listen to this podcast!

Lately I've been listening to this podcast and I find myself wanting to share every single episode over every social media platform I'm part of because they're just that good. So rather than doing that, I just decided I'd give kind of an overview on here.

The podcast is called The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo. As the title suggests, Brooke Castillo is a life coach.

I had heard the term "life coach" before, but I never really knew what that entailed. From what I've gathered from the podcast, life coaching is basically about teaching you to manage your thoughts -- rather than letting them manage you -- to create the life you want to have.

Brooke teaches that a lot of people believe that their circumstances create their results, and how that's actually not true. Instead, it's our thoughts and feelings about our circumstances that create results.

To illustrate, here's an example. Say your mom gets cancer. This makes you angry, so you start snapping at everyone you encounter. The first type of person (believer that circumstances create results) would blame their snapping on the cancer. But here's what really happened:

• Circumstance: Mom got cancer.
• Thought: This is not fair.
• Feeling: Anger.
• Action: Snapping at people.

The cancer didn't make you snap at people -- your thoughts and feelings about the cancer caused that. And here's the thing. Once you break it down and realize that, you can choose whether you want to continue with those thoughts/feelings/actions or whether you want to change your thoughts. It's just about being aware and taking control rather than feeling like every bad (or good!) thing that happens to you determines your happiness. You are in control of your happiness, and you can choose it at any time, regardless of your circumstances.

Now that's not to say that you DO choose happiness at any time, just that you can. Brooke talks a lot about how the human experience means feeling an array of emotions -- both positive and negative. And she's constantly saying that we'll feel positive emotions 50% of the time and negative emotions 50% of the time because it's part of being human. The key is knowing that whatever emotion you're feeling is in your control. Nobody else can take away or give you happiness. And that's empowering!

(Episode 1 of the podcast can give you more details on how Brooke coaches, if you're interested.)

I feel like I can't do the podcast justice. It sounds so simple and easy when laid out as it is above. And it is simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Our brains are programmed to take the easy, comfortable, and familiar route. So if we're used to blaming our circumstances for our emotions and actions, it will take effort to break away from that. Which is why I recommend listening to the podcast -- it gives helpful tools and ideas to really work on retraining your brain.

She's been doing the podcast for over three years now, and I've only been listening for about a month. I went over all her episodes and downloaded the ones that sounded interesting or applicable to me, and I've seriously wanted to recommend each one! So here are the ones I've listened to, but I'm sure all the others are great as well!! :) I really truly have loved them all, but I especially recommend episodes 3, 4, 5, and 15.

1 - An overview of Brooke's teachings.

3 - How to set goals.

4 - How to fail.

5 - Overcoming fear.

8 - Owning negative emotion.

9 - It doesn't get better than this.
11 - The manual.
12 - Boundaries.
13 - Success vs. Happiness.
15 - Other people's opinions.
18 - Weight loss. (But not just about weight! So good!)

It's seriously SO GOOD. Let me know what you think about it if you listen to it :)

Other great podcasts are Bold New Mom (not just for moms), which is similar to Brooke's podcast, and Awesome with Alison, which is fun and inspiring, too. Do you have any favorite podcasts I should add to my lineup? :)