Happy Rebel Podcast

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Season 4, the last season of the first year of Happy Rebel, and we are greeting autumn with a Cheshire cat grin. Autumn and spring are my two favorite seasons. Not just because of the weather (I love sweater weather that allows for open-toes shoes), but because these seasons are intentional. We plant and then we harvest. We have to be thoughtful and thorough, present and purposeful during these times…especially in an election year. And make no mistake, ...

You know what I’ve noticed a lot lately? People smoking. And where I live — in a West Los Angeles beach town, full of health-conscious, Lululemon-clad people coming and going from yoga and Pilates or their gym of choice, likely on their way to Erewhon to get a $20 smoothie — seeing a cigarette sticking out of a car window is weird. And that weird is happening. A lot. Now, I’m GenX. When I was in high school, we literally had a smoking section in the parking lot on campus. It was where the pu...

Every day, society checks to see what we will tolerate. And every day, we lower our standards, cross our own boundaries, and accept things we find unacceptable. Usually, for our convenience. As a person in Los Angeles, I will say, we tolerate the gas prices. Because it's easier to tolerate them than to figure out public transportation. So we say, “Yes, we will accept this obnoxiously high gas price,” while the CEOs and the shareholders make their money and show absurd profits. Meanwhile, the...

Boundaries. I love them. And they can be super disrupty because some people don't know what the fuck to do when you assert them. Their assumption is, if you assert your boundaries, well, then you're not a nice person. And if you're not a nice person, well, then you're certainly not a happy person. And I am here to tell you all of that is crap. Being happy doesn't mean being a doormat. It doesn't mean tolerating bullshit. And it doesn't mean automatically forgiving people for their bull...

Think about it for a moment. Give it a good Scooby-Doo. Who benefits by you being unhappy? Because someone does. And it isn’t you. And you know the impact being unhappy has in your life. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t get you anywhere. So, who benefits if you remain unhappy? When we are unhappy, we are compliant. We are stuck. We stick with the devil we know. Our nervous system has acclimated to this misery and has deemed it safe. How can something that makes us unhappy be safe? Becau...