We all wish – or, I will argue, we all think we wish – that we could escape our worries, stresses, anxieties and repetitive, annoying thought patterns. We all dream of a worry-free, stress-free and anxiety-free life. The process goes something like this: we experience our worries (and stresses/anxieties, but I will just say “worries” …
Is there something that you would like to feel right now? Can you give that feeling to yourself? Can you give yourself the recognition, sense of importance and feeling of worthiness that you long for? The approval you seek? The love you crave? Longing to feel a certain way, we are conditioned to turn to …
My hope is that I’ll one day experience the love I long for and I fear that day will never come. My hope is that, in time, I’ll be successful, and my fear is that I’ll forever be doomed to failure and mediocrity. My hope is that I’ll eventually experience myself as inherently adequate, confident …
Freud showed that much of our proclaimed self-knowledge is, in fact, self-deception. The vast majority of who and what we are lies just out of reach, living on in the unconscious regions of our mind. To a large extent, our proclaimed self-knowledge is the product of simple pattern repetition. We think we know ourselves because …
Intro We all have stories about who we are and how the world works. These stories are necessary insofar as they provide us a map with which to construct our lives and guide our behavior. Unfortunately, there is often a restricting element to our stories. They are inherently limited. They are the product of our …
At any given moment, we are evaluating our experience and putting into one of three possible categories: positive/promising, negative/threatening, or neutral/irrelevant. The category we ultimately place a given experience in is determined by the goal that we are pursuing. For example, when feeling hungry, our goal is to satisfy that hunger. This goal determines how …
Wherever you go, there you are John Kabbat Zin Other people come and go. Even the people most significant to you – those that will be by your side for the entirety of your life – come and go throughout the course of a single day. Nobody is with you constantly. And, even if they …
The Most Important Relationship You Have And How To Nurture It Read More »
For most of history, humans have turned to the heavens in search of an explanation for our existence, for our lives, and for our death. We have found god in many forms and called god by many names. God provided us with a semblance of ground to stand on. An understanding that our lives are …
Most of us go to great lengths to avoid our core vulnerabilities. “Core vulnerabilities” is another term for “feelings that we don’t like”. To put the first sentence another way, we do our best to avoid people and circumstances that cause us to feel things we don’t want to feel. Duh. The problem with this …
