Join writer and host, Jill Hodge, as she shares her creative self-care journey through a soulful mashup of storytelling, spoken word poetry, and music. Part self-help/part performing arts, this podcast explores personal growth through a creative lens. Through an immersive backdrop of music and soundscapes, Jill explores a variety of practices and tools drawn from positive psychology like mindfulness, positive reframing, gratitude, and creative flow. Dive into creative self-care techniques su ...
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Reduce Overthinking with Stream-of-Consciousness Journal Writing
22:27
22:27
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22:27
I’ve got a wonderful way to temp down overthinking, worry, and rumination. I use stream-of-consciousness journal writing to allow my mind to feel free to express itself; just 15 minutes of this writing, a type of creative flow, can unlock new insights and reduce anxious feelings. You leave the stress of planning and plotting and give your subconsci…
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Mindfulness and Moderation: The Power of the Middle Way
26:08
26:08
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26:08
It’s taken me a while to find a path toward the Middle Way, that Buddhist principle that rests firmly on common sense and shows us how to find moderation instead of swinging between one extreme or another. The Middle Way can offer us some peace as we find a balance between the extremes of self-indulgence, busyness, and wanting, or on the other side…
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The Power of Habits: A Poetic Exploration on Building Healthy Routines
25:00
25:00
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25:00
What do you do when you’ve lost your fight and slip back into sloppy habits that make you miserable? You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back in the game. In this episode, I’m exploring habits, the cues and triggers that govern them, the benefits they provide, and how to replace “bad” habits with better ones. I’m discussing my long, we…
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Deep Listening: Uncovering the Wisdom Within
31:28
31:28
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31:28
This episode is about how deep self-listening helps us construct better personal growth goals and the power of connecting that listening to essential self-truths that form the basis for our choices and actions. In this episode: I talk about how a recent Being Well podcast episode on manifesting sparked new thoughts on intention setting and dedicate…
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Summertime Refresh, Renewal and Self-Care
19:50
19:50
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19:50
It's summertime in NYC! I'm exploring the changing seasons in New York, as Central Park transitions from spring to summer. My cherished cherry blossom trees, vast array of birds, and wild mushrooms keep me company. From that beautiful spaciousness, I’ve dived into spring cleaning. In this episode, I explore: The beauty, wonder, and sensory pleasure…
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Give Yourself Grace: Self-Care for Stressful Times
22:25
22:25
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22:25
Having grace and compassion for ourselves, especially as we make mistakes and take missteps along our life's journey, frees us to learn from those mistakes. It also helps us embrace one of the basic tenets of a growth mindset: recasting mistakes as opportunities for personal growth. In this episode, I share how stress and my inability to cope with …
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Embracing Uncertainty: Feeling Faithful & Taking Action
28:18
28:18
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28:18
When life feels out of control, and we are thrust into the world of adulting with a capital “A,” we can feel overwhelmed by our options, not see them clearly, or find them too chaotic to contemplate. That’s when we must simplify our world by leaning on some foundational pillars of self-care. I call on faith, spiritual practices, and small action st…
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Keep Your Creative Spirit Alive: Focus on the Journey
18:23
18:23
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18:23
We’ve heard the saying “It’s the journey, not the destination,” or “I control the actions but not the results.” In this episode, I combine these two ideas to explore the role that our core beliefs play in keeping our creative spirit alive and fueling our productivity and stamina when pursuing projects. Focusing on our core beliefs is especially hel…
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The Nature Connection: Finding Peace and Perspective
27:06
27:06
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27:06
This city girl is deeply connected to nature. Mindful walks in nature are a core way to add richness and “right thinking” to your life. In this episode, I talk about an early, profoundly moving natural experience that shaped my deep love of the ocean. This life-changing event would connect me to the ocean for the rest of my life. From Cape May, New…
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With over 53 million caregivers in America, we are likely to face caregiver challenges at some point in our lives. As Rosalynn Carter reminded us: “There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.” Caregiving can be…
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Have you struggled to be present in your life? Perhaps you’ve been on autopilot for so long that you haven't been experiencing your life in a meaningful way. I understand; I’ve been there too and mindfulness has helped me become more invested in my life’s purpose. It has helped me enjoy the good things that come into my world each day. But where do…
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Hope is an active state of mind that doesn’t negate the sadness, unjustness, or challenges of the world, but seeks to help us persevere to affect the world positively. One of the most important avenues for facilitating and cultivating hope is creativity. Our creativity connects us to hope by offering a conduit to the special talents we have to offe…
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Affirmation Meditation to Overcome Overthinking and Worry
13:22
13:22
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13:22
This affirmation meditation accompanies episode #23 on overcoming overthinking. Along with tools like journal writing, affirmation meditations can help you engage calmly with gentle thoughts meant to return you to more reasoned thought patterns. This may take time, as the mind has to be redirected to these ideas repeatedly. Return to this meditatio…
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Overcoming Overthinking & Worry with Journal Writing & Meditation
29:25
29:25
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29:25
This episode is on overthinking, those patterns of automatic and often negative thoughts that drain our energy with mostly lies and what-ifs scenarios that never happen. I’ll discuss the differences between rumination and worry (those twin overthinking processes) and touch on automatic negative thoughts as well. Once we can define them and identify…
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Affirmation Meditation to Cultivate Creative Flow
16:17
16:17
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16:17
This affirmation meditation accompanies episode #21 on cultivating creative flow. Creative flow, that wonderful feeling of innovation, freedom and creativity, is the ultimate self-care activity. More than that, it is a pathway to finding purpose and meaning in your life, and supports your journey to know yourself and your interpretation of the worl…
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This episode is about what we know as children: that play and creativity are the building blocks of a joyful soul. It’s also about what we should carry forward as we live our “grown” lives, an understanding that the impulse for play and creativity still lives inside us, waiting to be unleashed through creative flow. I’ll explore what creative flow …
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Affirmation Meditation: Keep Your Dreams Alive
11:48
11:48
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11:48
This affirmation meditation accompanies episode #18 on keeping your dreams alive. I believe strongly in the power of setting intentions as a guidepost for taking action to work toward goals and dreams. First, we speak our dreams into existence through visualization and by setting an intention; then, we take action to move toward our dream. Along th…
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Lessons from My Trip to Morocco: We Travel the World Through Our Eyes
21:11
21:11
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21:11
During my trip to Morocco this past summer, I expected some culture shock; I expected beautiful landscapes, incredible food, and curious interactions with strangers. What I hadn’t thought about was how awakening my spirit and mind to these new experiences would return me to my deeply-held beliefs. That travel to North Africa would reaffirm the way …
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Affirmations & Actions to Keep Your Dreams Alive
36:24
36:24
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36:24
This episode is about giving our dreams space to grow and take shape. Dreams can come alive, if we feed them like fires, stoke our internal flames. We keep our dreams alive by: · Cultivating a positive mindset · Taking small actions consistently to work toward goals Knowing we need these two ingredients is one thing, and doing them is another. In t…
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Bonus: 30-Day Journal Challenge (Writing Prompts to Get Started)
17:41
17:41
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So you've decided to journal or resume a journaling practice. You may be a beginner or an old pro, but you're finding yourself in need of some inspiration. Perhaps some structure and tools to get your journaling off the ground. Why do a 30-day challenge? Because writing in a journal is a practice and practices are built on habits. We need to make t…
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Bonus: The Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health & Wellness
20:13
20:13
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20:13
In today's bonus episode, I'm making a case for journaling. This simple, timeless act of writing down our feelings and thoughts is one of the most authentic reflective tools that humans have as they think their thoughts, love their loves and build their dreams. Journaling never goes out of style, because journaling is the human condition in words. …
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Grief and gratitude can be two sides of the same coin. They do a sort of dance, especially as we contemplate the loss of a family member or loved one during the holidays. Find out how a simple fingertip pulse oximeter box sparked great sadness in me, and then deep gratitude. As my mom transitions into advanced dementia, I’m struck by how often my s…
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Build a Personal Growth Practice (with Creative Self-Care)
29:01
29:01
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29:01
What do I mean by a personal growth practice? What are the components of self-growth and how do we build our capacity for it? Personal growth is not a one-and-done, it's a practice that we build over time and in stages. In this episode, we’ll think about where we are in the journey to knowing ourselves, dealing with our struggles, and taking those …
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Dealing with Dementia (Caregiver Tips & Journal Prompts)
29:13
29:13
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29:13
Dealing with a loved one’s dementia, or handling other difficult transitional times in our lives requires that we give ourselves some grace -- and create a formidable community of support. We may have to handle the logistics of moving our loved ones out of their home, arranging for care, managing finances, and caregiving. This is adulting with a ca…
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Comparison, especially comparing ourselves to the images we see on social media, can rob us of the ability to hold court with our personal strengths and abilities. We compare ourselves to a facade of perfection and find our lives lacking. While small amounts of comparison may help motivate us or provide a standard of sorts with which to reflect our…
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A Positive Spin on Aging (It’s Tied to Purpose)
30:23
30:23
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30:23
As we talk about all things aging, let’s remember that while research shows that we may experience a mid-life dip in happiness, there are benefits to getting older that are valuable in the way they can lead us toward our purpose. Mid-life can be a time when we’re burdened by caregiving, health problems, and financial worries. It sounds all “doom an…
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The Road to Brighter Days: Building Resilience
36:12
36:12
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36:12
This episode is personal and passionate, as I explain the core beliefs behind this show – how to build resilience and inner strength as you increase your capacity and internal resources to call forth a more joyful life. Finding brighter days and cultivating positivity is more about building resilience than fooling yourself into “happy thoughts.” In…
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Calming Down with Mindful Breathing & Creative Grounding
19:40
19:40
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19:40
Everything begins with the breath. Today we’ll explore ways in which breathwork, exercise, music, and creative grounding help calm our response to stressors (triggered by our fight or flight response). We can use tools to go beyond the rational mind to tap into the mind/body connection. Once you slow your breathing and embrace stillness, your body …
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In this episode, I’ll discuss the adage “time heals all wounds.” We may not want to hear this, especially if it’s said off the cuff, but ultimately, time gives us a cushion to process our feelings. Engaging our senses in mindful acts also creates some space to heal. Time passes, priorities get rearranged, and new options start to appear. All these …
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We’ll connect the threads between how making space and time for friends (and actively tuning into our interactions with them) helps us build more meaning in our lives. To do this we have to clear the cobwebs—get rid of the dead weight and make sure we can distinguish between people who we should journey onward with as friends and those that we can …
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In this episode, I talk about how we carry our loved ones (and all their teachings) with us when they aren’t around anymore. The distance could be from illness, death, or just geographical location, but we miss them and want to feel close to them even though they aren’t physically present in our lives. We are amazing humans, and we are capable of c…
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Personal Power: Manifesting Your Inner Lion
15:17
15:17
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15:17
As the saying goes, “Life is not for the faint of heart.” We may worry about this or that, predict obstacles and roadblocks, and ruminate about the next challenge, but most of the time none of that stuff happens. Life has other plans for us, and we may not see any of them coming! But after you’ve been knocked down a few too many times, you toughen …
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Today I’m talking about shitty days. We’ve all had them, but some of us (yes, I’m talking about myself) don’t tolerate them well. We act out over them, ruminate over them, and buy into our bullshit thoughts that tell us these uncomfortable feelings will be with us forever. They won’t. They will pass. Shitty feelings always pass, but not before we f…
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Positive Shift: Meditation for Your Glow Up
19:08
19:08
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19:08
You control your perception. Yes, you control your perception. For anyone who’s struggled with that idea (yes, I’m raising my hand here), this episode presents a case for small, manageable meditation sessions and mindful moments in nature. Before you think, “Oh no, I can’t meditate. I can’t rest my thinking for more than a nanosecond," or “I don’t …
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Losing My Mother: a Catalyst for Personal Growth
29:05
29:05
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29:05
Struggle is a teacher, and while we may not want to learn what it has decided to teach us, it’s coming for us! Truthfully, we need it, because how we respond to struggle determines our life’s purpose. It is in response to struggle that we do what needs to be done to find our strength. And one of the most brilliant and pleasurable pathways to this f…
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Host Intro / Journal to Have Deep Conversations with Yourself
8:49
8:49
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8:49
There comes a time in life when the shit hits the fan. Where you look around and wonder, is this all my life will be? How did I get here, and why am I not doing more joyful things in my life? Why am I not more creative, self-aware, and positive about my life and where it’s going? When Kendrick Lamar began his masterful song, United in Grief, with a…
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A Mashup of Stories, Poetry & Music for Personal Growth
3:58
3:58
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3:58
Living on autopilot may keep things going. The trouble is, we rarely want to go where it takes us. I’m Jill Hodge, a writer who loves a good beat. I created this new, immersive personal growth podcast, Let the Verse Flow, to put the fun and creativity back into my life (and yours). Lovingly dedicated to my mother, this podcast is about finding more…
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