Kate's Nuggets

Rest is a crucial part of life. Especially when we are stressed and things are busy. In this episode, Kate discusses rest as a radical act and rest as the foundation of productivity.50% of Americans don’t take the vacation days they earn. 31 million earned vacation days are left unused by Canadians every year. What do we have against rest?Rest is crucial for regulating our nervous systems for optimism and joy, for memory formation, and for physical health.This episode is a call to nap, dawdle, vacate, and play for your health and happiness. 

Your Inner Sage is capable of handling every situation you might encounter. All you have to do is learn how to put it in charge. In this episode, Kate helps you get to know this very powerful part of your consciousness. We all have subpersonalities, parts of our personality that function independently. If you have ever had the experience where you felt like one part of you wanted to do something and another part of you wanted to do something entirely different, you have experienced these subpersonalities.  Each subpersonality is created by a pattern of neurons that fire together. When one pathway is activated, you experience one set of thoughts and behaviours. And when another pathway is activated, you experience things differently. Developing a mature personality is the process of integrating these subpersonalities so they are working together. Your Inner Sage is the part of you that can see all of the subpersonalities with calm, clear wisdom and choose how to integrate them in service of what matters most to you. 

Many of our self-sabotaging behaviors are overactive responses to fear. In this episode, Kate describes the anatomy of fear and discusses how understanding that anatomy can help us learn more appropriate fear responses.When our threat response system is engaged, we can’t think straight. We act reactively and without thought. If our threat response system is badly calibrated, we behave badly. Many of our reactive behaviors have negative unintended consequences.In order to have more control over the impact we have in the world, we need to learn how to respond more skillfully in situations that scare us.In this episode, Kate discusses the connections between fear, strong, emotions, learning and memory. She talks about how to use what we know about the anatomy of threat responses to help us have more control over how we react to the things that happen to us.

We all belong exactly where we are, but we don’t always feel like we belong. In this episode, Kate describes a powerful way of increasing our felt sense of belonging.If we don’t feel like we belong, we struggle.It doesn’t matter whether we cognitively understand that we are a necessary part of all that is or how we fit in the systems that rely on us. If we don’t feel it, it isn’t real to us in a crucial way.This is even more true for those of us who are isolated from others for some reason. In this episode, Kate focuses on the sense of belonging to the Largest Possible Community. This sense is what gives us a sense of belonging when we don’t feel like we belong with the people close to us. 

One powerful way to overcome the disruptive effects of fear is through commitment. In this episode, Kate discusses some ways to think about and work with commitment.Have you ever been so committed to something that no set-back was enough to stop you from trying? Heard stories of heroic rescues of children by their parents in the face of enormous dangers? Commitment is a powerful motivator. A strong enough commitment to something becomes the source of our boundaries, motivation, and creative problem solving. How should we choose what to commit to? How can we increase our sense of commitment when our motivation is flagging? And when should we choose to quit? 

Emotions are messages from our non-cognitive intelligence about the state of our world and what actions we might want to take. We need to take them seriously, but we don’t want to be ruled by them.When we are infants, our behaviours are instinctive reactions to emotions. We do not have any information about how the world works so there is no point in slowing down to think about what is going on. As we mature, we learn how to relate to our emotions in a more conscious and self-directed way.In this episode, Kate discusses how to become self-directed in our emotional intelligence learning and why we should.

When life feels tough, it is more important than ever to have a practice of noticing the good that exists simultaneously.In every moment, there are good and bad things happening in the world. People naturally notice bad things more than good things. This can easily lead to a pessimistic outlook. Actively paying attention to the good things acts as a counterbalance. In this episode, Kate looks at why it is important to practice noticing the good stuff and offers some tools for finding optimism without denying tough realities.

There are so many self-care tools to choose from. How do you decide how to spend your time? If you understand which neurotransmitter is involved in the mood or experience you are trying to shift, it is easier to decide.Different neurotransmitters mediate different emotional and behavioral subsystems. And different interventions affect different neurotransmitters. So when you are planning an intervention or a habit change, knowing which system is involved can help you decide what will have the greatest positive impact in your life.  In this episode, Kate shares some information about which tools affect which systems.

It is one thing to be mindful and compassionate when things are calm, but how do we stay open and loving when the world is exploding around us? In this episode, Kate provides some ideas for practicing mindfulness in action.Most of us have heard by now that mindfulness creates calm and allows us to stay non-reactive, but few of us have time to sit and meditate. In fact, the people who benefit from mindfulness the most typically have the hardest time sitting still.  Kate’s personal experience with 30 years of mindfulness in action practice helped her manage attention and focus issues that would probably get her an ADHD diagnosis if she were a kid now. Out of necessity, she discovered tools and techniques increasing mindfulness without adding anything more to your to do list, no matter how scattered your attention is.  In this episode, Kate shares some tools for increasing our capacity to stay awake, aware, present, and non-reactive during the ups and downs of daily life.Resources mentioned in the episode:The Zen Path Through Depression by Philip MartinPositive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine Join the Kate's Nuggets community for opportunities to ask Kate questions and extra materials associated with topics covered in the podcast.

One of the easiest ways to improve relationships is to celebrate each other’s joy whether we understand it or not. Sympathetic joy is the joy we feel when others' experience joy. We delight that they are delighted. We celebrate on their behalf. When we are in the habit of celebrating other people’s successes and good fortune on their behalf, we increase our own experience of joy and reduce jealousy. But more than that, celebrating another’s joy when you don’t understand it is a wonderful way of letting them see how much you care about them. In this episode, Kate shares some tools for developing the habits of sympathetic joy and reducing jealousy.