Always On My Mind Podcast: Work On Your Mind While You Work On Your Body
This one came from a request.
After Episode 2, a client sent me a picture of her handwritten notes from listening. And the line she wrote down was this one.
Work on your mind while you work on your body OR you will be forced to work on your mind to keep your body.
Nicole Doria MS CPT
So here we are.
The mind work in my journey was best described as mirror work. Follow me on this … it will make sense at the end.
My journey started with a few things.
Faith, therapy, and community. Sermons and Bible studies and MOPS and fellowship friends. A therapist and a composition book I filled up right after every session with every thought and every feeling I could not carry around with me the rest of the day. Walks with a spouse, a friend, a kid, just talking through whatever came up. And a coach who asked me one simple question that cracked the whole thing open … were you bored? I did not realize it at the time but that was the start of the mirror work.
Those connections, that community, they were already holding something up in front of me. It was just a little cloudy. A little dusty. It needed a My Big Fat Greek Wedding style Windexing before I could really see anything.
Journaling has always been part of that too. Mini composition books as a kid. Creative writing, poetry, a blog the first time I was losing weight. A way to get it out of my head and somewhere I could look at it. And sometimes going back and reading what I wrote is its own kind of reckoning … seeing something from the other side of some distance that you could not fully see when you were in it.
Books came after all of that. And I want to be upfront about something. I failed reading in fourth grade. Summer school. The whole thing. And I genuinely believe it was an ADHD thing because the minute I found Sweet Valley Twins and Christopher Pike I could not be stopped. Books ended up being one of the most powerful tools I had for the mental work. Not because they told me what to do but because they gave me other people’s perspective to sit with in my own time.
These are the ones that helped me most. Organized by where they landed in the journey.
Self Awareness … Holding Up the Mirror
First you have to know what you are working with. And that sucks. Because you have to hold a mirror up to yourself or have somebody else hold it up for you and actually look at what is there.
Sometimes in the beginning that mirror is a little cloudy. A little dusty. It needs a My Big Fat Greek Wedding style Windexing before you can see anything clearly.
How to Do the Work by Nicole LePera.
April 2022. The book that broke my brain because it was the first time I could see my childhood and what I went through for what it actually was. Complex PTSD had made my experience feel normal. This one gave me a different perspective on what normal actually was.
The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday.
Rooted in Stoicism … Holiday has a way of pulling people throughout history and retelling their stories so that you understand what Stoicism actually looks like in real life, in real moments, under real pressure. The obstacle is not in the way. The obstacle is the way. The resistance, the setback, the hard season … all of it is the actual path. My son is currently borrowing this one because it resonated for him too.
Think Again by Adam Grant.
I grew up in the because I said so generation. A lot of beliefs collected along the way that had never been challenged. This one helped me understand that two things can live in the same space at the same time. Grieving a long term marriage and being grateful for the atmosphere the house has now. Those two things can both be true.
Emotion … What You See When It Clears
Here is the thing nobody really warns you about. When the mirror clears you have to figure out what to do with what you see. And for a generation that heard I will give you something to cry about … you did not always have permission to feel something. So there is a lot to catch up on. Self awareness for me came with a grief I was not expecting. I said ignorance is bliss more times than I can count in those early years. I still mean it sometimes. But I would rather know. Even with all the dips.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
A psychiatrist who survived Nazi concentration camps and built a framework around the idea that the last human freedom is the ability to choose your response in any given situation. His image is still on my dashboard.
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown.
A lot of what I was working through was shame. This is where the shame research lives. And hearing that vulnerability was not a bad thing was a bigger deal for me than I can explain.
Big Feelings by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy.
Uncertainty, comparison, anger, burnout, perfectionism, despair, regret. Written by humans, not researchers, and that perspective deserves space too. Lots of tabs.
Chatter by Ethan Kross.
The voices in your head are not always yours. They sound like you at first. But when you dig a little deeper you start to realize the story you keep repeating might not even belong to you. You can actually put it down. This is one of my most recommended books in coaching.
Rebuild … The Mirror Goes Both Ways
Healing is violent. That is the thing I want to say about this section. You crawl and then you walk and then maybe you stand up pretty tall. But here is what starts to happen as you change … the people around you start to notice. Some are supportive. Some do not care. And some have things to say. And what I have learned over time is that when someone has something to say about the version of you that is showing up differently … it is not really about you. When you start becoming intentional and learning and growing you become a mirror for somebody else without even meaning to. You are now reflecting something back at them that they are not ready to look at yet. And that is on them, not you.
Rising Strong, The Gift of Imperfection, and Dare to Lead by Brené Brown.
Any Brown. Honestly just any of them. The rebuild work, the tough conversations that start happening as you change, the way you show up differently and become a mirror for the people around you … all of it lives here.
The Second Mountain by David Brooks.
The first mountain is success and achievement. The second mountain is commitment. To people, to purpose, to something bigger than yourself. This one made me think about the meaning of what I was actually building.
Holding Tight … Keeping It Clean
Once the mirror is clear and the emotions have been felt and you have started to get back up … how do you actually stay there. How do you keep from letting the old patterns fog everything back up. For me this was the hardest part because some of the things that had driven me to lose the weight in the first place were not even mine. Stories I had been carrying that sounded like me but were not. And I had been on a wild roller coaster with myself for years … picking myself up and dropping myself back down. The work in this section was about creating new patterns so I did not keep going back to the old ones.
Do Hard Things by Steve Magness.
Real toughness. Not the mask it up and push through version. The sustainable kind. There is a section in this book about someone who processed grief through running and called it moving meditation. It was the first time I saw the way I feel about running reflected back to me in someone else’s words.
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer.
I am the oldest daughter. Honor roll student. High performer. I performed to get attention and yes there are deep trauma wounds underneath that. Learning how to rest well was necessary and this book gave me the framework for it. It is Christian based but Pastor Comer bridges the gap in a way that lands on regular reading lists without people even knowing.
The Practice of Groundedness by Brad Stulberg.
This one and Do Hard Things are the two I put in front of clients most often, especially anyone going through grief, loss, injury, or diagnosis. It settles things back down and helps you move through it even when it is hard and sad and all the things.
Come listen.
And if this list hits you somewhere … start with whichever one is already on your shelf. That is probably the one you need first. ♥️
With love, Coach Nik
