There are many temptations to organize our life around the experience of earlier trauma. But that may short-change the future—which starts by our envisioning something better.
I suspect it is difficult for many of us to believe we have a whole, undamaged Self because we are so used to feeling that we are flawed at the core; so used to striving.
Rest can be as accessible as a sigh. At any time, a deep breath provides an instant of rest. It’s not necessary to wait for a vacation to rest. Rest a little bit every day.
Attachment is what relationships are made of, but so are change and impermanence. To successfully navigate life, we have to come to terms with this paradox.
How ironic I find it that after my personal professional identity crisis, I have joined a profession going through it. Except I just don't think it's true, despite what they say.
It takes strength and optimism to crawl forward in the dark and believe in the light at the end, and it takes strength and optimism to look at what’s in the tunnel, too.
My earring fell down the drain and it made me think about impermanence. Life has a way of forcing you to contemplate this truth, but we resist knowing it in a bone-deep way.
During the pandemic, it feels important right now to focus on what I can control. This is part of Stephen Covey's first habit of highly effective people: be proactive. Choose.
Better can be the enemy of good, too. Even if you’re wise enough to know perfection is impossible, better is always possible. I truly believe in better. But sometimes good is best.
I was a little disappointed to find spirituality at the bottom of that list. Almost as disappointed to find that there as I was surprised to find kindness in the top five.
One of the most important things I've learned is that success is inseparable from failure, because success is about rising to challenges, and challenges require practice to meet.
Clever Readers, these orientations are basically pessimistic and optimistic. Some goals lend themselves more to a promotion strategy, and some to a prevention strategy.
Is life admin getting you down? How about your New Year's goals? Priority-setting, scheduling, and making a plan are three things that make me want to pull the covers over my head.
If I can free myself of regret and fear, well, then I will be golden. Failing that, if I can accept regret and fear, then I’ll be pretty good. Silver, I suppose.
There is a more complex form of visualization that is also helpful. It is called mental contrasting. Mental contrasting is visualizing one’s goal and also visualizing the obstacles
It's summer, which means traveling with family, sometimes sharing vacation time with more than one family within a family. And that means--drama. Dreaded family drama. How to deal?
I was at the gym on a recent Saturday on the weight machines, maintaining muscle mass. So were a skinny, blonde, teenaged girl and a macho weight-lifter bully.
When women’s backs are to the wall, they really discover resourcefulness and strength and courage, and I think that we’re in that time frame right now. Our backs are to the wall.
I’m always intrigued by something that I learned in Overeaters Anonymous, which was, ‘Fake it till you make it’. Act like you're in recovery before you're in recovery.
Now, I have a teensie problem with self-esteem. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it. I hope you haven’t. Well, I have an exercise to help me with this problem, and it can help you.
This reminds me of an incident with the plumber the other week. I called the plumber. You know plumbers, they charge you $100 to step over your threshold.
It seems like a good day to reiterate one of the planks of my scaffolding of success: centering. As in, remember what’s in your control and what’s not.
Grit is what you think it is: tenacity. But this new definition of grit adds the element of passion. So grit is perseverance in pursuit of something of intrinsic interest to you.
What is grit? Is grit muscling through weekend traffic on 495 and 95 to and from visiting your rising 10th grader at her theater camp's performance day? Sadly, no. That's different
The other weekend my next door neighbor dropped dead. He was a grandfather, in his seventies, and had heart problems. Strange as it may seem, I never met him. I knew his wife.
According to Martin Seligman, anxiety and depression spring from having “a bleak view of the future.” Not from past traumas nor how they feel about what is happening at present.
Current events are inconveniencing me, Readers. They are preventing me from splashing happily in my bath. They are keeping me from focusing with laser-like concentration on work.