We could all use a little pick me up every now and then. Whether you’re struggling with a lack of motivation, coping with mental health issues, or simply feeling uninspired in your career, there are plenty of reasons you may want to enjoy some feel-good content on occasion.
Jump ahead to these sections:
- Best Positive Thinking or Mindfulness Podcasts
- Best Positive Podcasts for Physical and Mental Health
- Best Positive Podcasts for Motivation, Inspiration, and Building
- Positive Podcasts for Young Adults
- Positive Podcasts for Parents
- Positive Podcasts to Fall Asleep To
Consider these positive podcasts when such times strike. They cover a range of topics, including career tips, mental health, and spirituality. The information and stories they offer will give you a new perspective on challenging situations and emotions, making the process of changing your life much easier than you might assume.
Best Positive Thinking or Mindfulness Podcasts
Our culture’s focus on positive thinking and mindfulness isn’t a mere fad. Research consistently shows that changing the way you think can help you change your life for the better. These podcasts will teach you how to do so:
1. Good Life Project
Good Life Project is a very inspirational general resource if you’re just starting to explore positive podcasts. Featuring interviews with everyone from doctors to poets, each episode provides stories and advice about the transformative value of positive thinking.
Many episodes also embrace death positivity, reminding listeners that address death’s inevitability can motivate us to live good lives now.
2. Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations
Few people understand the topic of positive thinking as thoroughly as Oprah. Thus, it likely comes as no surprise that her SuperSoul Conversations is one of the best positive podcasts out there.
Interviewing leading experts across numerous fields, Oprah discusses living life to the fullest, crossing items off your bucket list, and many other related subjects, all in her signature warm and compassionate style.
3. Happier
It’s all there in the name! As the author of The Happiness Project, host Gretchen Rubin knows a thing or two about positive thinking. Her podcast adds to the lessons her books offer, providing listeners with tips they can use to enjoy greater happiness on a consistent basis.
Rubin thankfully isn’t afraid to share personal details when it makes sense to do so. This adds a layer of genuine emotion to the podcast that some others lack.
4. 10 Percent Happier
Dan Harris is the co-anchor of two major ABC programs. When he suffered a panic attack on air, he realized he needed to address his stress and anxiety. Harris discovered that practicing mindfulness meditation helps him stay calm, focused, and (as the podcast’s title suggests) just a little bit happier than he was before discovering mindfulness. 10 Percent Happier explores the topic in greater detail.
Along with offering mindfulness tips, it frequently covers scientific research confirming that practicing mindfulness on a regular basis can actually yield positive physical changes in the brain. That makes it particularly valuable for anyone trying to better understand exactly why mindfulness is so effective.
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Best Positive Podcasts for Physical and Mental Health
Podcasts may often share very useful practical information. This is certainly true if you want to improve your physical or mental health. The advice offered on such podcasts can help you better understand how to make such changes in your own life. Specific health and wellness podcasts worth checking out include:
5. The Overwhelmed Brain
Improving your mental health can seem intimidating. It’s hard to make lasting emotional and mental changes when non-stop thoughts, emotions, and stimuli bombard you every single day.
The Overwhelmed Brain is a useful podcast for anyone who feels this way. Its episodes provide listeners with effective strategies for improving their emotional intelligence, correcting behavior patterns that hold them back, boosting their self-esteem, and more. The podcast’s prime target is anyone who struggles to boost their mental health because they’re constantly overwhelmed with other concerns and thoughts.
6. TEDTalks Health
The TEDTalks Health podcast features audio versions of selected TED Talks covering issues related to health and wellness.
Individual episodes touch on numerous specific topics, ranging from basic diet tips to information about innovative medical technology breakthroughs. As always, the people each episode features are experts in their fields.
7. Optimal Health Daily
Do you want to improve your health through nutrition? Do you want to exercise but can’t seem to find the motivation to get started?
Optimal Health Daily addresses all these topics and many more (there are nearly one thousand episodes already!), making it an ideal positive podcast for anyone interested in learning more about physical wellness. It’s essentially a health blog in a convenient audio format.
8. Hurdle
Hurdle is a unique podcast. Each episode features a guest talking about a life challenge many face, such as stress or anxiety.
However, guests also explain how focusing on exercise and physical wellness helps them cope with these difficulties. Listening to it will provide you with valuable lessons about how to improve both your mental and physical health.
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Best Positive Podcasts for Motivation, Inspiration, and Building
Boosting your motivation and offering inspiration is one of the most valuable benefits a podcast can offer. Whether you’re trying to find the motivation to start a business, lose weight, or change your lifestyle, these podcasts will help:
9. The Mindset Mentor
Why does it seem that some people can sustain feelings of motivation throughout their lives, while others struggle with frequent periods of low motivation? The right mindset is often a crucial factor.
If you change the way you think about yourself and your experiences permanently, you can stay motivated. The Mindset Mentor offers lessons on how to do so.
It also frequently explores specific mindsets that hold people back. For example, one episode offers tips for reducing negative self-talk. Another covers how to stop thinking about yourself as weak or broken. Yet another explores strategies for letting go of control issues.
No matter what type of mindset keeps you from achieving your goals, odds are good you’ll find an episode of this podcast that addresses it.
10. The James Altucher Show
The James Altucher Show’s intro describes it as “not your average business podcast.” That’s a fair assessment. Serial entrepreneur, multi-millionaire investor, and successful author James Altucher doesn’t merely cover practical business topics (although episodes feature plenty of that content as well).
He often speaks with artists, performers, and athletes, diving deep into how personal development and professional development go hand-in-hand. The result is a unique blend of both personal stories and actionable business advice.
11. Inspire Nation
Some positive podcasts focus on specific topics, such as career tips. Inspire Nation is different.
It explores health, spirituality, relationships, personal development, and much more, serving as an ideal general resource for anyone in need of a little extra motivation.
12. The Tony Robbins Podcast
Few motivational speakers boast qualifications matching those of Tony Robbins. Over the last few decades, he’s helped everyone from average people to world leaders improve their lives in a range of ways.
The Tony Robbins Podcast features numerous lessons from his life-changing books and programs, covering such topics as money management, career success, and relationships.
13. Tiny Leaps, Big Changes
People often lack the motivation to pursue their goals because they believe they need to take massive action to make massive changes in their lives.
However, the truth is that changing your life in a major way actually tends to involve many small steps along the way. Tiny Leaps, Big Changes offers inspiration by exploring how small behavioral shifts can, over time, lead to a dramatically better lifestyle.
14. Pivot
There are many reasons some people struggle to achieve their career goals. A common one is the fact that they feel stuck on a career path already. They lack the motivation to switch to a new field or climb the corporate ladder because they don’t know how.
If that sounds familiar, Pivot is the podcast for you. Host and former career coach Jenny Blake offers expert advice on how to get out of a professional rut.
15. The Science of Success
As the name implies, The Science of Success explores the topic of success from a scientific perspective.
Guests ground their lessons in a genuine understanding of topics ranging from how to boost your productivity to how to improve your memory. It’s an ideal podcast for anyone who wants research-backed success tips.
16. The Tim Ferriss Show
Tim Ferriss is the successful author of The 4-Hour Work Week, which encourages readers to pursue their dream lifestyles by setting up passive income streams that pay the bills while requiring minimal effort. Those who achieve this goal can often justify quitting their day jobs to spend life building their dream businesses, indulging in their hobbies, and more.
The Tim Ferriss Show touches on similar topics, featuring advice from top performers across a range of fields. Their insights can help you better understand how to be more productive and realize your life vision.
Positive Podcasts for Young Adults
Young adulthood can be one of the most stressful periods of someone’s life. While some older folks might balk at this notion and claim young adults don’t face the stresses that come with holding down jobs, paying bills, and raising kids.
However, it’s important to remember young adulthood is a period of dramatic change that can involve seemingly non-stop ups and downs. Podcasts to help teens cope with these experiences include the following:
17. Dear Hank & John
Young adult novelist John Green has cultivated a major following among teen readers because of how his books address the complexities of a very complex stage of life. In Dear Hank & John, Green and his brother offer advice by answering questions young adults may have about the topics they’d find most important.
Naturally, many of these topics are quite serious and heavy, but the hosts also have a laugh addressing more humorous questions their listeners may submit. This approach ensure the experience of listening to the podcast is fun enough to keep a young adult entertained.
18. The Mortified Podcast
It’s an experience that plenty of young adults can relate to: feeling so embarrassed they wish they could crawl up into a hole and hide. The Mortified Podcast can help teens realize that doing or saying embarrassing things is a fairly common aspect of young adulthood.
It features adults (many of whom are celebrity guests) sharing the most embarrassing stories they have from childhood and their teen years in a humorous way. Sharing these candid stories allows young listeners to stop worrying so much about their own embarrassing moments.
19. Work in Progress
Being a young adult involves being at a unique crossroads in life. You’re starting to become a competent adult who should be able to care for yourself. At the same time, you don’t have enough life wisdom to realize that growing and learning is a constant process that never truly ends. Featuring interviews with successful professionals and celebrities across a variety of fields, Work in Progress focuses on how these guests overcame difficulties to continue becoming stronger, healthier individuals.
20. College Life Podcast
Adjusting to the college experience is among the more significant struggles young adults face. College Life Podcast helps young listeners comfortably navigate these experiences with advice on everything from developing proper studying habits to making friends in a new environment.
Positive Podcasts for Parents
Being a parent is perhaps the most important job in the entire world. It can also be among the most challenging. Thus, parents might find it helpful to listen to podcasts that focus on messages about raising children with an emphasis on positivity. Options along these lines to consider listening to include:
21. Good Inside
Good Inside recognizes that no one is born to be a perfect parent, nor do any perfect parents exist. The podcast acknowledges that being a strong parent who raises their children to be healthy adults is a journey. Its host, clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy, Ph.D., helps parents along this journey by addressing a range of questions that parents may have.
22. Zen Parenting Radio
As the name implies, Zen Parenting Radio is a parenting podcast that focuses on how learning about topics such as zen living and mindfulness can help parents raise children to be more compassionate. Its hosts are married self-help professionals, making this a helpful and deeply personal podcast.
23. That New Mom Life
As much as welcoming a child into the world may be a joyful experience, it’s also worth remembering that adjusting to motherhood is challenging. Any mother knows the first few months of motherhood can be a very stressful time. It can also be very lonely. It’s not uncommon for new mothers to feel slightly alone in their attempts to navigate the various experiences they may have during this time.
That New Mom Life offers some positivity and general advice to new mothers in this position. While offering practical information, it also provides emotional support by reminding new moms that what they are experiencing is to be expected.
24. Band of Mothers
Although positive podcasts are often helpful, some listeners struggle to find a podcast that fully appeals to them in this area, as these podcasts are often remarkably earnest as well. That’s not always a tone that resonates with every listener.
This makes Band of Mothers a valuable alternative to other positive podcasts for moms and parents in general. It addresses parenting in a genuinely helpful manner while also doing so from a thoroughly comedic perspective.
25. Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting
It’s important for parents to tend to their own mental health when handling both the joys and the difficulties of raising children. To help parents stay mentally well while also raising children to enjoy all the benefits of strong mental health, Dr. Lisa Damour offers Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting.
Positive Podcasts to Fall Asleep To
Many find that listening to a podcast can help them fall asleep more easily than they might if they had to solely listen to their own thoughts when attempting to relax at the end of the day. If this sounds like you, consider listening to one of these specific options. Falling asleep to positive messages is certainly one smart way to end your day on a high note.
26. Headspace Sleepcasts
Headspace is primarily an app that helps users begin to practice mindfulness meditation. Headspace Sleepcasts consist of audio recordings that can \ promote genuinely restful sleep. Although the content does not necessarily share specific positive messages, by transporting listeners to calm audio environments, it allows them to focus on feelings of warmth as they go down to sleep.
27. Nothing Much Happens
Nothing Much Happens is a sleep podcast that promotes itself as “bedtime stories for grownups.” Each episode features a yoga teacher sharing a gentle story during which, as the name of the podcast implies, very little actually happens. Regardless, each story’s purpose is to shift a listener’s mental state to one of ease and positivity as they end the day.
28. Goodnight, World!
Not every positive podcast for sleep needs to be for adults! Consider the example of Goodnight, World! Both Headspace and Sesame Street offer this podcast, which uses positive stories to guide young children to rest.
29. Sleep Life
Sleep Life is slightly unique when you compare it to many other popular sleep podcasts. Yes, like most other sleep podcasts, it presents its content in gentle tones to lull listeners into sleep more easily. However, the content also offers information about proper sleep hygiene, making it an ideal option for those who want to improve the quality of their sleep.
30. On Being
On Being is a conversation-based podcast where the host and a guest discuss some of the most important questions we have about life and spirituality. The covered topics often overlap with the subjects you’d find on numerous other positive podcasts. Although you could listen to an episode of On Being in its entirety if you want to hear everything a guest might have to say, many have found this podcast is ideal for lulling someone to sleep while still providing them with a degree of mental stimulation.
Positive Podcasts to Change Your Life
Positive podcasts teach you how to improve your life in a convenient and entertaining format. Consider these options if you’re looking for podcasts to help you achieve your dreams.
If you're looking for more on positive change, read our guides on positive websites and positive thinking books.