Podcast
In Your Right Mind with Monique Rhodes
Hosted by Monique Rhodes · EN
This is a daily bite sized podcast teaching you how to be happier
43episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
I Teach Happiness at 70 Colleges. Here's What's Wrong.
Yesterday00:11:34Tap to summarizeI have been teaching happiness at over seventy universities for fifteen years. And I have watched the wellness industry get almost everything wrong. Not a little wrong. Wrong at the level of the question. In this episode, I'm telling you three things the happiness industry is selling you that are actually making you worse. Not because the people selling them are bad — most mean well. But because the entire premise is built on a misunderstanding about how humans actually work. Happiness isn't a feeling — it's a baseline. Forced positivity isn't wellness — it's shame with a ribbon on it. And the thing being sold as self-care is usually comfort, which is a different thing entirely. If you've been doing all the things and still feel flat and behind — this one's for you. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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Perfectionism Isn't a Virtue, It's a Coping Mechanism
3d ago00:12:33Tap to summarizeMost perfectionists have been praised their whole lives for being perfectionists. That's the thing that makes it so hard to see. In this episode, Monique unpacks what perfectionism actually is, underneath the praise: a survival contract your younger self made with the world that said, if I get this right, I will be safe. She tells the story of a woman called Nina — a successful lawyer whose family and team had stopped bringing her their rough drafts because they'd learned she had a very accurate ruler. And the story of a brilliant writer friend with a folder of forty-three finished, unsent pieces on her laptop. This is an episode for the high achievers who have quietly been paying the price of their own perfection for years. Who can't tell the difference between high standards and fear anymore. Who finish things and feel relieved instead of proud. You will leave this episode with one small, specific experiment to try this week. Not a breakthrough. Not a life overhaul. Just eighty per cent, one thing at a time. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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Apologizing Too Much? This Might Be Why
6d ago00:13:02Tap to summarizeIf you say sorry when someone bumps into you — this episode is for you. In this conversation, Monique talks about the slow, quiet erasure of yourself that happens when you've spent years apologising for existing. The waiter, the wrong order, the friend who talks over you, the text that begins "so sorry to bother you." All those tiny moments where you choose someone else's comfort over your own legitimate need. Again. And again. And again. She names where this comes from — the fawn response, the way some of us learned, very young, that small was safer than seen. And she shares a moment with a friend who apologised for crying at her own father's funeral, an apology so deep it had become a reflex, ready before the grief had even fully landed. This is not about becoming inconsiderate. It's about the difference between real warmth and compulsive self-erasure. One is a choice. The other is a held breath. If you've been doing this for so long that you can't tell the two apart anymore — please listen. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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The Sandwich Generation
1w ago00:10:42Tap to summarizeYou are caring for your kids, your parents, your work, and your own grief — and somewhere in that pile, you forgot you were a person too. This episode is for the women in their forties, fifties, and sixties who are holding more than anyone is acknowledging. The ones who know their mother's medication schedule the way they know their own phone number. The ones who track who needs which form, which appointment, which gentle phone call. The ones who park outside the supermarket for five quiet minutes because they cannot face one more aisle yet. Monique tells the story of her friend Maeve — fifty-two, two teenagers, a mother with dementia — who phoned her from a carpark after a specialist appointment and realised she couldn't remember the last time anyone had asked her how she was doing. She tells the story of a woman at a workshop who hadn't seen her own GP in three years because it had started to feel selfish. This is the long, quiet grief of caring for someone you love while they slowly become less of who they were. Of doing something extraordinary in almost complete silence. Of being asked to be infrastructure when you are, in fact, a person. If you've been holding everything together — please listen. You are not failing. You are doing something almost no one acknowledges. And this episode is one quiet acknowledgment. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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Why Mother's Day Hangovers Hit So Hard
1w ago00:12:07Tap to summarizeIf Mother's Day was harder than you expected, and now it's Monday and you're not okay — this episode is for you. Not the catastrophic kind of hard. The quieter kind. The kind that happens when your mother is still here, you maybe even saw her or rang her yesterday, and yet you spent the whole day performing a version of your relationship that felt three inches away from the truth. The kind of hard that doesn't fit on a sympathy card. In this episode, Monique talks about what she calls the Mother's Day hangover — the flat, hollow Monday that lands after a day of holding it all together. She shares a story about her friend Tess phoning her in tears the morning after, and a quiet moment in the supermarket card aisle looking for a card that didn't exist. This episode names something most people are carrying alone: that you can grieve a relationship that still exists. You can grieve the mother you needed even while the one you have is still on the end of the phone. And you don't have to have any of it sorted by today. If yesterday was hard, please listen to this. You're not the only one. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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The Hidden Cost of Being "The Strong One" in Your Family
2w ago00:14:05Tap to summarizeIf you are the person everyone calls when they're falling apart — who do you call? This episode is for the strong ones. You know who you are. You're the eldest daughter, the friend everyone leans on, the person who keeps the family together, the one who organised the funeral. And you've been wearing that role so long you might not even realise it's a costume. In this conversation, I want to talk about the hidden cost of being the strong one. The way it gets handed to you so early you don't remember putting it on. The slow, quiet loneliness of always being the giver and never quite knowing how to receive. And the strange panic that can rise up when someone genuinely asks how you are — because you've been so fluent in everyone else's pain you've lost the language for your own. I share a story about my friend who organised her father's funeral and then spent months crying in supermarket car parks. I share my own honest experience of trying to put the costume down. And I offer one small, slightly terrifying invitation: tell one safe person you're not okay. Just one. One crack in the door is enough. You are allowed to fall apart. You are allowed to need things. You are allowed to be held. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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You're Not Lazy. You're Emotionally Depleted.
2w ago00:15:16Tap to summarizeIf you've been calling yourself lazy lately, this episode is going to gently change something for you. We've been taught to read exhaustion as a character flaw. Can't get off the couch? Lazy. Can't reply to the message? Lazy. Skipping the workout? Lazy. But what most of us call laziness is actually emotional depletion. They are not the same thing, and treating one like the other is making people sicker. In this episode, Monique walks through the difference between lazy ("I don't want to") and depleted ("I literally cannot"), the way emotional debt accumulates without us noticing, and what to do when your body is sending you a signal that your mind keeps trying to override. If you've been waking up tired, snapping at people you love, or staring at a task you "should" be doing and feeling absolutely nothing — this conversation is for you. You're not broken. You're depleted. And those are two very different roads. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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Why Your Morning Routine Is Making You More Anxious
2w ago00:14:20Tap to summarizeIf you wake up and immediately start running through a 12-step morning routine — cold plunge, journal, gratitude list, supplements, workout — and somehow still feel anxious before you've even made coffee, this episode is for you. I'm a meditation teacher and I'll tell you something honestly: there are still mornings I wake up anxious before my feet hit the floor. After decades of practice. So if that's you too — if you've worked at a morning routine and you're still waking up tense — please hear that you're not failing. Something else is going on. In this episode, I unpack why so many of us are quietly performing wellness instead of actually feeling well. The 5 AM club. The perfect morning routine. The optimisation stack. None of it is making us calmer. In a lot of cases it's making us more anxious, more self-critical, and more disconnected from what our bodies actually need. I'll share my own honest morning — the dog, the kettle, the small thing I've settled into after years of trying everything. The one question I ask myself before the day starts running me. And what a real, embodied morning practice can look like (it's much smaller than you've been told). If you've been feeling exhausted by your own self-improvement, take this as your permission to do less. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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Why Your Phone Is Quietly Stealing Your Happiness
3w ago00:14:52Tap to summarizeMIT researcher Sherry Turkle found that just placing a silenced phone face down on a table between two people reduces the depth of their conversation and their empathy for each other. In this episode, Monique explores what our phones are actually doing to our happiness baseline, why we reach for them so compulsively, and shares real stories of people who made small changes to their phone habits and saw their relationships and their wellbeing transform. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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Why "Think Positive" Is the Worst Advice You've Ever Been Given
3w ago00:12:33Tap to summarize"Think positive" is the most common advice in self-help. It's also one of the most damaging. In this episode, Monique breaks down the science of why forcing positivity actually makes things worse, what toxic positivity really does to us, and what to do instead. Drawing on her own journey and decades of happiness research, this is the conversation you wish someone had had with you years ago. Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye-opening) way to discover what's actually impacting your consistency, focus, and overall wellbeing. Most people are shocked by their results — and even more surprised by what it reveals about the patterns holding them back. Take the quiz here → https://iintendtobehappy.com/ Let's take this work deeper, together.
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