Category: Self-Compassion

Mara Glatzel: What Do You Need?

We all have needs. Yet why is it so difficult to honor them? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Mara Glatzel about her book, Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty, and how we might begin to answer the profound question: What happens when we take radical responsibility for our needs? 

Tune in for an empowering and indeed much-needed conversation about “giving ourselves permission to take up space in the center of our lives,” exploring: building a working vocabulary around needs and feelings, the disempowering stories we carry about what it means to have needs, the daily practice of identifying your needs, the harmful habit of consistently putting your needs aside, asking for the fullness of what you want, developing a strong self-partnership, shifting from people-pleasing to setting boundaries, Mara’s practice of “staying low and open and receptive,” self-care and “staying in the game,” making commitments that matter, knowing your job and their job when it comes to conversations about needs, the fallacy that one person alone can meet another’s vast and myriad needs, accessing your body’s intelligence, working in your inner landscape, sovereignty amid relationship and interdependency, the challenge of receiving everything you’re asking for, and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Rachel Macy Stafford: The Soul Shift to What Really Ma...

In her new book, Soul Shift, Rachel Macy Stafford offers a practical approach to navigating a culture of distraction and depletion to find your way back to what delights your heart, makes you feel alive, and brings you peace. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Rachel about the attitude and actions involved in making a “soul shift” and learning to embrace what we know matters most to us. 

Give a listen to a conversation that will help you radically reprioritize your to-do list with urgency and passion, as Tami and Rachel discuss recognizing the angels in your life; trusting your heart; the importance of getting quiet on a daily basis; shifting from control to surrender; living with “hands free and open”; the struggle of constantly proving your worth; shifting from a critical observer to a joyful participant in your life; reaching big goals through small steps; the gift of self-compassion; the empowering phrase “only love today”; the primary Soul Shift practices, including presence, finding true self-worth, letting go, authenticity, and self-forgiveness; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Paulina Porizkova: Aging Beautifully

We’re all beautiful in different ways. To see this beauty in everyone around you only takes a little kindness and patience. This is just one of the many deep insights you’ll hear in this podcast with author and former supermodel Paulina Porizkova. Here, Tami Simon speaks with Paulina about her book No Filter, and how “the world is so full of beauty on every level if you stop to look for it.” 

Give a listen as Tami and Paulina talk about the trouble with the word “still”; our cultural bias about youth and beauty; opposing the marketing forces deciding the standards of beauty; self-acceptance and confidence that comes from within; Paulina’s hashtag, “#BetweenJLoAndBettyWhite”; a new vision for the modeling industry; internal beauty; vulnerability and connection; the freedom of acceptance; starting from zero and rebuilding your life with the wisdom of age; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Sará King: Liberatory Technology from the Future

We live in an age of astounding technological wonders. Yet there is great fear and uncertainty around where it’s taking us all. The multitalented Dr. Sará King is a neuroscientist, education philosopher, public speaker, and codirector of Mobius, a nonprofit committed to the creation of “liberatory technology” as a countercurrent to the harm perpetuated by much of our modern technology. 

In this thought-provoking podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. King about her life and work, covering a variety of intriguing topics including the critical skill of self-compassion; intergenerational trauma and the relationship between the personal and the collective; how to shift to a freeing perspective on our suffering; the pain inflicted through the practice of othering; empowerment, awe, and curiosity; gratitude for our ancestors whose dreams become our reality; the metaphoric medicine bowl visualization; metta (or lovingkindness) practice; weaving together the multiplicity of selves within us; technology that contributes to our sense of interdependence and well-being; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

The End of All-or-Nothing, Emergency Self-Care

What message are you giving to yourself when you wait until you’re in crisis before you begin caring for yourself? I used to be deeply entrenched in this pattern. I’d care for myself just enough so that I could be productive again and then get back to work until my next care emergency. I’d crash from striving and producing without a thought to my needs and then stop just long enough to treat myself just kindly enough to nurse myself back to health so that I could resume my breakneck speed.

Those days were exhilarating because even in my burnout I felt so purposeful, high on how good I was at pushing my needs aside to tackle whatever needed tackling. Exceptionally good in a crisis, I felt born for running myself into the ground and then picking up the pieces just enough to get back to work. Even as this pattern started to break down for me, I could feel my ego attachment to it. I was good at getting things done. I was good at helping others. I was good at putting everyone else’s needs ahead of my own. I was good. I was good. I was good.

The tricky thing about this pattern is that needs will get met one way or another. They don’t just vanish or disappear when you ignore them. They become rowdier and rowdier, nipping at your heels as you try to outrun them. Your body is infinitely wise and makes more noise as your ache for care compounds itself. When you ignore your needs long enough, you will be forced to prioritize yourself by circumstance, illness, or burnout, bringing you abruptly to the crisis point of having to slow down.

But even in the face of that, attending to the need for sustenance can sometimes still feel impossible if you are exhausted from a lifetime of holding it all together. While the need for sustenance might seem to come before rest, [in my book Needy] I ordered these chapters deliberately [“Rest” coming before “Sustenance”] because having the energy to start asking big questions about what you need requires energy too. You’re crumbling beneath the weight of your conditioned expectations for yourself and others, and you judge yourself for not being about to do it all without a thought for the energetic capacity necessary to prioritize joy, pleasure, or satiety.

You might think, Well if it’s right, it should feel good or it should be easy. But tending to your needs can be almost boring, and having the capacity to investigate the larger picture of what you are hungry for requires energy. It requires stamina and self-awareness to develop a healthy relationship with yourself after being in a dysfunctional relationship—one that’s chaotic, intense, familiar, thrilling, and compelling even when you know there is no way it will all work out in the long run. After a dramatic relationship like that, a relationship in which you are respectful of each other, loyal, trustworthy, and committed to each other can feel boring—but that kind of steadfast love heals and rebuilds a steady foundation of trust. The same is true for your relationship with yourself.

Self-love so often isn’t a flash-in-the-pan,
Instagram-worthy, wait-until-the-moment
is-perfect-and-the-stars-align kind of love.

It’s about showing up for yourself each and every day and doing what needs to be done. Maybe that’s resting. Maybe that’s calling your lawyer. Maybe that’s dealing with the window that is leaking and the moldy floorboards. Taking care of yourself is showing up for your relationship with yourself each day, asking what needs to be done and doing that to the best of your abilities.

It can be mundane, but as you begin making these shifts for your own sustenance, you might find yourself softening into a rhythm and routine of caring for yourself this way. 

There is a deliciousness in knowing you will be there when you need yourself. There is a sense of safety in the self-trust you build each time you choose not to abandon yourself. This work can be messy but also joyful, silly, sexy, creative, and playful. You might find yourself enjoying the celebration of infusing pleasure and sovereignty where there was none before.

And with time, you might realize that the purpose of your life is not to be good, productive, or approved by others. The purpose of your life is for YOU to live it. For you to take up space in your own thoughts and actions. For you to tend to your needs, devoting yourself to your own wholeness each and every day. For you to contribute to the world in the way that only you can. For you to love and be loved. For you to play. For your utter enjoyment and wholehearted pleasure. The purpose of your life is not to be nice and polite. It is for living—messily, humanly, in whatever way you feel is good and right for you.

Excerpted from Needy: How to Advocate for Your Needs and Claim Your Sovereignty by Mara Glatzel.

Mara Glatzel, MSW, (she/her) is an intuitive coach, writer, and podcast host. She is a needy human who helps other needy humans stop abandoning themselves and start reclaiming their humanity through embracing their needs and honoring their natural energy cycles. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it, and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you. Find out more at maraglatzel.com.

Valerie Gangas: In Deep Shift

When our lives are unexpectedly overturned, how do we regain our footing and make something new and better of ourselves? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with author Valerie Gangas about her book, In Deep Shift: Riding the Waves of Change to Find Peace, Fulfillment, and Freedom, an empowering guide to help us navigate those times when life turns upside down and inside out. Give a listen as they talk about spontaneous awakenings and spiritual “emergencies,” the connection between deep despair and deep shifts, spiritual sensitivity and how to stay grounded, the power of complete surrender, the practice of transcendental meditation, “opposite land” and the discovery that nothing is at is seems, out-of-body experiences versus embodied presence, cultivating your intuition, manifestation and listening for that which wants to be created through you, removing the distractions on the path to living your purpose, and more.

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