What You're Craving with Molly Carmel
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What You're Craving with Molly Carmel
Welcome to The Daily Ascent. I'm Molly Carmel — and this is the podcast I always wished existed: a bite-sized, on-the-ground spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life. Because sometimes, that's all it takes — a small shift in what we choose to believe — to make the day a l...
Recent Episodes
313 episodes
Ep. 181 | What I Told My Coach That Changed Everything About Social Media
My social media coach kept saying she couldn't guarantee results. After the third time, I stopped her and said she never had to say that to me again....
Ep. 180 | If You Believe in Toxic Energy, You Already Believe in Prayer
At a spiritual retreat this week, someone asked my teacher if she believed in the power of prayer. She didn't answer. She turned the question around:...
Ep. 179 | Why Unsolicited Advice Isn't Kindness (Even When It Comes From a Good Place)
I was on a spiritual retreat in Lourdes when a woman in my small group started doing unsolicited therapy on me. She was kind. She was well-meaning. An...
Ep. 178 | [FAVORITE] It's All Happening for a Reason" (and Other Things That Need a Second Look)
This one is a crowd favorite, and it might ruffle some feathers. I'm taking a hard look at one of the most overused phrases in spirituality, "everythi...
Ep. 177 | What 27 Strangers on Labor Day Weekend Taught Me About Belonging
My friend threw me a welcome party when I moved to Connecticut. It was Labor Day weekend, and genuinely thought nobody would come. Twenty-seven women...
Ep. 176 | [FAVORITE] The 15-Year-Old Who Taught Me the Hardest Spiritual Lesson
This one is a crowd favorite, and honestly, I think you'll see why. My goddaughter was 15. One dinner-table moment and I was catapulted straight out o...
Ep. 175 | How to Actually Leave Something Behind (Not Just Say You Will)
A client of mine had a really hard year. When she told me she was heading out on a hiking trip to celebrate making it through, I told her to give it t...
Ep. 174 | Why Stepping Back Was the Most Sacred Thing I Did in Lourdes
I went to Lourdes with a plan. I was going to do the bathing ritual. I was going to get dunked in the sacred water and it was going to be transcendent...
Ep. 173 | You Said a Sacred Yes (Even When You Want to Take It Back)
When I arrived in Lourdes for an eight-day spiritual retreat, my first thought was: I made a terrible mistake. This happens to me every single time I...
Ep. 172 | Why "I'll Try My Best" Is Holding You Back
A coaching client said something to me recently that I have heard a hundred times in a hundred rooms, and I finally want to say out loud what it actua...
Ep. 171 | The Smallest Way to Build a Self You Can Trust
I used to tell myself I was going to put away the laundry before I went to sleep. And I knew, even as I was saying it, that I wasn't going to. That sm...
Ep. 170 | You Don't Have to Keep the First Thought You Have
I was on my way to Lourdes, sitting next to a man who coughed the entire flight, and I was catastrophizing at altitude in a way that was decidedly not...
Ep. 169 | What Happened When I Finally Asked to Be Held
The night before I left for Lourdes, I was depleted in a way I hadn't fully admitted to myself. I went to my women's circle and I did something I don'...
Ep. 168 | Why Asking for Help Feels So Hard - And What Changes When You Do It Anyway
I did something recently that was genuinely hard for me — not complicated, just vulnerable. I needed to ask about ten people for something, and every...
Ep. 167 | The Difference Between What You Fear and What You Know
Last week I sat in coaching session after coaching session hearing people make declarations about their lives with complete certainty — certainty that...
Ep. 166 | Why You Can't Speed Up the Things That Actually Matter
I have been saying the same thing to people for twenty-five years — in treatment rooms, on retreats, seventeen miles deep in the forest with someone w...
Ep. 165 | Why You Can't Stop Once You Start (It's Not What You Think)
Last week Danny, my seventy-five-pound lab mix, accidentally ran a little experiment for me. I had been giving him these yak milk bones and then takin...
Ep. 164 | Why You Don't Need a New Hobby, You Need a Relationship with Downtime
In today's episode, I'm sharing a conversation I had with my best friend during her surgery recovery week, when the house unexpectedly went quiet and...
Ep. 163 | The Quiet Grief of a Friendship That Ended
In today's episode, I'm sharing something I have been carrying for a long time and have not really known how to talk about, the loss of a friendship t...
Ep. 162 | Why You Should Follow the Inner Nudge Even When It Makes No Sense
In today's episode, I'm sharing the trip I almost didn't take, the inner voice that told me I had to go anyway, and what was actually waiting for me o...
Ep. 161 | How to Build the Kind of Community That Shows Up When You Need It
In today's episode, I'm sharing what I noticed while I was with my best friend the week after her major surgery, and the moment when one of our friend...
Ep. 160 | Why Unsolicited Advice Hurts Even When It Comes From Love
In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened the day my calmest friend in the world finally yelled, after the accumulated weight of all the well-mean...
Ep. 159 | The Pattern That Hits Right After You Make a Big Decision
In today's episode, I'm sharing the call I made to my spiritual advisor twelve hours after I drove my new car off the lot, the way she gently laughed...
Ep. 158 | How to Choose Freedom Over Being Right When Someone Has Hurt You
In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened the day a recruiter called for a reference on the assistant who'd stolen from me and refused to talk to...
Ep. 157 | How to Look Honestly at a Hard Chapter Without Flogging Yourself for It
In today's episode, I'm sharing something I've never talked about on the show, what happened with my last assistant, and the deep inventory work I was...
Ep. 156 | How to Give Yourself the Runway to Find Your Flow
In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened when I heard a wildly successful comedian say something so honest about his early days that it made me t...
Ep. 155 | How to Stop Letting Other People's Opinions Decide Your Worth
In today's episode, I'm sharing something I scrolled past while bracing for a return to social media that completely shifted the way I'm holding criti...
Ep. 154 | Why You Don't Have to Understand a Spiritual Experience to Have One
In today's episode, I'm sharing the decision I had to make before a trip I'm about to take that surprised me with how much it revealed about how I app...
Ep. 153 | What Happened When I Left My Phone at Home for Three Hours
In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened the day I accidentally left my phone at home and discovered something about my own nervous system that I...
Ep. 152 | Why You Should Ask Before You Sacrifice for Someone You Love
My best friend was having surgery, and I'd quietly decided I had to be there every second of it.
So when a once-in-a-lifetime concert landed ri...
Ep. 151 | Why Knowing When to Stop Is One of the Hardest and Most Loving Things You Can Do
In today's episode I'm sharing something I am still learning — knowing when to fold.
I have a condition called mast cell activation syndrome, a...
Ep. 150 | Why the Most Energizing Day You'll Have This Year Might Cost You Nothing
In today's episode I'm sharing something one of my retreat participants did after our retreat that I think is one of the most quietly radical things I...
Ep. 149 | What I Realized I Lost When Everything Went Online
In today's episode I'm talking about something I've been slowly noticing and am finally ready to say out loud.
Before Covid I was in the world...
Ep. 148 | Why Taking Care of Your Body Is an Act of Self-Love Not a Chore
In today's episode I'm sharing a ritual my friend Betsy introduced me to — you write thirteen wishes, burn twelve, keep the one that survives. Mine sa...
Ep. 147 | How Sending Love to Strangers Changed the Way I Fall Asleep
In today's episode I'm sharing something that started as a genuine annoyance — major nighttime construction outside my home, 9pm to 6am — and turned i...
Ep. 146 | Why Giving Is Easy and Receiving Is So Hard
In today's episode I'm talking about something I witness at almost every retreat I host — women who have come specifically to be received, and the mom...
Ep. 145 | How to Stop Taking Other People's Behavior So Personally
In today's episode I'm sharing something my friend Andrew modeled for me at a Q + A recently that I have been genuinely trying to practice ever since....
Ep. 144 | Why Not Knowing What to Do Next Isn't the Same as Being Lost
In today's episode I'm sharing a reframe that has saved me more times than I can count — sometimes you don't know what the next right thing is, but yo...
Ep. 143 | Why Feeling Out of Place in a Room Full of People You Love Is More Common Than You Think
Today's episode is a vulnerable one... YAY! I had a hard Mother's Day and I'm talking about it.
Susan Cain writes in Bittersweet that our longi...
Ep. 142 | How to Let Things Be What They Want to Be
In today's episode, I'm sharing what happened when my friend Michelle and I co-hosted an event that started with big plans for twenty people and ended...