
Hosted by Monique Rhodes · EN

I'm going to say the thing nobody in your life will say to you. The reason you keep saying yes — the reason you give and give and end up empty — is not because you are a kind person. It is because you are frightened. And until you can see that clearly, nothing changes. In this episode I unpack the difference between kindness and the survival reflex that looks like kindness from the outside, why most people-pleasing advice doesn't work, and the small, hard question to ask yourself the next time you say yes. 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.

This is a different kind of episode. No list. No three takeaways. Just one conversation about something I think we don't talk about enough — the particular pain of wanting today to be different than it is. The mood you woke up in. The argument that's still sitting in your chest. The day that already feels heavy when nothing has even really happened yet. We're going to sit with this together, gently, and I'm going to offer something I learned the hard way. Take your time with this one. It's not a quick 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.

If you grew up being the one who kept everyone calm, you didn't choose it. It was assigned to you. And the role you played as a child often becomes the role you play everywhere — at work, in relationships, in friendships. Today I want to talk about what it actually costs to be the family peacemaker. Why your nervous system probably still scans every room. Why you can't relax when other people are tense. Why "I'm fine, don't worry about me" comes out of your mouth before you've even checked whether it's true. And what it might look like to gently put the job down. 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.

You've been told to set boundaries. You've tried setting boundaries. And somehow you're still exhausted, still over-explaining, still feeling like you have to defend the smallest "no." So today I want to push back on the most-recommended advice in the wellness world and tell you what I actually think happens when you keep being told that the answer to other people's behaviour is just to draw a clearer line. There's a deeper conversation underneath this one, and we're going to have it. By the end of this episode I want you to walk away with a different way of thinking about the energy you keep handing over without realising. 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.

Most people don't know they're burned out. They just think this is who they have become. In this episode, Monique walks through five quiet signs of burnout that almost nobody talks about. Not the obvious ones. Not "you're tired" and "you're working too hard." The ones you can have for two or three years without ever realising you have them. You'll hear why losing your anticipation for small things is one of the very earliest signals, why going quiet on the group chats isn't antisocial — it's a system in power-saving mode — and the specific kind of evening tiredness that gets misread as personality. Number four is the one almost everybody recognises but nobody connects to burnout. If you have started to wonder whether you used to be more fun and you just got older — this episode is the one for you. Burnout is not a personality. It is a state. Which means it can shift. 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.

Monique has spent fifteen years around genuinely calm people — and she means the real ones, not the ones who post about it. They all do nine very specific things that the rest of us don't. This episode walks through all nine. Not personality traits. Not temperament. Habits. Which means they're learnable. Number six is the one almost no one believes is actually a calmness skill. Number eight is the one Monique personally got most wrong, for the longest time. You'll hear what calm people do with small decisions, why they refuse to run a tight schedule, why they don't argue back at their own thoughts, and the very specific thing they do with other people's moods that the rest of us get backwards. If you have spent the last year feeling slightly behind, slightly buzzing, slightly never-quite-arrived — this episode is 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.

There is a kind of permission that arrives — sometimes in your fifties, sometimes later, sometimes never — and it quietly changes everything about how you live the next thirty years. In this episode, Monique walks through seven specific things the people she knows who have this permission have stopped apologising for. Not the obvious ones. The ones almost nobody talks about. You'll hear the story of a woman who came back from ten days at her sister's house, exhausted, and realised she hadn't said the word "no" once in the whole visit. The cake at the lunch table that closed a small loop in someone's head forever. And the moment in a workshop in Auckland when a room full of people went quiet at the same question. Number five is the one most people quietly admit they didn't realise they were even allowed to do. This is an episode for anyone who is starting to notice they have spent a lot of years explaining themselves — and is ready to take some of that energy back. 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.

There is a kind of tired that cannot be explained by anything you did. Not the tired you feel after hard work or a bad night's sleep — those make sense. You can trace them. You can point to a reason. This episode is about the other tired. The tired that arrives in the late afternoon when you have barely done anything. The tired that finds you sitting on the edge of the bed at nine in the morning, already wrung out. The tired you cannot explain to anybody else and have started to wonder if something is wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you. The tiredness has a name. And once you know the name, you can start to put some of it down. Monique tells the story of a woman who sits in her driveway for ten minutes every evening before walking into her own house — not because anything is wrong at home, but because she needs ten minutes before becoming the person her family needs her to be. And a moment in an Auckland workshop where she asked forty women when the last time was they had been alone with their own thoughts, and the room went silent. This is an episode about emotional labour — the invisible, unpaid, constant work of regulating everybody else's feelings. And one small, specific practice to begin getting fifteen minutes of your own life back each day. 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.

I have been teaching happiness at over seventy colleges 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.

Most 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.