#105 - Stop Comparing Yourself to Others, and Start Believing in Yourself Instead

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 Nov 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 Nov 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 Nov 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 Okt 201446min

Is there hope for your relationship, or is it time to cut your losses? To have some ambivalence about a relationship can be normal, depending on what's going on. If you've been going through a rough patch (as all couples sometimes do) it can be easy to ruminate about all the aspects of your partner that you don’t like, and fantasize about what your life would be like without them. And then when you two repair the wound caused by the fight and you can let it go and start appreciating them again, and feel just as sure about things as ever. But when you have repeated negative interactions over a period of time it starts to chip away at your commitment, and your trust. If problems keep coming up it can be easy to feel hopeless that things will ever improve. You may start to wonder if what you’re experiencing in your relationship is a solvable problem, or if it’s just the way that things are. (And if it's the latter, that it's a long-term reality you may unwilling to accept). That pushes you into a space of indecision: Do you break up, or do you stay together? Not knowing whether to stay or to go is absolutely agonizing. On the one hand you can look at your relationship and see all the positive aspects of it. You look at your partner sometime and still see how attractive they are to you, or you have a few good days or weeks together it feels like things are getting better again. But then something crappy happens again and you wonder if the negative aspects of your relationship are deal breakers. It's exhausting -- for both of you. On todays episode of the love, happiness and success podcast I’ll be talking about different common relationship situations and whether they are "solvable problems" or not. I'll share with you what I see, as a marriage counselor, as being deal breakers for a couple versus "growth moments" for a couple -- plus some direction about what to do with each. Listen Now:

21 Okt 201442min

Every one likes to toss around the phrase, "Get Over It." If you've been going through the pain of a loss you may desperately want to "Get Over It." But how does one actually accomplish such a thing? I've been a therapist in Denver for a long time, and have done my share of grief counseling. I know that wishing and praying to feel better, or anesthetizing yourself with booze or busy-ness does not work -- for long, anyway. Unfortunately the only way to the other side is through the process of grieving. I also know from my years as a therapist that there are many different kinds of losses that deserve the respect of grieving. Whether you are dealing with the a death, or a more subtle, hidden loss like the of a cherished relationship, a miscarriage, a pet’s death, a move, the loss of a dream, or the end of an era in your life: You need to grieve. It’s necessary in order to heal and move on. Today on the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I'm going to teach you about the step-by-step process of grieving. Listen, and learn how to help yourself "Get Over It" in a healthy, and authentic way. The only way out is through. Listen now to learn how to "Get Over It," and move on to the next chapter of your life.

29 Sep 201436min

Could there be a "magic bullet" to creating the positive outcomes you desire? Well, kind of...    We all want the good stuff: Health, happiness, secure relationships, a meaningful career and money in the bank. The billion-dollar self help industry is evidence enough that we’re seeking solutions to make things happen. But — what if we’ve been wasting our energy chasing after "tools?" What if by focusing our efforts on only one or two core skills: Grit and Self Control, we can create the life we want?    That’s what new research is suggesting. About ten years ago, Dr. Angela Duckworth started with one simple question: Why do some kids do better than others in school? Her subsequent research blew the top off our traditional understanding about why some kids succeed while others fail. To sum up the findings, it’s not about intelligence, socio-economic status, or environment. Kids who did well academically did so because they persevered through adversity, and were able to control short term impulses in favor of long term goals.    In recent years, Dr. Duckworth and her fellow researchers have been extending her original research, and seeking to understand the relationships between Grit, Self-Control, and a host of positive outcomes. It seems that everything from stable marriages, to feeling happy to financial security can be mediated by these variables.    Kind of a big deal.   So today on the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I’m so honored to be speaking with David Meketon a former teacher and school administrator who works with Dr. Duckworth. He’s going to be talking more about the research behind Grit and Self Control, and also provide us with some practical strategies that we can use to develop these qualities in ourselves.

15 Sep 20141h 9min

Believe it or not, most relationships are actually pretty resilient -- as long as we're getting a few very basic emotional needs met. If not... look out. And what it takes to have a great relationship may surprise you: It's almost certainly not what you've been fighting about. At least, not on the surface anyway. The strength of your marriage isn't measured by whether or not you have conflict or even big noisy fights. The health of your relationship isn't determined by "communication skills" or whether or not you say please and thank you, or use a pleasant "tone." It doesn't matter how similar you are, whether you want the same things out of life, have sex often enough, or have an equitable household chore plan worked out. The health, strength and sustainability depend on whether or not you are making The 5 Biggest Relationship Mistakes: 1) Empathic Failure 2) Not asking for authentic needs to be met in a way that your partner can hear them 3) Not being responsive 4) Being self-focused 5) Not getting help if any of the above are missing On today's episode of the Love, Happiness and Success Podcast I'll walk you through each of these "Big 5" relationship mistakes and give you some real world examples of how to do things differently. If you can shift your behaviors in these five areas, you'll be well on your way to repairing your love and bringing peace back to your home.

8 Sep 201443min