#234 - How to Improve Emotional Intelligence

Life, Love, and Comedy, With Denver's Empty Girlfriend On the latest episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I had the most delightful time talking with Denver comedians Hayley Driscoll and Christie Bucle about their take on life, love, and how they keep things real with their podcast Empty Girlfriend.  Listen now and get fresh insights on how to use humor to take your power back in challenging situations, how to use your voice to shine a light on subjects that might otherwise stay hidden in darkness, and how to use transparency and authenticity to create connection with others.

13 Tammi 201556min

Is your marriage still recovering from the holidays? Have your conflicts felt especially nasty lately? Are you feeling particularly anxious or grim about the state of your marriage right now? If so you are not alone. Right now marriage counselors everywhere are being flooded by couples in crisis. Why is there such a big uptick in who reach out for marriage counseling after the holidays? 1) We think of the holidays as being happy times for a family, but in truth they can put an enormous strain on a relationship. There are just SO many things to fight about! 2) Negative memory priming. 3) New Year's Resolutions. "I'm not living like this for one more year." 4) January is the most common month for people to file for divorce. On this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success podcast I'm talking about why this time of year is so darn hard for couples, and what you can do to put your marriage back together again and make 2015 a year of Love, Happiness and Success for both of you. . --- Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

5 Tammi 201535min

Happy New Year! This is a wonderful, introspective time and a beautful opportunity for reflecting on what you've learned from the last year. Just like you clean your house and clear out old stuff at the end of the year in order to have a fresh start, now is a great time for doing a little mental and emotional house-cleaning too.  So today on the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I'm sharing a strategy that I teach my private Life Coaching clients about how to uncover the things that they learned from this past year. This simple exercise will help you gain awareness on what it is that you need to say goodbye to, in order to say hello to the Love, Happiness and Success you're resolving for in 2015.  Listen now.

29 Joulu 201423min

Mindfulness: The ability to stay grounded in the current moment, and simply be present with whatever is happening.  So simple, yet so hard. What's easy? Getting swept away by distractions, thoughts, feelings, daydreams, and worries about things that might happen.  When we live in our heads, which most of us do most of the time, we're not really here. And that's too bad, because the world is a beautiful place. Our ambient stress and future-focus is even more pronounced in the weeks leading up to the holiday season, so I thought that this would be a good time to revisit some simple mindfulness skills that will help you be able to slow down, breathe, and enjoy this special time of year. My guest on the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast today is Dr. Peggy Sheehan. She's a Denver-based physician who teaches John Kabat Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program through Kaiser Permanente, as well as a spiritual director of the Zen Center of Denver. She knows a lot about mindfulness: The benefits of the practice, and everyday practices that will help you to slow down, and be more peaceful and present with your life. Today, she's sharing her wisdom with you.

8 Joulu 201451min

The holidays are upon us! Time for turkey, presents, and LOTS of time with your family. The counseling and coaching sessions I'm having with my Denver clients recently have focused on how to handle "family time."  The truth is that everyone wants to have a happy holiday with their family. It's also true that many people look forward to time with their parents with a mixture of excitement... and apprehension. Particularly during the holidays, with all the forced together-time, it's easy for tensions to flare and wreck a nice day pretty fast. So today I'm re-issuing the "How to Deal With Difficult Parents" edition of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast, in order to remind you of the mindset to cultivate in order to genuinely appreciate your parents for who they are, and have a good time together. I hope these ideas help you have a happy holiday. And Happy Thanksgiving! xo, Lisa ====================================================== Do your parents make you crazy? You're not alone! Even as adults, our parents can have a unique ability to trigger familiar old frustrations, hurts and resentments. Or maybe they're just annoying. Maybe, as in my own case, you're still a little upset with your mother for not being Hillary Clinton. On this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I talk about how to deal with your parents, as an adult. Listen, and learn why you get so triggered by your parents, and the steps to create a healthy, peaceful and reality-based relationship with the parents you have. We'll talk about the stages that we all move through on the path of "individuation" including disillusionment, distance, healing / growing, and reclaiming. You'll learn how to shift from being a child in relation to your parents, to an adult. Finally, you'll learn how to appreciate your parents for who they are, forgive past mistakes, set healthy boundaries, and start actually enjoying your relationship with them. Listen now....

24 Marras 201457min

"Follow your feelings" is the punchline of countless self-help books, and the focus of many therapy sessions. We can spend years in therapy or counseling learning how to respect and obey our emotional guidance system, which will often lead you in the right direction. But the truth is that not all feelings are the same. Sometimes, listening to your emotions will absolutely wreck your life. How do you tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy feelings? Healthy emotions are like your sense of smell. They provide you with information about the world, about yourselves, and other peoeple. Your feelings help you make decisions, and know when to move closer to something (or protect yourself).  At the same time, we're all vulnerable to unhealthy feelings: Feelings that are rooted in depression, anxiety, low self esteem, trauma or impulsivity. And if we listen to those feelings we will almost invariably experience negative consequences.  But the big problem is that our feelings always feel true, no matter if they are "healthy" or "unhealthy." It's therefore very difficult to differentiate between feelings that we should respect and obey, or feelings that we should over-ride.  On today's episode of The Love, Happiness and Success Podcast we're talking all about feelings - and how you can determine which ones to listen to and which ones to let go of.

11 Marras 201439min

It is 1:19am. You have to be up and at ‘em at 5:30am. I don’t have to remind you of this. I’m sure you are very, very well aware that you are awake, as the minutes drip by.  As a matter of fact, I’m sure it’s all you can think about. And this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast is for you, my dear insomniac. Sleep. It’s so important. It is quite literally a foundational building block for a healthy and happy life. And yet when we need it most is when it is most rebellious and oppositional. When we're lying awake at night we're like anxious parents of teenagers waiting up in a dark living room, thinking "Where the hell is Sleep? It needs to get it's butt home so we can both get some rest." I don’t know exactly where your Sleep has run off to. It might be careening around with a carload friends playing mailbox baseball in the middle of the night, or hanging out in someone’s smokey rec room listening to ancient Black Sabbath records in the dark, but figuring out where it’s gone is not why we’re here today. What we're here to talk about how to create the ideal conditions in both your body and mind to make it want to come back home again. And turn out the lights. And carry you both into dreamland. Listen now, to this episode of The Love, Happiness and Success Podcast -- and get some rest.

3 Marras 201435min

Can you have a passionate marriage? Or is it the eventual fate of all couples to be as bored and put off by each other as they are attached? Many couples arrive in marriage counseling really worried that the fact they’re feeling “meh” about each other is a sign that something is very wrong in their relationship. They think that they’ve "Fallen Out of Love," and that this is a reason to end their relationship. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth: This moment is when real growth, passion and intimacy can begin.   And my purpose for making this particular podcast today is to help you understand what’s going on in the "falling out of love" phenomena.  I'll also give you some strategies about how to bring the sparkle back that may surprise you. (I can promise you that the punchline of this podcast is not going to be to have a date night and buy some lingerie.) We go deeper than that on the love, happiness and success podcast. I’m going to talk to you about what you need to do, and really, who you need to become, in order to wantto have a date night and go buy some lingerie. Listen now, to "How To Rekindle The Passion" on this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast.

27 Loka 201446min