look deeper. How many of us are really avoiding stepping fully into our genius, following our hearts, and living our dreams because... well.. it might be/seem/look/feel/etc. kind of CRAZY to everyone around us? Having done this off and on for years, I've now deepened my commitment to forever raise the white flag of peace: I will not fight my heart anymore.

It's never what we're doing that makes a meaningful life; it's how/why we do it that matters. All of us go through the motions of the same basic things in our lives: we eat, sleep, work, receive new life and experience loss/death. But the major difference in how we experience these things is what's going on within. Our inner myth/story guides whether or not we experience our lives positively or negatively. Are we a victim of our life's circumstance or are we the hero or our life story?

I’m deeply honored and thrilled to share this special episode of the Joyful Living Podcast with you. My special guest, Jeff Olsen, is an incredible friend of mine whom I am inspired by daily. Jeff’s remarkable story of losing his wife and baby son tragically in a car accident in 1997 and the life-transforming experiences and growth that have come from this are sure to inspire and strengthen you as you listen. The most powerful insights he shares are about courageously choosing joy every single day, as well as honoring and sharing our stories.

We frequently discuss all the yummy and beautiful emotions we typically think of as related to joy. As a culture we crave the highs and fear the lows. But, what if the highs and lows are both sides of the same coin? Today on Joyful Living we're flipping the coin to look at what to do when those big, nasty emotions surface. Our typical response can be to judge ourselves/others, fear the emotion (and then bury it), or distract ourselves from it (can also look like putting on a happy face and moving on). The invitation into greater joy requires us to experience and grow from both the highs AND the lows (and this doesn't necessarily mean learning what not to do from the lows).

At a time in my life last fall when I was feeling bright with hope for my future, I was also feeling incredibly overwhelmed about my life at home. I worried about how our family could reach some of our goals when our home life felt so draining and exhausting. Honestly, it often felt like chaos. At this moment of feeling unsure of where to turn to bring things into greater order at our home, Nicholeen Peck's book Parenting: A House United came into my life, with the promise of it being able to bring greater order and peace to my home.

Within all of us is an itch that can't seem to be itched, a hunger that can't seem to be satisfied. With the intense itch and insatiable hunger subconsciously driving us forward, it can be only natural to grasp at things we think will satisfy, only to be disappointed (and sometimes left more empty than before). Where does this come from? Our souls. Soul hunger can be easy to misidentify and misunderstand. However, as we courageously dare to get more clear on the "why?" behind what we are pursuing, it opens a candid, life-transforming conversation with our souls. We can then know more clearly what will finally ease the itch and resolve the hunger.

So many of us are desiring to make shifts in our lives this year, which can make the beginning of the year intimidating, as well as exhausting. You're fully involved in the dance between where you have been and where you want to be. Your desires are big + inspiring, but it can feel like a chasm is dividing you from now to there. In this special episode of the Joyful Living Podcast we dive deep into the importance of living this year more in your essence. Listen as we harness the power of the Cinderella story, including it's relevant archetypes, and other powerful metaphors that speak to and inspire the soul.

Thinking about (or dreading) New Year's Resolutions? Think again. Rather than making lists of what to do or not do in this new year, you can do something MUCH more powerful! Over 4 years ago Kelly King Anderson invited me to dive in to the practice of choosing an intention word for the year. Ever since, my years have been drastically different. Kelly King Anderson joins us on this special New Year's episode of the Joyful Living Podcast to share her insights on this truly powerful practice.

How deeply do you trust your mother's intuition? The path of living joyfully for mothers requires us to get more in touch and live in flow with our intuition. Following our hearts requires great courage, especially when we are being led to do something that seems impossible or that we have heavy judgments about. In today's episode of the Joyful Living Podcast, Jenny Bradshaw joins me to discuss what it actually looks like to develop great confidence in following your intuition with your children and blazing your own trail, especially if homeschooling is calling to you. Listen in to experience deeper confidence in the greatness of living in more alignment with your intuition and your heart, regardless of if this path leads you to homeschooling your children (or if it leads you for only a short season).

With the new year dawning and holiday parties and goodies abounding, concerns about our body weight can arise for all of us women. It's easy to feel down on ourselves about how tight our pants might be getting or to look at the looming year ahead and dread the slimming down process that we know she should be doing, but also may not really want to do. Calli Lewis joins us on this special episode of the Joyful Living Podcast to talk about what's really going on inside of us with the body weight struggle. She points us to looking toward our beliefs for information about why the weight continues to cling and why we can't seem to keep it off (even when we work really, really hard to slim down).

“Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow. The caterpillar will become a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you're not. You will no longer have to prove you're good enough. When you embrace your shadow you will no longer have to live in fear. Find the gifts of your shadow and you will finally revel in all the glory of your true self. Then you will have the freedom to create the life you have always desired.” - Debra Ford Jaque Hanson joins us for this powerful episode of the Joyful Living Podcast to discuss the joy of working with our shadows. We also talked about how messy and beautiful the process of our growth and self-awareness can be. Jaque shared some inspiring insights, inviting us to lean more into Trust and grow into the Truth of our unique and individual brilliance. In Jaque's experience and perspective, the way to our joy is by learning to work with our shadow.

Over the years it’s been inspiring to witness the evolution and blossoming of the beautiful, talented Mindy Gledhill, Indie singer and songwriter. Her courage and audacity to truly sing the song of her heart to the world with unabashed abandon over all these years has inspired me, as well as countless others. In today’s episode […]

We talk a lot about living more joyfully as adults on the Joyful Living Podcast, but what about helping our children lean into joy also? One of the major aspects that drew me into loving Waldorf Education was how it creates the perfect environment for children to lean into the joy of childhood and the joy of learning. Regardless of whether you love this educational philosophy, have never heard of it, plan on using it (or not), this episode is packed with so many powerful principles and proven strategies to support creating more joy in your home and family.

It has been a crazy “letting go” journey over the past month or so, including a lot of craziness that came up to this moment of finally being able to release this episode of the Joyful Living Podcast. The fascinating thing has been that I’ve heard many people in my life experiencing a lot of “letting […]