When you’re waiting for news, for an answer, for closure… how are you patient, how do you get through the day, what do you occupy your mind with? This wonderful question came from a member of our Elegant Excellence Community.

I shared the spontaneous teaching you’ll hear in this episode, and am following it up with thoughts through the lens of my brother-in-law’s accident that hadn’t yet happened when I shared this original teaching.

Links in this episode:

• Ep 149: How to live well

Would love to hear your thoughts after on Instagram @HilaryRushford. If you think this would help someone you know please share and tag me so I can see + chime in!

Four weeks ago I’d have told you I’m deeply empathetic.

I still am! But I’ve been humbled as to how much I can declare that in scenarios in which I truly have never walked a similar path.

It’s rare we have “overnight change” moments. When they happen we get a clear vision of a before and after of ourselves.

Today we’ll chat about:

• The difference between sympathy, empathy, and being an empath.

• Why pity feels gross and how we shift to a much better feeling. (Whether they’re feeling it towards you, or you to them.)

• The 4 H’s to know your role in supporting someone. (I love an easy to remember hack!)

• And the #1 thing I implore you to start doing when people ask how you’re doing. 🙏🏻

Links in this episode:

• IG post about Aaron’s accident

• GoFundMe to support Aaron’s recover journey

• Mama of a daughter in a wheelchair, LittleMissMiggy

• Ep 17: Am I doing self-love wrong?

Would love to hear your thoughts after today’s episode @HilaryRushford! If you think this would bless someone else please share it and tag me! 

If you love someone who’s walked through illness + injury, this “pour a cup” or “let’s go on a walk” chat is for you. My 26-year-old brother-in-law (outdoorsy, active, military veteran) was in an accident 2.5 weeks ago, fracturing his C5 vertebrae and paralyzing him from the neck down. He’s been given a 1-2% chance of getting out of a wheelchair, and our family is rocked, devastated, fighting, believing, and learning a whole new world.

When I shared the news on Instagram Monday comments and DMs were flooded by the caregivers. I saw a whole demographic that had been there all along, you just hadn’t had a reason to share your story with me.

Today’s episode is for you. Or for your friends who may not understand what you went through or are going through, because it takes this long to explain it, and these aren’t even any of the personal details, just 8 of the different emotions and experiences I’ve found myself or my family in over the last couple weeks.

I’m sharing from what I call the First-and-a-half Circle of Grief. The wife of the brother. Close enough to watch the trauma unfold, but aware how far my experience is from that of his parents and siblings who’ve known him every day of his life. Today’s conversation is for those who may not have quite heard themselves in the stories from the center on other podcasts about trauma and recovery. 

May you feel seen. Love, Hilary Links in this episode:

• Ep 59: Permission to heal + Third Circle Grief

• Ep 149: How to live well, instead of fearing death (reflections on t’Witch, Dave Hollis) (Fourth Circle Grief)

• Recovery Fund for Aaron

• Meal Train Sign-up for Aaron’s Caregivers

• Elegant Excellence Community via our Journal shop

Would love to hear your thoughts after today’s episode on Instagram @HilaryRushford  

Whether ending a relationship, letting go of a home or a side gig, it can be so challenging to know when a long story has run its course.

And it matters BIG TIME! When we’re leaking energy on the wrong thing, we can be missing out on passion and purpose meant for us, in our career or simply in how we live our daily life.

In this episode I guide us back to how we got here, and how we get out with lots of grace, empowerment, and hope.

This is an important episode for any entrepreneur, yet it’s about so much more than business or work.

Links in this episode:

• Choose your Elegant Excellence Journal + join the Community today!

• A lil dance party for the nervous system advice

• Start our Healing Burnout Course today with this free workshop!

• Ep 136: Decision making: when you choose wrong + fate vs planning (part 1)

• Ep 137: Decision making: when you just cannot decide (part 2)

• Ep 138: Decision making: do you go with your gut or the data? (part 3) 

Come let me know your thoughts on today’s episode inside the group and on Instagram @HilaryRushford!

© 2019 - 2023 Hilary Rushford

Calming nervous system dates, the simplest path to feeling beautiful + more in today’s post-Florida download. 

94% of us are in a waiting season. #HandRaised This week I stumbled upon a few ways to support myself in what feels like a Groundhogs Day chapter + broke down why/how they helped so I can look for more.

Join me in a seasonal reset inside our Elegant Excellence Community for April! We’ll be Choosing Lightness (hope, ease, releasing, faith) daily together in a special format this month.

Come let me know your thoughts on today’s episode inside the group and on Instagram @HilaryRushford!

© 2019 - 2023 Hilary Rushford

A light girlfriend chat after a hard week. Anyone else just need to feel lighter?

We talk about Prince Harry, Pamela Anderson, habit stacking, winter blues, maman guilt (pet or human) – a grab bag of topics.

All tying in to less guilt in our actions or inactions (except when it’s warranted as I’ve been personally convicted of lately) and overall how to stop making things heavier for ourselves or others as we choose more lightness.

Links in this episode:

• The [temporary] Elegant Excellence Journal shop site is open!
• Get a discount on your Elegant Excellence Community membership when you join with a journal!
• Reels on the story of the site disappearance

Would love to hear your thoughts after on Instagram @HilaryRushford.

Please click the button to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and leave a review if your favorite podcast app has that ability. Thank you!

© 2019 - 2023 Hilary Rushford

What’s the thing you keep trying to solve/fix/change in your life?

What should I do for work? Why are friendships hard for me? How can I be less anxious or reactive?

Today I’m sharing the history of the Elegant Excellence Journal, which is really the history of my evolution in personal growth — how to heal.

I say in this chat, “I wanted healing, I wanted breakthrough, but it felt elusive.”

Can you relate?

This is what helped.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Join us inside the Elegant Excellence Journal here
• Black pens
• Zebra Midliner highlighters
• DiverseBee highlighters
• Heart paper clips

Would love to hear your thoughts after on Instagram @HilaryRushford.

Please click the button to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and leave a review if your favorite podcast app has that ability. Thank you!

© 2019 - 2023 Hilary Rushford

What’s stealing your time? I asked myself that question while using my Elegant Excellence Journal one morning.

When we’re behind most of us tend to go to one main reason. Perhaps that’s beating yourself up, or blaming others. Perhaps it’s a sense of failure that makes you procrastinate, or a believe you can solve it through perfection that amps you up into overdrive.

What I realized is there are actually 5 different scenarios it could be. By opening up those possibilities, now I opened up my options.

I didn’t have to just blame myself, but also sometimes I could take that ownership because I wasn’t making it “my fault” 100% of the time which is exhausting.

I didn’t have to just accept it, but also sometimes I could have that acceptance and release because it didn’t leave me empowered that 100% of the time there’s nothing I can do to feel more safe or less overwhelmed.

Suddenly I felt less like a failure or a victim.

When we realize the habit groove we’ve been creating of one narrative isn’t the only option, our thinking expands, and we don’t keep banging into the same tender spot again and again.

Listen in today and see which of the 5 reasons you’re behind lead you to the biggest breakthrough of peace, permission, or an action plan.

5 Categories Cheat Sheet: (will make sense once you listen!)

1. This can be avoided in future by X
2. Unwise choice
3. Unplanned but purposeful for my 12-month priorities
4. Planned + honored
5. Life. Happens to everyone.

Links mentioned:

• The Elegant Excellence Journal shop re-opens on Friday, March 10th! Join me LIVE when you save your seat here right now: HilaryRushford.com/Reveal

Would love to hear your thoughts after on Instagram @HilaryRushford.

Please click the button to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and leave a review if your favorite podcast app has that ability. Thank you!

© 2019 - 2023 Hilary Rushford

A simple 5-part daily check in on living with peace while surrounded with hard things we can’t control.

Trigger warning we speak of suicide and loss of life at a too young age.

Though we end with hope, with actionable steps to guide us in what it means to live well each day driven not by a fear of death but an appreciation of life.

_________________

The 5 Hand Motions:

• Heart: Show Love
• Cheeks: Appreciate beauty
• Head: Keep a sense of the bigger picture
• Palms out: Give thanks
• Wrap: Love yourself as a child of God

_________________

Links mentioned in this episode:

• YWP Ep 59: Permission to heal: social media, Covid + community (Circles of Grief)
• Article: Young people are more likely to die of heart attacks post-COVID, study finds. But why?
• Rise Together Podcast Ep 229: You are worthy of unconditional love
• IG post from t’Witch’s wife Alison: We will continue to live from joy + love

Would love to hear your thoughts after on Instagram @HilaryRushford.

Please click the button to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and leave a review if your favorite podcast app has that ability. Thank you!

© 2019 - 2023 Hilary Rushford

While in a hard season right now there’s 2 phrases I keep coming back to.

One question, and one statement. They’re my mantras, my guides, and goodness are they blessing me.

If you’re going through something hard right now it can feel complicated to find words of wisdom that really ring true. Don’t feel trite, don’t fall apart upon further scrutiny and application.

Yes. And… sometimes it’s the simplest phrases that hold the most impact because we truly remember them.

Listen in to see if they serve you as much as they are me. (PS One of them is from Tom Hanks. Though to be fair it’s also the wisdom inside a book I’m loving right now. Once you hear good truth, you often start to hear it more places!)

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Get on the waitlist before the shop opens: ElegantExcellenceJournal.com 
• The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements + Onjuli Datta
• The Idea of You by Robinne Lee

Would love to hear your thoughts after on Instagram @HilaryRushford.

Please click the button to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and leave a review if your favorite podcast app has that ability. Thank you!

© 2019 - 2023 Hilary Rushford