You’d like to read more regularly. You want to write a novel. You’d like to start running. You’d like to build a new business. You’d like to learn a new language, or play the piano, or paint, or start a journaling practice. You’d like to stop smoking. You’d like to stop using your phone every […]
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“There is mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh Over the past few years, many of us in the helping professions have noticed an emotional shift that feels like a sense of gloom hanging over much […]
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It’s very easy to passively enjoy something, but acknowledging just how happy it makes you adds another layer of gratification. Perhaps it’s reallllly enjoying a glass of wine at the end of the day, finding comfort in the smell of your home when you walk in, feeling just how soft your sheets are all over […]
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As commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt juggled ruthless pursuit of enemies and delicate diplomacy with tribal leaders, using a trove of modern weaponry and streams of tech-generated data. But his best decisions, he said, relied on a tool as ancient as it is powerful. Maj. Gen. Piatt often began […]
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As a child, and much into my adulthood, I spent countless hours worrying about things that I could not change, things that I had no control over, and often things in the future that never even happened. This created a lot of suffering for me — often unnecessary suffering — that I had difficulty finding […]
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Mindfulness has become quite the buzzword these days, with impressive studies popping up in the news with regularity. For example, research from the University of Oxford finds that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is just as effective as antidepressants for preventing a relapse of depression. In MBCT, a person learns to pay closer attention to the […]
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Everyone has writing on their wall — hidden belief systems and pre-recorded programs that dictate how we behave, react and experience ourselves and the world. This information has been imprinted onto our subconscious minds like music onto the track of a tape. We may not be aware of it, but we listen to the voice […]
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Our mental health isn’t static. It is something we can change and improve and build on. Which is why coach and speaker Miles Adcox prefers the term “mental or emotional fitness.” “Fitness conjures the idea that we have some control and work we can do to improve the status of our mental and emotional well-being.” The […]
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What can conflict and change teach you? Life is full of potential friction. We expect relationships to last forever, situations to have certain outcomes, jobs to last longer than they do. However, life tends to serve us what we need to grow and evolve rather than what will keep us safe. How we tend to […]
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We all have habits we’d rather not have, whether it’s smoking, emotional eating, or any of a hundred other things. And it’s likely that we’ve all, at one point or another, tried to break one or more of them, only to have the break be only temporary. What’s the secret to permanent habit change? Listen […]
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Inner peace is the centerpiece of your soul. Stress is a constant, a fact of life, a silent killer. These catchphrases grab our attention because, yep, they sound pretty stressful — as though we’d better put on our protective gear, grab our weapons, and prepare for combat… or else. No doubt, our daily exposure to the stress […]
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Try this short experiment and say the following statements to yourself: I want to stop eating junk food. I want to stop yelling at my kids. I want to stop worrying about things I can’t control. (Feel free to substitute behaviors that might be more relevant in your life). Notice how this feels in your […]
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You’re all-too familiar with the cracks and indentations of your bedroom ceiling. Because you’ve spent one-too-many sleepless nights staring at it. And staring. And staring. And staring some more. You likely don’t struggle with insomnia or another sleep disorder, but on some nights, it’s simply tough to fall asleep–and stay that way. Psychotherapist Melissa Divaris […]
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Build your mental and emotional muscles by giving up these patterns. There has been a great deal of research in recent years about how positive emotions can build your resilience, help you bounce back from setbacks faster, and help you enjoy a better quality of life. However, similar to someone who adds vegetables to their […]
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I have spent a decade studying personal development systems in conjunction with psychological paradigms for mind management. Some approaches I looked into were weird and mystical, like the Silva Method, Lazaris, Abraham Hicks and A Course in Miracles, others were more socially acceptable like Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Hypnotherapy, while some were widely applied in clinical […]
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Journaling can transform not only my physical health, but also emotional and spiritual health. I didn’t always love my body. In fact, for years, I hardly thought about it at all. My body was a machine that I worked relentlessly and neglected constantly. It was simply a tool that my brain used to get where […]
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“Life is not about accumulation. It is about contribution.” Stephen Covey’s powerful words resonate on oh so many levels. In the work setting, it’s not about accumulating personal performance accolades; it’s about our contribution to the betterment of the entire organization. In the social sphere, it’s not about the number of friends that we accumulate (know any “friend […]
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If you’re a Marie Kondo fan then you already know about her “does it spark joy?” rule. And if not, may I suggest picking up her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, or watching her Netflix show, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo? I promise it will change your life! […]
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We all do it. We try to wish our thoughts away. When our mind turns to a stressful work situation, a craving for a cigarette, or a fantasy we shouldn’t be having, we immediately try to remove the thought from the gray matter of our brains. We start a random conversation with the person next […]
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Despite many of us in the modern world enjoying a level of comfort and luxury that would be been unimaginable for most of human history, we still find it very hard to be happy. In fact, it seems that modern society is contributing to our fatigue and discontentment — with high-pressure working lives, decreased sense […]
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