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On this week's confession episode, I tell you about my years long evolution into a mental rut, how that came to be, what made me realize it, and what I'm doing to start working towards getting out of it. Then I touch on habits I have been implementing to create upward spirals and dial in my internal locus of control in an effort to close my knowledge to skill gap and start taking action on all of the thoughts I have developed and grown over time, After that I tell you about a concept I learned in Daniel Chidiac's Stop Letting Everything Affect You about why our minds cling to emotional pain and how it subconsciously causes you to continue patterns without realizing it. I tell you how this impacts my romantic relationship and my relationship with my wellness. Lastly, I end on a listener question about gratitude journaling and walk you through my morning and night 5-minute gratitude journal.

On today's episode I am talking about the research backed and widely discussed and debated definition of the term wellness, how to create an upward spiral toward becoming well and developing a strong locus of control. I discuss how we mistakenly discuss health and wellness interchangeably and why you don't have to be in a complete state of health in order to experience wellness. Then we discuss how wellness has no end point and it is the constant progression towards personal development. I explain how to create upward spirals in your life and how your locus of control determines your success rate of creating upward spirals. If you are always striving to be well but feel you're constantly falling short this episode is for you.

On this episode I am introducing some new segments into our causal Friday episodes. I start the episode talking about my Wellish confession of the week that I have a god complex when it comes to being a good friend and unpack it right there with you guys to discover tendencies stemming from my good enough wound and self-protection. Then we discuss the real-life application from the week for Monday's episode and how I made my routines more rewarding to get in front of procrastination. After that I ranted about positive psychology, upward spirals, and a strategy to sit through the discomfort of our thoughts and feelings instead of trying to eliminate them unsuccessfully. Lastly, I shared a DM for Confessions of a Wellish Listener about how to give yourself grace but still be consistent without being stuck in the loop of not feeling enough.

If you want to develop any sort of wellness habit let it be physical, mental, emotional etc. you are going to be faced with procrastination, ESPECIALLY if you struggle with perfectionism and/or being hard on yourself. There is so much shame surrounding procrastination, so on today's episode I want to separate you from the shame that you've built up around your procrastination habits that have led you to either avoid it completely or muscle through it with self criticism. I am breaking down what chronic procrastination is, how it happens and my four steps to overcome it. Whether you procrastinate knowingly or unknowingly about big or small things this episode is for you.

I thought the goal was getting rid of the negative overwhelming thoughts, but I've recently learned I've been working my a** off to fix the wrong thing. The real goal is making yourself capable of protecting yourself in the midst of the inevitable thoughts and feelings. On this episode I giving you five of the best ways I have found we can protect ourselves in the face of an emotional storm no matter of big or small the storm is. If you resonate with this, you have likely spent a lot of time inflicting cruelty on yourself creating the shame of powerlessness within you. Between the self-doubt, self-criticism, self-abandonment, comparison (shall I go on?) we are basically laying belly up in a field being annihilated by the emotional storm. After listening to this episode, you will begin to develop the 5 skills that will help you protect yourself to gain mental clarity, resilience, control leading to confidence, and even tools to achieve your habits and goals.

If you have ever tried to engage in basic wellness habits like exercise, drink water, getting better sleep or rest, eating whole foods, putting yourself in spaces to learn new things then you know that the more you engage in these habits the better mentally you feel. And if you don't know this yet, it possible you haven't engaged in the wellness habits consistently enough to recognize the difference but have heard time and time again that doing so will help you. Today's episode I am breaking down why we struggle to do the wellness habits we want to even though we know they will help us feel better. I provide 5 reasons we have these barriors using research-based evidence to help raise your awareness and work towards incorporating these habits into your life in a way that is much more effective than sheer willpower and "trying harder." If you have a goal of feeling better mentally or you just struggle to incorporate basic wellness into your life, and want to, this episode is for you.

The tools we're given to stop anxiety, rumination, anger, sadness insert any negative emotion is causing us to suppress our feelings. When we protect ourselves in that way to stay safe or avoid conflict it keeps our emotions in preventing us from healing which leads to unwanted tension. In this episode we are discussing how you have to let yourself sit in the uncomfortable feelings and simultaneously take action despite them. We discuss why this is the way you will actually get closer to ridding yourself of them completely than taking the short come to become the dream version of yourself you picture in your head, but you always end up falling short. I end the episode with tips to dive deeper and express your feelings, so you can practice this in your everyday life.

I took a week away from Wellish and realized I’d been trying so hard to get the podcast “right” that it stopped feeling like a place to hang out. In this episode, I’m talking about what changes in Season 5: more honest, less edited conversations about self improvement, without turning every conversation into another list of things you should be doing. I also get into being called “aggressive,” the moment I caught myself wanting to change how I show up so people would like me, and how that fear has kept me at arm’s length from people. Catching the pattern didn’t instantly make me fearless. But it gave me a chance to stop following it. That’s the kind of conversation I want Wellish to make room for.

Five years ago, I started Wellish because I believed the right advice could help us become better versions of ourselves. Hundreds of conversations and several identity crises later, I’ve realized that many of us aren’t using self-improvement because we believe in ourselves—we’re using it to finally feel good enough. In this anniversary episode, I’m sharing the real story behind Wellish: the wound that started it, how my relationship with personal growth changed, and why the podcast became a rebellion against self-rejection disguised as self-improvement. We’re talking about the pressure to become your “best self,” the knowledge-to-skill gap, learning to trust yourself without having everything figured out, and what I want the next five years of Wellish to stand for. You can want to grow without making your current self the enemy. Happy five years, Wellish besties. 🤍

What if your “healthy” routine is actually spending more energy than it gives you? In this episode of Wellish, Sarah sits down with naturopathic doctor and The Cortisol Cure author Dr. Erin Kinney to rethink what we’ve been taught about cortisol, chronic stress, and burnout. Dr. Kinney introduces her Cortisol Bank Account framework: every demand on your body—from work and emotional stress to exercise, caffeine, and even certain wellness practices—requires energy. If you continually spend more than you restore, you may find yourself exhausted, wired at night, dependent on caffeine, struggling with your hormones, or unable to relax without feeling guilty. Sarah and Dr. Kinney discuss why wellness can become another form of hustle culture, how to tell when you’re running on empty, and how ambitious people can protect their energy without giving up their goals. In this conversation: Why cortisol isn’t simply a “bad” hormone you need to lowerHow healthy habits like intense workouts, cold plunges, and elaborate routines can become additional stressorsWhy relaxing may initially feel uncomfortable or unproductiveThe connection between chronic stress, energy, hormones, and relationshipsHow “relax reps” can help your body practice slowing downWhy eating before caffeine may support steadier energyHow to make small energy deposits throughout your dayWhat sustainable wellness looks like when you’re an imperfect humanBecause sometimes taking better care of yourself doesn’t require another supplement, routine, or self-improvement project. Sometimes it means giving your body enough energy to support the life you’re already living. Learn more about Dr. Erin Kinney and The Cortisol Cure: The Cortisol Cure⁠ DrErinKinney.com⁠ Instagram: @drkinney This conversation is educational and is not a substitute for individualized medical advice.

Do you genuinely want the goal or do you want what achieving it would prove about you? In this episode of Wellish, Sarah breaks down how approval-seeking can quietly shape your goals, especially when you’re a naturally Type B person holding yourself to Type A standards. You’ll learn how to recognize when a goal has become proof that you’re disciplined, desirable, successful, healed, or finally good enough and how to separate what you truly want from how you want other people to see you. You don’t have to abandon your ambitions. You can pursue meaningful goals without making your achievement responsible for your self-worth.

What happens when self-awareness stops helping you understand yourself and starts giving you more reasons to think you should be doing better? In this confession episode, I’m talking about the period of my life when I knew so much about self-improvement, attachment styles, boundaries, nervous system regulation, confidence, habits, and emotional intelligence that I couldn’t have a normal human reaction without analyzing what it meant about me. I wasn’t just anxious—I thought I should be more secure. I wasn’t just tired—I thought I lacked discipline. I couldn’t make a mistake without wondering what I still needed to heal. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t only trying to become healthier. I was trying to become so self-aware, healed, disciplined, and emotionally intelligent that no one could have a reason to disapprove of me. If you love self-improvement but constantly feel like you should know better, be further along, or have yourself more together by now, this episode is for you. Because sometimes growth looks less like fixing your reaction and more like letting yourself be a person without turning every imperfect moment into another self-improvement project.

If you love self-improvement but somehow every new piece of advice becomes another thing you feel like you should already be doing, this episode is for you. Wake up earlier. Journal. Meditate. Exercise. Read more. Meal prep. Regulate your nervous system. Set better boundaries. Be more confident. Keep every promise you make to yourself. None of that advice is necessarily bad. But when every good idea becomes another standard your “better self” would be meeting, self-improvement can start to feel like an impossible checklist. In this episode of Wellish, we’re talking about how to stop turning useful advice into evidence that you’re falling behind. You’ll learn the beginning of the Wellish filter for deciding which advice actually belongs in your life, how to recognize when growth has turned into self-rejection, and why “this might improve my life” is very different from “I should already be doing this.” Because self-improvement should give you more options for living well—not more reasons to believe you’re not good enough yet.

What if self-improvement isn’t actually making you feel better about yourself? In this confession episode, I’m talking about the years I spent reading the books, learning the habits, becoming more self-aware, trying to be more disciplined, and chasing the “best version” of myself because I thought eventually I’d feel good enough. But the more I learned, the more I found new ways to judge myself. We’re talking about the gap between knowing what to do and actually being able to live it, why self-awareness can turn into self-criticism, the pressure to become your imaginary “better self,” and what changes when you stop using personal growth as proof that you’re worthy. Because maybe self-improvement isn’t the problem. Maybe it stops helping when every new piece of advice becomes another way to decide you’re not good enough yet.

What if your self-improvement isn’t actually helping you feel better, it’s just giving you more reasons to feel like you’re not good enough yet? In this episode, we’re talking about the difference between healthy personal growth and self-rejection disguised as self-improvement. Especially if you’re naturally more relaxed, flexible, or Type B but keep trying to force yourself into the perfectly disciplined, productive, “best version of yourself” you think you’re supposed to become. We’ll talk about the signs your self-help habits have turned into a way of judging yourself, why your imaginary “better self” may be impossible to live up to, and how to keep growing without treating who you are right now like a problem that needs to be fixed. Because you can want better habits, more confidence, bigger goals, and a better life without making self-improvement the price of finally feeling good enough.