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Tag: healthy environments

Your Inner Cow!

My guest, April Ockerman, manages cows and teaches people how to manage them. I love hearing her view of animal behavior.

THE HAPPY BRAIN PODCAST is a frank conversation between Loretta Breuning and a real reader of her book, Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin levels. Read the book and send your questions to Dr. Breuning on the contact form at the Inner Mammal Institute at: InnerMammalInstitute.org. You may be a guest on the show yourself!

The brain chemicals that make us feel good are inherited from earlier mammals. They evolved to do a job, not to make you feel good all the time. When you know the job each chemical does in the state of nature, your ups and downs make sense. More important, you can re-wire yourself to enjoy more of them in sustainable ways.

It’s not easy, alas. Our brain is designed to release happy chemicals when you take steps that promote survival. But our brain defines survival in a quirky way: it cares about the survival of your genes and it relies on neural pathways built in youth. To make things even harder, our brain habituates to the rewards it has so you always have to do more to get more happy chemicals.

We are not born with survival skills like our animal ancestors. Each newborn human wires itself from its own early experience. Happy chemicals are like paving on your neural pathways, wiring you to repeat behaviors that made you feel good before. This is why our urgent motivations don’t make sense to our verbal brain. It’s not easy being mammal!

When you know how your brain works, you can find healthier ways to enjoy happy chemicals and relieve unhappy chemicals. You can build new neural pathways by feeding your brain new experiences. But you have to design the new experiences carefully and repeat them— a lot!

The Inner Mammal Institute has free resources to help you make peace with your inner mammal: videos, blogs, infographics, and podcasts. Dr. Breuning’s manyt books illuminate the big picture and help you plot your course. You can feel good in new ways, no matter where you are right now. Get the details at InnerMammalInstitute.org.

Music from Sonatina Soleil by W.M. Sharp. Hear more of it at InnerMammalInstitute.org/musicbywmsharp

The Empowered Whistleblower: Dawn Marie Westmoreland on Bullying

Dawn Marie Westmoreland has always found her joy in inspiring, supporting, and empowering those who need it most. That joy has been reflected in her career and continues to be her driving force to this day. Dawn has also experienced workplace bullying and discrimination first-hand.  In 2012, Dawn reported her former government agency to the Office of Special Counsel and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for prohibited personnel practices and retaliation. As a result, her managers and co-workers turned on her, and she was subjected to two years of horrific workplace bullying and discrimination.

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The Empowered Whistleblower: Workplace Bullying with Author Dawn Marie Westmoreland

Dawn Marie Westmoreland speaks with us about her experience working with Veterans Affairs and the horrific workplace bullying she suffered after reporting unfair treatment, the subsequent law suit, her activism to empower others experiencing this type of harassment, and her book coming out in May of 2015, The Empowered Whistleblower.

For anyone who has experienced workplace harassment this book and this show are for you.

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Ending Workplace Bullying: The Empowered Whistleblower Dawn M. Westmoreland

Dawn M. Westmoreland has joined us before on Mental Health News Radio. She is an advocate and coach for anyone that has experienced workplace bullying. She also works extensively with legal professionals pursuing cases that involve workplace harassment. Her journey from the Air Force to Human Resources expert to Veterans Affairs to “Empowered Whistleblower” is fascinating. In 2015 the Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) compensated her to educate Senators on the need to protect whistleblowers in the Veteran Affairs. She is one of the co-authors of a new, number 1 Amazon Best Seller, “The Strength of My Soul: Stories of Sisterhood, Triumph and Inspiration”.

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