Help Me Be Me

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

Sometimes breaking through the pain of negativity takes an extra “jolt.”  If you are on a path to becoming your best self, you might encounter – at random – moments in your life, or days or weeks even, that you lose touch with the brightness and joy that lives inside you.  For whatever reason, you might become trapped in a mood or be overcome once again by your conditions. And often this dark cloud will feed itself – it will become more “true,” more weighty and real, and with your inability to find the salve, the more blind to the falsity of this mood, you become. This is when, once again, we are secretly removed of our power – by fear.  Fear that “we will always be this way” and “how did I believe I could let this part of who I am go” and “the hope I felt was false after all.” 

It is during these moments that “extra-strength” meds come in handy.  And by meds, I mean a profound “jolt” from outside of us: the affects of someone with a lightning bolt of truth that can reach you through that cloud – that lie that is your chemical fear – and “jolt” you out of that physical mood/moment and back into your awareness of joy.  It’s like a hard-restart when the programs won’t stop running. 

If you have been stuck in a chronic dark-cloud of energy, this is a podcast power-up for you. 
For more of my writing and my toolkit book, check out Teaspoon of Happy! 
http://bit.ly/1vyjzl0

And if you like, please post a Testimonial on Teaspoon or review me on iTunes! Xox Sarah May B.


Extra-Strength Lightening Bolt: For Prolonged Bad Moods and a Jolt Out of Negativity

This is a podcast for relief from the self-inflicted pain called Regret. If you suffer from a chronic problem of regret – or you have a major life-defining regret, this is a podcast for you. 

The most important part is it’s not about what it’s about. It’s a ruse!  I am going to try to logically dismantle if for you, because I do not have regret – ever. It’s not because I don’t mess up, it’s because there’s no such thing as an undo button and regret is a worse sin than the original mess up. It’s like burning something valuable and throwing opportunity in the trash. 

Quite simply? It’s really a bad habit – and it’s not about what it’s about.  You are punishing yourself for having to learn a lesson the hard way. Why?
You want to feel bad because you feel like it’s warranted: Like penance. It's a trained-in compulsion, your mind naturally assigns it. It has nothing to do with the thing you regret, itself.  As your life exists only in the present.  You are deciding (unconsciously of course) to relive the thing you dislike, that happened in the past. 

That is illogical: and most importantly - it is worsening something negative by wasting valuable energy and focus on it. Continuing to create waste! That is the real problem. It’s like building a bonfire in the center of your living room because you accidentally burned a hole in the couch.  

Often, source of your regret is totally unrelated.

They are old residual feelings of low self worth. It's a go-to label for all resonant feelings of pain. You get that sinking feeling of pain that creeps over you, and you think, “what is this about? Oh yeah – I am sad because I ruined my interview..” when in reality, it’s from when you were in school and you got in trouble all the time. The feeling is really tied to, “I’m a bad kid.”

Regardless of the source – it’s an automated reaction that must be deliberately undone.  Starting now! Please join me!! Xox Sarah may B.

This is for Angelica. Thank you for this awesome topic! I know it’s a big one. :)


Episode 28: Regret: Relief from the Self-Inflicted Pain that Drives Us Mad

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

Hola Peeps, this is a little mental power up episode to help you manage persistent thought patterns.  We all have moments we call out to ourselves via thought-instant-message, "You are now experiencing(fill in the blank familiar state of being)," despite our deliberate effort to change that state.  It's that thought, in itself, that then creates our actual state moving forward. 

It’s often that semi-average, automated thought that we trust as legit - that tends to hold ultimate power over us.  Thoughts like, "I'm tired." can alter the remainder of our thoughts for the rest of the day.  Those automated thoughts also have the power to block us from mental stillness and calm.  For example, even in the moment of attempting to quiet your mind, you might experience the thought, “I am having a hard time keeping my focus today.” That, too, is just a thought - and instead of taking it as gospel, we must instead observe it as just another automated mumble floating through our consciousness. So this is to hopefully help you separate from those mumbles so that you can dethrone them in favor of a happier you.  

For more check out http://www.TeaspoonOfHappy.com 

I hope you have a fantastic week! xo 

Outsmarting Negative Thought Patterns

This is a short-ish mindfulness meditation for you to do while sitting just about anywhere. It's a manual-brain-shut-down button for anyone who has incessant, non-stop thoughts that never seem to quiet down. That's a sign that there has been some imbalance created in you brain based on your lifestyle. To remedy it, I recco starting a daily meditation practice. This is one of those meditations (if you like it, that is.) 

To listen to it, find somewhere you can be alone and uninterrupted for at least half an hour - somewhere you are comfortable. It's under 15 minutes and should be completed in one sitting.  If you like it, let me know and I'll make more! 

For more of my writing you can head to TeaspoonOfHappy.com
Smile lovely friends! xox


Brain Chatter Relief: A Daily Quieting Meditation

Has it ever happened to you – that you do something nice for someone else and they don’t respond and so part of you is worried they didn’t like it, but then you start to get mad, because you are thinking – they should have appreciated that gesture! And how could they?! So uncaring. Wow – they are really a jerk, after all.  Or, maybe there’s someone in your workplace who gave you a dirty look – and you can’t figure out why, did they hear something? Do they really just dislike you? And if so, why? You didn’t do anything to them. Maybe you try to be nice and they don’t acknowledge you at all and now you just feel uncomfortable. The tension makes you feel nervous and distracted because you are nice! AND didn’t do anything wrong!  If this sounds like you and you do everything in your power to talk yourself out of it, but still can’t seem to soothe the obsessive thoughts of everything from worry to hate to insecurity and self-doubt, then this is a podcast for you! It’s got some information about why this happens plus some methods to soothe the obsession. And most importantly, how to curb your need for validation from other people when it’s hurting you to do so. 

For more of my writing, check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com

Smile lovely friends!!! And if you like this, please show me some love! It helps me a lot a lot! xox Sarah May B. 

(This one's for you - Ambika! Hope it helps xox)



Episode 41: What Do They Think: How to Stop Obsessing About Other People’s Thoughts

This is about the value of stepping back from your preoccupations to do more nothing. 
Busyness is a cultural habit that is also an addiction. Physiologically as well as on a level of personal identity.

Are you one of those people who is sooo busy and you can’t tell where the time is going?  When you see someone and they ask how you are – do you find yourself inclined to say, “I am soooo busy.” It’s a state we can all relate to. It’s also often a boast hidden in a complaint. Culturally we have all agreed to take on this state of life – thanks to texting and smart phones and email and social media. They are making you mentally connected to all people and obligations and stores and humans simultaneously. Hence- the empty private time with yourself, alone is gone!  The biggest downside of the busyness pattern is you trade your life, day by day, to this insecurity. It can happen without you noticing, quite simply because your not present. You are caught up in your busy thoughts.  So that’s what today’s podcast is about: slowing down – and stopping. Literally, I am going to promote the idea of doing nothing. 

Nothing but being. Hanging out. Nothing on your agenda. No one to respond to – nothing to pick up, attend, return. When was the last time you sat in an extended amount of time – like that?

The episode has three parts. 

Part 1: Why aim to do nothing. 
Part 2: Self-Diagnosis. 
Part 3: 3 Tools to help you free up your time.

And to download the Journal Exercises mentioned in the episode head here: 
https://teaspoonofhappy.squarespace.com/busyness

AND if from April-June 2015, if you haven’t yet, please enter the Headspace contest to win a year awesome mind-soothing meditations! 
http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com/headspace-contest

This episode is dedicated to Irene May Bates - my grandmother and one of my heroes. She makes the most valuable moments in your day.


Episode 48: Busyness Junkies: Breaking the Habit of Stress and Over-Scheduling

This episode is about noticing negative thought patterns when they’re happening. 

What are negative thoughts? Bad habits. They’re not You – they’re the voice of a bad computer framework operating through you being fed by a chemical addition. You are now used to the chemical results of this thinking, so your brain wants to repeat it. They are the trained in ways of being – basically muscle memory but in your brain. So based on old experiences, just like a river wants to flow down the lowest path, so do your thoughts follow existing trained in currents.

The more often you have these thoughts – the stronger the habit becomes. In other words, you have trained in the path of the river with repetition. As a result of that – you now perceive and look for this thought habit in your everyday life – like if you’re thinking of mean people who hate you, you will see mean people who hate you. Because it’s your mindset now. Plus, now that you are looking for this thing, you find it – so negative thinking becomes self-fulfilling. What is most important about all of this: it’s all totally unconscious. The fact that they’re unconscious is also the key to stopping these thoughts! 

This episode is broken up into three parts. What. Why. How aka Tools. For the blog version, check out TeaspoonofHappy.com later this week. It also has my book references for anyone who wants to read further. 

Smile friends! xox

For more of the Buddhist psychological types – check out “The Chemistry of Joy” – linked here:
https://goo.gl/diu91t



Episode 52: How to Stop Negative Thoughts

This is for anyone who has conflicts with someone they care about who wants to figure out ways to get out of those conflicts fast and productively. 
It’s about our emotional baggage – specifically the unmet needs from our childhood, and how those block us from being able to see and receive the love from people in our life currently.  I will focus on how to get out of conflicts and pain and move into happiness and get more of what you want. How to better love others and better encourage love back. 

It’s a set of tools to stay out of blaming and resenting and let go of what you think they should do. So that you can empower yourself to get to more of what you DO want – which is shared affection and happiness. 


Hi friends! I’ve been away for a bit because I got hitched! It was awesome and wonderful. And now I’m back!

I will do the usual 3 parts: The What, The Why, The How – the tools. And to be clear – this is about all relationships that involve conflicts between the needs of others and your own. About relationships that involve needs of others and your own – and when those don’t match up. 

For more check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com
Smile peeps! xo

This one’s for Lara from Spain – thanks for writing me girl! :) 


Episode 53: Love Languages: Overcoming Emotional Baggage So You Can Better Receive and Give Love

Jealousy, or a perception of your insecurities come to life. How does it sneak into your mind? Your darkest thoughts in your most fearful voice begin scratching at your feelings, dragging you down and causing you to act as your lowest self. You assume you are less than and life is against you somehow.  You're either not enough, or something else outside of you is not enough.  What is this emotional state? Your lowest form of self, the self that is motivated by fear and hate, put in a threatened defensive position. Think of it as You minus your awareness of what is good and loving in this world. This low emotional self is also called your irrational self. 

Most of jealousy acts as a hallucination. It does not show you reality it shows you insecure self-loathing reality: in that world, no one likes you and all the fears you have about yourself are true. For many of us it is clear that we are in an emotionally charged, irrational state – however, we cannot stop ourselves from wanting to “solve” for the perceived insult. “Is it true?! If so, how true? I need to know!” Nothing will quench the irrational need to compute “why” we have been betrayed: we go into loops of solving, calculating, tallying, replaying.  And jealousy has a very potent ability to madden us for that reason: it’s all consuming, it belittles us, and we are aware it’s inside of us and us alone.  A self-inflicted pain with the power to torture and haunt our every moment.  

You will never arrive at your truth through jealousy - you can only do that from a calm, objective vantage point - so this is all about stepping back from the emotion so you can regain your sound thinking. The power behind jealousy is also the key to undoing it: it does not live in reality – it lives in our reaction to reality.  So we can indeed help ourselves when we struggle in the triggered moments.  

Hopefully, I will offer you a few tools to help you navigate out of it and back to your true and highest self: grounded, making decisions from a balanced and sane mindset.  There are three parts: The what. They why. The how: the tools. 

This one is for Fran - thanks for writing me and I hope you likee! xox Sarah May B.

Episode 55: Jealousy – How to Rise Above Your Weakest Self

This is for people who are aware of when old issues are entering their present and they know they don’t want that to be happening. Our old memories operate like a trigger/pattern system. Think of it as a pinball machine called “My Pain Game” and it makes the shape of your brain with all sorts of memories that you allow to define who you are, what is allowed to affect you and what you focus on and feel.  You have that little pinball that lies latent but when it’s triggered – it shoots around your brain and activates different zones of pre-set actions. Those zones are things like, “

There are two little paddles you get to control at the base of this game.  Your emotionally driven reaction depends on where you choose to hit this ball.  If you hit it hard, it shoots into “pain and drama.”  When you don’t hit it at all, it drops off the board.  The point being – you are the one who keeps the ball in play.  So when it goes into a certain area, it activates new triggers that are not controlled by you. Those little “hot spots” that shoot it even harder – these emotional hotspots take over the game and the ball will shoot around the table at top speed. 

The ball makes its way around and back to our hands – and what we tend to do is shoot it back up again, causing it to replay the series of triggers we have all over our “memory of self.” 

Just like a pinball machine – often it feels in our mind like we have no control and we are not to blame for this patterned response. However – ultimately we have control, and we can choose to keep the ball in play or not.  Our power comes into play when we actually choose to USE that control in the moment it counts.  When we have the brief moment of awareness – that we are about to play out our game again. 

Aren’t you sick of the game? I bet you are – because what you’re losing right now is quality of life. If your old pain is old enough, it’s likely voiced by the rationale of a child – so the childhood logic, which is petty and small – is still operating you.  Even if the situation is recent and totally unrelated to your childhood dynamics –the same baggage will pilot you when a trigger comes up. Don’t let it. You’re a grown up now. And grownups can look at things and put them down already. Old pain is totally unnecessary and the only person it robs is YOU. You hurt you by wasting your valuable moments in an old automatic loop of behaviors and thoughts and reactions.  Who wants to play this now? It’s old, dusty and not fun. 

For more visit Teaspoonofhappy.com and please review me if you like this! xo

Episode 56: How to get over it: How to stop old conflicts from stunting your present life

Hi peeps! This is an episode with a short meditation in part 3. It covers why soothing your body and reducing the chatter in your brain is the key to your ultimate happiness.

As a society we tend to get hyper focused. We get into the groove of our job or our relationships – and we get stressed by how many things there are to worry about. Am I doing well as a person? Am I successful?” When will I get to the right level? How can I be more of what I want to be? Suddenly we’re looking straight down at our feet and trying to take bigger steps instead of keeping our eyes to the beautiful sunrise on the horizon.

This is almost like an introduction to my podcast in that it is truly the KEY to every positive change you want to make in your life. It is also the key to happiness and also the key to finding your life’s purpose. 

What is it? Ready? Listen intently. 

Consciousness: Feeling the feelings that are going through your body as they come. Being fully connected to that awareness and not “occupied” be a roaring sea of thoughts or rapid firing fears and analysis.  Sometimes it’s like facing a roaring lion because some terrible awful stuff lives inside us in many moments of our life.  Feeling hopeless, or worthless or afraid of what if’s to come. And yet, we must allow ourselves to feel those things - it's the key to building your ultimate life.

This is an episode with three parts. The general what, why, and then as a tool, I end with a meditation. 

Check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com later this week for the blog version of this post and I hope you enjoy this! Smile lovelies! xox
Sarah-May



Episode 58: The Importance of Being Present

Just like stress can cause you to get a tight knot in the muscles of your back, so too can other parts of your body hold tight to things like fear or anger or even malform due to a particular belief system.  Things like a pervasive feeling of lack in life can manifest in physical form in the way we digest food. You’ve probably heard things like this a million times and thought to yourself, “Ha - yeah right!” Because it’s a heady concept and not something you could TEST with a beaker tube. The power of the mind over the body comes off as super new-agey and therefore we all to often put it in the bullshit pile. But the affects of how we hold onto emotional pain are quite severe, they manifest in disease and damage your gene code for future generations– so in my opinion, why not lean in favor of, “do something about it, regardless” because there’s nothing to lose, everything to gain.  OR, even just decide to stay open to what I am saying purely for the sake of practicing openness. 

In broad strokes, I will go through some of the connections between emotions we hold onto and where they tend to get stuck in our body- plus a few tools to do something about it. There are several books on the particular topics that I will post at the end of the blog version of this podcast, but in truth – if you suffer from chronic pain go to a doctor! And if you suffer severe emotional pain, see a therapist! This is not a substitute for either of those. 

So you know what you’re getting into – this is an episode all about the body, with a lot of yoga poses to soothe particular negative emotions that get stuck in your body. If that doesn’t appeal to you – you probably won’t like this episode– but I will bet you get something valuable out of it regardless. This is about the body, so I’m going to talk about things like pooping – so if that’s not what you want to listen to right now, then maybe save this for another time. There are three parts – the what, the why and the how. I hope you enjoy lovely peeps. xoxoxo


Episode 62: Where We Hold Pain: How Negative Emotions Get Stuck in Our Bodies

This is for people in a loving relationship and you’re working to give love BETTER to that person. I have a lot of tools in this one – many of them are for being the most effectively supportive if your partner is suffering.  Many of them are for breaking through to an empowered position when the powerful patterns take over – when intimacy is not fun or simple romance, and you are both struggling to find a path to be loving in the midst of life stress and conflicts. Because, relationships are very confusing – they’re personal.  When two people get intimate, another human becomes a very major your focus – you cannot separate yourself completely when you operate as a pair. And that can make you feel frustrated, overwhelmed and powerless - And when someone it comes to one partner’s suffering, it can be very difficult to deal – because it’s your life, too. There are three parts – the what, the why and the how – the tools.

This one is for Katie – I hope this helps!!

For the blog version check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com later this week. Smile lovely friends!! xox

Episode 63: How to Love – Giving to Your Relationship in the Best Way Possible

It’s no shocker that working all night and all day with a million different deadlines can lead even the most inspired and motivated individuals to burnout and depression.  Careers and schools often demand it, and it becomes the norm – hopefully for only a short time in your life, but regardless – it’s dangerous for your body and soul and can take a toll on the future-you and your success as a professional AND happy individual. 
So this is for people who are in creative fields, schools, or professions that require they go hard for extended periods of time – causing them to burnout mentally and motivationally. I have some information to empower you to make better decisions, plus some tools to help you if you’re already stuck in an overworked depression. And ways to temper the stress and anxiety of intense deadlines and assignments moving forward. I know there’s a lot written on this subject but I will offer you a more practical set of solutions so that you can actually implement them starting NOW and not in six months, when “things calm down.” 

This one is for my new friend in the Netherlands – Nathalie. xo

There are three parts – the what, the why, the how – the tools. 



Ep 68: Burnout – How to Deal With Creative and Motivational Exhaustion

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

DJ spinning Progressive, Techno, Trance and Psy Trance.

Help Me Be Me

Michael Whyte