Healing Into Possibility

The transformational lessons of a stroke--and how they can help you face your challenges.

by Alison Bonds Shapiro, M.B.A.

Making a Difference

We might sit and dream that if only this accident or illness had not happened to us, we could be somebody useful or important. We might say we were no longer sufficient to do something truly worthwhile. Read More

Trusting Each Other

What happens when we examine the way trust works? Trust requires a relationship between two people and all relationships are complex. Read More

More Than 100 Percent

Our lives are not static. We don't stop growing because we are injured or we experience a loss. Read More

Good Intentions?

The person we spend the most time with is our self. What we wish for ourselves plays out in every moment of our lives, 24/7 awake and asleep. Read More

One Thing Leads to Another

When we look at the year just passed and face the results of the choices we have made, positive or negative, we may find that we are not so pleased with what we see. Read More

Seasonal Suffering: The Sting of Expectations

Our expectations of what is true and what will be true are the product of the stories we create about our lives. They are not the same as what is actually happening. Read More

Habits of Mind: The Flavors of Our Experience

Our experience is simply a group of sensations until we filter our experience through one of our habits of mind. Then it acquires a flavor. Read More

Anxiety: A Modern Plague

What are major causes of this plague and what can we do about them? Most of us experience significant anxiety at one point or another in our lives. Read More

The Benefits of Restraint

We may think of restraint as some desperate force holding back the flood of greed, but no force is necessary, only practice. Restraint is a practice our bodies already know. Read More

Preparing for Adversity

All of us are artists in one way or another, creatively responding to life's demands. Like any other activity or skill, though, the more we acknowledge our art and intentionally practice it, the more the practice becomes a part of us. Read More

Learning With Our Friends: The Zone of Proximal Development

We don't suddenly acquire a body of knowledge and the skills necessary to implement that knowledge. All of us routinely use the energy and skills of another person to help us learn and we have done so all our lives. We learned this way as children and we learn this way as adults. Read More

Possessed by Possessions

Owning things can add to our freedom of movement and our freedom of choice, allowing us to do things and go places we might not otherwise be able to do or go. But owning things also requires using our attention, our time, our energy and our resources just to keep up with them. Read More

Romance and Marriage After 60

There is something fascinating about the later romances and marriages I am witnessing. They are happening to people who have made a deliberate effort to live out their personal sense of what is meaningful, bringing to life their particular gifts, often taking a risk to do so Read More

The Spaces We Create: What They Can Teach Us

A large part of how we know ourselves is in relationship to the places we inhabit and the way in which we inhabit them. We shape our homes and places of work and our spaces shape us and influence our sense of who we are. Read More

Having Fun - We Are Designed For It

Having fun is not a response that needs to be directed by anyone else, it's a life-long part of what we are and do - our birthright as human beings. Our minds, bodies and spirits are made to delight in being alive. Read More

Protecting Ourselves Against Abuse When We Are Vulnerable

People abuse other people. We might not want to think that someone will abuse us when we are vulnerable but it happens all the time. Read More

Getting Out of the Way: The Balance Between Homeostasis and Growth

There is a constant dynamic tension between homeostasis and creative change. Too much change at once can disrupt internal balance. Too little change can lead to stagnation. With the media impact of constant stories of disasters and difficulties, we may develop a habitual tendency to focus on homeostasis, pulling back from creative change. Read More

Love, Wholeness and the Nature of Change

Who we are and who we are becoming are not dependent on whether or not our bodies can do all the things that are possible for a body to do. Our uniqueness, our individual wholeness, is inherent in each of us. Read More

Determining To Be Generous – a Teaching in Two Parts

Recently I received a wonderful two-part teaching. In the evening I heard a lovely talk about a Buddhist view of generosity. In the morning I witnessed the teaching in action. Read More

Compromise: Is there an Alternative?

It all starts with the notion that what I perceive to be "true" is both real and complete - as if I had the smallest chance of knowing all there is to know about life. Read More

Traveling

There is so much to focus upon to get through the increasingly difficult task of maneuvering our way through airport parking lot buses, terminals, baggage handling, security check points, gates and planes, that we may forget the person in front us is doing the best that she or he can. Read More

The Art of the Small Goal

Focusing only on a long range intended result may both frustrate and discourage us and may take our attention away from what we need to do. Read More

Laughing With Life

One kind of humor hurts and separates us. The other heals and connects us. Because humor can heal and connect, the laughter it brings can help us when we are sick or injured. Read More

Curiosity and Wellness

As I was growing up I heard, "What you don't know won't hurt you". When it comes to healing, my experience is the exact opposite. What you don't know may very well hurt you. Curiosity is essential to wellness Read More

Mirroring Care

What I do impacts you and what you do impacts me. Our brains activate when we witness other people's actions in the same way they do when we perform those same actions ourselves. And feeling what others do and feel has a direct affect on our ability to heal. Read More

Collaboration and Care

Collaboration is an art that we value in many contexts - in our work - in our personal partnerships - in our friendships. But we may not think about collaboration when faced with the illness and care of someone we love. Understanding care giving and care receiving as something other than dependency may create surprising results. Read More

Hidden Disabilities

Hidden disabilities are everywhere. Our culture teaches us that appearance is everything - the ultimate measure of a person - but appearances can be quite deceiving. Read More

Practicing Happiness

Like many people I grew up thinking that happiness was a quantity that I could acquire and keep - something I either had or I didn't. I have finally understood that happiness is not an object to be acquired. Read More

Paying Attention

Attention is the key to so many things related to our lives. We have to pay attention to walk across the street. We know our relationships are more satisfying if we actually pay attention to one another. Our business affairs require our attention. All of this seems somehow self evident. We know that attention is important, but we may not know that attention has direct biological results. Read More

Generosity

Generosity is not a "zero sum game". Although people may think it is. Generosity, when practiced regularly, creates abundance. Read More

Alison Bonds Shapiro, M.B.A., works with stroke survivors and their families, and is the author of Healing into Possibility: the Transformational Lessons of a Stroke.

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About Healing Into Possibility

Healing Into Possibility is about possibilities and how they are nourished and developed. Our approach to life's challenges has the power to change everything and the lessons we learn in the process can bring us insights that will support us throughout our lives.