How To Push Past ‘I Can’t Do This’ in All Parts of Your Life, From Fitness to Finance

In the seven months since we launched The Well+Good Podcast, we’ve spoken to dozens of super-smart and insightful “thought leaders” in the wellness space. Among the neatly packaged episodes you’ll find hours of insightful ideas from our chats with guests. But for the latest episode, we’re sharing our favorite moments that we just couldn’t squeeze into the original episodes, where you’ll hear the best wellness advice about everything from self-doubt to finance.

The premiere episode entitled “Are We Well?” features Jessamyn Stanley, yoga teacher, entrepreneur, advocate, and author of Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance. During the interview, she shared how to take care of oneself on and off the mat.

“Yes, core awareness is hard and your thighs burning is hard and all of these things are really physically arduous. But it’s also, what happened at that moment that you said, ‘I can’t do this?'” says Stanley. “Is this the only place you say that? What I’ve found is that it’s not the only place that I’m saying that. If I say on the yoga mat, ‘I can’t do this. I’m not good enough. Why even try?’ Those are not things I just say there, those are the things that come up in every part of my life.”

Over the course of this episode, you’ll hear gems from Stanley and other experts: friendship expert Danielle Bayard Jackson; dietitian  Shana Minei Spence, MS, RDN; certified sex educator Shan Boodram; licensed psychotherapist and board-certified life coach Tess Brigham, MFT; journalist Kayleen Schaefer; physiotherapist Brendon Stubbs, PhD, psychologist Andrea Bonior, PhD; and CEO and co-founder of EllevestSallie Krawcheck.

During discussions for “Boundary Hunter,” which discussed how to set boundaries, Dr. Bonior shared that being kind to yourself right now involves remembering the wild times we’re living in and not holding yourself to unrealistic expectations.

“So many people measure pre-pandemic standards. They say ‘well look at what I did during this pandemic, I didn’t learn a new language and I didn’t organize my entire house,'” says Dr. Bonior. “And I’m thinking to myself, okay, so [during] the biggest sustained stress situation that most of us have probably ever been in our lives, we’re also supposed to be superhuman and adding all these accomplishments? No. I mean we survived, right? That’s enough at some point. And we can build on that as our lives start to get back to normal. But I think self-compassion is so important there.”

For the two most recent episodes “Money on the Mind” parts one and two, we spoke with Krawcheck from Ellevest, an investment company for women. She shared that one of the best things women can do for themselves is to recognize the power that they already have.

“Empowerment is to be given power, that’s the definition and we don’t have to be given power. We have power, we just need to use it,” says Krawcheck. “If men had gotten together 200 years ago and said, ‘how do we keep women down?’ This is what they would’ve done. They would’ve sent us messages that we’re not good with money. Then we wouldn’t have invested as much. We wouldn’t have talked about it as much. We wouldn’t have had as much. And the industry was sort of built up to keep us from doing it.”

For more advice, listen above to the full episode, and subscribe to The Well+Good Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.