Dr. Diana Hill shares how retreat helps clarify where your energy is aligned or depleted, drawing on her family’s annual week at Plum Village, a Buddhist Monastery founded by Thich Nhat Hahn. When you go on retreat, you come back to yourself and things become more clear for you about how you want to use your energy, about where you're off track, where you're out of alignment. Listen to this episode to hear five lessons she learned from Plum Village that you can apply to your daily life right now.

• Lesson One Let Yourself Cry
• Lesson Two Sometimes Happens
• Lesson Three Missing Instrument
• Lesson Four Disease Purifies
• Lesson Five Movement Has Life

If this episode helps, share it with someone whose energy is misaligned and drained.

Get enhanced show notes for this episode

• Become a Wise Effort Community member
• Sign up for my newsletter
• Order my book, Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most, and receive special bonus gifts.

• See Diana at an upcoming event

• Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
• Leave a 5-star review on Apple so people like you can find the show.
• Follow Diana on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Diana’s website.

Thanks to the team, Craig and Ashley Hiatt, and Benjamin Gould of Bell & Branch for your beautiful music.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Wise Effort Community

Wise Effort Community

Do you get grippy, anxious, or self-critical when life doesn’t go the way you planned? In this Secret Sangha episode, I explore the paradox and dark side of control—sparked by what happened at a private dinner after my Tell the Truth Salon event with Dan Siegel. Drawing on Dan’s ABC motivational systems (agency, belonging, certainty), we unpack how control spirals show up as rumination, self-blame, people-pleasing, or criticism. I also share how one question at dinner revealed that many pivotal moments in our lives come when control is ripped away.

• The ABC systems behind your control habits: agency, belonging, and certainty
• Common “dark side” control strategies (inner focus, outer focus, and push-pull)
• What’s not up to you (others’ actions, happiness, thoughts/feelings, outcomes) and what is (your actions and response)
• The Wise Effort method: get curious, sort what you can/can’t control, and focus your energy

If this episode helps, share it with someone who’s stuck in a control loop.

Get enhanced show notes for this episode

• Become a Wise Effort Community member
• Sign up for my newsletter
• Order my book, Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most, and receive special bonus gifts.

• See Diana at an upcoming event

• Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
• Leave a 5-star review on Apple so people like you can find the show.
• Follow Diana on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Diana’s website.

Thanks to the team, Craig and Ashley Hiatt, and Benjamin Gould of Bell & Branch for your beautiful music.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Wise Effort Community

Wise Effort Community

On The Wise Effort show, Diana Hill talks with Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi, a researcher in process-based therapy and ACT, about self-righteous anger and how to stay honest and kind when others aren’t. They explore the psychology of getting “hijacked” in conflict, describing outrage and being right as an addiction (experiential attachment) distinct from experiential avoidance, with different intervention implications. Using examples like a conflict with neighbors, online outrage, and relationship fights, they discuss wise distance, not adding fuel to the fire, asserting boundaries when effective, and directing core human yearnings (competence, connection, purpose, meaning, orientation, and feeling) toward what truly satisfies rather than empty status pursuits.

Get enhanced show notes for this episode

• Become a Wise Effort Community member
• Sign up for my newsletter
• Order my book, Wise Effort: How to Focus Your Genius Energy on What Matters Most, and receive special bonus gifts.

• See Diana at an upcoming event

• Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
• Leave a 5-star review on Apple so people like you can find the show.
• Follow Diana on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Diana’s website.

Thanks to the team, Craig and Ashley Hiatt, and Benjamin Gould of Bell & Branch for your beautiful music.

Mentioned in this episode:

Tell the Truth Salon Series

 You are invited to join me live in person or streaming online here in Santa Barbara to Tell the Truth Salon Series. This is something that I have been dreaming up for a while now. I want us to gather in person, online, and have real conversations, unedited, unscripted, with people who are change-makers in our world, but also to uncover our own inner truths. https://drdianahill.com/salon

Tell the Truth Salon Series