If you just got dumped, here's a special playlist with some helpful content. Although it feels like the end of the world, this isn't forever and you will one day be happy. Much love xox Sarah May B.

Getting Dumped

self heeeeelllllllpppppp

Dirty Tactics

Help Me Be Me

An emotional power-up for when you are feeling down about unmet goals and need help getting un-stuck.   

Don't Be Discouraged!

Freaking out about something in your life? Overwhelmed by anxiety over the future? We've all been there! This is an emotional power-up for this kind of state - specifically when you're working on yourself and overcoming a super difficult emotional issue. For example: an eating disorder, self-cutting, any unhealthy managing problem of any kind. Because everything is in your power to change when it comes to your focus and energy. So don't panic - if you're doing the work, the momentary freak outs will pass if you go through the motions of self-care. Soothe in healthy ways and first things first. 

If you are suffering extreme pain and need help call 9-11 or an emergency service. Don't dwell in places that feed the darkness! xo

Panic and Fear: When You're Overcoming a Big Scary Issue

The relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship you have in the world.  This episode features a recipe for creating more self-love and confidence so that you can live a happier and more fulfilling life.  There are ten different tools, a few of which are from the "Help Me Be Me" book.  Invest in your relationship with yourself and you will better the lives of everyone you touch. 

Episode 7: Self-Love from Scratch

Often when you grow up with caregivers or relationships with people who are inconsistent, unstable, deceptive and unreliable, as a natural result you end up completing the other half of the Yin-Yang and it becomes inherent to your make-up as a person.  You grow opposite and complimentary strengths – and those strengths actually reward you in lots of ways, not to mention, it feels good to be able to take care of others and make it happen.  However – here’s the kicker – as a result, in the rest of your life, you unconsciously seek out others you can compliment in the exact same way, which means you often end up with partners and friends who are just as incapable or flawed.  It’s not your fault, it’s just the dynamic you’re comfortable with.  It’s also because that’s who is drawn to you: they crave what you can give and once they see you giving it, they cling to you. 

You also have a very specific form of trauma in that you expect and anticipate disappointing behavior from everyone in your life.  Why wouldn't you? Based on your life experience, to trust is to place yourself in harm's way. 

Not to fear! This is not a damning situation in the least.  You have the building blocks for something much greater than if you hadn’t had this upbringing at all.  You can build the muscle to trust others and you can also build the muscle that will allow you to find trustworthy people.  Your solution will take conscious and consistent work, but it’ll be simple and somewhat automatic, so don’t stress.  It will unfold on its own, and it can start right now with 3 very conscious, deliberate steps. I’m going to introduce you to those steps right now.  

For more about me and to read more of my writing, check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com 

If you likee please review me on iTunes! 'Twould help me a lot. xo Sarah May B. 


Episode 18: Learning How To Trust Again - Getting Over Bad Experiences

It’s pretty easy to “never deal” with anything heavy, or anything that makes you feel vulnerable in life.  You can always find a way to distract yourself, or hide from the tough stuff.  Maybe you’ve been coasting through your emotional adult life and perhaps medicating any and all issues and scary feelings that might come up – or numbing them with drinks, tv, or constant distractions.  Maybe you’ve never allowed yourself to become vulnerable to another person – you’ve kept it very superficial, and you just kind of “pass the time” in your life – but never venture past the top layer. It all feels fine until one day you suddenly “wake-up” and realize you don’t know who you are, what you want, or even whether or not you like yourself.  
Maybe something in your life comes to a head, like you finally meet someone you want to be in love with and that makes you totally clingy because you feel so reliant on their liking you, or maybe you’ve been through a break-up and you suddenly realize you feel shattered – like you have nothing, to you, solo.  This window of clarity might force you to realize you’ve got some work to do on yourself so that you can actually figure out who you are and what you want.  And with that work, grow to like that person, and be happy with who that is.  

If you’re staring at the vast ravine of what you don’t know quite yet – and realizing you’ve been asleep at the wheel of your life for years, I know looking at the amount of work you have to do can feel totally overwhelming.  So if this sounds like where you are right now– this is a podcast for you. 

Firstly, know that you have been gifted with an amazing opportunity. Right now you get to choose who you want to be. Which is really awesome and shows that you have what it takes – already – to become who you want to become.  That you even have this awareness about yourself is the key to the change itself. So what I am going to give you are some steps/tools to help you move through this time efficiently. There are 10 of them and if you want to read them, I will also post the blog version on TeaspoonOfHappy.com so keep an eye out in the next couple days.

Ready? Here we go! This is a blessing in disguise and you're about to enter the best time of your life!!!
This is for you, Justin. Thanks dude for suggesting this to help others!! I hope this helps you, as well. 
xo! Sarah May B.


Episode 23: Where to start the process of personal growth

Power Up: Soothing from Anger

This is for anyone who is stuck in a moment of feeling pain and rage. Maybe you’re in the moment – someone has stung you, or you are feeling completely overwhelmed by the injustice or idiocy of the situation around you. 

I will tailor it to those who cannot leave that situation but if you can, take a walk while you listen. Even if it’s just going into the bathroom and sitting in the stall.  I will include one breathing tool and one visualization exercise.  For the blog version, check out Teaspoon of Happy in the next few days! Xox Sarah-May B.
Links to other help:
https://teaspoonofhappy.squarespace.com/bookstore/
https://teaspoonofhappy.squarespace.com/mail-happy


Anger-Soothing Meditation: For When You're Stuck in Actively Painful Situations

Warning - I say a couple bad words in this one! And it's cause the topic demands it. This is a little "confrontational" power-up for anyone who's hating on themselves and feeling like a loser.  It's to help you stop the negative thoughts and focus on more positive and relevant thoughts - like what you want to do that makes you happy! I hope you likee and if you want more there's a bunch of tools on the links below:
xox Sarah May b

http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com
teaspoonofhappy.squarespace.com/bookstore/

When You're Hating On Yourself and Feel Like a Loser *Contains Sparse Profanity

OR Building friendships worth growing for a lifetime.


In this podcast I go over the three essential ingredients to good friendship so that you can train yourself to choose great ones. I also cover nine general rules for being a great friend to yourself and others – as well as ways to find friends that are perfect for you. So if you are looking to make new and better friendships that you can invest in for a lifetime, this is a podcast for you.

This is for Catherine – (thanks girl!) She wrote, “Can you talk about what it means to be a good friend – and ways to practice that.” Catherine - I know your question was more general than the topic above. I chose to take this angle because I think it’s a good way to force yourself to choose better relationships, despite your conditioned-in blinders. 

Just like with anything else – a job, a marriage, or anything really, we bring our old rusty eyeballs into a relationship – and often we can’t tell how we are being blinded by those issues and experiences.  Sometimes they can compromise our ability to choose the right people for the right reasons, or give and to receive the fruits of friendship.  In other words, they get in the way of smart and self-loving decision-making.  So I am going to present this to you in a way that hopefully will allow you to approach friendship from an intentional perspective so that you can build mutually beneficial and powerful friendships that bring value to your life and the others who are out there right now, in need of a friend like you.

If you likee, check out the Teaspoon for more of my writing- as well as my books. And if you prefer to read, this will be posted as a blog later on this week. Smile peeps! xox Sarah May b.

http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com


Episode 27: Nine Tools to Build Successful Friendships

Does your brain start chattering and seemingly never stop?  Do you feel distracted and unable to focus?  This is for anyone who is trapped in chronic thinking. Like your brain won’t seem to shut up and it’s getting a bit noisy up there. I will cover the what, the why, and most importantly, the solution. There are about 10 different super silly tools to get you started. And apologies in advance - I also drop the F-bomb. (Just once!)

This is for Cindy – and it’s a great topic. Thanks for suggesting this girl!

Check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com for the blog post with all my references and research  -it will be live later this week. Smile peeps! xox Sarah-May B.

Episode 29: How to Stop Thinking So Much - Tools for Chronic Overthinking

We all want to be nice and caring people – because it feels good. It rewards us. However we are human and sometimes it can be a challenge to stay in that mindset, especially if people are deliberately cruel and hateful.  Anger and hate become a natural reaction – or to simply shutdown and ignore.  For the same is true of fearing those who hate: when you don’t understand someone and their beliefs betray everything you hold sacred, it’s a feeling that can touch every nerve inside you and incite the same thing – inside you. A hate and intolerance for their beliefs.  

It’s tough to be willing to understand others, especially when they express hate, brutality or intolerance. Like looking into the face of someone filled to the brim with fire and toxic sludge, spitting at you – it can offend every sense you have to witness such a thing. And worse, it can infect you and bring you down. There are lots of toxic people out there, and the natural reaction is to stay as far away from them as possible. But when it comes to people you love, you work with, or you can’t shut out of your life – this is a set of tools to help you understand them and better relate to them.  In the face of intolerance, the self-protective instinct is to run away – to shut down to them and soothe the hurt, lest this hurt you anymore. But this is only a temporary fix to manage the situation. There is a state you can graduate to – PAST this point of managing and shutting off – one comparable to enlightenment: compassion. It’s challenging but also freeing, and it can be a powerful solution when it comes to someone you care about or must deal with in your life – for example a loved one or family member. I hope you enjoy! xo 
For more of my writing head to TeaspoonOfHappy.com 


Ep 66: How to Use Compassion to Rise Above the Hate & Intolerance of Others

Heads up, this is recorded on my iPhone, so forgive me, it’s not the best quality – it’s a post-yoga reflection that I just had to record for you as soon as it came to mind, so I hope you enjoy it. It’s a short meditation to do as we enter this new year full of awesome potential. A way to check in with your thoughts and reorganize them so that you can better your trajectory, see what you’re holding onto that’s not serving you, what’s playing on a loop in your head, and what has manifested in your life that you might want to tweak. Much love and have a happy new year! Xo Smile loves. 

A Simple Reflection Exercise for Clarity and Awareness

Hi peeps! It is moi, Sarah May. This is Part 1 of a two part episode. Part 2 will be solely focused on how to ask for a raise and how to tell someone your value when you apply for a new job. This is for anyone who is insecure or has a hard time with confidence at work or socially. Maybe you are introverted or sensitive, so this prevents you from speaking up or saying what you think. Or maybe when you do assert yourself it hurts to hear what people say back to you that’s critical. Maybe you feel intimidated by those around you and they use tactics to make you feel worse. 

Because in an unseen but felt way, your life overall is guided by this theme of fear, low self-confidence, low self-worth: instead of an upward climb, it’s a torturous plateau full of mental battles and fearful anticipations. And you want to do the things that everyone else does – like speak up with confidence, demand a raise, let go of what other people think, have faith in the value of your own opinions, and be a boss. It’s just that pesky inner voice that seems to get in the way.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds hours of create. If you get any value out of the work I do or it helps your life, please consider a monthly donation. Even something as small as a cup of coffee helps this show exist. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/sarahmayb

Thanks! xo


Ep 70: Weak and Insecure: How to Grow Your Strength and Confidence at Work and in Life

Why sometimes people aren’t honest with us and sometimes we’re not honest with ourselves. 

This one’s written for a person who contacted me who’s newly single and dating quite a bit. He has a few different partners and has had a lot of difficulty saying he is doing so because it goes against everything he wants. This is all about how the simple act of being honest can change your life in awesome earth-shattering ways.

I talk about honesty and dishonesty and how it comes into play in our relationships. So if you’re the type of person who dates and doesn’t tell the other person where you’re really at – or if you’re super jealous and suspicious about your partner and it drives you mad, or if you’re a regular person dealing with regular relationship power-plays— this is for you! 

Help Me Be Me is advertising free and takes hundreds of hours to create. If you enjoy my work or it improves your life, consider a monthly donation: even something as small as a cup of coffee makes a big difference. Head to HelpMeBeMe.com/donate or visit Patreon.com/SarahMayB 

Thanks! xox

Looking for more? Check out my other podcast with cohost Ellen Huerta of LetsMend.com Check us out on Soundcloud and iTunes – our show is all about love and heartbreak, called Love Is Like a Plant. Yay!


Ep 73: Love & Honesty: What We Hide and Why

This is a power-up episode all about how to be more present in your everyday life – specifically when it comes to your human interactions.  This is something I decided to record after reading (listening to) “When Breath Becomes Air” and this episode of All in the Mind – the guest is this amazing woman called Christine Bryden who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers in her 40s. She’s amazing and so is this interview. Her latest book is called “Before I Forget.” Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy – it’s very much my train of thought, so be forgiving…
Xox
Sarah May B.

When Breath Becomes Air:
http://amzn.to/1LmSgmo

All in the Mind:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/2015-12-13/7012970

Before I Forget:
http://amzn.to/1LmShHc

If you're looking for more content, subscribe to "Love is Like a Plant" by new podcast with cohost Ellen Huerta of LetsMend.com – it’s all about love and break-ups:
https://soundcloud.com/loveislikeaplant


How to Be There: A Simple Way to Make Life More Meaningful

For those who can’t stop trying to convince themselves they’re bad with self-destructive actions. This one is for Nikki. 

Why do we destroy relationships with those who love us? Why do break our own trust, betray our own dreams, and rob ourselves of happiness and safety as soon as we get close to it. It’s a mystifying loop of behavior that has powerful effects on everything about our life: a chain reaction that keeps us hiding or running from the ugly truth of what we’ve done. 

Just like an addict, you live with a subconscious awareness that you will inevitably destroy whatever good you might have – and that anxiety is overwhelming and scary. Like a lurking future of pain awaits you just around the corner. Happiness is immediately blocked by the overwhelming sense of dread that it will soon be lost. And so you self-medicate the fear and cling more tightly to what you want so badly. 

When you do inevitably self-sabotage and act out in ways that betray your values and the values of your partner, the experience is laden with fear and the resulting shame is soul-crushing. Like you just woke up inside a nightmare. You have an almost separate self who is doing these things despite you. 

I want you to know there’s a simple reason behind your cycle of behavior that you must CHOOSE to learn. It’s not who you are, it’s a tactic that you learned to cope with unrelated pain and anxiety. There are three parts: the what, the why, the how.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB  Thanks!


Ep 74: Self-Sabotage: Why We Betray Ourselves and Destroy Our Relationships

Slime Season 3

Digits

YEAR OF THE THUG

This is also known as gas-lighting – based on a Hitchcock film where Ingrid Bergman was made to feel crazy by her husband. 

What I am going to talk about is what to do and how to recognize when someone is intentionally keeping you feel off-balance or pushing your buttons to make you into the bad guy. It’s a control tactic, and it’s extremely cruel – not to mention, when done overtime it can make you believe you can’t trust your own instincts. You will start to lose a connection to your own gut instincts because someone is making you believe that they might be wrong, consistently over time. It can stall you from actually reaching the solution to an issue, and even blind you to real and dangerous truths happening right in front of you – on a greater and greater scale. Because over a long period of time – no matter how rational and confident you start out, eventually you catch “the sickness” of the manipulative behavior. Long story short – it’s DANGEROUS and NOT COOL and you shouldn’t be tolerating it or be around it – at all. This is an episode to give you a starting point for helping yourself out of this situation. 

Three parts – what why and how, the tools. 

Apologies for the background sounds - I recorded this after work in the car so there are helicopters around me!


Ep 76: Dirty Tactics: When Someone Uses Manipulation to Make You Feel Crazy

A power-up episode for anyone dealing with the pain of sorrow of grief and they don’t know where to put the painful feelings. This is a new meditation exercise I learned and I think it’s pretty amazing. I hope it works for you, too. xoxo


Grief & Deep Sadness - a meditation exercise for releasing and passing pain

This is a power-up episode for anyone facing change that feels too hard or too painful. Take heart and remind yourself that you will do what you need to do when you're ready and in your own time. xo!
Sarah May B.

A Grounding Talk for Confronting What Feels Impossible

Hi peeps, this is a cheat of an episode in that it’s about how to get closest to getting your ex back via supporting yourself. There are no cheats that will make your ex spontaneously love you if things fell apart, so think of this as a best-practices-for-best-conditions kind of thing.  

That feeling of pain and longing and even obsession over the loss of your relationship. Maybe it wasn’t something you were expecting, or you both kind of “decided” it was right but now you’re realizing it’s not at all what you wanted and you can’t stop thinking about getting back together. Maybe you’re internet stalking your ex, maybe you’re just super depressed and texting them when you get drunk. Or maybe you’re actively trying to convince them you should get back together – as respectfully as you possibly can, and you can’t for the life of you, figure out how to do this right. So this is for anyone who is trying to get their ex back or is holding their head up high and not admitting they want that, but still wishing they were magically back together– either because you broke their heart and you know now you screwed up, or because you were dumped and you were not ready or willing to have this outcome. If this is where you are – you’re likely in a split personality state that can be sometimes a belligerent puking of tears, sometimes a banal but painful loneliness, sometimes annoyingly obsessed, sometimes scary-obsessed, or sometimes feeling like complete and utter worthless shit – and ONLY your ex can make you feel stable and “yourself” again. 

If you are helped by this podcast, consider a small donation. Visit https://www.yaywithme.com/support-help-me-be-me or visit www.Patreon.com/sarahmayb

Ep 80: I Want My Ex Back - Best Practices Toward Loving Outcomes

An interview with Dr. Sharon Flynn, PhD all about therapy and how it works. How long does therapy take? How do I find a therapist? What's the difference between all the different doctors? How much does it cost? We will discuss various techniques, plus why someone might want to go to therapy in the first place. Hopefully if you've had a "dumb" question about therapy, I will ask it for you! To find Dr. Sharon Flynn, visit https://goo.gl/Mg1yLO

Ep 84: Therapy 101 - What Kind of Help to Get, Why + How

If you got dumped or you didn’t get your dream job, here are some tools and insights to get you back on the wagon of awesomeness. 

Getting rejected is a confidence assault on so many levels because it reduces you to below the level you were before you mustered the courage to try. Especially if you don’t see it coming, it can make you feel like you can’t trust your gut and therefore, you should never try again. Well I assume you’re waiting for the typical catch-phrases like, “You can’t win if you don’t try.” But that would make me annoyed if I just got rejected so I’ll skip that part. 

Here are some tips to give you some grounding if this just happened to you. 

Looking for more? Head to YayWithMe.com xox
My theme song was created by BookerHillMusic.com

How to deal with rejection

Hi friends, this is a quickie Q&A episode answering three questions: What do you do when an ex keeps trying to come back into your life?! How do you deal with a depressed partner/friend who pushes you away? How to deal with being ghosted and positive ways to overcome it? If you're looking for more please reach out! xo Sarah May B. Here’s the Reco’d Reading I mentioned: 
The Gift of Fear: http://amzn.to/2nMhwcL
The Depression Cure: http://amzn.to/2nPCEQX
Codependent No More: http://amzn.to/2oqPw16
Courage to Change: http://amzn.to/2orhFVw

Help Me Be Me • Power-Ups

Audience Q&A's: Obsessed Exs, Depressed Partners and Getting Ghosted

Help Me Be Me is an emotional toolkit for creating positive change in yourself. I like to think of it as self-help for people who hate self-help. I'm Sarah May, coach/mom/all-around happy person, and these are the tools that work for me in my life. For all of my offerings you can check out YayWithMe.com What I share is my personal opinion. It's not a diagnosis for treatment or a substitute for professional help. If you're suffering, please reach out to your local emergency services or call 9-1-1. Music theme created by www.BookerHillMusic.com