Every Branch Podcast

We don't think of ourselves as people who hold grudges, but we definitely have our wounds. And most of them have been caused by other people. This week, Brooke and I share personal areas where we need to work on forgiveness. We also explore an interesting Hawaiian practice called ho'oponopono that is intended to create freedom not only for yourself, but for those around you.

If you’re the kind of person to make New Year’s resolutions, they probably involved some form of consistency. And if that’s the case, you might be struggling about now. Consistency is a challenge. In this episode, we talk about our own struggles and victories with developing consistency in our lives, and give you a (hopefully doable) challenge to carry you through the rest of the year.

Happy 2016! We’re so glad to be back. With the new year, we’ve been thinking about the deeply-held beliefs that hold us back in our lives. If one of your goals this year is to change false beliefs and old patterns, today’s episode should be especially helpful as Brooke shares a daily practice that has changed everything for her.

Today is our last podcast episode of 2015! It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this since July. We are so grateful for your support and encouragement along the way, and we have grand plans for all of us in 2016. We’re talking today about becoming more aware of our subconscious programming, and how we’re learning to “catch ourselves in the act” of repeating old patterns that don’t serve us anymore. We hope you get as much out of it as we did.

This week’s podcast almost didn’t happen. Sarah was jet-lagged, Brooke was sick and emotionally depleted, and we were running behind on our recording schedule. But we did it anyway, knowing that we need conversation and connection the most when we feel like it the least. We gave ourselves the caveat that we wouldn’t release it if it ended up being a cry-fest. Thankfully, it was a good thing for both of us. In this episode, we talk about mothering ourselves, and what that looks like on a daily basis. We hope it encourages you this week.

This week, we’ve been thinking a lot about where we get our self-worth. It’s been a common theme for us this year, trying to find our importance in things that last. In this episode, we discuss the subconscious ways we seek acceptance, the two goals we all have in common, and how focusing on helping others can be a practice of self-acceptance.

Sometimes it's hard to get motivated. Our energy ebbs and flows and often doesn't line up with our calendars. In today's episode, we're talking about our personal struggles, as well as the things we're doing to overcome our resistance to work. We hope it's helpful for you!

Today’s episode is ironic considering the terrorist attacks on Paris last night. We can’t imagine the horror of that situation, and our hearts are with everyone involved. Still, perhaps it is appropriate to reflect on these hearts of ours today. Does it make sense to be sad or anxious when other people have it far worse than we do? How do changes in our circumstances affect our happiness over the long-term? We hope our conversation is illuminating for all of us.

This week, we've been thinking about creativity; specifically, creating for ourselves vs. creating as part of our livelihood. Is one "better" than the other? What keeps us from creating for ourselves on a regular basis? What can we do to get past our fears and create for the pure love of it? We discover a few ideas in today's episode.

This week, Sarah becomes restless in a few of her work endeavors and asks the question, "How can we turn our routine tasks into art?" We look to monks, curiosity, and birthday candles for clues.

This episode comes about ironically. I forgot about it and ended up being an hour late to our recording session. Then another recorded episode ended up failing on Brooke’s computer. Mistakes are fun. Except they aren’t really. We hate making mistakes. Depending on their severity on the Mistake Richter Scale, they often bring with them a pit-in-the-stomach feeling of impending doom. Especially if those mistakes involve letting down another person. Both fortunately and unfortunately, we’re human. We keep making mistakes all the time. How do we make peace with it? In today’s episode, we share at least 5 things we’re learning about creative mistake-making. We hope it helps you turn even mammoth mistakes into possibility.

I (Sarah) went to a conference this week where I learned my new favorite term – "beyond category" thank you Adam and Lynn for sharing this. The late composer Duke Ellington used it as his highest form of praise. He applied it to a piece of music or a person who was so good they couldn't be readily captured in language or metaphor. Categories can be useful, but they are arbitrary. We made them up, and could just as easily have made up different ones. This is especially interesting when we apply this thinking to the categories of "work" and "play". In today's conversation, we explore how we can change our mental categories to get more out of our entire lives. We hope you enjoy, and that it inspires you to live a life that is beyond category.

Friendship is something both of us struggle with. Maybe it’s because we’re introverted; maybe it’s because we’re so focused on being productive that relationships get the short end of the stick. Whatever it is, we’ve both been really aware of it lately. In today’s episode, we gave ourselves an assignment: to make a list of people we really love being around and why, and to think about ways we can increase our enjoyment of each other. We discovered some interesting things about where friendship is to be found, and we hope it inspires you, too.

Unless I'm joking around, I hate to admit when I'm jealous. It makes me feel small, and on top of that, like I'm a terrible person. If you've been struggling with jealousy lately (or ever), today's episode will make you feel a little less alone. We talk about what makes us jealous, the purpose of jealousy (yes, there is a purpose!), and how we deal with it. Listen and enjoy. For show notes, visit http://everybranch.is.

In this week's podcast conversation, we discovered that Brooke and I have yet another trait in common – we have a habit of turning everything we love into a business. Although this has resulted in an abundance of entrepreneurial experience, it has had another side effect: we are now protective of our avenues of pure creativity and enjoyment. Even though we do what we love for others (and earn our living from it), we still need creative outlets that are just for us. How do we protect our creative joy, both within our work and outside of it? It's not easy to do, but we've discovered a few new things to try in today's episode.

Some of us are naturally tuned to what’s going on in the lives of the people around us. I (Sarah) have a friend who remembers every small thing about my life and always asks me about it. “How did that conversation go? How are you feeling about the decision you made last week? How is your book going?” This friend knows me. She may be in a totally different place in her life, with different experiences, but I feel loved and understood when I’m with her. This week, we gave ourselves an assignment: to observe another person (for us it was our kids) and to see what we noticed about their interests. What are they reading, doing, exploring? What do they care about? And how can we use what we learn to developer closer, richer relationships with the people we love? So what does this have to do with self-expression? Surprisingly, quite a lot. You’ll have to listen to hear why, but one thing is clear…expressing our unique selves is a very personal, often unconscious act. And as we get older, it is also an extremely cour

Did you miss us? We've missed you! While we were gone, we made a lot of improvements to http://www.everybranch.is, and we've been working hard on a new (free) course for everyone called The Thriving Life: A New Path to Life Balance. In this episode, we talk about what we've been making during our absence and how it's affected our lives, and what we hope it can do for yours. If you're impatient to sign up for the course (did we mention that it's free?), you can register at http://everybranch.is/the-thriving-life. It's good to be back!

Today is our final episode of Season 1. We'll be back on September 4th! In this episode, we talk about a surprising cure for worry and anxiety. It’s easy, free, and leaves you feeling much better off than the tension that fear and overwhelm bring. It’s called gratitude. This week, both Sarah and I share ways that we implement gratitude as a daily practice, even during difficult life trials that might not go away for awhile. It’s another one of our favorite ways to change the way we think—which really…changes everything. For full show notes, please visit http://everybranch.is

Today’s podcast is a continuation of last weeks discussion involving a little Q&A from our community. We also talk about how to have the best of both worlds…living in the present moment AND sharing your life online. We’ll talk about the strategy that makes it possible to do both. To start off though, Sarah has a little confession. If you’ve tried any self imposed rules to help keep yourself in check with addictive habits, this part is just for you.

Since we are only a week or two away from releasing Digital Detox, our first online course, we thought it would be fun to involve our community in the podcast discussion for the next two weeks. We asked our friends on Facebook to share questions about their love/hate relationship with technology and media. In response, Sarah shares her thoughts about how the internet is like fire, and why we need boundaries. We also talk about some of our own personal rules that help us balance the quantity and quality of our media consumption. Finally, we discuss using media as an escape, sharing hacks on what to do instead of defaulting to your screen when you get tired.